Many women and African American men had long dreamed to have the right to vote. In many states, they could only vote if their state allowed them the privilege. The dedicated men and women fought for their right to vote in the Civil Rights Movement in the early and mid 1900s. Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act to give African Americans the rights to vote. It would have not occurred if the Civil Rights Movement had not taken place. The Nineteenth Amendment would not have occurred either if not for the Civil Rights Movement. The freedom to vote is now held by a majority because of the fight by the people involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and the African Americans and women who fought for their right to vote. The Civil Rights Movement, an intensely rough time for many, led to the freedom of voting rights. The History Reference Center states that throughout a majority of America’s history, property owners and tax paying white men withheld the right to vote only. Men, of other ethnicities, and women could only vote if their state law allowed them. (Wermiel n. p.) According to the book, Selma and The Voting Rights Act, even though President Abraham Lincoln declared the slaves free in 1863 with his Emancipation Proclamation, the whites held the blacks under them with barely any rights still in the 1960s. (Aretha, 11) The UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History records that when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to try to protect the rights of black citizens after Civil War, the south started the Black Codes. States passed the Black Codes, laws created by white southerners, to limit the rights and freedoms of blacks. (Benson, Brannen, and Valentine, 297) The Ku Klux Klan, a secret group of white sout... ... middle of paper ... .... If the Civil Rights Movement, the fight for African Americans right to vote, or the Women’s Suffrage Movement had not occurred, many of us would not hold the right to vote today. Works Cited Aretha, David. Selma And The Voting Rights Act. Greensboro, North Carolina: Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2008. Print. Benson, Sonia, Daniel E. Brannen Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History. Ed. Lawrence W. Baker and Sarah Hermsen. Vol. 2 and Vol. 8. Detroit: Gale, Cengage, 2009. Print. Carter, David C. “Voting Rights Act of 1965.” World Book Advanced. World Book. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. Kauffman, Heather. “Women’s Suffrage.” Issues and Controversies in American History. Infobase, 1 Oct. 2005. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. Wermiel, Stephen J. “Heroes of the Struggle for Voting Rights.” Human Rights. 39.1 (2012): 29. History Reference Center. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.
Walens, Susann. A. United States History Since 1877. Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT. September 2007.
Although establishing rights for many different members of society, the voting rights act isn’t the end of this concern. We can learn from history that the interpretation of voting rights will always be in question by some new player. The best we can do is to understand that voting rights in American history has had much to with time and place, thus the reason for the ongoing change in the interpretation.
Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.
Garrow, David. Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting rights act of 1965. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978. 135-147. Print.√
The right to vote in the United States of America had always been a very important part of its society. The 1800s had brought about a different way of voting in the United States for white American men. The qualifications were
Frederick Douglas, perhaps the most famous abolitionists in history, made it known that after the Civil War, African Americans should be equal to whites. To Douglas, the definition of equality would be the, “immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every state of the union.” Douglas reasoned that without this specific right that, “he is the slave of society.” Without the right to vote, African Americans would still be second class citizens to whites, and still subjected to white superiority, especially in the South, which would be very much like slavery. Racism was abundant throughout the United States, so the thinki...
Moving forward, African Americans and did not have citizenship rights. African Americans were still not able to vote, attend restaurants with White Americans, go to the same schools as White Americans, or even serve on a jury. The civil rights movement is a movement that established citizen rights for African Americans. In the early to mid-1960s, African Americans slowly gained those rights with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights of 1965. These acts changed the world tremendously and provided more opportunities to minorities and women (6 Bumiller, Kristin 1992.
In the latter half of the 18th century, freed slaves possessed the right to vote in all but three states. It was not until the 19th century that states began to pass laws to disenfranchise the black population. In 1850, only 6 out of the 31 states allowed blacks to vote. 1Following the civil war, three reconstruction amendments were passed. The first and second sought to end slavery and guarantee equal rights. The third, the 15th amendment, granted suffrage regardless of color, race, or previous position of servitude.2 The 15th Amendment monumentally changed the structure of American politics as it was no longer the privileged whites who could vote. For some it was as though hell had arrived on earth, but for others, it was freedom singing. However, the song was short lived. While many political cartoons from the period show the freedom that ex-slaves have for voting because of the 15th Amendment, they often neglect to include the fact that many African Americans were coerced into voting a certain way or simply had their rights stripped from them.
...d so much in addition to risked their lives to make a change to segregation. “What began with such hope and promise soon gave way to deep suspicion and despair, as Americans reeled from one crisis to another” (Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund, p. 793). African American fought hard to put an end to segregation and discrimination. As people and events lost and won, the civil rights act movement made history. “The African American communities of Montgomery helped awaken America to the long-standing injustice of racial segregation, and new leaders emerged with innovative strategies to carry on the fight” (Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund, p. 759). Martin Luther King Jr. had voiced and protested in an expressive manner and made a change. The Voting Rights Act helped end Jim Crow. Without these people and events America may have still been a racial segregated country.
Santoro, Wayne A. "The Civil Rights Movement and the Right to Vote: Black Protest, Segregationist Violence and the Audience." Social Forces 86.4 (2008): 1391-1414. Web. 15 Oct. 2013.
Levy, Peter B., The Civil RIghts Movement, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1998. Web. 24 June 2015.
Foner, Eric and John A. Garraty. The Reader’s Companion to American History. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).
Cook, L. (2009, September 24). The 19th Amendment & Voting Rights | eHow. eHow. Retrieved January 29, 2014, from http://www.ehow.com/about_5453262_th-amendment-voting-rights.html
Reed, Roy. “Rights Marchers Push Into Region Called Hostile.” New York Times. 23 Mar. 1965: 1+
Cohen, Daniel.. Chapter 4: Political Success of the Antiliquor Movement. The Millbrook Press, 1995. eLibrary. Web. 03 Mar. 2014.