"Did We Always Care About Voting Rights?"
Brian K. Landsberg writes on History News Network: Voting rights in the United States continue to attract public debate. Voter fraud investigations, faulty election procedures, the extension of the Voting Rights Act and, of course, the 2000 presidential election have all drawn attention. One common assumption is that the federal government must play a muscular role in addressing voting rights issues. Yet this assumption was strongly disputed fifty years ago, when Congress enacted the first modern civil rights law. What happened to change the earlier consensus that the federal government should play, at most, only a limited role in protecting the right to vote? The story of the eight short years between enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 helps us understand the enormous change in the role of the federal government. It is a story of conflict between local power and federal power, of conflict between white supremacists and black civil rights advocates, and of conflict between the dominant white power structure and individual black citizens who sought to register to vote.
Much has been written about voting rights in America and about the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. However, prior works tend to either treat the history with a broad brush or to focus on the dramatic events that led to the Voting Rights Act. It is time to start examining the period in more detail. Rather than demonize local officials or federal judges, we need to understand what may have led them to act the way they did. Rather than treat the civil rights movement as a collection of super-hero leaders, we need to look as well at the real heroes, the rank and file citizens who insisted on the right to vote.
Finally, in all the ink that has been spilled on this subject, the work of the federal government has been virtually ignored. Yet if one were to ask who were the important players in the march from the pallid 1957 Act -- which only authorized the United States to bring civil suits to remedy racial discrimination in voting -- to the 1965 Act -- which substituted federal officials for local registrars and required federal approval of changes in southern voting laws -- the lawyers of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice would occupy a key position on the list. The progression from weak to tough legislation is based in significant measure on the 70 voting rights suits the Division brought between 1957 and 1965. -- Did We Always Care About Voting Rights?