The Voting Rights Act — the landmark civil rights legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting — turns 50 today. Signed by President Lyndon Johnson, the law was an important victory in the campaign to overthrow the odious Jim Crow system that prevented many blacks from voting in the South.
The ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 extended voting rights to former slaves. Other laws — known collectively as the Enforcement Acts — were enacted that further reinforced the right of black Americans to have an equal voice in our nation’s political debates.
But in the late 1800s to early 1900s, many states passed laws and amended their constitutions to disenfranchise blacks. Some even received the imprimatur of the Supreme Court.
A variety of schemes were employed to keep blacks from voting, including poll taxes, literacy and character tests, private ownership requirements, and violence and intimidation at polling stations. They were effective. In the 1904 presidential election, for instance, black turnout in Virginia and South Carolina was zero.
These injustices continued until the onset of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the VRA the next year.
The new law soon boosted voter turnout. In Mississippi, black voter turnout rose from 6 percent in 1954 to 59 percent in 1969. By 2004, a higher share of blacks than whites were registered to vote in that state.
In subsequent decades, Congress re-authorized the VRA four times and amended it five times, expanding it protections.
In its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down a section of the law requiring nine Southern states with a history of racial discrimination to receive approval from the federal government before altering their voting laws.
In Shelby, the court ruled that in reauthorizing and expanding the law, Congress had not taken into account the dramatic racial progress the country had experienced in the 48 years since the VRA passed.
As Ilya Shapiro notes in an Examiner op-ed today, the gap between whites and blacks in voter registration and turnout is lower today in states covered by the provision than it is nationwide. In some of those states, blacks vote at higher rates than whites.
This suggests real progress. But many liberals continue to warn of dire threats to voting rights — not, as before, in the form of literacy tests and poll taxes, but with voter identification laws and limits on early voting and same-day voter registration. Conservatives argue that such laws are necessary to combat voter fraud.
There is a robust debate to be had over the merits of new voter laws (and in fact Congress will consider several of them this fall). What isn’t debatable is that this nation has come a long way in a short time to correct a historic injustice.
It is important to be on guard against violations to constitutional rights, especially those fueled by racial animus. But it is also important to recognize — and to celebrate — when real progress has been made.
