Civil Rights

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This research paper was written for a presentation for a Judge at a Continuing Legal
Education class on the Voter’s Rights Act of 1965.
Brief History of the Voter’s Rights Act of 1965
The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing
America to face all its interrelated flaw -- racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It
is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society ... and
suggests that radical reconstruction of society is the real issue to be faced.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
While “we the people” might begin the preamble to the Constitution, it did not represent
people who looked like me. The drafters of the constitution were not concerned with the
rights of people who looked like me or even white women. It was only concerned with
white male Americans. Even white women could not vote until there was an amendment
to the constitution. It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to grant minorities the right to
vote.
While there has been a long history of struggle in the United States for racial and gender
equality, I will be focusing primarily on the African-American civil rights movement
from 1955 to 1968. This period was characterized by non violent protest and civil
disobedience. It pitted non violent direct action against guns, billy clubs, and fists, to
highlight racial and economic inequity, disenfranchisement, white supremacy, and
violence against African-Americans.
Following the civil war was the Reconstruction era. In 1867, black men voted for the
first time in the United States. The right of women suffrage was debated but rejected.
However, from 1890 to 1908 the southern states passed state constitutions that
disenfranchised blacks and poor whites though literacy tests. Grandfather clauses were
used to enable illiterate white the right to vote.
Jim Crow laws imposed racial segregation by forbidding interracial marriage, enforcing
segregation in business and public institutions. In 1896, the Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson upheld the “separate but equal status” of African Americans. Plessy v.
Ferguson remained doctrine until it was overturned by Brown v Board of Education in
1954. Brown did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson because it dealt with education and
Plessy with transportation, but it did set in motion the overturning the “separate but
equal” doctrine.
Invigorated by the victory of Brown v. Board of Education, but frustrated by the lack of
practical effect, many citizens turned away from the more gradualist legalistic approach
to bring about desegregation. Instead they used civil disobedience which gave rise to the
Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968.
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956

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On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white
passenger. At the time, she was the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National
Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had a long history of
working for social justice. In 1944, the NAACP sent Parks a seasoned activist to
investigate the rape of share cropper, Recy Taylor by six white men. Although Parks was
able to get national attention to this case, it was still Jim Crow-era Alabama and these
men were never charged.
Parks was arrested, tried and convicted of disorderly conduct and violating a local
ordinance for failing to give up her bus seat to a white man. As word of the arrest spread,
a boycott was organized. On the Fourth day of the boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. and
the Montgomery Improvement Association met with officials from the bus company but
the MIA refused to implement a more moderate segregation plan. According to bus
receipts, about ninety percent of the African American who rode the bus found alternative
modes of transportation and reduced bus revenue by eighty percent.
The protesters were met with violence: blacks riding in carpools were harassed by
police and cited on trumped up charges; Martin Luther King Jr. and E.D. Nixon (boycott
leader) homes were fire bombs.
In November of 1956, a federal district court in Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707
(1956) ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional because it deprived people of
equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court further enjoined the state of
Alabama and city of Montgomery from continuing to operate segregated buses.
Lunch Counter Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960 four students from Agricultural and Technical college of North
Carolina staged a sit-in at the segregated Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North
Carolina. The four students purchased small items at other parts of the store, kept their
receipts, sat down at the lunch counter and ordered coffee. Following store policy, the
staff refused to serve them at the “Whites Only” counter. When refused service, they
asked why their money had been good everywhere else in the store but not at the lunch
counter.
The following day, news reporters covered the protests in which twenty students from
surrounding colleges joined in the sit-ins. More than 300 people had taken part by the
fourth day. This sit-in inspired sit-ins in Richmond, Virginia; Nashville, Tennessee; and
Atlanta, Georgia. These sit-ins garnered much national media attention and were
successful in getting lunch counters in some areas desegregation.
Freedom Rides 1961

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Congess for Racial Equality the Freedoms organized the Freedom Rides to test Court's
ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and
rail stations unconstitutional. Freedom riders traveled to desegregate seating patterns and
desegregate bus terminals. The first freedom ride started on May 4th 1961 and was
scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. On May 14th the Freedom Riders split
into two groups to travel through Alabama. The Greyhound group had fourteen
passengers on board, five regular passengers, seven freedom riders, and two journalists.
Of the two regular passengers one was the manager of the Atlanta Station and one was an
undercover Alabama Patrol officer that was trying to garner information about the
freedom riders plans.1
In Anniston, Alabama the Freedom Riders were met by a mob of over one hundred
Klansmen who slashed the bus’s tires, and smashed out windows for about twenty
minutes. The police escorted the bus out of town but departed at the outskirts of town,
where the Klan began to follow the bus. When the bus pulled over to change the tires, it
was firebombed and the doors held shut to burn the riders alive. There is conflicting
reports that either an exploding fuel tank or an undercover state investigator brandishing
a revolver forced the Klan to retreat. The undercover Alabama State Patrol officer used
the retreating mob as an opportunity to pry open the bus doors. After escaping from the
bus, the Freedom Riders were beaten by the mob. The only thing that stops the riders
from being lynched was a state patrol officer who fired his gun in the air.
Later in the day, the second group on a Trailways bus didn’t fare much better. Among
the regular riders on the bus were two members of the Klan who boarded the bus in
Atlanta. They taunted the crowd as the bus drove toward Anniston. In Anniston, they
savagely beat Riders for their failure to follow the “color line”.2 The bus continued on to
Birmingham where Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor gave Klan
members fifteen minutes to attack the Trailways group of Freedom Riders at the
Birmingham bus station. Jim Peck, white, and Charles Person, African American,
entered the “whites only” waiting room and approached the lunch counter. When the
mob attacked Person, Peck defended him which only incited the mob more. They were
dragged down a loading corridor and beaten with lead pipes and kicked by a dozen
Klanmen. The riot spread to the sidewalk and streets surrounding the Trailways Station
where other Freedom Riders and some innocent bystanders and news photographers were
also beaten.
Peck, who received fifty stitches from the beatings, insisted to reporters, "I think it is
particularly important at this time when it has become national news that we continue and
show that nonviolence can prevail over violence." [3] It was later determined that the FBI
1 Oh, my God, they’re going to burn us up!” Accessed November 1, 2012,
http://blog.oup.com/2006/01/oh_my_god_theyr/
2 Get on the Bus NPR Accessed November 1, 2012 http://www.npr.org/2006/01/12/5149667/get-on-the-
bus-the-freedom-riders-of-1961
3 Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York:
Viking Penguin Inc., 1987 p. 149.

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knew in advance that the two buses were going to be attacked, but did nothing to prevent
the attacks.
The following day both Greyhound and Trailways refused to take the riders any further
because they did not want to lose another bus to a firebombing. While the violence
garnered national attention, CORE had to suspend travel by bus and flew the riders to
New Orleans.
Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964
The civil rights movement had seen many victories but now placed their attention on
Mississippi because it was seen as a stronghold for segregation. Civil rights activists had
been working in Mississippi but with limited results. At the time, Mississippi voting
procedure required that African American voters answer twenty one questions that were
based on 285 subsections of the state constitution. 4
In June of 1964, a massive effort to register African American voters in Mississippi was
called Freedom Summer. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the
(NAACP), and the (CORE), along with local community groups, organized over a
thousands mostly white middle- class students to work with local organizations. This
brought to national attention the lengths to which segregationist would go to suppress
voter registration. Prior to the project beginning, three volunteers were murdered by
local police officers and vigilantes: James Chaney, Michael H. Schwerner and Andrew
Goodman. The second objective of Freedom Summer was to provide classes in African
American history and free literacy classes.
Two of the most significant accomplishments were the creation of Freedom Schools and
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It also brought considerable media attention
to the persecution of blacks in the Deep South.
Civil Rights Act 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex
or national origin. President Kennedy had brought this civil rights bill before Congress in
1963 and it was still being debated when he was assassinated in November 1963. While
Kennedy approach was a case study in how to avoid a divisive domestic issue,
President Lyndon Johnson showed what can be accomplished if one through one’s vast
powers into the struggle.
4 The Civil Rights revolution: events and leaders,1955-1968, p 72. (McFarland 2004).

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Johnson, a Texas Democrat, asserted his commitment to this civil rights legislation in
order to seem like an acceptable candidate to the national Democratic Party. Johnson
was a political insider that Kennedy had not been and was able to use his political
contacts and knowledge of the inner workings of Washington. Johnson’s first move as
president was to call African American leaders to the White House. As Johnson himself
told it: "I spoke with black groups and with individual leaders of the black community
and told them that John Kennedy's dream of equality had not died with him. I assured
them that I was going to press for the civil rights bill with every ounce of energy I
possessed."5
The Civil Rights Bill had been stalled in the House Judiciary Committee and on
December 9, 1963, the House Judiciary Chairmen filed a discharge petition. If they
could get a majority of the votes of the House, the bill would bypass the Judiciary
Committee and go directly to the House. After seventy days of public hearing with than
270 witnesses, the Bill passed the bill passed the House on February 10, 1964. It then
had to pass the Senate
President Johnson’s main opponent was his long-time friend and mentor, Georgia
Democrat Richard B. Russell, who told the Senate: "We will resist to the bitter end any
measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality
and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Russell
organized 18 Southern Democratic senators in filibustering this bill.6 The Senate allows
for unlimited debate meaning that it can kill a bill by simply talking it to death.
Johnson strategy was to allow these Senators to continue to talk until it became apparent
that only a small number of them were opposed to the bill. Finally, on June 10, 1964, the
Senate voted to end the filibuster and they passed the bill a week later.7 Johnson signed
the new legislation into law on July 2, 1964 with civil rights leader present. The laws
provisions created the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission to address race
and gender discrimination in employment. It also authorized federal intervention to
ensure desegregation in public places and most private institutions.
5 Loevy, Robert D; A Brief History of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Accessed October
31, 2012; http://faculty1.coloradocollege.edu/~bloevy/CivilRightsActOf1964/
6 Spartacus Educational Accessed October 31, 2012;
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcivil64.htm
7 Leadership Conference; Today in Civil Rights History: Civil Rights Act of 1964
becomes Law – http://www.civilrights.org/archives/2009/07/481-cra.html

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Bloody Sunday
On February 18, 1965, a group of about 500 members of the Zion United Methodist
Church in Marion, Alabama planned a peaceful march from their church to the jail a half
block away where civil rights activist James Orange who was being held. The
congregation was met by Marion City police officers and Alabama State troopers and the
police began to beat the protesters. Jimmie Lee Jackson, his mother Viola Jackson, and
his 82-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee, ran into the Café behind the church. Police
clubbed his grand father to the floor in the café’s kitchen and continued to beat him.
When viola tried to pull the officers off her father they beat her as well.8 When Jimmie
Lee tried to protect his mother, he was thrown against a cigarette machine and shot by a
second trooper. He later died eight days later from an infection from the gun shot
wound. His death was the catalyst for the Selma to Montgomery marches.
The first march took place on March 7, 1965 in Selma and included 600 civil rights
marchers. They had planned on marching to the Capitol in Montgomery to protest the
Southern legislators’ resistance to voting rights legislation. When they reached the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they were met by an unprovoked attack by State
Trooper using knight sticks, and tear gas. Mounted police chased retreating protesters
and continued to beat them. The attack sent seventeen people to the hospital and injured
8 Fleming, John (6 March 2005), "The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson", The Anniston Star,
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-insight-0306-jflemingcol-5c09o1640.htm,

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dozens others. The police rampage became known as “Bloody Sunday” received national
attention and outrage.
A second march was led by Martin Luther King Jr. on March 9. President Johnson had
asked King not to conduct the march until he could issue a court order to protect the
protesters. King led the marches to the Edmund Pettis Bridge where they kneeled and
prayed.
Civil rights leaders wanted protection to have a full-scale march to Montgomery.
Federal District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson ruled in their favor stating: "The law is
clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be
exercised in large groups . . .,and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along
public highways." 9
The third march was held on March 21, 1965 was a fifty mile five day march with the
protection of federal agents and the Alabama National Guard. By the end of the march
the number of marchers had swelled to 25,000.
At the end of the march Martin Luther King gave a rousing speech:
Last Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk
from Selma, Alabama. We have walked through desolate valleys and
across the trying hills. We have walked on meandering highways and
rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces are burned from the
outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some have literally slept in the mud.
9 Waging Peace Accessed November 1, 2012;
http://wagingnonviolence.org/column/at-the-crossroads/page/4/

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We have been drenched by the rains. Our bodies are tired and our feet are
somewhat sore.
They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we
would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows
that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state
of Alabama saying, "We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around." …
Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to
vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the
flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the
root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a
way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the
races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the
races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book,
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the
races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon
interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern
labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the
poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that
followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker
became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner
would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay
him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably
low.
Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant
happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The
leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes,
and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the
emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the
Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the
Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.
To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to
engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to
follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of
racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass
media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the
thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds
to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed
the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for
Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And

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that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement
of the nineteenth century.10
Many historians contend that this march had a profound affect upon the civil rights
movement and helped usher in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Although the Civil Rights Act had given equal public accommodations, it did not do
enough to prevent restriction of African American voting.
President Johnson Signing the VRA
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was a landmark piece of legislation that outlawed
discriminatory voting practices. President Johnson introduced to Congress the VRAt. In
his speech he declared:
Rarely are we met with a challenge…..to the values and the purposes and
the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American
Negroes is such as an issue…..the command of the Constitution is plain. It
is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right
to vote in this country."
10 Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montogomery March – Martin Luther King and the global
freedom struggle Accessed October31, 2012
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march/

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The VRA established extensive federal oversight of and gave teeth to the fifteenth
amendment. Section 2 of the VRA required that the federal government oversee voter
registration and election in areas that had historically suppressed minority voting or
where registration or turnout of minority voters had been less than fifty percent in the
1964 Presidential election.11
Section 5 also required that those jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting
practices be unable to implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the
approval of the Department of Justice. This process is known as preclearance.
It was signed into law on August 5, 1965. By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new
black voters were registered and by the end of 1966, only four out of the thirteen southern
states had fewer than fifty percent of African Americans registered to vote.
The effects were dramatic. By 1968, nearly sixty percent of African Americans were
registered to vote in many southern states. It also increased the election of African
Americans to elective office at the local, state and national levels. Between 1965 and
1990, the number of African-American legislators and members of Congress rose from
two to 160. 12
The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a
twenty five year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.13 In
2009, the Supreme Court in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder,
557 U.S. 193, 129 S.Ct. 2504 (2009), upheld the VRA but allowed for jurisdictions to opt
out of the requirements established in Section 5, which weakened the act. The court also
signaled that the VRA, could in the future be struck down as unconstitutional.
Loving v. Virginia 1967
Loving V. Virginia, a landmark Supreme Court,
declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial
Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional. It ended all race-
based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
The plaintiffs were Mildred Jeter a women of African
American and Native American decent and Richard Perry Loving a white man who were
residents of Virginia but who married in Washington DC in June of 1958 to escape the
“Racial Integrity Act. When they returned to Virginia, a group of Virginia police
officers invaded their house and found the couple sleeping in their bed. They were
11 States News Service. Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of the1965 Voting Right Act (July 28, 2010)
12 States News Service. Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of the1965 Voting Right Act (July 28, 2010)
13 Bush signs Voting Rights Act extension: Historic 1965 law renewed for 25 years".Associated Press.
NBC News. July 27, 2006. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14059113/. Retrieved 2008-08-29.

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charged under the code that prohibited people from marrying in another state and
returning to Virginia. The Lovings pled guilty on January 6, 1959 and were sentenced to
one year in prison with the sentence suspended for twenty five years if they left the State
of Virginia. The Lovings moved to Washington DC and on November 6, 1963 the
ACLU filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment on the grounds that it
violated the Fourteenth amendment.
In a unanimous decision the Justices struck down the Racial Integrity Act as
unconstitutional because it violated the Loving’s rights to equal protection of the law and
due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.The Court ruled: “There can be no doubt
that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the
central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.” The Court also found that the Virginia
law deprived the Lovings of liberty without due process of law.
“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital
personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men….
To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the
racial classifications …is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty
without due process of law.” 14
Challenges to VRA Today
Redistricting
After each decennial federal census (every 10 years) state and local governments redraw
congressional districts in order to accommodate shifts in population. Responsibility for
redistricting falls within the state legislature.
In Vieth v. Jubilerer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004), the Court had the opportunity
to view political redistricting but was unable to agree on a legal standard
for adjudicating partisan gerrymandering claims even though several
workable standards were proposed. While five justices in Vieth made clear
that a constitutional claim of partisan gerrymandering may still be brought
in the courts, courts in the post-2010 round of redistricting have dismissed
these claims because no judicially manageable standard has emerged. See,
e.g., Perez v. Perry and Quesada v. Perry, No. 5:11-cv-00360-OLG-JES-
XR (Order of September 2, 2011). Issuance of such orders, of course, is
tantamount to deciding that political gerrymandering cases may not be
brought in federal courts.15
14 Bill of Rights Institute: Loving V Virginia. Accessed November 1, 2012;
http://my.billofrightsinstitute.org/page.aspx?pid=619
15 Herber, J. Gerald and Megan P. McCallen, 39.1 (Aug. 2012): p10 Human Rights Redistricting in the
post-2010 cycle lessons learned?

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Voter ID Laws/Suppression laws
Today we continue to see the emergence of new state voter suppression laws, so the VRA
remains relevant. Over thirty states have considered laws that require government issued
ID to vote, in order to prevent voter fraud. The new voter ID laws and other voter
restrictions have the potential to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. It is
estimated that up to eleven percent of the population lack such identification. These laws
would require them to navigate the bureaucratic system in order to vote. Minorities,
poor, seniors and students have the potential to be the most impacted by this legislation.

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