Voter Registration Project: Freedom Summer

The 15th amendment gave African American men the right to vote by saying that the” right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Sadly, African American men wouldn’t be able to exercise this right for almost a whole century. Using literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods Southern states could prevent African Americans from voting. It took the passing of Voting Rights Act of 1965 before most African Americans in the South could vote. Woman went

John F. Kennedy had a major influence on civil rights and over 70 percent of African-Americans voted for him (“Civil Rights Movement”). Many people had high hopes for his presidency as he furthered progress on civil rights (“Civil Rights Movement”). John and Robert Kennedy led a personal intervention to secure Martin Luther King Jr.’s release after he was arrested protesting in Georgia. In response to the demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, John F. Kennedy sent thousands of troops and sped up the progression of the civil rights bill (“Civil Rights Movement”). He “led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement” (“John F. Kennedy”). Kennedy had more African Americans in federal government positions than any other president before him. He had 40 senior federal positions, among these were five federal judges (“John Kennedy and Civil Rights”). The civil rights crisis was, as Kennedy stated, “a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it, I ask the support of all our citizens… this nation for all its hopes and all its boasts will not be fully free until all its citizens are free,” being denied entrance into public spaces was “an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do”

Although Kennedy never signed the legislation he set the groundwork for the civil rights movement. He proposed the idea and did most of the foot work, even kennedy's death helped pass the bill. After Lyndon took office, he was determined to carry out kennedy’s ideas. It only took a couple of months after Kennedy died for the bill to be passed (http://loc.gov/). Johnson used the nation's sympathy to propel the campaign forward. The campaign was doing so well after his death that it went further than Kennedy had ever imagined, the bill would go on to set up the NAACP and ended the poll

What made the murders even more of a national outrage is the fact that the corrupt Ku Klux Klan police attempted to cover up the crimes, and that it involved white people. Although this was another horrible moment facing the morale of activists and organizations, the Freedom Summer helped establish many more schools and influenced the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act was an enormous victory for not only African Americans, but for anyone dealing with discrimination such as women, latinos,

Freedom summer was a 1964 voters act that civil rights movements held a convention for blacks to be able to vote. During the process three young civil rights movement activist were taken and beaten to death. 6 weeks later they were found dead in neshoba county. The Klu Klux Klan was the ones who laid waste to them. “Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention” Fannie Lou Hamer was the first black women to run for office. she was forced to leave the plantation she was a sharecropper at. She was also beat in jail by negros for running for

The 1964 civil rights act was the most important step to civil rights in American history. The act became law when Lyndon B. Johnson signed it in 1964. Although it was a huge victory for civil rights activists, many people questioned his true motives behind the passing of the act. Was it because he wanted to be elected for a second term, or was it because he wanted to follow what he felt was best, regardless of the consequences? Lyndon B. Johnson signed the act out of politics because the public now had a different stance on civil rights, there were more people to vote for someone who supported civil rights then there were those who opposed it, and he switched his position on the issue when

The first source Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society by John A. Andrew III will be used to analyze the extent of Johnson’s actions during the Civil Right Movement. The origin of this source is valuable because Andrew wrote this novel in 1998, the Johnson’s presidency occurred in the 60’s. Second hand sources provide the clarity that comes with hindsight. Also, since the distance from the civil rights movement and this Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society is thirty five years apart thus, the civil rights movement can be more objectively written and referenced. Andrew was a history professor at Franklin and Marshall College. In the acknowledgments Andrew says his interest in “Johnson has grown steadily, both from teaching these years and finding a dearth of good classroom materials and from my own research into the period.” This indicates Andrew’s vast

The Civil Rights Act was an act that influenced strongly by the March on Washington. The Civil Rights Act was signed by Lyndon B. Johnson right after John F. Kennedy died in Dallas, TX. The Civil Rights Act was signed on July 2, 1964 and was intended to end segregation that was in the South like in stores, barber shops, restaurants, and other places that were segregated. The Civil Rights Act was later expanded to bring disabled Americans, the elderly and women in collegiate athletics under its umbrella. The Act was an inspiration for two other Acts: the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1965. A group most supportive of the acts was the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In the race of the presidency of 1964, Johnson was chosen in a victory and used this to push for legislation he believed would help the American way of life, to gain more voting-rights laws. After the Civil War, which happened between the years 1861 through 1865, the 15th amendment, was changed in the 1870, which prevented states from denying a man citizen the right to vote based on race, color or any conditional origin, if he wasn't white. But years passed on, some discriminatory reasons were used to prohibit African Americans, especially from the South, from their right to vote. During the Civil rights movement of the years 1950s and 1960s, the voting rights activists in the South were put through forms of poor treatment and violence. One very significant event that happened on March 7th, 1965 when participants very peaceful in a voting rights march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery were met up by Alabama troopers who attacked them with weapons. Some of the people were beaten up and some ran from their lives. In that tragedy incident, Johnson called for inclusive voting rights legislation. In a speech of session of Congress in

Then he passed the Civil Rights Act for citizen’s sake. Johnson vetoed these two measures because he felt that Southern states were not represented in Congress and believed that setting right to vote policy was the responsibility of the states, not the federal government. Both vetoes were overridden by Congress. In a clause of the Constitution in 1867, Congress established military Reconstruction in the former Confederate states to enforce political and social rights for Southern blacks. President Johnson got revenge by appealing directly to the people in a series of speeches during the 1866 government-related elections. On more than one occasion, it appeared that Johnson had had too much to drink, and teased and annoyed more than convinced his audiences. Johnson faced a further loss of support from the public. The Radical Republicans won a big victory in the midterm elections. (Castel, Albert E.,

It forbade the discriminatory voting practices. The Freedom Summer, in which African-Americans went door to door to learn how to register to vote, resulted in the Bloody Sunday. There was a non-violent protest march happening between Selma, Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama, but the protesters were attacked by state troops and the local police. Later, President Lyndon Johnson signed off on the document regarding the act. It affects today’s life and generation of how the society works, since it gives everyone eighteen and older a chance to have the same percentage to register and vote for their

In Birmingham, Alabama between 1957 and 1962 seventeen black churches and homes had been bombed, racial tension continued to grow, and more and more African Americans were being killed. Although the population of Birmingham was 40% African American, there seemed little hope for a political solution to the racial divide; of 80,000 registered voters, only 10,000 were black due to a barrier that was placed on the new state constitution of Alabama. One of these barriers was an annual poll tax that had to pay for two years before the new election season. African Americans in Mississippi could barely afford the necessities in order to live such as food, clothes, and a roof over their head. African Americans were the poorest part of Mississippi’s population. The other barrier that was placed in the new state constitution was a literacy test. It required a person seeking to register to vote to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the county clerk, a white man, who processed voter registrations. This new law was setup for African Americans to fail. Along with many other civil rights leaders and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to lead and participate in several boycotts, marches, and picketing leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King’s arrest. While being incarcerated, Dr. King wrote an open letter more known as The “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In this letter, King highlights many

Johnson’s role in civil rights had proven to be one of grave importance, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964

It was a time of conflict, excitement, and confusion in the United States. And this was also “Black Power” of the Civil Rights Movement. Moody at that time was a member of NAACP. She was involved in her first sit-in, and her social science professor, John Salter, who was in charge of NAACP asked her to be the spokesman for a team that would sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter (Moody 1968, 286). Although she could go to jail for this, but she still agreed. After that, she joined CORE and continued to fight for the voting rights (Moody 1968, 311). Following passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the struggle for racial justice moved to the next battleground: voting rights in the Deep South. The campaign was already under way in places like Selma, Alabama, where local activists, facing intense white resistance, asked Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference for support (Ayers 2010, 780). Black voter registration in the South was one of the great accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Within months of its passage, more than 2 million black southern were registered to vote. Most supported the Democratic Party of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, which had endorsed the cause of civil rights (Ayers 2010, 782).

The African- American civil rights movement started in 1954, and although the civil rights act was signed in 1964, and was meant to prohibit discrimination in both public and private places, equality still wasn't present in many aspects of American life. African-American's still didn't have equal voting rights, in order to protest against this, Freedom Summer workers registered people in Mississippi to vote, after this Martin Luther King "launched" a march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in January, 1965. The voting act that was eventually passed gave the federal government the power to oversee voting in states where discrimination was practised, which was primarily in the south. In the mid 1960's America was divided on the issue of civil rights. This was especially evident through the views in regards to the proposed voting rights act of 1965. The aim of the act was to overcome the legal barriers, such as unreasonable tests that were given to African American's when they tried to register for voting. The two approaches seen in the documents are one that is more legal and evidence based and therefore logical, this refers to document 2A, a statement by Attorney General Katzenbach. The other, document 2B, is a statement by Attorney General Button, is an approach that is far more emotional and passionate and thus somewhat biased. It is focused on the disadvantages for the individual state, as he is the Attorney General for the state of Virginia, therefore it is only