CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS

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Fighting for Voting Rights
Essential Question What methods did civil rights
workers use to gain voting rights for
African-Americans in the South?
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Gaining Voting Rights

• Attorney General Robert Kennedy urged SNCC
  leaders to focus on voter registration rather
  than on protests
• SNCC, CORE, and other groups founded the Voter
  Education Project (VEP) to register southern
  African Americans to vote
• VEP was a successby 1964 they had registered
  more than a half million more African American
  voters.

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Freedom Summer, 1964

• Voting registration drive in Mississippi
• Organized by SNCC
• 3/4 of volunteers were northern white college
  students
• 3 volunteers were murdered, African American
  James Chaney whites Michael Schwerner Andrew
  Goodman

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Selma Campaign

• MLK Jr. and SCLC organized a march from Selma to
  Montgomery
• Selma had a majority of blacks but made up only
  3 of the registered voters
• 600 African Americans began the 54-mile march,
  but city and state police blocked their way out
• TV cameras captured police brutality

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Edmund Pettus Bridge Bloody Sunday
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Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Outlawed use of discriminatory devices such as
  literacy tests and poll taxes and allowed federal
  officials to monitor voting registration
• By the end of the year over 250,000 blacks had
  registered to vote

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Talk to your neighbor

1. What was Freedom Summer and what crisis occurred
   that summer?
2. What was the purpose of the Selma campaign? What
   happened during the march?
3. Why is the Voting Rights Act of 1965 significant?