Letters from an American - The Voting Rights Act

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

August 6, 2026On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, In 1865, Americans ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes, In subsequent years, with the ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, citizenship was guaranteed to anyone born or naturalized in the US (except certain Indigenous Americans) and the right to vote was extended to Black men, These amendments gave Congress the power to enforce them, In response, white opponents hindered the ability of Black men to vote, Opposition did not gain traction until after WWII, when judges used the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that states could not deprive any American of equality, Under pressure from President Dwight D Eisenhower, Congress passed civil rights acts in 1957 and 1960, and in 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which strengthened voting rights, In 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law, It was reauthorized repeatedly by large margins, but in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the law requiring that states with a history of discrimination get approval before changing voting laws, The assault on the Voting Rights Act continued in 2026, after the decision in Louisiana v Callais, The gap between white and Black voter turnout in the 2024 election was the highest since at least 2008.Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ-Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribeYou can also find me:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place. August 6, 26th, 26, 61 years ago, on August 6th, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The need for the law was explained in its full title, an act to enforce the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, and for other purposes. In the wake of the Civil War, Americans tried to create a new nation in which the law treated black men and white men as equals. In 1865, they ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, outlawing enslavement except as punishment for crimes. In 1868, they adjusted the Constitution again, guaranteeing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States,

except certain indigenous Americans, was a citizen, opening up suffrage to black men. In 1870, after Georgia legislators expelled their newly seated black colleagues, Americans defended the right of black men to vote by adding that right to the Constitution. All three of those amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th, gave Congress the power to enforce them. In 1870, Congress established the Department of Justice to do just that. Reactionary white Southerners had been using state laws and the unwillingness of state judges and juries to protect black Americans from white gangs and cheating employers

to keep black people subservient. White men organized as the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize black men and to keep them and their white allies from voting to change that system. In 1870, the federal government stepped in to protect black rights and prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan. With federal power now behind the constitutional protection of equality, threatening jail for those who violated the law, white opponents of black voting changed their argument against it. In 1871, they began to say that they had no problem with black men voting on racial grounds. Their objection to black voting was that black men, just out of enslavement, were poor and uneducated. They were voting for lawmakers who promised them public services, like roads and

schools, that could only be paid for with tax levies. The idea that black voters were socialists, they actually used that term in 1871, meant that white northerners who had fought to replace the hierarchical society of the Old South with a society based on a society based on equality, began to change their tune. They looked the other way as white men kept black men from voting, first with terrorism and then with grandfather clauses that cut out black men without mentioning race by permitting a man to vote if his grandfather had voted. Literacy tests in which white registrars got to decide who passed, poll taxes, and so on. States also cut up districts unevenly to favor the Democrats who ran an all-white segregationist party. By 1880, the South was

solidly Democratic and would remain so until 1964. Southern states always held elections. It was just foreordained that Democrats would win them. Black Americans never accepted this state of affairs, but their opposition did not gain powerful national traction, and, until after World War II. During that war, Americans from all walks of life had turned out to defeat fascism, a government system based on the idea that some people are better than others. Americans defended democracy and, for all that black Americans fought in segregated units, and that race riots broke out in cities across the country during the war years, and that the government interned Japanese Americans,

lawmakers began to recognize that the nation could not effectively define itself as a democracy if black and brown people lived in substandard housing, received substandard educations, could not advance from menial jobs, and could not vote to change any of these circumstances. Meanwhile, black Americans and people of color, who had fought for the nation overseas, brought home their determination to be treated equally. especially as the financial collapse of European nations loosened their grip on their former African and Asian colonies

and launched new nations. Those interested in advancing black rights turned, once again, to the federal government to overrule discriminatory state laws. Spurred by lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker-Motley, judges used the due process clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to argue that the protections in the Bill of Rights applied to the states.

That is, the states could not deprive any American of equality. In 1954, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Republican former governor of California, used this doctrine when it handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional. White reactionaries responded with violence, but black Americans continued to stand up for their rights.

In 1957 and 1960, under pressure from Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, Congress passed civil rights acts designed to empower the federal government to enforce the laws protecting black voting. In 1961, the United States, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, and the Council of Federated Organizations, or Kofo, began intensive efforts to register voters

and to organize communities to support political change. Because only 6.7% of Black Mississippians were registered, Mississippi became a focal point, and in the Freedom Summer of 1964, organized under Bob, Moses, volunteers set out to register voters. On June 21st, Ku Klux Klan members, at least one of whom was a law enforcement officer, murdered organizers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, near Philadelphia, Mississippi, and, when discovered, laughed at the idea they would be punished for the murders.

That year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which strengthened voting rights. When Black Americans still couldn't register to vote, on March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, marchers set out for Montgomery to demonstrate that they were being kept from registering. Law enforcement officers on horseback met them with clubs on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, The officers beat the marchers, fracturing the skull of young John Lewis, who would go on to serve 17 terms in Congress. On March 15th, President Johnson called for Congress to pass legislation defending Americans' right to vote. It did. And on this day, in 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law. It became such a fundamental part of our legal system that Congress repeatedly reauthorized it by large margins, as recently as 2006.

But in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, struck down the provision of the law, requiring that states with histories of voter discrimination get approval from the Department of Justice, before they changed their voting laws. Immediately, the legislatures of those states, now dominated by Republicans, began to pass measures to suppress voting by Democrats and, by extension, people of color. In the wake of the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states

increased the rate of voter suppression, and on July 1, 2021, the Supreme Court permitted such suppression with the Bernovich-Rex, the Democratic National Committee decision. On April 29th of this year, the Supreme Court continued the assault on the Voting Rights Act. In Louisiana v. Calais,

it rejected the long-standing interpretation that sometimes, in order to guarantee black representation in government, states have had to create districts that are made up primarily of black Americans. By a vote of six to three, with the right-wing justices in the majority, the Supreme Court in April declared Louisiana's construction of a majority-minority district unconstitutional

under the 15th Amendment. It was, they said, an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. A 2024 study by the Brennan Center of nearly a billion vote records over 14 years showed that the racial voting gap is growing almost twice as fast in places that used to be covered by the pre-clearance requirement. Another recent study showed that in Alabama, the gap between white and black voter turnout in the 2024 election was the highest since at least 2008. If non-white voters in Alabama had voted

at the same rate as white voters, more than 200,000 additional ballots would have been cast. In 1957, when he was Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson called for the protection of black voting, saying, This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies. Upon signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said to the American people, I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.

Letters from an American was written by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. recorded with music composed by Michael Moss