One Person, One Vote

1
One Person, One Vote

• The Struggle for
• African-American
• Voting Rights

2
The Legacy of Jim Crow

• Disenfranchisement
• Withholding the vote
• Limits on registration
• Poll taxes
• Literacy tests
• Grandfather clause

3
Challenges to Disenfranchisement

• Organizing
• Registration drives
• Coaching
• Protests
• Marches
• Court cases

4
March on Washington

• August 28, 1963
• Led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• John Farmer
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• 250,000 people

5
March on Washington

• Kings I Have a Dream Speech
• I have a dream that my four children will one
  day live in a nation where they will not be
  judged by the color of their skin but by the
  content of their character.

6
Murder in Birmingham

• Sept. 15, 1963
• KKK bombs 16th Street Baptist Church in
  Birmingham, Alabama
• 26 Children meeting in basement, 4 killed
• March and this incident cause many to work for
  civil rights

7
Critical Thinking

• Why do you think black civil rights workers did
  not turn to violence in response?

8
24th Amendment

• Proposed August 29, 1962
• Ratified January 24, 1964
• Abolished Poll Tax
• Directly affected
• Virginia
• Arkansas
• Alabama
• Texas
• Mississippi

9
Freedom Summer

• Summer 1964
• Massive black voter registration drive in
  Mississippi
• Young civil rights workers from all over the
  country
• Three murdered in August
• 1964 6.7 registered
• 1969 66.5 registered

10
Civil Rights Act,1964

• July 2, 1964
• Most sweeping CR legislation since Reconstruction
• Outlawed discrimination in
• Voting
• Employment
• Public Services

11
Selma, Alabama 1965

• Selmas blacks prevented from voting by
  discrimination
• MLK leads series of attempts to march from Selma
  to Birmingham, the state capitol.
• King asks Gov. Wallace to protect marchers
• Wallace orders police to block marchers

12
Bloody Sunday March 7, 1965
13
Critical Thinking

• Why were white Southerners so threatened by
  blacks voting?

14
Voting Rights Act, 1965

• Selma lights fire under LBJ
• August 6, 1965
• Outlawed any restrictions on voter registration
• Made registration a federal responsibility in
  areas with less than 50 registered
• Active response