Essay on Voting Rights for African Americans

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court’s decisions, Congress’ enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

The 1960s was a very hostile time for African Americans, especially in one particular state. In Mississippi, only 7% of the African American population was registered to vote, while other southern states had about 50%-60% of the black community participating in elections. Though preventing someone from voting based on their skin color was unconstitutional, many towns in Mississippi made it almost impossible for anyone of color to enter the voting booth. Many efforts to try to encourage voting in African Americans failed due to the fear of what would happen after the attempt. The possible consequences for those who pursued in the right to vote was having their name publicized in local newspapers, losing their job, or facing the threat of violence against

African-Americans may sometimes wonder at the contradictory facts about their history presented in many standard history texts. These texts state that blacks were given the right to vote in 1870, yet the same texts will acknowledge that this right did not really exist for African-Americans until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

When Africans first came here in 1619 and disembarked from a ship in Jamestown, Virginia, they were enslaved which automatically denied them to right to vote. However free black men could vote in some of the original states including North Carolina, all of the New England states (except Connecticut). In New York only blacks who owned $250 worth of land were able to vote, which of course was improbable at this time. Naturally, however, this did not apply to whites. Then came the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which allowed blacks to be elected as delegates. New amendments to the constitution and allowed

Unfortunately, Blacks faced more struggles than just voting. A few years after the Reconstruction era, a black man by the name of Homer Plessy wanted to board a train. The conductor refused to let him on because there were separate train cars for whites and nonwhites. Plessy argued that he could exercise his right from the fourteenth amendment, and took it to the courts (Schmidt, Shelley & Barder, 2014-2015, p. 95). In the 1896 U.S Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson the court ruled that blacks were “separate but equal” and that segregation did not interfere with the 14th Amendment. (History.com, Plessy v. Ferguson, 2009 ). This ruling sparked the era of Jim Crow laws, for which public facilities like schools, bathrooms and water fountains

Who should The African American Community vote for? The African American Community is one that is heavily marginalised by the criminal justice system, by systemic discrimination and face economic deprivation. In the upcoming elections, their votes do matter, as they would decide which politician would represent their rights and their fight for equality.

Voting is political power and restrictions diluted as well as denied any significant to the Negro right to vote. What good is a vote if the vote is not counted in the race.

“Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma

Following their emancipation in 1865, African Americans in Texas faced many obstacles while trying to gain full voting rights and overcome the severe limitations of slavery. These obstacles included Jim Crow laws, Black Codes, racial gerrymandering and racist white supremacy groups who promoted racial discrimination and segregation, poll-taxes, literacy tests. African Americans wanted to live in a society that would allow them equal opportunities and legal status. Due to a white majority in state legislature and Congress, blacks’ political and legal status was contingent on finding white Americans who favored equality for all. Fortunately,

Furthermore, Lewis identifies the problem that the voting section of the bill affects thousands of African Americans who are eligible to vote. He focuses mainly on the South Side, where many African Americans are not able to vote. He mentions the “African cry,” which establishes the need of rights the African Americans deserve. For this reason, Lewis begins by showing his feelings towards the topic of voting rights for African Americans when he writes, “One man, one vote is the African cry.” (Paragraph 3) In other words, African Americans right to vote was requested in a direct and indirect form. He begins with saying “thousands of black people” to briefly saying the people in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Moreover the author includes

Forty six years later the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund released Defending Democracy: Confronting the Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America; a report revealing that there is a connection “between the trend of increasing, unprecedented African American and Latino voter turnout and an onslaught of restrictive measures across the country designed to stem electoral strength

Voting can be said to be one of the most valuable privileges anyone can have in any country. Everyone might have a voice, but that does not mean every voice is heard. Voting is one of the surest ways the voice of the people, along with their demands, is heard. Throughout history though, not everyone had a voice or a chance to vote. It was not until the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments came along, that ensured African Americans the right to vote. Even then, whites made voting a difficult task by setting up voting barriers such as: white primaries, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the grandfather clause, which not only impeded African Americans from voting, but also uneducated, poor whites. Nowadays those barriers do not exist yet most citizens who are eligible to vote do not. The question asked is why? There are many factors that influence who votes and who does not, as well as

The Passing of the 15th amendment in 1868 did give black men the right to vote. They were able to vote but were not permitted because they were blocked at the poles with threats of violence and death. The violence and intimidation of the Ku Klux Klan had a lot to do with the blocking of the blacks at the voting polls.

In her book, Angela Davis mentions that there were many people who disagreed with suffrage for Black men and that because they were emancipated, they were equal to white women, however, if they had the right to vote, “the vote would render Black men superior” (1981, p. 65). Although I believe that it was fair that Black men were given the right to vote, I can understand why the women felt that it was unfair, but the racism was not justifiable. Frederick Douglass mentions that “slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” (Davis, 1981, p. 69), and that it was not to prioritize black men over women. In addition, Douglass argues that without political rights, “black people in the South would be unable to achieve any economic progress