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The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests that were used to deny African Americans the right to vote and established federal oversight of states with violations. Poll taxes were also outlawed in 1964, and literacy tests were perniciously discriminatory. The Act warned states that citizens’ voting rights were under federal protection, and any qualifications imposed cannot disproportionately affect protected groups.
The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that banned literacy tests because the practice was being wrongfully used to deny African Americans the right to vote. This act not only ended literacy testing, but established an extraordinary regime of federal oversight of the electoral practices of those states with gross violations of African American voting rights.
At the end of the US Civil War, three amendments to the US Constitution &emdash; the Thirteenth, the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth &emdash; have been ratified. Among other things, these amendments ended the practice of slavery, granted former slaves US citizenship, and prohibited states from denying citizens the right to vote because of their race or former slavery. During the Reconstruction period, which lasted until 1877, those states were forced to hold elections in which freed slaves voted. After 1877, when federal troops left the last of the Southern states, they began exploring ways to disenfranchise African Americans &emdash; i.e. deny them the right to vote &emdash; without violating the Constitution or reducing the right of whites to vote. In addition to intimidation and violence, two of the most popular methods of denying the right to vote were poll taxes and literacy tests.
Poll taxes were just that: a tax levied on whoever voted. These taxes weighed heavily on the poor, and most of the freed slaves and their descendants in the South were very poor. They were found to have a discriminatory effect and were outlawed in 1964 with the ratification of the 24th amendment to the Constitution.
Literacy tests were far more pernicious. First appearing in the South in the 1890s, the laws that established them often exempted or exempted from testing anyone whose grandfather voted in any election before the Civil War &emdash; in other words, a time when only white males could vote. Anyone other than the grandfather had to pass a literacy test, which usually consisted of giving the voter a paragraph to read and explain to the test officer. It has been found that whites &emdash; even those who couldn’t even read &emdash; they were supplied with simple nursery rhymes and equally easy material, and they always passed. African Americans, on the other hand, were given complex paragraphs, often sections of the Constitution, and no matter how well they read and explained the text, they were declared illiterate. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 dealt with literacy tests, it did not end them altogether, and it was not until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act a year later that this blatantly discriminatory practice was finally put to rest. notice.
In addition to banning literacy tests for voters, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 imposed a harsh federal oversight regime of those states, all Southern, that had the most egregious patterns of disenfranchisement. In a significant break with established tradition, for example, those states were required to seek Justice Department approval before making any changes to their electoral procedures. Other states typically could make the changes that affected them and only had to report to the Justice Department if a valid complaint was filed.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a milestone in civil rights legislation because it not only ended a specific discriminatory practice but warned states that citizens’ voting rights were under the special protection of the federal government. While states can still determine who can and cannot vote in elections &emdash; there is no constitutional right to vote &emdash; whatever standards and qualifications they impose must be applied fairly across the board and cannot be influenced by the voter’s gender or race, or age if over 18. Furthermore, any qualification imposed cannot disproportionately affect members of any protected group.
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