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The Civil Rights Movement started in 1954 and continued until 1968. The Civil Rights Movement was a strive for the rights and the freedoms that African Americans had been given, but taken away from by things such as the Jim Crow Laws and segregation. The Civil Rights Movement had goals of gaining equal rights but also making the fundamental documents that America had been constructed upon to be true for everyone in America. These fundamental documents include the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

A huge group of people were disenfranchised. Before the suffrage amendments passed people were very limited with their voting abilities. The only people that were aloud were white, old, and rich men. These four amendments have allowed an enormous amount of other people to vote too. The 15th amendment was the first amendment that gave suffrage to a minority group.

The thirteen amendment to the constitution was passed January 31, 1865 and ratified by the state on December 6, 1865, in which declare that slavery or involuntary servitude should not exist in the United States (Schleicher, 1998) while in the fourteen amendment was ratified on July9, 1868 and granted citizenship to “ all persons born on naturalized in the United States” including slaves, these amendment expanded the protection of civil right to all Americans and is named in more litigations than any other amendment(Hudson, 2002). Finally third and last of the reconstruction amendments, in which was not fully realized in our country until a century later. The fifteen amendment provided suffrage for black men, declaring that “The right of citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied for abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude’ African were deterred from exercising their right to vote thought a measures like the poll taxes and literacy test (William, February 27, 18690) The U.S. has a long history of discriminatory voting laws.

The Voting Rights Act was one of the most revolutionary bills ever passed by the congressional legislation in the United States. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law on August 6th, 1965, not only as part of politics but also, a depiction of morals. Since 1965, it has protected minority voters at the polls, but it has been fifty years since the Voting Rights Act has been passed and it is still a controversial topic that is constantly debated on today. The voting rights of all minorities throughout the country are once again under attack which impacts one’s ability to exercise his or her constitutional right as a citizen.

This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting, also in those years, African Americans in the South faced tremendous obstacles to voting, including poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions to deny them the right to vote. They also risked harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence when they tried to register or vote. As a result, very few African Americans were registered voters, and they had very little, if any, political power, either locally or nationally.

The Voting Rights Act was passed into law on August 6, 1965. The law prohibited the use of poll taxes and literacy tests that prevented Southern Blacks from voting. It also gave the federal government authority to supervise how poll taxes are conducted within places with disfranchised African Americans. After the Civil War, regardless of the 15th amendment, which banned the states from denying the right to vote of male citizens based on their race or previous condition of servitude before the war, discrimination was still around, prevented African Americans from voting. Many voting rights activists were also being mistreated violently.

However, until today, African Americans still couldn’t get their real voting rights. This act doesn’t totally infer this situation, no matter how industrious blacks demand their completed fundamental rights. Except African American, within the United States, many minorities have struggled for their rights for many years. It is necessary for a government to protect all citizens’ rights, including the minorities. If the government couldn’t do that, as a citizen, we should speak out our perspectives by participating in the voting

The 15th Amendment (Amendment XV), which gave African-American men the right to vote, was inserted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment says, “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.” Although the amendment was passed in the late 1870s, many racist practices were used to oppose African-Americans from voting, especially in the Southern States like Georgia and Alabama. After many years of racism, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aimed to overthrow legal barricades at the state and local levels that deny African-Americans their right to vote. In the

Even though it gave everyone a right to vote, somehow people still found a way to discriminate. They did things like literacy tests, which gave the disadvantage to the people who didn’t have an education and the poor. Some people didn 't like this amendment, so

Reasonably, the Founding Fathers desired a republican form of government, where the citizens of the United States were able to vote for the people who they wished to be represented by. And while Thomas Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, it excluded several citizens who were entitled to a vote. Originally, only Caucasian men were allowed to vote, this changed in 1870 when all men who were citizens, regardless of race, were allowed to vote, as stated in the 15th Amendment. It was not until 1920 when all citizens, despite their sex, were allowed to vote because of the 19th Amendment. In 1971, the voting age was changed from 21 to 18 and this was made into the 26th Amendment.

They placed laws requiring voters to pass literacy tests (which could be judged arbitrarily) and pay poll taxes (which hit poor whites and poor blacks alike), effectively denying black men the franchise that was supposed to have been guaranteed by the 15th amendment"(page 4, reading #3). Since many blacks were poor and uneducated, the government used methods such as literacy tests and poll taxes to ensure that blacks would not be able to vote. Literacy tests were usually unnecessarily long and if a voter answered one question wrong, their entire participation in the election process was taken away. Blacks didn 't receive the best education, some received no education at all, making them more likely to not pass the test taking away their privilege to vote.

To accomplish social equality and justice has been a long controversial issue in U.S. history. Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be understood as a tremendous accomplishment today because it not only represent a symbol of the triumph of fighting social injustice, but also open the first gate for African American and minority to strive for more political power in order to create a “great society.”

To make voting more difficult for black people, many were required to take a test called a “literacy test.” The literacy tests were given to people who couldn’t prove they had a fifth grade education or higher. If they got one question wrong, they would fail the entire test, and would not be allowed to vote. (Document 6: Louisiana Literacy Test from the 1960s) The questions on the test had complicated instructions written with the intent of making people fail.

Introduction: The civil rights movement of 1954-1968 has made a huge impact on the history of African-American equality. All the great leaders of the movement have gone down in history for their courageous work and outstanding commitment to the civil rights movement. One of the most famous of the activists was Martin Luther King Junior (1929-1968) . King is still remembered today for his legendary speech entitled “I had a dream”.

As noted in Document 1, the 14th Amendment explicitly affirmed: “…All persons born or naturalized in the United State, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…” The 14th Amendment ------------ (lead into the 15th amendment) 15th Amendment: The Fifteenth Amendment granted all male citizens, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” the right to vote.