Turning Point

"At times, history and fate meet at a single time, in a single place, to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom...Every American citizen must have the right to vote.''
- President Lyndon B. Johnson addressing Congress, March 15, 1965

The time had finally come.

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) on August 6, 1965.

This monumental legislation turned the tide against disenfranchisement, and ensured the rights granted to African-Americans promised by the 15th amendment. The VRA was the key to ensuring all other civil rights by giving minorities' access to the ballot box.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Source: S.1564, 89 Congress, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1965

Signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

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Source: Irving Brant, Washington Post, August 8, 1965
Source: President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, at the Capitol Rotunda, August 6, 1965
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"LBJ giving a pen to Clarence Mitchell (NAACP)"
Source: National Archives 
"...this law will ensure them the right to vote... the right is one which no American true to our principles can deny." 
- President Lyndon B. Johnson, August 6, 1965
(Click on Play Button to view slideshow)


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Source: Amelia Boynton, Matriarch of the Voting Rights Movement
"a voteless people is a hopeless people..."
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Source: Ramsey Clark, LBJ Library
"voting rights act was most successful....most important in terms of contribution to democracy...psychology of our people."
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Source: New York Times, August 7, 1965

"The seventy-one federal voting rights suits that were filed under the 1957, 1960, and 1964 acts had failed to remedy the exclusion of qualified black voters by state and local jurisdictions in the South."
- Publius, Vol. 16, No. 4, Assessing the Effects of the U.S. Voting Rights Act (Autumn,1986), pp. 5-16
"The VRA put the teeth in the 15th amendments guarantee that no citizen can be denied the right to vote based on race."
 - Congressional Record, V. 153, Pt. 11, July 13, 2006 to July 24 2006, Part 11, Pg. 14262