Joshua Herron
Government/Period 6
Mr. Hunt
10/18/15
Media Report The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade the use of any voter registration or literacy requirement in an unfair or discriminatory manner. Texas ID Law Called Breach of Voting Rights Act by Erik Eckholm states that Texas has a strict voter identification law which blacks and Latinos find discriminating and claims it violates the Voting Rights Act is 1965. This case is being closely watched in legal circles after a 2013 Supreme Court decision that blocked the voting act’s strongest enforcement tool, federal oversight of election laws. Texas is one of the states that are being watched, due to its history of racial discrimination. The Texas ID law is one of the strongest laws in the
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Abraham Lincoln was the first president who mentioned African American voting. In 1865, Lincoln said that freed slaves who were intelligent or who had served as a soldier should be allowed to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868 guaranteed this right as part of the full citizenship accorded to African American men. Voting remained a contentious issue; the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote but the racial divide remained. Voting rights became a central issue in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. lead a march from Selma to Montgomery for better voting laws. Less than five months later, Lynden Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made limiting the vote on the basis of race, color and language illegal. In sections four and five of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 included special provisions to ensure fair voting practices in a number of states, most of them in the South. Voting rights advocates say some citizens there continue to be disenfranchised, but the Supreme Courts close ruling in 2013, striking down section four, suggests conditions have changed since 1965. It is left to Congress to reconsider the
Chapter two of the textbook “Texas Politics” discusses the abundant state constitutions of Texas. The current constitution of Texas is quite lengthy and often ridiculed due to its outdatedness whereas when compared to that of the United States constitution, the results viewpoint and reactions are quite the opposite. Because of this, Texas, along with a great number of other states must constantly make formal changes to the constitution, this is known as a constitutional amendment. The current Texas constitution is extremely long, particularly compared to the United States constitution, this being because of the variety of policies that the constitution attempts to put on the citizens of Texas in order to maintain peace and civility.
Reconstruction is during which the United States began to rebuild the Southern society after they lost to the civil war. It lasted from 1865 to 1877, and it was initiated by President Lincoln until his assassination in 1865. President Johnson continued Lincoln’s agenda to continue the Reconstruction. Throughout the process of Reconstruction, one of its main purpose was to guarantees for equal rights for all people, especially for the African Americans. Even though slavery was abolished after the civil war, many Southerners were still against the idea of equal rights for all black people, such as the Republicans.
Before the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment they were not recognized as US citizens, therefore they were not allowed to vote or serve in Senate or in Congress. After the Amendments were ratified, they gained the right to vote. To protect their right, the government made a law that if the South denied blacks the right to vote, they would be punished. In the government, African-Americans started to run for political positions. Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first ever African-American to serve in the US Senate when he was elected to the US Senate to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era.
In todays current society, the Federal Constitution provides that the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives is prescribed in each state by the state legislature. Congress is allowed to grant power by holding elections, which is where power is matched, by the state to control over the election process for state offices. Overall, state qualifications to vote are set by the states, subject to certain restrictions in the Constitution and its Amendments and the authority of the federal government in enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The authority has limits based in the Constitution and its Amendments. States may not use certain factors in determining qualification.
After the march the right for African Americans to vote in the south was becoming possible for them. Later, August 6,1965. The president signed a law, Voting Rights Act of 1965, stating the southern states must stop their practice of discrimination and not allowing African Americans to vote. James Meredith’s March Against Fear affected the present and future non-segregation between blacks and
The eight-year-old Sheyann Webb was a young eight-year-old girl who was marching for her rights she wanted to prove that…………………… 5. There were many provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It banned racial discrimination in voting nationwide. It requires states to and local government to “preclear” proposed changes during elections. It also forces states and governments to aid those who are not complete literate and those not fluent in English.
Texas and the Rules Texas is ruled and governed by many different rules and regulations with in the government. Many question why this and what the purpose of this is? The Texas Government makes it known for their policies and procedures that they enforce and they follow. Below I will begin to inform as well as educate on why they follow these procedures and what they reasoning are for doing so.
Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193, 193 (2009)).
Texas has had six constitutions since its independence back in 1836. “The current Texas constitution is the seventh constitution in Texas history” (Library) it was written in 1875 and ratified in 1876 and has since been the standing constitution in Texas. How does Texas’s state constitution identify with society today, and what did the final document produce for the Texas people. To describe some of the features of the current constitution let’s take a quick look at the influences that lead to the adoption of the present constitution. When the Democrats regained legislative control, after the Reconstruction period they called for a constitutional convention to revise and recreate the 1869 constitution that the “Democrats” felt to have been involuntary forced on the state at the time by post-Civil war radicals.
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
Abidjan Bright Badih Elarba Texas Politics 1133.010 Fall 2015 Voter ID law in Texas It was in 2011 that the Legislature passed Bill 14 that allowed Texas to have a strict voter ID law for the November election. Many people were opposed to this because it limited many eligible citizens from voting causing a lower voter turnout than what Texas has already had. This is a major problem in Texas because majority of our population consists of immigrants from Mexico and many of them are still fighting for citizenship. Because of this law it is in question, how much power does our state actually have in the regulation of elections?
Spring Branch I.S.D. v. Stamos Supreme Court of Texas, 1985 695.S.W.2d 556 [27 Educ. L. Rep. 640] This case examined the constitutionality of the Texas Education Code 21.920 (b) “No Pass, No Play” rule: A student, other than a mentally retarded student, enrolled in a school district in this state shall be suspended from participation in any extracurricular activity sponsored or sanctioned by the school district during the grade reporting period after a grade reporting period in which the student received a grade lower than the equivalent of 70 on a scale of 100 in any academic class. The campus principal may remove this suspension if the class is an identified honors or advanced class. A student may not be suspended under this subsection
The tactics used civil rights movement of both the 1950’s and 1960’s were different helped them succeed in different ways. During the late 1950s the tactics that were used were political, while in the early in 1960s they used social and political tactics to get their goals achieved, but in the late 1960s the tactics that were used were primarily economic and social, In the 1950’s, the civil rights movement was very successful because activist showed the level of racism and segregation in the south. The tactics and resistance made in this time period helped achieve desegregation because and the resistance that the activists dealt with just made them become more aware in the media and hopefully spread nation wide.
Then the court case, Brown v. Board of Education, ended “separate but equal”, and started the integration process. The integration had started, but African Americans still could not vote, so Martin Luther King lead thousands in the Selma Marches. The voting rights act was signed, and everyone could easily vote. The marches were essential
Even though the government adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African Americans’ suffrages were still restricted because of southern states’ obstructions. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was important for blacks to participate in political elections, but before this act was passed, there were several events led to its proposal. The government gave African Americans’ the right to vote by passing the 15th Amendment, but in the Southern States, blacks’ suffrages were limited by grandfather clauses, “poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions” (ourdocuments.gov). As times went on, most African Americans couldn’t register their votes.