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U.S. Voting Rights

When the Constitution was written, only white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the
nation's population) had the vote. Over the past two centuries, though, the term "government by the
people" has become a reality. During the early 1800s, states gradually dropped property
requirements for voting. Later, groups that had been excluded previously gained the right to vote.
Other reforms made the process fairer and easier.
1790

1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.

1800

1810

1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

1820

1840

1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males
could vote.

1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857.
The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.

1860

1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting
rights of adult male citizens of any race.

1880

1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.

1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states
—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites
from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote
before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.

1900

1910

1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people
instead of State Legislatures.

1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910).
In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th
Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.

1920
 1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.

1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to
vote in federal elections.

1930

1940

1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other
states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definion, could exclude
whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by
the terms of 15th Amendment.

1950

1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up
the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

1960

1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."

1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential
elections.

1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.

1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw
national attention to African-American voting rights.

1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such
as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.

1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a
qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and
Virginia.

1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.

1970

1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act.
At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court
upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the
court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise
voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.

1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.

1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for
voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.

1980
 1990

1995 The Federal "Motor Voter Law" takes effect, making it easier to register to vote.

2000

2003 Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act requires states to streamline registration, voting,
and other election procedures.

SIT-INS MOVEMENT

19 February 1 Four Greensboro students stage sit-in at Wollworth’s Department

60 store.

Actions at Woolworth
On February 1, 1960, four students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North
Carolina sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North
Carolina.[1] The men, later known as the Greensboro Four, ordered coffee.[5] Following store
policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the "whites only"
counter and the store's manager asked them to leave.[6]

The four university freshmen -- Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later known as
Jibreel Khazan), and David Richmond -- stayed until the store closed.[6]

The next day, more than twenty African American students who had been recruited from other
campus groups came to the store to join the sit-in. White customers heckled the black students,
who read books and studied to keep busy. The lunch counter staff continued to refuse service.[5]

Newspaper reporters and a TV videographer covered the second day of peaceful demonstrations
and others in the community learned of the protests. On the third day, more than 60 people came
to the Woolworth's store. A statement issued by Woolworth's national headquarters said the
company would "abide by local custom" and maintain its segregated policy.[5]

More than 300 people took part on the fourth day. Organizers agreed to spread the sit-in protests
to include the lunch counter at Greensboro's Kress store.[5]

As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-in had begun, students in other North Carolina
towns launched their own sit-ins. Demonstrations spread to towns near Greensboro, including
Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte. Out-of-state towns like Lexington,
Kentucky also saw protests.

The movement then spread to other Southern cities including Richmond, Virginia, and Nashville,
Tennessee where the students of the Nashville Student Movement had been trained for a sit-in
by civil rights activist James Lawson and had already started the process when Greensboro
occurred. Although the majority of these protests were peaceful, there were instances where
protests became violent.[7] For example, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tensions rose between
blacks and whites and fights broke out.[8]

As the sit-ins continued, tensions grew in Greensboro and students began a far-reaching boycott
of stores that had segregated lunch counters. Sales at the boycotted stores dropped by a third,
leading the stores' owners to abandon their segregation policies.[1]

Black employees of Greensboro’s Woolworth’s store were the first to be served at the store's
lunch counter, on July 25, 1960. The next day, the entire Woolworth's chain was desegregated,
serving blacks and whites alike

The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department
store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States.[1]

While not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were
an instrumental action, leading to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in US history.[2] The
primary event took place at the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's store, now the International
Civil Rights Center and Museum.

The sit-in movement used the strategy of nonviolent resistance.[3] As far back as 1942, the Congress
of Racial Equality sponsored sit-ins in Chicago, as they did in St. Louis in 1949 and Baltimore in 1952.
In August, 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-
segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library.[4]
[edit]

Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central
High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from
entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the
intervention of PresidentEisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-
American Civil Rights Movement. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard
would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch.[1]

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483,
on May 17, 1954. The decision declared all laws establishingsegregated schools to be unconstitutional, and
it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.[2] After the decision the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in
previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, the capital city of Arkansas,
the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the
Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955,
which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school
year, which would begin in September 1957. By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to
attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and
attendance.[3] The nicknamed "Little Rock Nine" consisted of Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b.
1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941),Carlotta Walls LaNier (b.
1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940),
and Melba Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High
School.

Jim Crow laws

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They
mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status
for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those
provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public
transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks.
The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800–1866 Black
Codes, which also restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. State-sponsored school
segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v.
Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of
1964[1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955
in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public
transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott,
including Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others, as listed below. The boycott
resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black
population who were the drivers of the boycott were also the bulk of the system's paying customers. The
ensuing struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was
arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal
ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision
that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.[1]

Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United
States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960).[1] The first Freedom
Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[2]
Boynton v. Virginia had outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals
serving buses that crossed state lines. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce
Commission had issued a ruling inSarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced
the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel, but the ICC had failed to
enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South.

The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in
the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the
violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called
national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern
United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim
Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses.

Most of the subsequent rides were sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), while others
belonged to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick"). The Freedom
Rides followed on the heels of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students
and youth throughout the South and boycotts beginning in 1960.

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal
right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. But the
Freedom Riders' rights were not enforced, and their actions were considered criminal acts throughout most
of the South. For example, upon the Riders' arrival in Mississippi, their journey ended with imprisonment for
exercising their legal rights in interstate travel. Similar arrests took place in other Southern cities.