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Voting Rights Litigation: The Search for Equal Access & Participation

IMLA Teleconference on Voting Rights

May 18, 2010

Benjamin E. Griffith

Introduction

The developments and current trends in voting rights litigation are rooted in part in the institution of slavery, post-Civil War disenfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, societal discrimination and the lingering effects of past discrimination. Indeed, today’s hotly contested issues of felon disenfranchisement, restriction of the protections of the Voting Rights Act to citizen voting age population, early voting, ballot access, and internet voting with its attendant concerns over cybersecurity and ballot integrity, as well as at-large elections, annexations, last minute poll place changes and redistricting which have had a discriminatory impact on racial and ethnic minority American voters, trace back to the 19th Century and the turbulent struggle our Nation underwent in reconciling its racial history with political, social, and economic reality. That struggle continues today, although much progress has been made.1 These and related electoral issues form the battleground for federal civil rights litigation by private plaintiffs and a broad array of enforcement actions by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. They echo back to the re-subjugation of post-Civil War African-Americans to the systematic denial of their right to vote through such tactics as poll taxes, literacy tests and outright intimidation to stop people from casting free and unfettered ballots.

Underpinnings of Voting Rights Litigation The moral underpinning of institutional litigation under Sections 22 (vote dilution), 53 (preclearance) and 2034 (language minority assistance) of the Voting Rights Act can be traced back to the birth of the Civil Rights Movement during the first half of the 20th Century, followed by passage of the crown jewel of that Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lest we forget, when he signed this landmark legislation into law in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson was a southern President who had been a lukewarm supporter of civil rights legislation while serving as Vice-President under President John F. Kennedy. To the surprise of many, following JFK’s assassination, President Johnson threw the full support of his Administration behind passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had triggered an outbreak of violence

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in many southern states, coupled with a concerted campaign by many conservative whites against the success that Martin Luther King had achieved in getting African Americans to register to vote. The violence of Freedom Summer - captured by Hollywood decades later in Mississippi Burning5 - convinced LBJ that more was needed if the civil rights issue was to be suitably contained and resolved. Five days after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the march on Selma, President announced his intention to pass a federal Voting Rights Act to insure that no federal, state or local government may in any way impede people from registering to vote or voting because of their race or ethnicity. He introduced this proposal to Congress in what is considered to be one of his best speeches:

Rarely are we met with a challenge…..to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such as an issue…..the command of the Constitution is plain. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country.6

With LBJ’s commitment to the cause, Congress realized that the President would not back down on this issue. If Congress hindered or failed to back the Voting Rights Act, Americans would view the failure to be one by Congress alone.

Reauthorization of VRA’s Temporary Provisions

Most provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and specifically the portions that guarantee that no one may be denied the right to vote because of his or her race or color, are permanent, but some enforcement–related provisions have required reauthorization over the years. When the Voting Rights Act was originally enacted in 1965, Congress hoped that within five years the problems would be resolved and there would be no further need for these enforcement-related provisions. Extension of these temporary provisions proved necessary, however, in 1970, and again in 1975 and 1982. They were set to expire in August 2007, but were extended for another 25 years with the July 2007 reauthorization vote. Originally enacted in 1965 as temporary remedial legislation to address massive, persistent abridgement of minority voting rights primarily in the southern states, the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act were steadily expanded to other minority groups, and ultimately included sweeping protection for language minority groups. Its current iteration, embodied in the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Right Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006, was passed by the Senate and House after widespread lobbying efforts by various citizen groups and non profit organizations, and signed by President George W. Bush on July 31, 2006, in one of the last major acts of bipartisan collaboration before our American political system descended into its present state of bitterly partisan gridlock.

1840-1900: Issues, Events & Organizations

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Space limitations do not permit a full treatment of many of the pivotal issues, events, organizations and most significant enactments that laid the pre-1900 groundwork for the Voting Rights Act. These included the Ku Klux Klan7, the Civil Rights Act of18668 , the Civil Rights Act of18759 , the 13th Amendment10, the 14th Amendment11 and the Abolition movement.12

1900-1980: Issues, Events & Organizations Similarly, as this Nation entered the 20th Century, the pace and tempo quickened for many of the issues that would later provide the framework for the Voting Rights Act. The unfolding of many significant events and the birth of many organizations helped frame what would come to be known as the Civil Rights Movement. These included the Niagara Movement13, the National Council of Negro Women14 , the NAACP15 , Jim Crow Laws16 , Little Rock High School 17, the Randolph Institute18 , the Montgomery Bus Boycott19, Freedom Riders20 , the murder of Emmett Till21 , Segregated Lunch Counters22 , Freedom Summer23 , the Baptist Church Bombing24 , the March on Washington in 196325, the Selma March26, Mississippi Burning27, the Civil Rights Act of 195728 , the Civil Rights Act 196029 , the Civil Rights Act of 196430 , and the Crown Jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act 1965.31

Universal Suffrage

The United States and other modern democracies extend the right to vote to almost all responsible adult citizens. This is known as universal suffrage, a hallmark of which is the "one person, one vote" principle. Our representative democracy was not always so representative, however, and long excluded African Americans and women from the franchise. They fought long and hard in their struggles to achieve the right to vote. At the dawn of our democratic experiment, the U.S. Constitution was silent with respect to the right to vote, a matter left to the states to determine. Indeed, at the time the Constitution was written, the right to vote was restricted to white males and limited by religious, property, and taxpaying qualifications. The principle of unrestricted white male suffrage was established by the time of the Civil War and was expressly mentioned in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. African American men theoretically achieved suffrage with the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, but many states erected barriers to black voting that persisted into the 1960s. American women did not win their struggle for suffrage until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, but unlike African Americans, they were not forced to continue the fight against state attempts to circumvent the law. A final extension of suffrage took place in 1971 when the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/researchstarters/women/

The Voting Rights Act

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Despite the fact that African Americans and other racial and ethnic minority Americans are guaranteed the right to vote by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was passed just after the Civil War in 1870, states and local municipalities continued to use tactics such as poll taxes, literacy tests and outright intimidation to stop people from casting free and unfettered ballots. Most provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and specifically the portions that guarantee that no one may be denied the right to vote because of his or her race or color, are permanent, but some enforcement –related provisions have required reauthorization over the years. Originally, in 1965, legislators hoped that within five years the problems would be resolved and there would be no further need for these enforcement-related provisions: however, it proved necessary to extend these in 1970, and again in 1975 and 1982. They were set to expire in August 2007, but were extended for another 25 years with the July 2007 reauthorization vote. There were 3 enforcement-related provisions of the Voting Rights Act that would have expired in August 2007 unless reauthorized. The first is Section 5, which requires certain jurisdictions to obtain approval or “preclearance” from the US Department of Justice or the US District Court in D.C. before they can make any changes to voting practices or procedures. Federal approval will be given only after the jurisdiction proves that the proposed change does not, have the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color. Secondly is Section 203, which requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual language assistance to voters in communities where there is a concentration of citizens who are limited English proficient. This provision was added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975. The third provisions are those in Sections 6-9 which authorize the federal government to send federal election examiners and observers to certain jurisdictions covered by Section 5 where there is evidence of attempts to intimidate minority voters at the polls. The hearings held in 2005 and 2006 in the House and Senate found a new generation of tactics, including at-large elections, annexations, last minute poll place changes and redistricting which have had a discriminatory impact on voters, especially racial and ethnic minority American voters. Thus H.R. 9 was introduced with strong bipartisan support in the House and the Senate to reauthorize the expiring portions of the VRA and allow the federal government to address these new challenges. See http://www.naacp.org/about/history/vra/index.htm

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President Johnson’s Speech on Passage of the Voting Rights Act The entire text of the speech delivered by LBJ on the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is accessible at http://www.civilrights.org/voting-rights/vra/johnson-speech.html These are the highlights:

Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield. Yet to seize the meaning of this day, we must recall darker times.

Three and a half centuries ago the first Negroes arrived at Jamestown. They did not arrive in brave ships in search of a home for freedom. They did not mingle fear and joy, in expectation that in this New World anything would be possible to a man strong enough to reach for it.

They came in darkness and they came in chains.

And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story fuse and blend.

And let us remember that it was not always so. The stories of our Nation and of the American Negro are like two great rivers. Welling up from that tiny Jamestown spring they flow through the centuries along divided channels.

When pioneers subdued a continent to the need of man, they did not tame it for the Negro. When the Liberty Bell rang out in Philadelphia, it did not toll for the Negro. When Andrew Jackson threw open the doors of democracy, they did not open for the Negro.

It was only at Appomattox, a century ago, that an American victory was also a Negro victory. And the two rivers--one shining with promise, the other dark-stained with oppression--began to move toward one another.

The Promise Kept

Yet, for almost a century the promise of that day was not fulfilled. Today is a towering and certain mark that, in this generation, that promise will be kept. In our time the two currents will finally mingle and rush as one great stream across the uncertain and the marvelous years of the America that is yet to come. This act flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American,

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in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny. ...

The Waiting is Gone

The Members of the Congress, and the many private citizens, who worked to shape and pass this bill will share a place of honor in our history for this one act alone.

There were those who said this is an old injustice, and there is no need to hurry. But 95 years have passed since the 15th amendment gave all Negroes the right to vote.

And the time for waiting is gone.

There were those who said smaller and more gradual measures should be tried. But they had been tried. For years and years they had been tried, and tried, and tried, and they had failed, and failed, and failed.

And the time for failure is gone.

There were those who said that this is a many-sided and very complex problem. But however viewed, the denial of the right to vote is still a deadly wrong.

nd the time for injustice has gone.

This law covers many pages. But the heart of the act is plain. Wherever, by clear and objective standards, States and counties are using regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote, then they will be struck down. If it is dear that State officials still intend to discriminate, then Federal examiners will be sent in to register all eligible voters. When the prospect of discrimination is gone, the examiners will be immediately withdrawn.

And, under this act, if any county anywhere in this Nation does not want Federal intervention it need only open its polling places to all of its people.

The Government Acts

...

And 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.

So, through this act, and its enforcement, an important instrument of freedom passes into the hands of millions of our citizens. But that instrument must be used.

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Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot.

The Vote Becomes Justice

...

This act is not only a victory for Negro leadership. This act is a great challenge to that leadership. It is a challenge which cannot be met simply by protests and demonstrations. It means that dedicated leaders must work around the clock to teach people their rights and their responsibilities and to lead them to exercise those rights and to fulfill those responsibilities and those duties to their country.

If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

The Last of the Barriers Tumble

Today what is perhaps the last of the legal barriers is tumbling. There will be many actions and many difficulties before the rights woven into law are also woven into the fabric of our Nation. But the struggle for equality must now move toward a different battlefield.

It is nothing less than granting every American Negro his freedom to enter the mainstream of American life: not the conformity that blurs enriching differences of culture and tradition, but rather the opportunity that gives each a chance to choose.

For centuries of oppression and hatred have already taken their painful toll. It can be seen throughout our land in men without skills, in children without fathers, in families that are imprisoned in slums and in poverty.

Rights Are Not Enough

For it is not enough just to give men rights. They must be able to use those rights in their personal pursuit of happiness. The wounds and the weaknesses, the outward walls and the inward scars which diminish achievement are the work of American society. We must all now help to end them--help to end them through expanding programs already devised and through new ones to search out and forever end the special handicaps of those who are black in a Nation that happens to be mostly white.

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So, it is for this purpose--to fulfill the rights that we now secure--that I have already called a White House conference to meet here in the Nation's Capital this fall.

So, we will move step by step--often painfully but, I think, with clear vision--along the path toward American freedom.

It is difficult to fight for freedom. But I also know how difficult it can be to bend long years of habit and custom to grant it. There is no room for injustice anywhere in the American mansion. But there is always room for understanding toward those who see the old ways crumbling. And to them today I say simply this: It must come. It is right that it should come. And when it has, you will find that a burden has been lifted from your shoulders, too.

It is not just a question of guilt, although there is that. It is that men cannot live with a lie and not be stained by it.

Dignity is Not Just a Word

The central fact of American civilization--one so hard for others to understand--is that freedom and justice and the dignity of man are not just words to us. We believe in them. Under all the growth and the tumult and abundance, we believe. And so, as long as some among us are oppressed--and we are part of that oppression--it must blunt our faith and sap the strength of our high purpose.

Thus, this is a victory for the freedom of the American Negro. But it is also a victory for the freedom of the American Nation. And every family across this great, entire, searching land will live stronger in liberty, will live more splendid in expectation, and will be prouder to be American because of the act that you have passed that I will sign today.

As enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was Public Law 89-110 (79 Stat. 437). http://www.civilrights.org/voting-rights/vra/johnson-speech.html

Immediate Impact of the Voting Rights Act Because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the most significant statutory change in the relationship between the Federal and state governments in the area of voting since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, it was immediately challenged in the courts. Between 1965 and 1969, the Supreme Court issued several key decisions upholding the constitutionality of Section 5 and affirming the broad range of voting practices for which preclearance was required. [See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327-28 (1966) and Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544 (1969)]

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The law had an immediate impact. By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one-third by Federal examiners. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982. http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?page=&doc=100&title=Voting+Rights+Act+%281965%29 The impact of this act was dramatic. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the traditional 13 Southern states, had less than 50% of African Americans registered to vote. By 1968, even hard-line Mississippi had 59% of African Americans registered. In the longer term, far more African Americans were elected into public office. The Act was the boost that the civil rights cause needed to move it swiftly along and Johnson has to take full credit for this. As Martin Luther King had predicted in earlier years, demonstrations served a good purpose but real change would only come through the power of Federal government. Johnson proved this. V Sanders has called what he did as a "legislative revolution". Johnson had one break in that he worked with a Congress that had a majority of Democrats serving in it and as a Democrat president both could work well together.

Congressional Black Caucus

The Voting Rights Act was a significant catalyst for the increase in black congressional representation during the second half of the twentieth century. Considered one of the most important victories of the civil rights struggle, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 significantly increased access to the polls for blacks, particularly in the South. Other factors—including black migration to northern cities, white relocation to the suburbs, and redistricting—also contributed to the increase in black congressional representation following the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Black participation in electoral politics resulted in a steady increase in the number of black Congress members, and the number continues to rise. In 1965, there were only six black members of the House and no black members of the Senate. A few years later, when the CBC was established in 1971, there were 13 members of the House and one black member of the Senate. The 109th Congress (2005-2007) has 42 black members of the House and one black member of the Senate.

Subsequent Amendments to the VRA

The issue of voting rights and the battle against disenfranchisement of citizens based on racial factors remains at the forefront of the work of the CBC. Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act has been amended several times. House members continue to introduce and support policy that ensures that all Americans have fair and equal opportunity to participate in the election process. The initial amendments to the Voting Rights Act were added in the 1970s. In 1970 and 1975, Congress extended Section 5 of the original Voting Rights Act. The purpose of Section 5 is to prevent voting rights violations before they occur. Section 5 focuses on the

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use of discriminatory tests or other devices designed to exclude certain individuals from the voting process. These extensions require that jurisdictions with a history of illegal discrimination obtain permission from either the Justice Department or a panel of federal district court judges before changing any voting practices. In 1975, these special provisions of the Voting Rights Act were extended for another seven years and were broadened to address voting discrimination against members of "language minority groups." In addition, the 1965 definition of "test or device" was expanded to include the practice of providing election information, including ballots, only in English in states or political subdivisions where members of a single language minority constituted more than five percent of the citizens of voting age. In 1982, Congress extended Section 5 for twenty-five years. While the right to vote is permanent, some key sections of the Voting Rights Act are temporary. Without reauthorization, these provisions would expire. In 2006, the provisions were renewed. These provisions include Section 5, Section 203, and Sections 6-9. Section 203 requires that states and municipalities provide assistance and language other than English for voters who are not literate or fluent in English. Sections 6-9 allow the United States Justice Department to send federal examiners to observe places that have histories of discriminatory voting practices. During the 1980s, Representative John Conyers of Michigan introduced bills to protect voting rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution by eliminating certain barriers to participation in federal elections and inappropriate registration procedures. Other key legislation introduced by CBC members included a bill by Representative Alan Wheat of Missouri that prohibited the requirement that a majority, rather than a plurality, of votes cast in a primary election for federal office be obtained in order to achieve nomination. In 1992, the Voting Rights Language Assistance Act was passed. Representative Wheat and other members of the CBC supported this act by co-sponsoring a resolution providing for the consideration of the bill to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with respect to bilingual election requirements. This act’s provisions require bilingual voting materials, and it expands coverage to counties with more than 10,000 voting-age minority citizens who are not proficient in English. This provision provided an alternative coverage standard for Indians and Alaska Natives. In the 1990s, the CBC members demonstrated their concern about the voting rights of disenfranchised populations such as the homeless and the incarcerated. In 1992, Representative John A. Lewis of Georgia introduced H.R. 1457, a bill to protect the voting rights of homeless citizens. In 1994, Representative Conyers introduced H.R. 4093, a bill to secure the voting rights of former felons who have been released from incarceration. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America to Vote Act aimed at improving the administration of federal elections by providing assistance with the administration of certain federal election laws and programs. Since the passage of this legislation, several

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CBC members have introduced amendments designed to further improve the administration of federal elections in local and state jurisdictions. In recent years, CBC members have rallied to protect the Voting Rights Act. President George W. Bush met with the Congressional Black Caucus in 2005 to discuss the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Extensions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act are set to expire in August 2007. Obstacles such as literacy tests that were set up by segregationists to keep blacks from registering to vote and provisions of the Voting Rights Act, such as the use of federal examiners and a requirement for Justice Department approval of election law changes, are up for renewal by Congress.

VRARA of 2006 In May 2006, CBC members co-sponsored the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006. Despite support from Republican and Democratic congressional leaders and President Bush, the bill was stalled in the House of Representatives. The first opposition was registered by Iowa Republican Steve King, who cast the only dissenting vote in the Judiciary Committee. Rep. King’s complaint related to the requirement to print ballots in Spanish in certain precincts that are heavily populated with Hispanics. Opposition from other Republicans, especially some representatives from Georgia and Texas, related to the law's special requirements for certain states and districts that are mostly in the South. Rep. John Lewis was one of the most vocal proponents of the bill. In reaction to the opposition, he stated, "The evidence shows that voting discrimination in America is not dead, and the Voting Rights Act must retain its original power in order to assure that democracy prevails...in America. If we as a nation and a people are truly committed to the full participation of every American in the democratic process, then there should be no serious impediment to the passage of H.R. 9." Despite the opposition, this bill was ultimately passed in the House and Senate and signed into law by President Bush in 2006. From Voting Rights History at http://www.avoiceonline.org/voting/history.html Since the founding of the League of Women Voters in 1920, protecting and promoting the right of every citizen to vote has been a guiding principle of the League. Americans are proud of the Voting Rights Act and rely on it to protect the essential expression of our democracy, the citizen’s right to vote. http://www.lwvjeffco.org/Voting%20Rights%20Act.html

Section 5 Preclearance Since its enactment in 1965, Section 5 has been renewed on four occasions, most recently in 2006. In the nearly 25 years between the 1982 and 2006 reauthorizations, the U.S. Supreme Court issued multiple opinions that arguably weakened the Section 5 preclearance standard. Famously, in the 1993 decision in Shaw v. Reno, the Court held that an apportionment plan that used race as the predominant factor in redistricting

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decisions – as was often the scenario in jurisdictions covered by Section 5 – would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1997 and 1999, the Supreme Court issues two opinions in the case of Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board that dramatically altered the court’s interpretation of which election law changes violated Section 5. In 1997, the Court held that preclearance may not be denied solely on the basis of a finding by the Justice Department that the election change would violate Section 2 of the VRA. Two years later, when the case returned to the court after the initial remand was appealed, the Court issued an opinion declaring that a redistricting plan that was enacted with a discriminatory purpose would not violate Section 5 so long as the plan was neither retrogressive in purpose or effect. This interpretation meant that a proposed voting change that, despite evidence that it was enacted with the intent to discriminate against voters of color, must still be precleared by the federal government so long as it improves or maintain the status quo with respect to the electoral influence of voters of color in the jurisdiction. A few years after this blockbuster pair of opinions the court issued an additional interpretation of Section 5 in the case of Georgia v. Ashcroft. The Court in Georgia held that Section 5 did not prohibit covered jurisdictions from reducing the proportions of a minority voting age population in some majority-minority districts “even if it means that in some of those districts, minority voters will face a somewhat reduced opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.” Scholars predicted that such an interpretation of Section 5 increases dramatically the types of redistricting changes that are non-retrogressive and permissible under the provision. Congress reacted to the Supreme Court’s opinions by passing a renewed VRA in 2006 that overturned Georgia v. Ashcroft and the second decision in Reno v. Bossier Parish.

Section 203 Language Minority Assistance

The provision, which was also renewed via HR 9 in 2006, was added to the VRA

in 1975 after Congress found that “language minorities have been effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process” as the result of “unequal educational opportunities” that resulted in “high illiteracy and low voting participation.” Congress meant the provision to remain in place so long as educational and other inequalities harmed the protected populations, and created Section 203 with a “sunset” provision that requires Congress to reauthorize it periodically in accordance with a continuing need for its protections.

Section 203 requires that a state or smaller political subdivision (such as a county or parish) provide language assistance if over 5 percent or more than 10,000 of the voting age citizens in the jurisdiction are members of one of the covered language minority groups and have an illiteracy rate higher than the national average. For purposes of Section 203, illiteracy is measured by the rate of the population over the age of 25 that has failed to complete the fifth grade. Currently, under Section 203(e), the provision only applies to Latinos, Asian American, Native Alaskan, and American Indian citizens. As interpreted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the protections are afforded to voters of the

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following descents: Hispanic, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, American Indian, and Native Alaskan. Approximately 505 political subdivisions are now covered by one of both of the language assistance triggers, and in one, Los Angeles County, assistance must be provided in six languages, Spanish, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Once it is determined that a jurisdiction is covered by Section 203's language assistance provisions, all of the “voting materials” it provides in English have to be provided in the language of all groups that trigger coverage, including ballots, voter registration materials and all election forms, polling place activities and materials, instructions, publicity, assistance and other materials relating to the electoral process. For members of Alaskan Native and American Indian groups whose languages historically have been unwritten, oral instructions, assistance and other information in the covered language is required to be available at every stage of the electoral process. The responsibility of the covered jurisdiction to provide effective assistance to members of the covered minority language groups exists and must be carried out at all stages of the electoral process for any type of election, whether primary, general or special, including not only elections for officials, but bond issues, referenda and constitutional amendments, as well as federal, state and local elections, school district, water district and other special district elections. Of the 505 covered jurisdictions, Spanish is the predominant language triggering coverage, with 425 or about 85% being required to provide Spanish language assistance.

Section 203 requires that a state or smaller political subdivision (such as a county or parish) provide language assistance if over 5 percent or more than 10,000 of the voting age citizens in the jurisdiction are members of one of the covered language minority groups and have an illiteracy rate higher than the national average. For purposes of Section 203, illiteracy is measured by the rate of the population over the age of 25 that has failed to complete the fifth grade. Currently, under Section 203(e), the provision only applies to Latinos, Asian American, Native Alaskan, and American Indian citizens. As interpreted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the protections are afforded to voters of the following descents: Hispanic, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, American Indian, and Native Alaskan. Approximately 505 political subdivisions are now covered by one of both of the language assistance triggers, and in one, Los Angeles County, assistance must be provided in six languages, Spanish, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Once it is determined that a jurisdiction is covered by Section 203's language assistance provisions, all of the “voting materials” it provides in English have to be provided in the language of all groups that trigger coverage, including ballots, voter registration materials and all election forms, polling place activities and materials, instructions, publicity, assistance and other materials relating to the electoral process. For members of Alaskan Native and American Indian groups whose languages historically have been unwritten, oral instructions, assistance and other information in the covered language is required to be available at every stage of the electoral process. The responsibility of the covered jurisdiction to provide effective assistance to members of the covered minority language

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groups exists and must be carried out at all stages of the electoral process for any type of election, whether primary, general or special, including not only elections for officials, but bond issues, referenda and constitutional amendments, as well as federal, state and local elections, school district, water district and other special district elections. Of the 505 covered jurisdictions, Spanish is the predominant language triggering coverage, with 425 or about 85% being required to provide Spanish language assistance. One study presented by Dr. James Tucker to the Congressional leaders in 2006 sought to document the costs associated with language materials and assistance under Section 203. The study also sought to determine public election officials’ practices in providing oral and written language assistance. Based on a survey of 411 jurisdictions in 33 states, the study yielded several important findings: • First, almost 62% reported they did not use bilingual coordinators to act as a liaison between elections offices and voters in the covered language group.Second, over 2/3 reported they did not confirm the language abilities of part-time election workers who claimed to speak one or more covered languages, nor did they provide any training on assistance in the covered languages, nor did they consult with community organizations about providing language assistance. • Third, almost 60% reporting oral language assistance expenses incurred no extra costs attributable to that assistance, and 90% indicated those expenses averages 1.5% of their total election costs. • Fourth, over 70% support reauthorization of the VRA’s language assistance provisions, regardless of whether they are covered by Section 5 or not. • Fifth, many responding jurisdictions minimize the costs of providing language assistance to voters by targeting the assistance to only those areas that need it.

Position of Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Section 203

In this regard, it is helpful to understand the position of the Department of Justice on the language assistance provisions of Section 203. In her statement submitted May 4, 2006 to the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights, Rena J. Comisac, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, reminded the Senators that the President and the Attorney General had directed the Justice Department to “bring all of its resources to bear in enforcing the Voting Rights Act and preserving the integrity of our voting process” and that the President had called upon Congress to renew this landmark legislation. Comisac outlined the Civil Rights Division’s vigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act's language minority requirements, describing it as “one of its primary missions,” and said that these efforts had met with enormous success, but that the work was never complete and that the enforcement program showed the continuing need for the VRA’s minority language provisions

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Section 2 and the Senate Report Factors The Senate Judiciary Committee in its report accompanying amended Section 2 identified nine factors, gleaned from White, Whitcomb and other pre-amendment vote dilution cases, considered to be relevant in determining whether or not there has been a violation. In elaborating on the nature of a Section 2 violation and the proof required to establish such a violation, the Senate Report specified certain “objective factors” and “enhancing factors” that typically may be relevant to a Section 2 claim. These factors were culled from White v. Regester, supra, and the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Zimmer v. McKeithen . These Senate Report factors necessarily call for evidence of the circumstances of the local political landscape, and include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following: (1) The extent of any history of official discrimination in the state or political subdivision that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process; (2) The extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized; (3) The extent to which the state or political subdivision has used unusually large election districts, majority vote requirements, anti-single shot provisions, or other voting practices or procedures that may enhance the opportunity for discrimination against the minority group; (4) If there is a candidate slating process, whether the members of the minority group have been denied access to that process; (5) The extent to which members of the minority group in the state or political subdivision bear the effects of discrimination in such areas as education, employment and health, which hinder their ability to participate effectively in the political process; (6) Whether political campaigns have been characterized by overt or subtle racial appeals; (7) The extent to which members of the minority group have been elected to public office in the jurisdiction. Additional factors which may be probative include: (8) Whether there is a significant lack of responsiveness on the part of elected officials to the particularized needs of the members of the minority group. (9) Whether the policy underlying the state or political subdivision's use of such voting qualification, prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure is tenuous. The list of Senate Report factors is neither comprehensive nor exclusive, and “there is no requirement that any particular number of factors be proved, or that a majority point one way or another.” Thornburg v. Gingles . Rather than engaging in a mechanical application of the Gingles preconditions and the Senate Report factors, the courts are obliged to consider all evidence reflective of the extent to which minority voters are currently able to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.

Special Circumstances Doctrine

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The Special Circumstances Doctrine can be traced to language that appears in the third Gingles precondition of legally significant white racial bloc voting, by which Plaintiffs are required to show that “the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it–in the absence of special circumstances, such as a minority candidate running unopposed, ...usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Thornburg v. Gingles . Since minority electoral success can and is often invoked as a defense to a vote dilution claim, the doctrine of special circumstances is often invoked by plaintiffs in order to discount or nullify the probative value of evidence of minority electoral success in order to improve their ability to establish a Section 2 violation. These fundamental principles were reaffirmed in Growe v. Emison. Justice Scalia spoke for a unanimous Court when he described the interrelationship between the Gingles preconditions: The "geographically compact majority" and "minority political cohesion" showings are needed to establish that the minority has the potential to elect a representative of its own choice in some single-member district.... And, the "minority political cohesion" and "majority bloc voting" showings are needed to establish that the challenged districting thwarts a distinctive minority vote by submerging it in a larger white voting population.... Unless these points are established, there neither has been a wrong nor can be a remedy. On the practical side, Gingles also addresses the nature of evidentiary proof considered relevant to identifying "minority preferred candidates" and the nature and extent of "white bloc voting." The Court noted that the trial court "relied principally" on extreme case analysis and bivariate ecological regression statistical evidence in assessing "how" the minority and majority electorates voted in particular elections. The Court observed that the statistical techniques essentially yielded "estimates" of the voting patterns of the respective electorates, including precinct-level estimates of the percentages of members of each race who voted for minority candidates over the span of dozens of electoral contests. The Gingles Court approved the trial court's evaluation of the presented statistical data, which included a consideration of the existence and strength of any "correlation" between the race of the voter and the selection of certain candidates, whether the revealed correlation was "statistically significant," and whether the differences in minority and majority electorate voting patterns was "substantively significant."

Racial Gerrymandering under the 14th Amendment: Appearances Do Matter The process of revising voting district boundaries, either as a remedy for a Section 2 vote dilution violation or as a consequence of the need to reapportion the numerical size of voting districts consistent with the one-person, one-vote principle, will typically involve the consideration and application of "traditional race-neutral districting principles" by legislatures. These traditional criteria – district compactness, non-separation of communities of interest, minimization of boundary changes and incumbency protection – will generally guide redistricting decisionmaking. There are

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occasions, however, where the race of voters may be included in the applied redistricting criteria (as when fashioning a Section 2 remedy) or where legislators are simply "conscious" of race during the districting process but do not use race as a criterion in any real sense. Yet the use of "race" as the "predominant" consideration renders the resulting districting scheme constitutionally suspect as a racial classification under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Differentiating between the use of race in redistricting in its more benign form and the use of race which results in the creation of a racial classification within the meaning of the 14th Amendment is a "delicate task."

Shaw v. Reno The central mandate of the Equal Protection Clause is “racial neutrality in government decisionmaking.” This mandate prohibits purposeful discrimination against individuals on the basis of race. In 1993, it was applied to prohibit racial gerrymandering of a congressional district in Shaw v. Reno . The Court, speaking through Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, drew the line between (1) impermissible racial gerrymandering by which voters are deliberately segregated into districts on the basis of race without compelling justification, and (2) permissible race-conscious state decisionmaking. As the Court put it, “we believe that reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter.” In invalidating a serpentine North Carolina congressional district with boundaries drawn predominantly on the basis of race, the Court said:

A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid. It reinforces the perception that members of the same racial group–regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live–think alike, share the same political interests and will prefer the same candidates at the polls. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotypes.... By perpetuating such notions, a racial gerrymander may exacerbate the very patterns of racial bloc voting that majority-minority districting is sometimes said to counteract. Shaw v. Reno has been characterized by many in the civil rights community as a judicial backlash against majority-minority districts. It was much more than that. The Court did indeed call into question those majority-minority districts that, despite being race-neutral on their face, were drawn predominantly on the basis of race, subordinating traditional non-racial districting criteria, in a manner that could not rationally be understood as “anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race.” Justice O’Connor emphasized that the Black electorate is not monolithic. She correctly equated the North Carolina redistricting plan aimed at maximizing black voting strength to “political apartheid,” and reasoned that a plan grounded on purposeful segregating of minority voters in majority-minority districts would only “reinforce the perception that members of the same racial group – regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live – think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls.”

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On the contrary, African-Americans are not monolithic in their views on a wide variety of such hot button issues as affirmative action. Indeed, “many are strongly in favor of affirmative action, of course, but others are ambivalent ..., and still others are strongly opposed.” In a series of decisions following Shaw v. Reno, the Court applied the exacting “strict scrutiny” standard of review when evaluating the constitutionality of redistricting plans challenged as racial gerrymanders, to which it declined to accord traditional judicial deference accorded the legislative decisionmaking process, a cornerstone of federalism. While acknowledging that the need to address a Section 2 vote dilution violation through redistricting constitutes a "compelling governmental interest," the Court has found on only one occasion that the districting scheme under "strict scrutiny" review was "narrowly tailored" to serve the articulated "compelling governmental interest." Given the rarity that a challenged redistricting scheme will survive the rigors of strict scrutiny, the central and deciding focus will usually involve the question of whether race "predominated" the redistricting effort. Although the relevant evidence may sometimes reveal direct proof of the decisionmaker's motivation to achieve certain racial proportions within the districting scheme at the expense of other race-neutral criteria, most often the chief evidence of the subordination of race-neutral criteria is circumstantial; that is, the extent to which the resulting districts are irregular or noncompact in shape.

Shaw v. Hunt In Shaw v. Hunt , the Court held that a state’s reapportionment scheme will not survive strict scrutiny if it is proven to be predominantly based upon race without sufficient regard to, or in subordination of, traditional districting criteria and is not shown to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. In Lawyer v. Department of Justice, the Court made it clear that it would nonetheless make every effort not to preempt the role of legislative bodies performing their task of redistricting and reapportionment and would continue to call for traditional judicial deference to that role by giving the state or local government body “the opportunity to make its own redistricting decisions so long as it is practically possible,” provided the government body chooses to that opportunity.

Bush v. Vera The Court adopted a mixed motive analysis in Bush v. Vera , applying the mixed-motive formulation of Mount Healthy City Board of Education v. Doyle , to determining whether race has predominated over or trumped other non-racial traditional districting principles such as party affiliation. Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Bush v. Vera was seen by many as a more accurate and comprehensive statement of the law that the majority opinion. Justice O’Connor said that compliance with §2's results test is a compelling state interest that can co-exist in principle and practice with Shaw v. Reno and its progeny. One of state’s goals in creating the three Congressional districts in question was to produce majority-

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minority districts, but other goals, particularly incumbency protection, played a role in drawing the district lines; the lower court’s determination that race was the predominant factor in the drawing of the districts had to be sustained. According to Justice O’Connor, “[t]he district court had ample bases on which to conclude both that racially motivated gerrymandering had a qualitatively greater influence on the drawing of district lines than politically motivated gerrymandering, and that political gerrymandering was accomplished in large part by the use of race as a proxy.” Moreover, the State of Texas in its §5 submission explained the drawing of one of the districts in exclusively racial terms, and this was coupled with an admission contained in legislative e-mail communications with the Department of Justice “written at the end of the redistricting process that incumbency protection had been achieved by using race as a proxy.” Such evidence was bolstered by other objective evidence strongly suggesting the predominance of race in the district plans and demographic maps. As Justice O’Connor noted, “political considerations were subordinated to racial classifications in the drawing of many of the most extreme and bizarre district lines….The fact that racial data were used in complex ways, and for multiple objectives, does not mean that race did not predominate over other considerations. The record discloses intensive and pervasive use of race both as a proxy to protect the political fortunes of adjacent incumbents, and for its own sake in maximizing the minority population of District 30 regardless of traditional districting principles. District 30's combination of a bizarre, non-compact shape and overwhelming evidence that that shape was essentially dictated by racial considerations of one form or another is exceptional....” Leading scholars and litigators in the voting rights field have placed great weight on Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Bush v. Vera concurring opinion, distilling from her concurrence the following helpful principles for state and local government entities involved in the redistricting process. First, as long as states do not subordinate traditional criteria to race, they may intentionally create majority-minority districts without coming under strict scrutiny. Second, a state may have to create majority-minority districts where the three Gingles preconditions (compactness, minority cohesion, and white bloc voting) are satisfied. Third, state’s interest in avoiding §2 liability is compelling governmental interest. Fourth, district drawn to avoid §2 liability is narrowly tailored so long as it does not deviate substantially, for predominantly racial reasons, from the sort of district a court would draw to remedy a §2 violation. Fifth, districts that are bizarrely shaped and non-compact and that otherwise neglect traditional principles and deviate substantially from the sort of district a court would draw are unconstitutional, if drawn for predominantly racial reasons.

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Background and Purpose of Section 5, as amended in 2006 Originally enacted in 1965, Section 5 of the VRA essentially "freezes" voting practices and procedures which were in place in certain "covered" jurisdictions at the time of Section 5's enactment. As such, Section 5 is "status quo" legislation which requires any change in voting practices and procedures to be reviewed under a "non-retrogression" standard and precleared by the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before they are deemed effective. The covered jurisdiction has the burden of demonstrating that the proposed voting change does not have the purpose or effect of retrogressing the electoral position of racial minorities. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, imposes substantial "federalism costs" on covered states and political subdivisions, requiring them to preclear any voting change or change in voting laws, practices or procedures that those jurisdictions seek to administer. The Fifteenth Amendment permits such an intrusion into state sovereignty. Preclearance under Section 5, when required, entails a certain amount of federal intrusion into state and local policymaking. It may be administratively requested through a formal submission to the Attorney General of the United States, or judicially through a declaratory judgment action, provided the action is brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Section 5 retrogression test §5 has much more limited purpose than §2. In jurisdictions covered by Section 5, the dual and significantly different requirements of nonretrogession and non-dilution must be satisfied. Section 5 is designed to combat retrogression, which requires a comparison of a jurisdiction’s new voting plan with its existing plan and implies that the jurisdiction’s existing plan is the benchmark against which the affected voting change is measured. See Bossier Parish II ; Bone Shirt v. Hazeltine . There is no single statistical measure of whether a proposed voting change has a retrogressive purpose or effect. Although non-retrogression often means maintaining the number of effective majority-minority districts and minority "influence" districts within the proposed scheme as compared to the benchmark plan, the courts and the DOJ are directed to examine the totality of the circumstances germane to the presence vel non of an invidious purpose or retrogressive effect, including the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice, the extent of the minority group's opportunity to participate in the political process, and the feasibility of creating a non-retrogressive voting plan. The Court has adhered to an analytical framework for identifying legislative purpose based on multiple factors set forth in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Redevelopment Corp ; Washington v. Davis (claim of invidious racial discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause is not automatically established by proof of a racially disproportionate impact).

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Scope of Section 5: Limited to covered jurisdictions

Section 5 applies to specific covered jurisdictions under a statutory trigger. It provides a centralized review procedure through the United States Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by which covered jurisdiction must first submit and obtain federal approval for changes in voting, electoral systems and practices before those changes can become effective. Its purpose is much more limited than §2. Section 5 is distinct from Section 2, particularly for covered jurisdictions, in that compliance with Section 2 is neither necessary nor sufficient to obtain preclearance from DOJ or the D.C. District Court. Relevance of Section 2 evidence to prove retrogressive intent or discriminatory purpose

under Section 5 Discriminatory effects of dilution under Section 2 are relevant to a determination of whether a given voting change has a discriminatory purpose or effect under Section 5. Reno v. Bossier Parish (I) School Board. The most significant interplay between Section 2 and Section 5 is seen in the redistricting process. That interplay usually takes place in a field of political litigation that imposes heavy demands upon Article III judges and captures the attention of elected officials who comprise legislative bodies and other governmental entities made up of single-member districts and multi-member districts. The redistricting process is essentially about reallocating political power through (1) equalizing district population under the one person, one vote standard of the Fourteenth Amendment, and (2) complying with the non-retrogression command of § 5 for covered jurisdictions, and the non-dilution standard of §2 for all jurisdictions. The traditional alliance between the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and private plaintiffs has been the subject of judicial scrutiny, most notably in Miller v. Johnson , where the Supreme Court rejected race-based redistricting efforts grounded on a black maximization agenda and an attempt to create “safe” minority seats in several of Georgia’s congressional districts.

Cromartie v. Hunt The Court retreated somewhat from its rejection of redistricting based predominantly on race when it was faced with a similar effort to create “reliably Democrat” seats in Cromartie v. Hunt , despite a strong correlation between race and political affiliation. Its strict scrutiny analysis focused in part on the Dole Compromise, a disclaimer of any right to proportional representation, set forth in §2 of the Voting Rights Act, as amended in 1982. The Court examined the construction of the First Congressional District in Cromartie v. Hunt. First, it noted that the state in its remedial plan continued to use race

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as the predominant factor in creating the majority-minority First District. Second, as a consequence, strict scrutiny had to apply, so that the state could then survive the constitutional challenge only by showing the District was narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. Third, according to the Court, §2 directs courts to examine the totality of circumstances to ascertain whether the political processes are equally open to all citizens and allows the courts to consider the extent of minority electoral success, but under the Dole Compromise disclaims any right of proportional representation. Fourth, once the §2 Gingles preconditions are met, the Court must then consider the Senate Report factors. Fifth, the state defendants presented sufficient evidence, according to the Court, to establish that it had a compelling reason, that is, a strong basis in evidence, to address race in constructing the remedial First District. Accordingly, race, while a predominant factor in composing the First District, was not impermissibly used in establishing the district’s borders. A compelling state interest was shown to exist in obtaining §5 preclearance, and the district was narrowly tailored to meet that interest.

Key Section 5 decisions Allen v. State Board of Elections : The Supreme Court held that Section 5 should apply not only to changes in electoral laws but to any practices that might dilute minority voting strength. Beer v. United States : The Supreme Court’s holding in Beer set forth the non-retrogression standard in the following words: A legislative reapportionment that enhances the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise can hardly have the "effect" of diluting or abridging the right to vote on account of race within the meaning of Section 5. We conclude...that such an ameliorative new legislative apportionment cannot violate Section 5 unless the new apportionment itself so discriminates on the basis of race or color as to violate the constitution. The retrogression standard’s application was further broadened in City of Lockhart v. United States , wherein the Supreme Court upheld preclearance of an electoral change that did not improve the position of minority voters, stating: Although there may have been no improvement in [minority] voting strength, there has been no retrogression either. Thus, in City of Lockhart, since the new electoral change did not "increase the degree of discrimination against blacks," it was accordingly entitled to be precleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. It was on this point that Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented in City of Lockhart, chastising the majority for reducing "Section 5 to a means of maintaining the status quo," insofar as it held that Section 5 could only forbid electoral changes that increased discrimination. Justice Marshall’s criticism of the majority was that such a view of the retrogression standard would permit a jurisdiction to adopt "a discriminatory electoral scheme, so long as the scheme is not more discriminatory than its predecessor," a view

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and approach that Justice Marshall condemned as "inconsistent with both the language and purpose" of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In Lopez v. Monterey County (Lopez I) , the Supreme Court held that where California had enacted legislation effecting changes in the method for electing county judges, Monterey County was nonetheless required to seek Section 5 preclearance before it could give effect to those changes. This is true even though the county arguably was just implementing a state law without exercising any independent discretion. Monterey County had adopted and implemented six judicial consolidation ordinances without seeking Section 5 preclearance. The Court reasoned that “Congress designed the preclearance procedure to forestall the danger that local decisions to modify voting practices will impair minority access to the electoral process and will accomplish this by giving exclusive authority to pass on the discriminatory effect or purpose of an election change to the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.” Following remand and a second appeal, the issue before the U. S. Supreme Court was whether Monterey County was required to pursue Section 5 preclearance for state-sponsored and legislatively authorized voting changes that it sought to administer. The Supreme Court in Lopez II , held that a covered political subdivision seeks to administer a voting change and thus is required to seek Section 5 preclearance of a voting change (1) even where it exercises no independent discretion in giving effect to a state-mandated voting change, and (2) even where the voting change it implements is required by the superior law of a non-covered state. In holding that Section 5's preclearance requirement does not require a covered jurisdiction to exercise discretion or a policy choice, the Supreme Court noted that Congress had enacted the Voting Rights Act with its trigger phrase "seek to administer," without limiting the Section 5 preclearance requirement to discretionary actions of a covered jurisdiction. The Supreme Court in Lopez II held that a covered political subdivision seeks to administer a voting change and thus is required to seek Section 5 preclearance of a voting change (1) even where it exercises no independent discretion in giving effect to a state-mandated voting change, and (2) even where the voting change it implements is required by the superior law of a non-covered state. In holding that Section 5's preclearance requirement does not require a covered jurisdiction to exercise discretion or a policy choice, the Supreme Court noted that Congress had enacted the Voting Rights Act with its trigger phrase "seek to administer," without limiting the Section 5 preclearance requirement to discretionary actions of a covered jurisdiction. On the contrary, according to the Court, Section 5 reaches non-discretionary acts by covered jurisdictions that seek to comply with a state’s superior law. Moreover, to the extent that a partially covered state enacts legislation that affects covered local

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government entities such as cities or counties, Section 5 preclearance is required. In this regard the Supreme Court noted that it as well as the Justice Department had assumed that Section 5 preclearance was required whenever a non-covered state effects voting changes in covered counties, at least as far back as United Jewish Organizations v. Carey . In numerous instances Section 5 cases had been decided based on the assumption that laws enacted by a partially-covered state must be precleared before they can take effect in covered political subdivisions, citing Shaw v. Reno , Johnson v. DeGrandy , and United States v. Onslow County . Finally, the Supreme Court accorded deference to the Attorney General’s interpretation of Section 5, noting that Section 5's preclearance requirement had consistently been applied to a covered county’s non-discretionary efforts to implement a voting change required by state law, even though the state itself was not a covered jurisdiction.

Bossier Parish I and II In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (Bossier Parish I) , the Court held that §5 preclearance of a covered jurisdiction’s voting standard, practice or procedure may not be denied solely on the basis that it violates §2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court rejected the Attorney General’s position that §2 of the Voting Rights Act is effectively incorporated into §5, but concluded nonetheless that §2 evidence of a redistricting plan’s dilutive impact may be relevant even though it is not dispositive of a §5 inquiry. The relationship between Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and Section 5 was explored in depth by the United States Supreme Court in Bossier Parish(I). In holding that Section 5 preclearance of a covered jurisdiction’s voting standard, practice or procedure may not be denied solely on the basis that it violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court rejected the Attorney General’s long-held position that Section 2 is effectively incorporated into Section 5. The Court concluded nonetheless that Section 2 evidence of a redistricting plan’s dilutive impact may be relevant even though it is not dispositive of a Section 5 inquiry. In conducting an inquiry into a covered jurisdiction’s motivation in enacting voting changes and in considering such evidence according to the majority, the analytical framework of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. , should be looked to for guidance. The opening line of Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion in Bossier Parish(I) promised much: "Today we clarify the relationship between §2 and §5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965...." The Court rejected the Justice Department’s position that §2 violations may form the basis for denying §5 preclearance, a position which "would inevitably make compliance with §5 contingent upon compliance with §2." The Court further held that "Section 2 evidence" may be relevant to prove that a covered jurisdiction had retrogressive intent and that it enacted a redistricting plan or other electoral change with a discriminatory purpose:

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The fact that a plan has a dilutive impact ... makes it "more probable" that the jurisdiction adopting that plan acted with an intent to retrogress than "it would be without the evidence." To be sure, the link between dilutive impact and intent to retrogress is far from direct, but "the basic standard of relevance...is a liberal one" and one we think is met here. In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (Bossier Parish II) , the Court rejected the Justice Department’s efforts to blur the distinction between §2 and §5 by shifting the focus of §5 from non-retrogression to vote dilution and by changing the §5 benchmark from a jurisdiction’s existing plan to a hypothetical, undilutive plan. The Court refused to extend §5 to discriminatory but non-retrogressive vote-dilution purposes, criticizing the Justice Department’s reading of the §5 preclearance provision as one that “would also exacerbate the ‘substantial’ federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already exacts,... perhaps to the extent of raising concerns about §5's constitutionality....” The majority opinion in Bossier Parish II emphasized that “proceedings to preclear apportionment schemes and proceedings to consider the constitutionality of apportionment schemes are entirely distinct. §2 and §5 are different in their structure, purpose and application, and impose different duties upon state and local government bodies. With regard to the limited meaning that §5 preclearance has in the vote-dilution context, Justice Scalia speaking for the majority in Bossier Parish II emphasized that preclearance does not represent approval of the voting change; it is nothing more than a determination that the voting change is no more dilutive than it what it replaces, and therefore cannot be stopped in advance under the extraordinary burden-shifting procedures of §5, but must be attacked through the normal means of a §2 action. As we have repeatedly noted, in vote-dilution cases §5 prevents nothing but backsliding, and preclearance under §5 affirms nothing but the absence of backsliding,” citing Bossier Parish I, 520 U.S. at 478, Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 926 (1995), and Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130, 141 (1976)].

Pouring Old Poison into New Bottles

In a lengthy opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part with the majority in Bossier Parish II, Justice Souter was joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer, in complaining that Congress did not intend to let state and local governments “pour old poison into new bottles.” Justice Souter’s fundamental complaint was that the majority’s constricted interpretation of §5 would require the Justice Department to approve a redistricting plan with a known discriminatory effect, leaving too much wiggle room for discrimination and mischief. Justice Souter warned that such a narrow statutory construction on Section Five would virtually eliminate “the most important power of the act, in that it requires local officials to create a lawful plan in the first place, and, at least, negotiate with minority interests if it does not meet muster in preclearance.” Brenda Wright, managing attorney at the National Voting Rights Institute, observed that if the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 5’s purpose prong in Bossier II had been applied during Section 5’s first 35 years,

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Congressman John Lewis of Georgia probably would not have won election to the U.S. Congress in 1986. In the early 1980’s, Georgia enacted a discriminatory congressional redistricting plan that fragmented the Black population in the Atlanta area. The Georgia legislator who headed the redistricting committee openly declared his opposition to drawing so-called Negro districts, except that he did not use the word “Negro”; he used the racial epithet. Because of the clear evidence of racism behind the plan, the Justice Department objected even though the plan was not retrogressive. Georgia then withdrew the district and the result was that Congressman Lewis was able to win election. But under the Bossier Parish (II) decision, the Department of Justice would have been obliged to approve Georgia’s original discriminatory plan. It was as if the Court was just warming up when it required the Justice Department to preclear proposed voting changes that had a clear discriminatory purpose. The Supreme Court’s decision three years later in Georgia v. Ashcroft , marked a major departure from the Beer retrogression standard. Up until 2003 retrogression had been defined as a failure to preserve the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice. Beer held that in evaluating submitted voting changes under Section 5, the retrogression standard ensured that “the ability of minority voters to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of choice is not diminished by the voting change.” Stated differently, the Beer retrogression standard had been interpreted up until 2003 to mean that covered state and local governments had to protect existing minority electoral gains and were prohibited from taking actions that would lower the percentage of minority voters in a given majority-minority district. Some commentators criticized the Ashcroft decision as a retreat from the goal of pursuing full participation by racial minority groups in the political process, replacing a clear standard with an unclear one that equated minority influence with election of minority-preferred candidates, inviting and shielding vote dilution. Others described the Court’s majority opinion as a “perversion of retrogression,” stating that [t]here is no way that the Court can with a straight face use totally different analyses in Section 5 (retrogression) and Section 2 (totality of the circumstances) cases, while at the same time using a Section 2 analysis to restrict the effectiveness of Section 5. That, however, is what the Court did in Ashcroft. The Ashcroft decision was not without its supporters, however, particularly those who saw no particular harm in a decision that allowed unpacking of some majority-minority districts that did not dilute minority voters’ electoral influence. Professor Carol M. Swain has taken the position that Georgia v. Ashcroft was a sensible decision that allowed politicians greater latitude to create influence districts and to forge coalition districts by unpacking majority-minority districts and dispersing minority voters in what had been relatively safe majority districts, thereby allowing for the creation of more opportunities for minorities to form coalitions and exert influence on politicians outside their own racial and ethnic groups. Moreover, the unpacking of majority-minority districts in traditionally Democratic districts would not bar the election of qualified minority politicians with consistently proven abilities to garner white crossover votes. According to Professor Swain, Ashcroft was a good decision that would have benefited

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minority voters by making it easier for them to elect a slate of politicians who shared their policy views. Ashcroft gave legislators an opportunity to craft districts that enhanced the electoral prospects of Democrats rather than focusing on the reelection prospects of minority incumbents and it empowered minority voters by acknowledging the changes that had taken place in race relations across the South and particularly in Georgia.

Impact of VRARA of 2006

In the hearings preceding passage of the VRARA, the House Subcommittee on

the Constitution, House Judiciary Committee, found that it was necessary to extend Section 5, one of the temporary provisions of the VRA set to expire in 2007, but it also necessary to "fix" provisions of Section 5 to clear up erroneous statutory interpretations by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ashcroft and Bossier Parish II.

Bossier Parish II generated much criticism from the civil rights community and past and present Justice Department attorneys. Its impact on the VRA’s strength was addressed during the Congressional hearings on the renewal of Section 5, the primary concern being that it weakened Section 5’s ability to prevent covered jurisdictions from enacting discriminatory voting practices. One proponent remarked "I think that Bossier(II) is indeed like a cancer, eating away at the Voting Rights Act."

Bossier Parish II was also attacked as a misconstruction of the plain meaning of the discriminatory purpose test, draining the "purpose" test of any practical meaning in the preclearance process. Proponents told the House Subcommittee that the plain meaning of the word 'purpose' encompassed “any and all discriminatory purposes, not merely a purpose to cause retrogression," but that if Section 5’s purpose prong only covered a "retrogressive" purpose, then a jurisdiction whose elected body never had minority representation “could continue to adopt new redistricting plans, intentionally designed to freeze out minority voting strength, and Section 5 would provide no protection.” Before it was amended by the VRARA, Section 5’s purpose test would only apply if by chance a covered “jurisdiction were to intend to cause a retrogression in minorities' electoral opportunity, but somehow messes up and adopts a change that, in fact, is not retrogressive. This is highly unlikely to occur, and in fact, in the nearly 5 years since Bossier Parish (II) was decided, the Justice Department has reviewed approximately 76,000 voting changes and no such incompetent retrogressor has appeared.” The VRARA modified Section 5 to restore the pre-Bossier Parish II discriminatory purpose standard. The new subsection (c) to Section 5 added reads as follows: "The term 'purpose' in subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall include any discriminatory purpose."

According to a representative of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., "this modification would allow the DOJ, or the reviewing three-judge panel, to interpose objections or deny declaratory judgments in situations where sufficient

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evidence of discriminatory intent exists such that the submitting jurisdiction cannot meet its Section 5 burden." The modification to Section 5 also accomplished another important goal. Bossier Parish II was founded on the Court's interpretation of statutory language. In a similar manner, the Court in Bossier Parish I had used Congress's failure to clarify Section 5's statutory language to justify its decision that the effects prong was limited to "retrogressive" effects. The legislative history now makes it clear that the VRARA’s modification to Section 5 was intended to avoid any implication that Congress ratified Bossier II by aligning the purpose prong with constitutional standards. While this amendment was seen by proponents at an important fix to Section 5, the Beer retrogression doctrine was not removed, and a realistic tactical decision had to be made over what battles were winnable in light of the 2006 composition of Congress, particularly with Section 5 set to expire in 2007. Proponents were “stuck” with the Beer analysis “and the convoluted DOJ regulations incorporating the Beer analysis,” prompting some to complain “[i]t is sad, however, that Congress did not go further and eliminate the Beer analysis so that the DOJ, the District court and community activists could use Section 5 instead of resorting to more costly Section 2 litigation.” The VRARA’s modification to Section 5 also corrected what proponents saw as "the unwarranted shift in statutory interpretation" as a result of the Ashcroft decision by restoring the ability to elect standard. The VRARA added new subsections (b) and (d) to Section 5 that provided: (b) Any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, or practice, or procedure with respect to voting that has the purpose of or will have the effect of diminishing the ability of any citizens of the United States on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees section forth in section 1973b(f)(2), to elect their preferred candidates of choice denies or abridges the right to vote within the meaning of subsection (a) of this section. (d) The purpose of subsection (b) of this section is to protect the ability of such citizens to elect their preferred candidates of choice. This amendment to Section 5 was designed to eliminate the "totality of the circumstances" test and the justification (or “excuse”) for removing dilution of minority voter strength from the Section 5 analysis and require the Justice Department to interpose objections to vote-dilutive plans submitted under Section 5.

VRARA after the 2010 Census: A Peek into the Future

LULAC v. Perry , was the first voting rights opinion issued by the Roberts Court, in the absence of Justice Sandra Day O’Connnor and with the votes of a new Chief Justice and Justice Alito. Six highly fractured opinions in LULAC v. Perry reflected the widely divergent views of the nine Justices. These opinions also provided us with a window of opportunity to evaluate how the Voting Rights Act and its 2006 reauthorization, the VRARA, will fare during the next decade.

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This case focused on Republican-led Texas Legislature’s mid-decade congressional redistricting plan that, inter alia, dismantled a Congressional district that was previously represented by an Hispanic. The action of the state legislature was alleged to have deprived Hispanics of the ability to elect the candidate of their choice. Specifically, the challenged redistricting plan replaced a judicially created plan crafted just a few years before with one that shifted over 8 million Texans into new districts. Many of the districts in their new form were less compact, communities of interest were fragmented, and the redistricting plan was motivated by a predominantly partisan purpose. Moreover, a majority African-American district was cracked without offsetting the loss in black voters’ ability to elect preferred candidates elsewhere. In a 132-page decision consisting of six separate opinions, reminiscent of Bakke decades earlier, one can identify four key holdings of the case: First, the Texas state legislature's decision to override a valid, court-drawn redistricting plan mid-decade was not an unconstitutional political gerrymander. Second, sufficient evidence showed minority cohesion and majority bloc voting among Latino voters in the redrawn congressional district 23. Third, a newly-drawn congressional district in which Latinos were barely a majority did not offset the loss of a potential Latino opportunity district as result of redistricting. Finally, the totality of the circumstances showed the redistricting plan for district 23 constituted vote dilution in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Was politics driving the redistricting process in LULAC v. Perry? Following its 2003 plurality decision in Vieth, and the evident inability to muster a majority that would hold partisan gerrymandering challenges were nonjusticiable political questions, the Supreme Court was understandably without a principled basis to determine how to measure impermissible partisan effect in LULAC v. Perry. The Court’s reaction in 2006 to cries of political gerrymandering was the judicial equivalent of a yawn. One example suffices. During oral argument, when counsel for one of the appellants complained that the only reason the redistricting plan as issue was passed “was to help one political party gain more seats in the Congress at the expense of the other,” Justice Scalia replied: “Wow. That’s a surprise.” Chief Justice Roberts, writing in a separate opinion, echoed concern over the consequences of VRA-driven race-based districting and how such a process has supplanted if not become the equivalent to minority electoral opportunity. Of such racial sorting, the Chief Justice objected to giving the courts any further role in “rejiggering the district lines under §2.” I do not believe it is our role to make judgments about which mixes of minority voters should count for purposes of forming a majority in an electoral district, in the face of

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factual findings that the district is an effective majority-minority district. It’s a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Notwithstanding the fractured opinions in LULAC v. Perry, the collective positions of the nine Justices do provide insight into how the Roberts Supreme Court, following the decennial census scheduled for April 2010, will interpret and apply key concepts and elements of the Voting Rights Act, as amended and extended. These are some of the key areas to watch: 1. Geographical Compactness: The Gingles preconditions provide a roadmap that aids in the evaluation of the potential effectiveness of majority-minority districts. The focus is on whether the minority community is numerous and sufficiently geographically compact, with internal consistency and cohesion in its voting choices, to enable it as the majority of the population to elect minority-preferred candidates, even in the presence of legally significant white racial bloc voting. The §2 compactness inquiry should take into account traditional districting principles such as maintaining communities of interest and traditional boundaries; the compactness inquiry under §2 embraces different considerations from the compactness inquiry in the equal protection context, the latter referring to the compactness of the contested district rather than the compactness of the minority population, with evaluation of the contours and relative smoothness of district lines to determine whether race was the predominant factor in drawing those lines, a district is rendered noncompact for §2 purposes if it combines two communities of interest that are separated by enormous geographical distance and contain populations with disparate needs and interests, with differences in socioeconomic status, education, employment, health and other characteristics.” A district that reaches out to grab small and isolated minority communities is not reasonably compact, and a district that combines two far-flung segments of a racial group with disparate interests does not provide the opportunity that §2 requires or that the first Gingles precondition of geographical compactness contemplates.” “The mathematical possibility of a racial bloc does not make a district compact.” Justices Souter and Ginsburg would hold that the Gingles precondition of compactness is satisfied by showing that minority voters in a reconstituted or putative district constitute a majority of those voting in the primary of the dominant party, defined as the party tending to win in the general election. 2. Minority Electoral Opportunity: Ensuring minority groups an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice is critical to advancing the ultimate purposes of §2; Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts rejected the claim in LULAC v. Perry that the state intended to minimize Latino voting power. They would sanction as constitutional the state legislature’s political gerrymandering by removing voters from a district because they voted for Democrats and against the Republican incumbent, even if it so happened that the most loyal Democrats were black Democrats and the state was conscious of that fact. They would also uphold the state legislature’s political and nonracial objective, finding no prohibited racial classification if district lines merely correlated with race because they were drawn on the basis of political affiliation, which corresponds with race.

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3. Minority Influence Districts: It is possible to state a §2 claim for a racial group that makes up less than 50% of the population, provided it can be shown that voters in that group constitute a sufficiently large minority to elect their candidate of choice with the assistance of crossover votes; the mere fact that African-Americans have influence in a district does not suffice to state a §2 claim; the opportunity to elect representatives of their choice requires more than the ability of minority voters to influence the outcome between some candidates, none of whom is their candidate of choice; the presence of influence districts where minority voters may not be able to elect a candidate of choice but can play a substantial role in the electoral process relevant to a §5 analysis and a relevant consideration under §5 of the Voting Rights Act, but the failure to create an influence district does not run afoul of §2 ; Justices Souter and Ginsburg would hold that a §2 vote dilution claim can prevail without the possibility of a district percentage of minority voters above 50%, that replacing a majority-minority district with a coalition district with minority voters making up fewer than half constitutes impermissible retrogression under §5, that protection of the minority voting population in a coalition district should be protected much as a majority-minority bloc would be; 4. Candidates of Choice: The fact that African-Americans voted for an Anglo Democrat candidate in primary and general elections could signify he is their candidate of choice; without a contested primary, such a fact, assuming the presence of racial bloc voting, could also be interpreted to show that Anglos and Latinos would vote in the Democratic primary in greater numbers if an African-American candidate of choice were to run, especially in an open primary system; the fact that African-American voters preferred an Anglo Democrat to Republicans who opposed him does not make him their candidate of choice; the ability of African-American voters to aid in an Anglo Democrat’s election in a district does not make that district an African-American opportunity district for purposes of §2, and §2 does not protect that kind of influence; 5. Communities of Interest: The recognition of nonracial communities of interest reflects the principle that a State may not assume from a group of voters’ race that they think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls; legitimate yet differing communities of interest should not be disregarded in the interest of race; “[t]he practical consequence of drawing a district to cover two distant, disparate communities is that one or both groups will be unable to achieve their political goals.” In some cases members of a racial group in different areas that are in close proximity, such as rural and urban communities, can share similar interests and form a compact district, but cannot be made a remedy for a §2 violation elsewhere “if the only common index is race and the result will be to cause internal friction.” 6. Proportionality: Proportionality, whether the number of districts in which the minority group forms an effective majority is roughly proportional to its share of the population in the relevant area, is a relevant factor in the totality of circumstances; when a vote dilution claim is framed in statewide terms, as where racially polarized voting and possible submergence of minority votes throughout a state, proportionality should be looked at and decided on a statewide basis; proportionality is always relevant evidence in determining vote dilution, but never itself dispositive; placing undue emphasis on

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proportionality risks defeating the goals underlying the Voting Rights Act; the role of proportionality is not to displace an intensely local appraisal of a challenged district or to allow a state to trade off the rights of some against the rights of others; proportionality provides some evidence of whether the political processes leading to nomination or election in the state or political subdivision are not equally open to participation. There is no magic parameter for determining proportionality, and “rough proportionality” must allow for some deviations; Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito would adhere to the standard announced in DeGrandy that a finding of proportionality can defeat §2 liability even if a clear Gingles violation has been made out.

Practice Pointers for Legislative Personnel Involved in the Redistricting Process

Cromartie v. Hunt provides a good list of potential topics to discuss with

legislators about to embark on the redistricting process once the Census 2000 results come in.

•First, public or private statements, speeches, e-mail communications, etc. are fair game in the evidence-gathering process. Recall the “smoking gun e-mails” from the Cromartie trial. •Second, be careful and circumspect in bringing key players into the legislative decision-making process. Each of those key players may be a potential witness on the issue of motive and purpose. •Third, as early in the redistricting process as possible, identify and articulate clearly the relevant and applicable traditional districting criteria, and then apply those criteria consistently throughout the process. •Fourth, understand and adhere to clear legal guidelines for implementing the race-predominant standard, bearing in mind that a deviation from a consistent race-neutral methodology or an over-emphasis upon race to the point that race-consciousness may be characterized as race-predominance, may lead to a successful constitutional challenge, strict scrutiny analysis and invalidation of racially gerrymandered districts. •Fifth, consideration should be given to the rigorous Daubert standard when legislators are trying to decide whether and to what extent experts should be retained and utilized during the legislative decision-making process. Indeed, there are experts upon experts in the field of statistical analysis, demographics, evaluation of exogenous and endogenous electoral evidence, racial bloc voting analysis, race-predominance analysis and many other discrete evidentiary subcategories. It is not premature for a legislative body or committee to make a preliminary assessment of a redistricting expert’s reasoning, methodology and credibility during that legislative process. An early Daubert assessment of experts whose reports, findings and conclusions may be central to any viable redistricting plan, may indeed provide valuable evidentiary support at a trial years later.

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Strong Showing of Necessity

Lawyer v. Department of Justice teaches us, moreover, that a legislative body seeking to engage in race-conscious districting can navigate through the process without running afoul of the constitutional prohibition against predominantly race-based districting. It can do this by developing the requisite legislative history sufficient to satisfy the “strong showing” of necessity required for race-based remedial action, followed by a bona fide declaratory judgment action through which the legislative body can seek to establish a great likelihood of a §2 violation in the absence of affirmative governmental race-conscious districting.

In this process, a number of practical evidentiary considerations that may come into play during the legislative redistricting process. That process should be conducted with a constant awareness of the fact that the entire legislative history will likely be the focus of pretrial discovery in the event a subsequent racial gerrymandering challenge or an action under §2 or §5 of the Voting Rights Act is mounted. Relevant legislative evidence may include the following: 1. Any narrative statements, exhibits or evidentiary materials submitted to the Section 5 Unit of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, for covered jurisdictions, over the period of at least the preceding decade; 2. Correspondence, e-mail, faxes and communications of any kind, nature and description to and from the state legislature and its representatives, on the one hand, and the Attorney General of the United States and the Voting Section attorneys, on the other, during that same relevant time period, including informal telephone memoranda and summaries of contacts; 3. Clear, consistent and unambiguous reference to traditional race-neutral criteria and standards such as compactness, contiguity, incumbency protection, partisan political interests, respect for political subdivision boundaries and preservation of non-racial communities of interest in the redistricting process; 4. Relevant newspaper articles, television interviews and other forms of recorded media coverage, whether on the national, state or local level, that identify or describe the principal goals and objectives of the redistricting process, the balanced use of race along with other non-racial factors in making boundary line changes, and other public expressions of legislative purpose bearing on the issue of whether and to what extent race predominated or was merely one of many factors in the drawing of boundaries of a given district.

Racial and Political Gerrymandering: LULAC v. Perry Drawing lines to determine congressional districts has been described as “one of the most significant acts a State can perform to ensure citizen participation in republican self-governance.” Political reality tells us something else. On June 28, 2006, the United States Supreme Court decided the long-awaited Texas Redistricting case, LULAC v.

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Perry . Significantly, this was the first voting rights opinion issued by the Roberts Court, in the absence of Justice Sandra Day O’Conner and with the votes of new Justices Roberts and Alito. At center stage was the Republican-led Texas Legislature’s mid-decade congressional redistricting plan that, inter alia, dismantled a Congressional district that had previously had an Hispanic. The action of the state legislature was alleged to have deprived Hispanics of the ability to elect the candidate of their choice. With much political credit to then House Majority Speaker Tom DeLay, the redistricting plan replaced a judicially created plan crafted just a few years before with one that shifted over 8 million Texans into new districts. As described by Justice Stevens in a stinging dissent, *32, 36, many of the districts in their new form were less compact, communities of interest were fragmented, and, motivated by a predominantly partisan purpose, a majority African-American district was cracked without offsetting the loss in black voters’ ability to elect preferred candidates elsewhere.” *49. Plaintiffs alleged violations of equal protection and Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. A three-judge panel of the district court rejected plaintiffs' claims. On appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, for the most part upholding the plan in a 132-page decision consisting of six separate opinions. The assortment of plurality, concurring and dissenting opinions may not have achieved Chief Justice Roberts’ goal of promoting clarity and guidance to the bench and bar by deciding cases on the narrowest possible ground, and indeed made that goal seem but a distant aspiration by the end of the term. The four key holdings of the case, patching together the fractured opinions in a Bakke-reminiscent process, were (1) the Texas state legislature's decision to override a valid, court-drawn redistricting plan mid-decade was not an unconstitutional political gerrymander; (2) sufficient evidence demonstrated minority cohesion and majority bloc voting among Latino voters in the redrawn congressional district 23; (3) a newly-drawn congressional district in which Latinos were barely a majority did not offset the loss of a potential Latino opportunity district as result of redistricting; and (4) under the totality of the circumstances, the redistricting plan for district 23 constituted vote dilution in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Politics Driving the Redistricting Process? The redistricting plan was attacked by plaintiffs as a partisan power grab. The media frenzy leading up to the crafting of the new plan included reports of a mid-air drama as a planeload of House Democrats fled Texas to prevent the formation of a

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quorum, allegedly under the watchful GPS-eye of Republican leaders. Following its plurality decision in Vieth in 2003, and the evident inability to muster a majority that would hold partisan gerrymandering challenges were nonjusticiable political questions, however, the Supreme Court was still unable to determine a reliable measure of impermissible partisan effect in LULAC v. Perry. Its reaction in 2006 to cries of political gerrymandering was the judicial equivalent of a yawn. One example suffices. During oral argument, when counsel for one of the appellants complained that the only reason the redistricting plan as issue was passed “was to help one political party gain more seats in the Congress at the expense of the other,” Justice Scalia replied: “Wow. That’s a surprise.”

Rejiggering District Lines and Divvying Up By Race Of greater interest to the Justices was District 23. This district was the focal point of charges that Republican legislators had voted to remove Hispanic Democrats from an Anglo Republican incumbent’s district to protect him “from a constituency that was increasingly voting against him,” *28, and from “the growing dissatisfaction of the cohesive and politically active Latino community in the district,” *28, and to ensure his re-election under what was changed into a “barely” majority Hispanic district. That district was created along with an “offsetting [Latino] opportunity district” that was not geographically compact and grouped two clusters of Hispanic voters in different communities of interest hundreds of miles apart. This manipulation led Justice Kennedy to conclude that the creation of the new district did not remedy the vote dilution that was evident in the new District 23. He said:

The practical consequence of drawing a district to cover two distant, disparate communities is that one or both groups will be unable to achieve their political goals. Chief Justice Roberts, writing in a separate opinion, echoed concern over the consequences of VRA-driven race-based districting and how such a race-drenched process has supplanted and indeed become the equivalent to minority electoral opportunity. Of such racial sorting, the Chief Justice objected to giving the courts any further role in “rejiggering the district lines under §2.”

I do not believe it is our role to make judgments about which mixes of minority voters should count for purposes of forming a majority in an electoral district, in the face of factual findings that the district is an effective majority-minority district. It’s a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” *69

Voting Rights Litigation in the Next Decade

The Court’s ruling in LULAC v. Perry, and the widely divergent views of the nine Justices expressed in six different opinions, give us a window of opportunity to evaluate how the Voting Rights Act and its pending reauthorization will fare during the next decade. Once the results of the 2010 census 32are released in April 2011, we may find

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that that the Perry decision gives us valuable insight into how the Court will interpret and apply concepts of geographical compactness, minority electoral opportunity, minority-influence districts, candidates of choice, communities of interest, and other key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

Impact of the 2006 Amendments

As noted above, ,the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Amendments of 2006 includes important modifications to Sections 5, 6-9 and 203 as a means of ensuring the participation of all citizens in our nation's electoral process. As Congress took up this matter, the need for reauthorization of these expiring provisions of the VRA was urgent, but the legislative process had to run its bumpy course. These were some of the most important and effective provisions of the Act as originally enacted and up for reauthorization. That process has led to Congress’ reauthorization of these expiring provisions, maintaining important safeguards that make available the right to vote to all segments of our population. Indeed, reauthorization through the enactment of H.R. 9 allows hard-earned progress to continue. While significant challenges to the constitutionality of the new Act await, the renewed provisions provide a significantly upgraded vehicle for the effective promotion of political awareness, participation and empowerment by and within minority communities.

Bartlett v. Strickland : Numerical “Majority” Required for §2 Districts

A redistricting case arising in Pender County, North Carolina provided the Court with an opportunity to refine and narrow the interpretation of one of the three threshold requirements that must be satisfied in order for a §2 suit to survive a motion for summary judgment. In such cases, only if all three Gingles preconditions were met and a §2 violation was established based on the totality of the circumstances, then and only then could majority-minority districts be required as part of the remedy. Pender County challenged a 1991 legislative redistricting plan that had divided the county in order to increase a legislative district’s minority voting strength.

The Gingles Preconditions

Under §2 of the Voting Rights Act, minority plaintiffs seeking to establish vote

dilution must show that minorities "have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to ... elect representatives of their choice." In the first case to reach the Supreme Court after the 1982 amendments to the VRA, Thornburgh v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50 (1986), the Court held that three preconditions must be satisfied before plaintiffs can proceed:

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(1) a geographically compact majority-minority district, (2) minority political cohesion, and (3) legally significant white racial bloc voting.

Bartlett v. Strickland focused on what must constitute a majority minority district. According to the county, creation of an intermediate, "crossover" district, in which the minority made up less than a majority of the voting-age population, but was large enough to elect the candidate of its choice with help from majority voters who cross over to support the minority's preferred candidate, nonetheless failed to satisfy the threshold Gingles precondition for §2 liability. This was because African-Americans were not a majority of the district’s voting age population, but could get enough support from crossover majority voters to elect their preferred candidate. When the lower court ruled that the §2 plaintiffs in Strickland were unable to prove the minority population in the potential election district at issue was greater than 50%, the stage was set for the U. S. Supreme Court to address whether there was a numerical majority requirement for majority-minority district under §2 of the Voting Rights Act No De Facto Majority-Minority Districts U.S. Supreme Court held it was not enough for a district to be a "de facto" majority-minority district for purposes of §2 liability. Addressing an issue left open in earlier cases, the Court concluded that a minority group must constitute a numerical majority of the voting-age population in an area before it can satisfy the threshold Gingles preconditions for establishing §2 liability, and thereby to require or permit a remedy in the form of creation of a legislative district to prevent dilution of that group's votes. While §2 can require the creation of a "majority-minority" district, in which a minority group composes a numerical, working majority of the voting-age population, it does not require the creation of an "influence" district, in which a minority group can influence the outcome of an election even if its preferred candidate cannot be elected. Such a district was found legally insufficient in Strickland.

Trends Suggested by Strickland

Strickland suggests several interesting trends in voting rights litigation for which

we should be watchful once the next round of redistricting commences after the 2010 census results are reports in the Spring of 2011. 1. White Majority Districts: The first trend is an increased focus on white majority districts in evaluating legally significant white racial bloc voting Bartlett v. Strickland suggests the first trend we may find in voting rights litigation. Minority electoral success in white majority districts will continue to be a focal point for demographers and statisticians in evaluating legally significant white racial bloc voting. Indeed, minority electoral success is the antithesis of legally significant white racial bloc voting.

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As the lower courts further refine Strickland’s strong reinforcement of a numerical majority in order to prove the hypothetical existence of a §2 district, that is, one meeting the definitional requirement for a geographically compact majority-minority district with 50% or greater minority population, proof of the second Gingles precondition of legally significant white racial bloc voting will necessarily entail an inquiry into the voting patterns of a majority white district. It will call for the court to examine whether the white district under scrutiny for racial bloc voting purposes is in fact “majority” white. This is a particularly significant complication for what most federal judges already classify as among the most difficult and challenging of federal civil actions. In light of our nation’s rapidly changing demographic characteristics that render decennial census results arguably outdated by mid-decade, look for the battle lines to be formed at the second Gingles threshold condition. Stated differently, satisfying the numerical majority requirement while establishing a hypothetical majority-minority district for purposes of the first Gingles precondition of geographical compactness may not necessarily lead to victory for plaintiffs in a vote dilution suit. This is true since the same type of evidence – a numerical majority vel non – may not be available to establish the existence of a majority white district in which minority candidates usually suffer defeat despite some degree of white crossover voting. Therefore, unless numerical majority status can be established for the white district under scrutiny, a plaintiff may be unable to satisfy the second Gingles precondition of legally significant white racial bloc voting. Attempting to satisfy that numerical majority requirement with anything less, like a functional white majority or de facto white majority district, could doom a plaintiff’s §2 case based on the absence of legally significant white racial bloc voting and spell victory for the defense. 2. Safe Harbor: The second trend is that Strickland’s adoption of a numerical majority requirement will now provide a safe harbor for the redistricting process. Before Strickland, there was no bright line rule in this area of the law. Strickland now provides a clear and objective 50% rule that should give state and local government legislative bodies some measure of relief in not having to defend every redistricting plan in court whenever they are faced with plaintiff’s competing redistricting plans containing “opportunity” districts, and thus not having to devote scarce public funds to finance the defense of such plans. Contrary to outgoing Justice Souter’s dissent in Strickland, race will become less and less of a determinant in state and local government redistricting decisions where plaintiffs are unable to satisfy the numerical majority requirement. Under the bright line rule established in Strickland, absent satisfaction of the first Gingles precondition, minority voters like all other voters do not have any entitlement to constitutional protection from defeat at the polls. Nor do minority voters any more than other voters have a constitutionally or statutorily protected right to form coalitions with non-minority voters, absent satisfaction of the first Gingles precondition. Of course, they can pull, haul and trade, to borrow our departing Justice Souter’s words in DeGrandy, and compete for votes and electoral support in the marketplace of political ideas. In short,

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absent satisfaction of the first Gingles precondition, §2 should not be applied post-Strickland to permit minority voters to benefit from special treatment. 3. No Opportunity Districts: The third trend is that Strickland will likely hasten the demise of “opportunity districts” by striking a class of potential §2 claims from §2 coverage. Before Strickland, opponents of the numerical majority or “bright line” rule felt that the first Gingles precondition of geographical compactness could be satisfied by establishing the existence hypothetically of a district in which minority voters could be shown by reconstructed electoral data to have an “opportunity to elect” their preferred candidate. Use of an “opportunity district,” however, would have armed Article III courts with a subjective standard and unbridled discretion to decide whether there are enough disparate racial minorities in a given district to support a finding that they have a “potential” to elect a representative of choice. Further, in determining a racial minority’s ability to vote by analyzing historical voter turnout differentials in a particular district, there may not be any remaining relevance to the question whether a less-than-50% minority group has an opportunity to elect. In the same sense, such a minority group’s measured minority voter effectiveness will likely not be given any consideration in determining any of the Gingles preconditions, although it may have some limited relevance with respect to one or more of the Senate Report factors. 4. CVAP only: The fourth trend is found in the implementation of Strickland’s 50% rule as a numerical population standard. Under this new 50% rule, lower courts will likely have to determine whether non-citizen undocumented aliens or only the citizen voting age population (CVAP) can or should be counted in determining that 50%. The greater weight of authority indicates that CVAP only will be counted. The 50% rule is one that rests on a numerical population standard, but 50% of what? Strickland did not specifically address whether citizen voters only (citizen voting age population or CVAP) or non-citizen undocumented aliens would be counted. Nor did the Court address who should be counted as “African-American” under the 50% rule, an especially difficult question in light of the creation of the multiracial category first used in the 2000 Census and in light of the somewhat ambiguous questions on race and ethnicity used to determine who counts as African-American. Some have taken the position that the 50% rule can create the risk of skewing the percentages of racial groups who are actually eligible to vote. Their argument is that a racial minority group in a district where they do not constitute 50% of the population, but nonetheless are able to elect their preferred representatives, should have access to §2’s protections against vote dilution. Absent a 50% population in any hypothetical geographically compact district, a minority group should not be able to argue post-Strickland that because one of the purposes of §2 is to give minority groups

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more voting power, that group should be given more voting power than it would otherwise have. That argument is precluded now under Strickland and was already in doubt under earlier circuit authority. 5. No Packing or Fragmentation: The fifth trend is the Strickland should not encourage jurisdictions to engage in packing, cracking and fragmentation of minority voters, a fear suggested by critics of the decision. Prior to Strickland, opponents of the numerical majority requirement raised the specter of jurisdictions rushing to pack as many minority voters as possible into districts in order to prevent them from electing candidates of their choice in surrounding districts, or to fragment or “crack” an otherwise compact minority population into multiple districts to dilute their vote. This cynical argument belongs to a bygone era and does anything but seek to minimize the role of race in politics. It puts race in the forefront by taking it into account more than necessary or factually justified, even to the point of trumping legitimate, racially neutral redistricting objectives. It exacerbates the risk of creating an even greater racial divide and eliminating the desire or foundation of trust essential to forming coalitions. This threadbare argument posits race as the predominant determinant of redistricting decisions. It ignores the political landscape of 2009, does nothing to encourage coalitions that discourage racial divisions and dooms racially polarized factions to retreat into majority-minority districts based on a quintessentially race-conscious calculus.

Reyes v. City of Farmers Branch, Texas

In one of the first appellate court decisions following Bartlett v. Strickland reehe

Fifth Circuit was confronted with the somewhat novel argument that Bartlett v. Strickland, 1had held that only voting-age population matters under the first Gingles preconditions. There, the minority Plaintiffs argued that Bartlett v. Strickland had implicitly overruled Fifth Circuit precedent requiring a minority citizen voting-age population in a district proposed under Section t to exceed 50% of its total citizen voting-age population. The Fifth Circuit in this case was confronted with a Section 2 vote dilution challenge filed by Hispanic Plaintiffs in which they claimed that the City’s numbered at-large system of electing its five city council members diluted minority voting strength of the Hispanic minority. As part of their threshold burden under Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50 (1986), which held that the minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district. The Plaintiffs were thus required to show that Hispanics would comprise a majority of the citizen voting-age population. Under the City’s at-large electoral system, all voters were permitted to vote for all five council positions, and there was no requirement that a voter be a resident of any particular district.

According to Plaintiffs, if the City were required to convert to single member residential districts that one “demonstration district" with 78% TPOP and 75%VAP, that

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district would contain a sufficient number of Hispanics to satisfy the first precondition under Since Plaintiffs had failed to make the threshold showing that the Hispanic citizen voting-age population exceeded the non-Hispanic citizen voting-age population, and no actual data was available to reflect the actual number of Hispanic citizens of voting age living in the demonstration district, the Fifth Circuit held that the district court properly rejected Plaintiffs’ claim for failure to show Hispanics would comprise a majority of the citizen voting-age population.

The Fifth Circuit also rejected Plaintiffs’ argument that under Bartlett v. Strickland, only voting age population matters under the first Gingles precondition, not citizen voting-age population, and that the district court had erroneously applied too stringent a test when it rejected Plaintiffs’ claim. The Fifth Circuit specifically rejected the argument that Bartlett v. Strickland had implicitly overruled 5th Circuit precedent requiring a minority citizen voting-age population in a district proposed under Section t to exceed 50% of its total citizen voting-age population. Its reasoning was based on four key points: (1) the question of citizenship was not before the Court in Bartlett v. Strickland, but the question there was quantitative, how many, and not qualitative, what kind of people. The Court was focused on the question of whether a minority population in a demonstration district comprised less than 50% of the possible voters could nonetheless meet the first Gingles precondition by showing it can win elections with the help of a reliable crossover vote. (2) only voting-age citizens can be “voters” who could form a majority, and the plurality opinion in Bartlett v. Strickland evidenced the vitality of the citizenship requirement, particularly when Justice Kennedy concluded that “only when a geographically compact group of minority voters could form a majority in a single-member district has the first Gingles requirement been met.” Bartlett v. Strickland, 129 S.Ct. at 1249. (3) “the jurisprudential backdrop belies the notion that the Court would hold that citizenship is irrelevant under Section 2 of the VRA, particularly where several sister Circuits joined the Fifth in requiring voting rights plaintiffs to prove that the minority citizen voting-age population comprises a majority. (4) the Court issued no binding opinion in Bartlett v. Strickland, only a judgment. There were only three justices who joined in the plurality opinion, and two others joined the judgment affirming that no voting rights violation existed while flatly denying that any voter dilution claim could be made under Section 2 of the VRA. “[T]hree justices a rule do not make.”

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NAMUDNO

The other case from Texas was a direct assault on the constitutionality of one of the federal government’s most formidable weapons in fighting racial and ethnic discrimination in elections, the §5 preclearance provision as it was renewed and extended for another 25 years under the VRARA of 2006.

Course of Proceedings Below

The Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 (NAMUDNO) was a small utility district in Austin, Texas, with an elected board of five members. While responsible for its own elections, it did not register voters. Since it was in Texas, a covered jurisdiction, the utility district was required by §5 to seek preclearance before it could change any aspect of its electoral process, although there was no evidence that the utility district had ever discriminated on the basis of race. The utility district attempted to change the location of its polling station to a public garage from a less convenient location. It considered this change in election procedure devoid of discriminatory intent. NAMUDNO filed suit seeking relief under the "bailout" provision in §4(a) of the Act, which allows a "political subdivision" to be freed from the preclearance requirements if certain conditions are met.

In the alternative, NAMUDNO argued that, if §5 were interpreted to render it ineligible for bailout, §5 was unconstitutional since it exceeded Congress’ 15th Amendment enforcement power. Its challenge to §5’s continuing constitutional validity was grounded in part on the fact that the systematic voting discrimination that existed at the time of the 1965 Act no longer existed. Alternatively, NAMUDNO sought bailout under §4(a) of the Act.

The Lower Court’s Determination

The three-judge U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to which this action was transferred from federal court in Texas, upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act’s 2006 extension . It also rejected NAMUDNO’s alternative request for bailout since bailout under §4(a) was available only to counties, parishes, and subunits that registered voters, but not to an entity like this utility district that did not register its own voters.

The three-judgeCourt also concluded that the VRARA of 2006 that extended §5 for another 25 years was constitutional.

Calling Balls and Strikes and Dodging the Bullet

In an 8-1 decision handed down June 22, 2009, the United States Supreme Court

reversed in part and held that the utility district was a political subdivision eligible to seek bailout under § 4(a) of the Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act of 2006 (VRARA) and thereby seek

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relief from the Act’s preclearance requirement. Even though the utility district did not register voters, the Court reasoned that specific precedent, the Voting Rights Act's structure, and underlying constitutional concerns compelled a broader reading of the bailout provision, that all political subdivisions are entitled to seek relief from the Act’s preclearance requirements, and NAMUDNO in particular was eligible to file a bailout suit.

NAMUDNO’s broadening of the availability of bailout to “all political

subdivisions” means that more state and local governmental entities will likely seek to be exempted from what critics have described as the “draconian” provisions of the Act.

Constitutional Avoidance

The issue before the Court whether §5 as amended and extended under the VRARA of 2006 could pass constitutional muster.

This was a far different political landscape compared to the conditions existing in 1965 when §5 was initially enacted. Preclearance in 1965 was a constitutionally valid requirement applicable primarily to southern states. Its constitutionality in 2006 was another matter entirely.

The Supreme Court in NAMUDNO did not reach the constitutionality of §5, the central provision of the Voting Rights Act and its many extensions. The Supreme Court did not address the question whether there was a strong basis in evidence to support this most recent extension of §5 as remedial legislation.

Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that passing judgment on an act of Congress is “the gravest and most delicate duty that this court is called upon to perform,” and such a momentous duty need not be undertaken at this time, particularly since a statutory claim also decide by the lower court and properly before the Supreme Court provided a sufficient vehicle for disposing of the entire case.

Finding that there was no need at this time to address the issue of whether §5 was still constitutional in light of fundamental changes that have swept across the South in recent decades, the Court declined to address the constitutionality of a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, passed originally for five years and repeatedly extended, that required covered jurisdictions to get approval from Washington for any change, no matter how trivial, to its voting procedures.

Bailout Under §4(a)

The bailout provision of the Voting Rights Act, according to the Court, must be interpreted to permit all political subdivisions, including the utility district in question, to seek to bail out from the preclearance requirements of §5. It was undisputed that the utility district was a "political subdivision" in the ordinary sense, according to the Court, but the Voting Rights Act also provided a narrower definition in §14(c)(2):

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" '[P]olitical subdivision' shall mean any county or parish, except that where registration for voting is not conducted under the supervision of a county or parish, the term shall include any other subdivision of a State which conducts registration for voting."

Some observers say the Court’s ruling means that the subject utility district - and

implicitly other political units as well — should have less difficulty applying for and obtaining bailout from § 5 preclearance provisions.

The Success of Bailout: By the Numbers

Over 12,000 jurisdictions are covered by §5. Since the bailout provision was

inserted in the 1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments, 17 have succeeded in bailing out of the Voting Rights Act. In expanding the availability of bailout, the majority in NAMUDNO reasoned that it was “unlikely that Congress intended the provision to have such limited effect.”

NAMUDNO’s Potential Impact on Future Litigation

While the Court avoided addressing the issue of 5’s constitutionality, the following passages in the majority opinion, an opinion joined in by eight Justices, may be seen as potential building blocks for the core constitutional issues that may be framed in the next challenge to §5: (1) “The evil that §5 is meant to address may no longer be concentrated in the jurisdictions singled out for preclearance.” (2) “The statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old, and there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions.” (3) “[T]he racial gap in voter registration and turnout is lower in the States originally covered by §5 than it is nationwide.” (4) “[T]he evidence that is in the record suggests that there is more similarity than difference [between covered and non-covered areas of the United States].” (5) While the parties did not agree on the standard or test to apply in deciding whether Congress exceeded its 15th Amendment enforcement power in extending the § 5 preclearance requirements, “[t]he Act]s preclearance requirements and its coverage formula raise serious constitutional questions under either test.” (6) “[T]he Act imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.” (7) “The Act also differentiates between the States in ways that may no longer be justified.”

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(8) “Many of the first generation barriers to minority voter registration and voter turnout that were in place prior to the [Voting Rights Act] have been eliminated.” (9) “Things have changed in the South. Voter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.” (10) “[A] departure from the fundamental principle of equal sovereignty requires a showing that a statute’s disparate geographic coverage is sufficiently related to the problem that it targets.” (11) “[T]he registration gap between white and black voters is in single digits in the covered states; in some of those states, blacks now register and vote at higher rates than whites.” (12) “Some of the conditions that we relied upon in upholding this statutory scheme in Katzenbach and City of Rome have unquestionably improved.”

In the closing words of the majority opinion, the Chief left the door open for another day, reminding us:

More than 40 years ago, this Court concluded that ‘exceptional conditions” prevailing in certain parts of the country justified extraordinary legislation otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system. … In part due to the success of that legislation, we are now in a very different Nation. Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”

Chief Justice John Roberts signaled that he thinks time has run out on the remedy

that Congress concocted in 1965 to overcome the historical pattern of denying blacks access to the ballot box in much of the South. No sitting Justice disagreed with him on that point. NAMUDNO appears to be the canary in the coal mine for continued viability of such remedial policies as the law of the land.

Post-NAMUDNO Constitutional Challenges

Chief Justice Roberts’ warning to Congress was unmistakable: Fix the Voting Rights Act before another lawsuit reaches the United States Supreme Court.

Almost as if on cue, there are now two suits underway in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia doing precisely that. This duo of constitutional challenges strikes at the heart of the 2006 amendments and extension of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Both are predicated on challenges to the race-based politics that led to the 2006 legislation.

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Shelby County and Kinston

One of the cases was brought by Shelby County, Alabama, styled Shelby County v. Holder, and the other was brought by Kinston, North Carolina, styled LaRoque v. Holder. Both cases are in the early stages and both focus on the constitutional questions that were left unanswered by NAMUDNO.

In the Shelby County suit, the plaintiffs contend that Section 5 and its trigger mechanism exceed Congress’ enforcement powers under the 14th and 15th Amendments. The heart of their constitutional challenge is that in 2006, Congress lacked evidence of intentional discrimination that warranted the earlier extensions of the Voting Rights Act, and that there was no evidence that discriminatory voting practices would be resurrected if Section 5 were stricken.

In the Kinston suit, the town of Kinston in which blacks comprise 64% of the registered voters, passed by a 2/3 majority a referendum to change to non-partisan voting. The Attorney General denied preclearance of that change under newly amended Section 5. The town had never been found to have engaged in discriminatory practices in voting, and the referendum was passed in five of the seven precincts in which blacks were a majority of the voters. In denying preclearance, the Attorney General speaking through officials of the Voting Section of the Civil Right Division, concluded that the change to non-partisan voting would likely reduce the ability of blacks to elect candidates of choice, and white Democratic voters would not longer vote for black candidates if those candidates were no longer affiliated with the Democratic Party.

The plaintiffs in Kinston contend that a non-partisan system would level the

playing field between party affiliated and non-affiliated candidates and would open the political system to a broader range of views. In essence, Section 5 is now being used to set aside the votes of black voters in an actual referendum and to trump those votes with the federal government’s presumptions about the preferences of voters in some future election. This challenge to Section 5 characterizes the 2006 amendment as imposing a minority maximization agenda of DOJ lawyers, to the detriment of good government measures like non-partisan voting and even where such measures are supported by minority voters.

CONCLUSION

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been called the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Movement. Its enactment into law came only after many bloody protests, confrontations and highly publicized marches by African-Americans. What they were seeking was nothing less than basic electoral access, full participation in the political process, equal opportunity and fundamental justice. The VRA provided the federal government and private citizens with effective means to overcome the vestiges of racial discrimination and institutional subjugation of minority communities throughout the United States, in every phase of the electoral process, from voter registration, ballot

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access, and casting votes to participation in the electoral process on equal footing with other voting groups.

Our nation has turned a corner since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which reflected Congress’ firm intention to rid the country of racial discrimination in voting. Tremendous progress in race relations was made as a result of an increasingly accessible electoral process, facilitated the Act’s subsequent revisions and extensions. That racial progress is palpable. Even to the gloomiest of observers, the glass of equal electoral and political opportunity is now more than half full. We have learned how to pull, haul and trade in the marketplace of political competition. We have witnessed the transformation of E Pluribus Unum from a nice sounding phrase to a political reality.

Our national commitment to protect minority voting rights rests on the twin pillars of equal access to the electoral process and effective participation in the political process. That commitment since 1965 has provided protection for the fundamental right of minority citizens to cast an effective vote. In light of these most recent constitutional challenges, we will now see whether the valuable goals that the Voting Rights Act accomplished over the past four decades have been sufficiently attained, rendering Section 5 no longer necessary, or whether the 2006 amendments and extension should be allowed to remain in effect for another 25 years. Ben Griffith is a partner in the Cleveland, Mississippi firm of Griffith & Griffith [www.griffithlaw.net], and focuses his federal civil practice on representation of cities, counties and other local government entities in redistricting litigation and electoral challenges under the Voting Rights Act, and a broad range of civil rights and governmental tort liability actions. He has served as lead counsel at the trial and appellate level in vote dilution and preclearance challenges in covered jurisdictions including Maryland, South Carolina and Mississippi. He serves as IMLA State Chair, IMLA International Committee Chair, and was a 2009 recipient of the IMLA President’s Award. Ben is past-chair of the ABA Section of State & Local Government Law, a member of the ABA House of Delegates and Advisory Commission to Standing Committee on Election Law, and serves as the World Jurist Association’s National President for United States. He is editor and contributor to America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights (ABA Section of State & Local Government Law, 2008 and Supp. 2009), chapter contributor to International Election Principles (John HardinYoung, editor, ABA 2009), and author of over 80 articles, commentaries and peer-reviewed publications in his field of practice.

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1 In his opening statement to Senate counterparts on April 27, 2006, House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) captured the sense of the overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives, whose support for this legislation in 2006 matched similar action by the House and Senate when the Voting Rights Act was first passed in 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement:

It has been 40 years since Congress first took steps to remedy our nation's sad history of discrimination in voting. The Committee's record demonstrates that, while progress has been made, vestiges of discrimination are still present in certain parts of the country. As this record also reveals, Congress is clearly justified under Section 2 of the 15th Amendment in using all remedies at its disposal to ensure that the most fundamental right of citizenship -- the right to vote -- is protected for all citizens.

...

Over the last 25 years, we've witnessed significant increases in minority voter registration and turnout. We've also seen substantial changes in the makeup of local, State, and Federal elected offices. Today, more and more minority citizens hold elected office in Congress, state legislatures, city councils, and school boards, and our nation has been enriched as a result.

2 §2 of the Voting Rights Act requires a showing that minorities "have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to ... elect representatives of their choice." In a nutshell, the Gingles preconditions, named after the first case to reach the Court following the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, are (1) a geographically compact majority-minority district, (2) minority political cohesion, and (3) legally significant white racial bloc voting. Section 2 is often referred to as the “sword” of the VRA because it provides a cause of action for the government or any private individual or organization to challenge election laws and procedures anywhere in the United States that have the purpose or effect of discriminating against a group based on race. As amended in 1982, it prohibits any election law or procedure that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” In addition, the report coming out of the Senate Judiciary Committee following its evaluation of Section 2 named eight factors that courts were to use in evaluating whether, under the “totality of the circumstances,” a challenged law or procedure violated Section 2. The 8 factors are enumerated in S. Rep. No. 97-417 (1982), reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 177. Taken from the Supreme Court’s opinion in White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755 (1973), the factors require courts to evaluate, among other things, the extent of any history of official discrimination in the state or political subdivision that touched the right of the members of the minority group to register, to vote, or otherwise to participate in the democratic process; the extent to which voting in the elections of the state or political subdivision is racially polarized; and the extent to which members of the minority group have been elected to public office in the jurisdiction.

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3 Section 5 requires certain jurisdictions to obtain approval or “preclearance” from the U.S. Department of Justice or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before they can make any changes to voting practices or procedures. Federal approval will be given only after the jurisdiction proves that the proposed change does not have the purpose or effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color. Section 5 was designed as “shield,” applicable only to prevent areas with a documented history of discriminating against voters of color from enacting further discriminatory procedures or apportionment plans. Covered areas, which currently include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Arizona, and parts of Michigan, New York, and California, are required to submit all election law or procedural changes to the federal government for approval or “preclearance” prior to or immediately following their enactment. In determining whether to approve the submitted changes, either the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia evaluates whether the changes will have a retrogressive effect on minority electoral power within the jurisdiction. 4 Section 203 was added to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 and requires certain jurisdictions to provide bilingual language assistance to voters in communities where there is a concentration of citizens who are limited English proficient. 5 In 1964 CORE (Congress on Racial Equality), SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) organized the Freedom Summer campaign, the main objective of which was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate their efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. These organizations established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. With a curriculum that included black history and the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, volunteer teachers reached over 3000 students during the summer of 1964, an experiment that would provide a model for future educational programs such as Head Start. The Freedom Schools as well as homes of local African Americans involved in the Freedom Summer campaign were often targets of white hate groups, and during that summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. 6 The entire text of the speech delivered by LBJ on the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is accessible at http://www.civilrights.org/voting-rights/vra/johnson-speech.html

7 At the end of the American Civil War radical members of Congress attempted to destroy the white power structure of the Rebel states. The Freeman's Bureau was established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865. The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals

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and providing homes and food for former slaves. Attempts by Congress to extend the powers of the Freemen's Bureau was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson in February, 1866. In April 1866, Johnson also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill that was designed to protect freed slaves from Southern Black Codes (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations). The election of 1866 increased the number of Radical Republicans in Congress. The following year Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act. The South was now divided into five military districts, each under a major general. New elections were to be held in each state with freed male slaves being allowed to vote. The act also included an amendment that offered readmission to the Southern states after they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and guaranteed adult male suffrage. Johnson immediately vetoed the bill but Congress re-passed the bill the same day. The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. At first the main objective of white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with. Radical Republicans in Congress such as Benjamin Butler urged President Ulysses S. Grant to take action against the Ku Klux Klan. In 1870 he instigated an investigation into the organization and the following year a Grand Jury reported that: "There has existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, which provides,

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among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering." Congress passed the Ku Klux Act and it became law on 20th April, 1871. This gave the president the power to intervene in troubled states with the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in countries where disturbances occurred. However, because its objective of white supremacy in the South had been achieved, the organization practically disappeared. The Ku Klux Klan was reformed in 1915 by William J. Simmons, a preacher influenced by Thomas Dixon's book, The Ku Klux Klan (1905) and the film of the book, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) became the main opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. To show that the members of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, considered at the time to be one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in America. After the First World War the Ku Klux Klan also became extremely hostile to Jews, Roman Catholics, socialists, communists and anybody they identified as foreigners.

In November 1922 Hiram W. Evans became the Klan's Imperial Wizard. Under his leadership the organization grew rapidly and in the 1920s Klansmen were elected to positions of political power. This included state officials in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine. By 1925 membership reached 4,000,000. Even on the rare occasions they were arrested for serious crimes, Klansmen were unlikely to be convicted by local Southern juries. After the conviction of the Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, for second-degree murder, and evidence of corruption by other members such as the governor of Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, membership fell to around 30,000. This trend continued during the Great Depression and the Second World War and in 1944 the organization. was disbanded.

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Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony (1954)

In the 1950s the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in a revival in Ku Klux Klan organizations. The most of important of these was the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led by Robert Shelton. In the Deep South considerable pressure was put on blacks by klansmen not to vote. An example of this was the state of Mississippi. By 1960, 42% of the population were black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

In 1964 the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized its Freedom Summer campaign. Its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of

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African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. The three organizations established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start. Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. These deaths created nation-wide publicity for the campaign.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1981 the trial of Josephus Andersonan, an African American charged with the murder of a white policeman, took place in Mobile. At the end of the case the jury was unable to reach a verdict. This upset members of the local Ku Klux Klan who believed that the reason for this was that some members of the jury were African Americans. At a meeting held after the trial, Bennie Hays, the second-highest ranking official in the Klan in Alabama said: "If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man." On Saturday 21st March, 1981, Bennie Hays's son, Henry Hays, and James Knowles, decided they would get revenge for the failure of the courts to convict the man for killing a policeman. They travelled around Mobile in their car until they found nineteen year old Michael Donald walking home. After forcing him into the car Donald was taken into the next county where he was lynched. A brief investigation took place and eventually the local police claimed that Donald had been murdered as a result of a disagreement over a drugs deal. Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, who knew that her son was not involved with drugs, was determined to obtain justice. She contacted Jessie Jackson who came to Mobile and led a protest march about the failed police investigation. Thomas Figures, the assistant United States attorney in Mobile, managed to persuade the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into the case. James

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Bodman was sent to Mobile and it did not take him long to persuade James Knowles to confess to the killing of Michael Donald. In June 1983, Knowles was found guilty of violating Donald's civil rights and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Six months later, when Henry Hays was tried for murder, Knowles appeared as chief prosecution witness. Hays was found guilty and sentenced to death. With the support of Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin at the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), Beulah Mae Donald decided that she would use this case to try and destroy the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Her civil suit against the United Klans of America took place in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Michael Donald and ordered it to pay 7 million dollars. This resulted the Klan having to hand over all its assets including its national headquarters in Tuscaloosa. After a long-drawn out legal struggle, Henry Hayes was executed on 6th June, 1997. It was the first time a white man had been executed for a crime against an African American since 1913.

On 17th May, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested. In May 2002 the 71 year old Bobby Cherry was convicted of the murder of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley and was sentenced to life in prison.

8 The Civil Rights Act (1866) was passed by Congress on 9th April 1866 over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. The act declared that all persons born in the United States were now citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition. As citizens they could make and enforce contracts, sue and be sued, give evidence in court, and inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property. Persons who denied these rights to former slaves were guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction faced a fine not exceeding $1,000, or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both. The activities of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan undermined the workings of this act and it failed to guarantee the civil rights of African Americans.

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9 The Civil Rights Act (1875) was introduced to Congress by Charles Sumner and Benjamin Butler in 1870 but did not become law until 1st March, 1875. It promised that all persons, regardless of race, color, or previous condition, was entitled to full and equal employment of accommodation in "inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement." In 1883 the Supreme Court declared the act as unconstitutional and asserted that Congress did not have the power to regulate the conduct and transactions of individuals.

10 On 23rd September, 1862 Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The statement said that all slaves would be declared free in those states still in rebellion against the United States on 1st January, 1863. The measure only applied to those states which, after that date, came under the military control of the Union Army. It did not apply to those slave states such as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and parts of Virginia and Louisiana, that were already occupied by Northern troops. It was not until December 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution had been passed by the House of Representatives and had been ratified by the required number of states, that slavery was finally abolished everywhere in the United States. 11 The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was passed by both houses on 8th June and the 13th June, 1866. The amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Most Southern states refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade, Henry Winter Davies and Benjamin Butler urged the passing of further legislation to impose these measures on the former Confederacy. The result was the 1867 Reconstruction Acts that divided the South into five military districts controlled by martial law, proclaimed universal manhood suffrage and required the new state constitutions to be drawn up.

12 THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT

The abolition movement in the United States can be traced back to the first slave in the early 1600s, for the inherent drive for freedom motivates humans at all times. It was not until Quakers agitated for emancipation of slaves in the mid 18th Century that public concern was aroused.

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A mass movement for the abolition of slavery depended upon two major developments in the early 19th Century: optimism regarding the free agency of human choice, and a complex, networked system of communication. Through newspapers, telegraph lines, railroads, and oratory skill, millions of people became aware of and concerned about the atrocity of slavery, and by implementing moral suasion, political activity, and active intervention, successfully emancipated 4 million slaves by 1865.

The problem of inter-racial discrimination, however, was not solved, and remains with us today to be minimized by 21st Century abolitionists.

http://www.abolitionhof.org/index.php

John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown, ca. 1856

Part of a series of articles on...

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1712 New York Slave Revolt

1739 Stono Rebellion

1741 New York Insurrection

1791-1804 Haitian Revolution

1800 Gabriel Prosser (Suppressed)

1805 Chatham Manor

1811 Charles Deslandes (Suppressed)

1815 George Boxley (Suppressed)

1822 Denmark Vesey (Suppressed)

1831 Nat Turner's rebellion

1839 Amistad

1856 Pottawatomie Massacre

1859 John Brown

This box: view • talk • edit

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was the first white American abolitionist to

advocate and practice insurrection and murder as a means to abolish slavery. President Abraham

Lincoln said he was a "misguided fanatic" and Brown has been called "the most controversial of

all 19th-century Americans."[1] His attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved

African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation. He was tried for treason

against the state of Virginia and was hanged, but his behavior at the trial seemed heroic to

millions of Americans. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of an abolitionist iceberg

and represented the wishes of the Republican Party, but those charges were vehemently denied

by the Republicans. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that

a year later led to secession and the American Civil War.

Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas

crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who still advocated peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery

faction, Brown demanded violent action in response to Southern aggression. Dissatisfied with the

pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he was quoted to have said "These

men are all talk. What we need is action - action!"[2] His belief in confrontation led him to kill five

pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856, in

response to the raid of the "free soil" city of Lawrence. Brown's most famous deed was the 1859

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raid he led on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia). During

the raid, he seized the federal arsenal, killing seven people (including a free black) and injuring

ten or so more. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed.

Within 36 hours, each of Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local farmers,

militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown's subsequent capture by federal

forces, his trial for treason to the state of Virginia, and his execution by hanging were an

important part of the origins of the American Civil War, which followed sixteen months later. His

role and actions prior to the Civil War, as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose still make him a

controversial figure today. Depending on one's point of view, he is sometimes heralded as a

heroic martyr and a visionary or vilified as a madman and a terrorist.

When Brown was hanged after his attempt to start a slave rebellion in 1859, church bells rang,

minute guns were fired, large memorial meetings took place throughout the North, and famous

writers such as Emerson and Thoreau joined many Northerners in praising Brown.[3] Whereas

Garrison was a pacifist, Brown resorted to violence. Historians agree he played a major role in

starting the war.[4] While some biographers, such as Bruce Olds, see him as a madman, others,

such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his

generation." David S. Reynolds hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and

seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who

gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free." For Ken Chowder he is "at certain

times, a great man", but also "the father of American terrorism."[5]

Brown's nicknames were Osawatomie Brown, Old Man Brown, Captain Brown and Old Brown of

Kansas. His aliases were Nelson Hawkins, Shubel Morgan, and Isaac Smith. Later the song John

Brown's Body became a Union marching song during the Civil War.

http://www.search.com/reference/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

13 The Niagara Movement was founded at Niagara Falls in 1905 under the leadership of William Du Bois. The group drew up a plan for aggressive action and demanded: manhood suffrage, equal economic and educational opportunities, an end to segregation and full civil rights. The Niagara group virtually came to an end with the establishment of the the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1909.

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14 The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) was founded by Mary McLeod Bethune in 1935. The organization campaigned against racial discrimination and published the journal Aframerican Women's Journal. Bethune served as president of the organization until her retirement in 1949.

15 Mary White Ovington was born in Brooklyn on 11th April, 1865. Members of the Unitarian Church, her parents were supporters of women's rights and had been involved in anti-slavery movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church. In 1895 she helped found the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn. Appointed head of the project the following year, Ovington remained until 1904 when she was appointed fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. Over the next five years she studied employment and housing problems in black Manhattan. During her investigations she met William Du Bois, an African American from Harvard University, and she was introduced to the founding members of the Niagara Movement. Influenced by the ideas of William Morris, Ovington joined the Socialist Party in 1905, where she met people such as Daniel De Leon, Asa Philip Randolph, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Jack London, who argued that racial problems were as much a matter of class as of race. Ovington wrote for radical journals and newspapers such as, The Masses, New York Evening Post and The Call. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line (1908). In September 1908 Ovington read an article by William English Walling, entitled Race War in the North, that described the atrocities being carried out against African-Americans. Walling ended the article by calling for a powerful body of citizens to come to their aid. Ovington responded to the article by writing to Walling and at a meeting in New York they decided to form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first meeting of the organization was held on 12th February, 1909. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, William Du Bois, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ida Wells-Barnett. In 1910 Ovington was appointed as executive secretary of the NAACP. The following year she attended the Universal Races Congress in London. Ovington

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remained active in the struggle for women's suffrage and as a pacifist opposed America's involvement in the First World War. During the war Ovington supported Asa Philip Randolph and his magazine, The Messenger, which campaigned for black civil rights. After the war Ovington served the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People as board member, executive secretary and chairman. The NAACP fought a long legal battle against segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting and transportation. They appealed to the Supreme Court to rule that several laws passed by southern states were unconstitutional and won three important judgments between 1915-23 concerning voting rights and housing. The NAACP was criticised by some members of the African American community. Booker T. Washington opposed the group because it proposed an outspoken condemnation of racist policies in contrast to his policy of quiet diplomacy behind the scenes. Members of the organization were physically attacked by white racists. John R. Shillady, executive secretary of the NAACP was badly beaten up when he visited Austin, Texas in 1919. Ovington wrote several books and articles including a study of black Manhattan, Half a Man (1911), Status of the Negro in the United States (1913), Socialism and the Feminist Movement (1914), an anthology for black children, The Upward Path (1919), biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, Portraits in Color (1927), an autobiography, Reminiscences (1932) and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Come Tumbling Down (1947). Ovington who retired as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1947 and in doing so, ended her thirty-eight years service with the organisation. Mary White Ovington died in 1951.

How NAACP Began Mary White Ovington By Mary White Ovington (Originally Written in 1914) The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is five years old—old enough, it is believed, to have a history; and I, who am perhaps, its first member, have been chosen as the person to recite it. As its work since 1910 has been set forth in its annual reports. I shall make it my task to show how it came into existence and to tell of its first months of work. In the summer of 1908, the country was shocked by the account of the race riots at Springfield, Illinois. Here, in the home of Abraham Lincoln, a mob containing many of the town's "best citizens," raged for two days, killed and wounded scores of Negroes, and drove thousands from the city. Articles on the subject appeared in newspapers and magazines. Among them was one in the Independent of September 3rd, by William English Walling, entitled "Race War in the North." After describing the atrocities committed against the colored people, Mr. Walling declared:

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"Either the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and of Love-joy must be revived and we must come to treat the Negro on a plane of absolute political and social equality, or Vardaman and Tillman will soon have transferred the race war to the North." And he ended with these words, "Yet who realizes the seriousness of the situation, and what large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid?" It so happened that one of Mr. Walling's readers accepted his question and answered it. For four years I had been studying the status of the Negro in New York. I had investigated his housing conditions, his health, his opportunities for work. I had spent many months in the South, and at the time of Mr. Walling's article, I was living in a New York Negro tenement on a Negro Street. And my investigations and my surroundings led me to believe with the writer of the article that "the spirit of the abolitionists must be revived." The NAACP is Born So I wrote to Mr. Walling, and after some time, for he was in the West, we met in New York in the first week of the year of 1909. With us was Dr. Henry Moskowitz, now prominent in the administration of John Purroy Mitchell, Mayor of New York. It was then that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was born. It was born in a little room of a New York apartment. It is to be regretted that there are no minutes of the first meeting, for they would make interesting if unparliamentary reading. Mr. Walling had spent some years in Russia where his wife, working in the cause of the revolutionists, had suffered imprisonment; and he expressed his belief that the Negro was treated with greater inhumanity in the United States than the Jew was treated in Russia. As Mr. Walling is a Southerner we listened with conviction. I knew something of the Negro's difficulty in securing decent employment in the North and of the insolent treatment awarded him at Northern hotels and restaurants, and I voiced my protest. Dr. Moskowitz, with his broad knowledge of conditions among New York's helpless immigrants, aided us in properly interpreting our facts. And so we talked and talked voicing our indignation. Lincoln's Birthday Of course, we wanted to do something at once that should move the country. It was January. Why not choose Lincoln's birthday, February 12, to open our campaign? We decided, therefore, that a wise, immediate action would be the issuing on Lincoln's birthday of a call for a national conference on the Negro question. At this conference we might discover the beginnings, at least, of that "large and powerful body of citizens" of which Mr. Walling had written. And so the meeting adjourned. Something definite was determined upon, and our next step was to call others into our councils. We at once turned to Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, president of the N. Y. Evening Post Company. He received our suggestions with enthusiasm, and aided us in securing the co-operation of able and representative men and women. It was he who drafted the Lincoln's birthday call and helped to give it wide publicity. I give the Call in its entirety with the signatures since it expresses, I think, better than anything else we have published, the spirit of those who are active in the Association's cause. "The celebration of the Centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, widespread and grateful as it may be, will fail to justify itself if it takes no note of and makes no recognition of the colored men and women for whom the great Emancipator labored to assure freedom. Besides a day of rejoicing, Lincoln's birthday in 1909 should be one of taking stock of the nation's progress since 1865. "How far has it lived up to the obligations imposed upon it by the Emancipation Proclamation? How far has it gone in assuring to each and every citizen, irrespective of color, the equality of opportunity and equality before the law, which underlie our American institutions and are guaranteed by the Constitution? Disfranchisement "If Mr. Lincoln could revisit this country in the flesh, he would be disheartened and discouraged. He would learn that on January 1, 1909, Georgia had rounded out a new confederacy by disfranchising the Negro, after the manner of all the other Southern States. He would learn that the Supreme Court of the United States, supposedly a bulwark of American liberties, had refused every opportunity to pass squarely upon this disfranchisement of millions, by laws avowedly discriminatory and openly enforced in such manner that the white men may vote and that black men be without a vote in their government; he would discover,

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therefore, that taxation without representation is the lot of millions of wealth-producing American citizens, in whose hands rests the economic progress and welfare of an entire section of the country. "He would learn that the Supreme Court, according to the official statement of one of its own judges in the Berea College case, has laid down the principle that if an individual State chooses, it may 'make it a crime for white and colored persons to frequent the same market place at the same time, or appear in an assemblage of citizens convened to consider questions of a public or political nature in which all citizens, without regard to race, are equally interested. "In many states Lincoln would find justice enforced, if at all, by judges elected by one element in a community to pass upon the liberties and lives of another. He would see the black men and women, for whose freedom a hundred thousand of soldiers gave their lives, set apart in trains, in which they pay first-class fares for third-class service, and segregated in railway stations and in places of entertainment; he would observe that State after State declines to do its elementary duty in preparing the Negro through education for the best exercise of citizenship. "Silence… Means Approval" "Added to this, the spread of lawless attacks upon the Negro, North, South and West — even in the Springfield made famous by Lincoln — often accompanied by revolting brutalities, sparing neither sex nor age nor youth, could but shock the author of the sentiment that 'government of the people, by the people, for the people; should not perish from the earth.' "Silence under these conditions means tacit approval. The indifference of the North is already responsible for more than one assault upon democracy, and every such attack reacts as unfavorably upon whites as upon blacks. Discrimination once permitted cannot be bridled; recent history in the South shows that in forging chains for the Negroes the white voters are forging chains for themselves. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand'; this government cannot exist half-slave and half-free any better today than it could in 1861. "Hence we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty."

This call was signed by: JaneAdams, Chicago; Samuel Bowles (Springfield Republican); Prof. W.L. Bulkley, New York; Harriet Stanton Blatch, New York; Ida Wells Barnett, Chicago; E. H. Clement, Boston; Kate H. Claghorn, New York; Prof. John Dewey, New York; Dr. W. E. B.DuBois, Atlanta; Mary E. Dreier, Brooklyn; Dr. John L. Elliott, New York; Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Boston; Rev. Francis J. Grimke, Washington, D.C.; William Dean Howells, New York; Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Chicago; Rev. John Haynes Holmes, New York; Prof. Thomas C. Hall, New York; Hamilton Holt, New York; Florence Kelley, New York; Rev. Frederick Lynch, New York; Helen Marot, New York; John E. Milholland, New York; Mary E. McDowell, Chicago; Prof. J. G. Merrill, Connecticut; Dr. Henry Moskowitz, New York; Leonora O'Reilly, New York; Mary Ovington, New York; Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, New York; Louis F. Post, Chicago; Rev. Dr. John P. Peters, New York; Dr. Jane Robbins, New York; Charles Edward Russell, New York; Joseph Smith, Boston; Anna Garlin Spencer, New York; William M. Salter, Chicago; J. C. Phelps Stokes, New York; Judge Wendell Stafford, Washington; Helen Stokes, Boston; Lincoln Steffens, Boston; President C. F. Thwing, Western Reserve University; Prof. W. I. Thomas, Chicago; Oswald Garrison Villard, New York Evening Post; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, New York; Bishop Alexander Walters, New York; Dr. William H. Ward, New York; Horace White, New York; William English Walling, New York; Lillian D. Wald, New York; Dr. J. Milton Waldron, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. Rodman Wharton, Philadelphia; Susan P. Wharton, Philadelphia; President Mary E. Wooley, Mt. Holyoke College; Prof. Charles Zueblin, Boston.

CONFERENCE

It was thus decided that we should hold a conference, and the next two months were busily spent arranging for it. Among the men and women who attended those first committee meetings were, Bishop Alexander Walters, Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, Mr. Alexander Irvine, Dr. Owen M. WaIler, Mr.

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Gaylord S. White, Miss Madeline Z. Doty, Miss Isabel Eaton, besides many of the New York signers of the Call. It was agreed that the conference should be by invitation only, with the one open meeting at Cooper Union. Over a thousand people were invited, the Charity Organization Hall was secured, and, on the evening of May, 30th, the conference opened with an informal reception at the Henry Street Settlement, given by Miss Lillian D. Wald, one of the Association's first and oldest friends. The next morning our deliberations began.

We have had five conferences since 1909, but I doubt whether any have been so full of a questioning surprise, amounting swiftly to enthusiasm, on the part of the white people in attendance. These men and women, engaged in religious, social and educational work, for the first time met the Negro who demands, not a pittance, but his full rights in the commonwealth. They received a stimulating shock and one which they enjoyed. They did not want to leave the meeting. We conferred all the time, formally and informally, and the Association gained in those days many of the earnest and uncompromising men and women who have since worked unfalteringly in its cause. Mr. William Hayes Ward, senior editor of the Independent, opened the conference, and Mr. Charles Edward Russell, always the friend of those who struggle for opportunity, presided at the stormy session at the close. The full proceedings have been published by the Association.

MEMBERSHIP IN THE HUNDREDS

Out of this conference we formed a committee of forty and secured the services of Miss Frances Blascoer, as secretary. We were greatly hampered by lack of funds. Important national work would present itself which we were unable to handle. But our secretary was an excellent organizer, and at the end of a year we had held four mass meetings, had distributed thousands of pamphlets, and numbered our membership in the hundreds. In May, 1910, we held our second conference in New York, and again our meetings were attended by earnest, interested people. It was then that we organized a permanent body to be known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Its officers were:

• National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston

• Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling

• Treasurer, John E. Milholland

• Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard

• Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer

• Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois

THE ROLE FOR DR. DU BOIS

The securing of a sufficient financial support to warrant our calling Dr. DuBois from Atlanta University into an executive office in the Association was the most important work of the second conference.

When Dr. DuBois came to us we were brought closely in touch with an organization of colored people, formed in 1905 at Niagara and known as the Niagara Movement. This organization had held important conferences at Niagara, Harpers Ferry, and Boston, and had attempted a work of legal redress along very much the lines upon which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was working. Its platform, as presented in a statement in 1905, ran as follows:

Freedom of speech and criticism. An unfettered and unsubsidized press.

Manhood suffrage. The abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color.

The recognition of the principle of human brotherhood as a practical present creed. The recognition of the highest and best training as the monopoly of no class or race.

A belief in the dignity of labor. United effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership.

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In 1910 it had conducted important civil rights cases and had in its membership some of the ablest colored lawyers in the country, with Mr. W. Ashbie Hawkins, who has since worked with our Association, on the Baltimore Segregation acts, as its treasurer.

The Niagara Movement, hampered as it was by lack of funds, and by a membership confined to one race only, continued to push slowly on, but when the larger possibilities of this new Association were clear, the members of the Niagara Movement were advised to join, as the platforms were practically identical. Many of the most prominent members of the Niagara Movement thus brought their energy and ability into the service of the Association, and eight are now serving on its Board of Directors.

"THE PRESENT CRISIS"

Our history, after 1910, may be read in our annual reports, and in the numbers of The Crisis. We opened two offices in the Evening Post building. With Dr. DuBois came Mr. Frank M. Turner, a Wilberforce graduate, who has shown great efficiency in handling our books. In November 1910 appeared the first number of The Crisis, with Dr. DuBois as editor, and Mary Dunlop MacLean, whose death has been the greatest loss the Association has known, as managing editor. Our propaganda work was put on a national footing, our legal work was well under way and we were in truth, a National Association, pledged to a nation-wide work for justice to the Negro race.

I remember the afternoon that The Crisis received its name. We were sitting around the conventional table that seems a necessary adjunct to every Board, and were having an informal talk regarding the new magazine. We touched the subject of poetry. "There is a poem of Lowell's," I said, "that means more to me today than any other poem in the world—The Present Crisis.'"

See http://www.naacp.org/about/history/howbegan/index.htm 16 After the American Civil War most states in the South passed anti-African American legislation. These became known as Jim Crow laws. This included laws that discriminated against African Americans with concern to attendance in public schools and the use of facilities such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, cinemas and public baths. Trains and buses were also segregated and in many states marriage between whites and African American people. Jim Crow laws were tested in 1896 by Homer Plessey when convicted in Louisiana for riding in a white only railway car. Plessey took his case to the Supreme Court but the justices voted in favour of the Louisiana Court. William B. Brown established the legality of segregation as long as facilities were kept "separate but equal". Only one of the justices, John Harlan, disagreed with this decision. In the early 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People concentrated on bringing an end to segregation on buses and trains. In 1952 segregation on inter-state railways was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was followed in 1954 by a similar judgment concerning inter-state buses. However, states in the Deep South continued their own policy of transport segregation. This usually involved whites sitting in the front and blacks sitting nearest to the front had to give up their seats to any whites that were standing. African American people who disobeyed the state's transport segregation policies were arrested and fined. In 1956 African Americans, led by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, organised the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Transport segregation continued in some parts of the Deep South, so in 1961, a civil rights group, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began to organize Freedom Rides. After three days of training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as they

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travelled through the Deep South. On their journeys they also campaigned against other forms of racial discrimination. They sat together, in segregated restaurants, lunch counters and hotels. This was especially effective when it concerned large companies who, fearing boycotts in the North, began to desegregate their businesses. In 1964, President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, managed to persuade Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. This made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin.

17 During the 1950s the main tactic of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was to use the courts to end racial discrimination in the United States. One of its objectives was to end the system of having separate schools for black and white children in the South. For example, the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky all prohibited black and white children from going to the same school. In 1952 the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People appealed to the Supreme Court that school segregation was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that separate schools were acceptable as long as they were "separate and equal". It was not too difficult for the NAACP to provide information to show that black and white schools in the South were not equal. After looking at information provided by the NAACP, the Supreme Court announced in 1954 that separate schools were not equal and ruled that they were therefore unconstitutional. Some states accepted the ruling and began to desegregate. This was especially true of states that had small black populations and had found the provision of separate schools extremely expensive.

However, several states in the Deep South, including Arkansas, refused to accept the judgment of the Supreme Court. Daisy Bates, the publisher of Arkansas State Press, started a campaign for desegregate schools in the state.

On 3rd September 1957, the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, used the National Guard to stop black children from attending the local high school in Little Rock. Woodrow Mann, the reforming mayor of the city, disagreed with this decision and on 4th September telegraphed President Dwight Eisenhower and asked him to send federal troops to Little Rock. On 24th September, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower, went on television and told the American people: "At a time when we face grave situations abroad because of the hatred that communism bears towards a system of government based on human rights, it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence and indeed to the safety of our nation and the

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world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations." After trying for eighteen days to persuade Orval Faubus to obey the ruling of the Supreme Court, Eisenhower decided to order paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, to protect black children going to Little Rock Central High School. The white population of Little Rock were furious that they were being forced to integrate their school and Faubus described the federal troops as an army of occupation. Elizabeth Eckford and the other eight African American students that entered the school (Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Terrance Roberts, Gloria Ray and Minnijean Brown) suffered physical violence and constant racial abuse. Parents of four of the children lost their jobs because they had insisted in sending them to a white school. Woodrow Mann and his family received death threats and Klu Klux Klan crosses were burnt on his front lawn.

The federal troops left at the end of November and the first black student graduated from Central High School in May 1958.

18 The Philip Randolph Institute was founded in 1965 by Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Funded by the AFL-CIO the main objective of the organisation is to bridge the gap between the African American community and the trade union movement. Activities included local civil rights campaigns, voter registration and job training. By 1990 there were over 200 branches in 37 states.

19 In the 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was involved in the struggle to end segregation on buses and trains. In 1952 segregation on inter-state railways was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was followed in 1954 by a similar judgment concerning interstate buses. However, states in the Deep South continued their own policy of transport segregation. This usually involved whites sitting in the front and blacks sitting nearest to the front had to give up their seats to any whites that were standing. African American people who disobeyed the state's transport segregation policies were arrested and fined. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant from Montgomery, Alabama, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.

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Rosa Parks having her fingerprints taken after her arrest on 1st December, 1955.

After her arrest, Martin Luther King, a pastor at the local Baptist Church, helped organize protests against bus segregation. He was joined by other campaigners for civil rights, including Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon and Bayard Rustin. The group was persuaded by JoAnn Robinson, of the Women's Political Council, that they should launch a bus boycott. The idea being that the black people in Montgomery should refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued. For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court on 13th November, 1956, forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. The following month the buses in Montgomery were desegregated.

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20 In the 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was involved in the struggle to end segregation on buses and trains. In 1952 segregation on inter-state railways was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was followed in 1954 by a similar judgment concerning inter-state buses. However, states in the Deep South continued their own policy of transport segregation. This usually involved whites sitting in the front and blacks sitting nearest to the front had to give up their seats to any whites that were standing. African American people who disobeyed the state's transport segregation policies were arrested and fined. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant from Montgomery, Alabama, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man. After her arrest, Martin Luther King, a pastor at the local Baptist Church, helped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued. For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration.

21 Emmett Till, the only child of Louis Till and Mamie Till, was born near Chicago, Illinois, on 25th July, 1941. In August, 1955, Emmett, now aged 14, was sent by Mamie Till to Mississippi to stay with relatives. During the evening of 24th August, Emmett, a cousin, Curtis Jones, and a group of his friends, went to Bryant's Grocery Store in Money, Mississippi. Carolyn Bryant later claimed that Emmett had grabbed her at the waist and asked her for a date. When pulled away by his cousin, Emmett allegedly said, "Bye, baby" and "wolf whistled". Bryant told her husband about the incident and he decided to punish the boy for his actions. The following Saturday, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, took Emmett from the house where he was staying and drove him to the Tallahatchie River and shot him in the head. After Emmett's body was found Bryant and Milam were charged with murder. On 19th September, 1955, the trial began in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. In court Mose Wright identified Bryant and Milam as the two men who took away his nephew on the 24th August. Other African Americans also gave evidence against Bryant and Milam but after four days of testimony, the all white jury acquitted the men. The Emmett Till case, publicized by writers such as William Bradford Huie, led to

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demonstrations in several northern cities about the way African Americans were being treated in the Deep South.

Emmett Till and his mother in 1955.

22 After the successful outcome of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, its leader, Martin Luther King wrote Stride Toward Freedom (1958). The book described what happened at Montgomery and explained King's views on non-violence and direct action. Stride Toward Freedom was to have a considerable influence on the civil rights movement. In Greensboro, North Carolina, a small group of black students read the book and decided to take action themselves. On 1st February, 1960, Franklin McCain, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Ezell Blair, started a student sit-in at the restaurant of their local Woolworth's store which had a policy of not serving black people. In the days that followed they were joined by other black students until they occupied all the seats in the restaurant. The students were often physically assaulted, but following the teachings of King they did not hit back. Later that month about forty college students staged a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Nashville, Tennessee. Their numbers increased daily and although hundreds were arrested, by May, lunch counters in Nashville began to integrate. This non-violent strategy was adopted by black students all over the Deep South. Within six months these sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities. Student sit-ins were also successful against segregation in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, museums and beaches.

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In October, 1960, students involved in these sit-ins held a conference and established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The organization adopted the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action. This included participation in the Freedom Rides during 1961. Leading figures in the organization included Robert Moses, James Lawson, Marion Barry, Charles McDew, James Forman and John Lewis. The campaign to end segregation at lunch counters in Birmingham, Alabama, was less successful. In the spring of 1963 police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King and large number of his supporters, including schoolchildren, were arrested and jailed. During the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward his promised legislation. Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much." In an attempt to persuade Congress to pass Kennedy's proposed legislation, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized the famous March on Washington. On 28th August, 1963, more than 200,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. At the end of the march Martin Luther King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was still being debated by Congress when he was assassinated in November, 1963. The new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a poor record on civil rights issues, took up the cause. Using his considerable influence in Congress, Johnson was able to get the legislation passed. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin.

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23 In 1964 the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) organised its Freedom Summer campaign. Directed by Robert Moses, its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. This involved the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP). Over 80,000 people joined the party and 68 delegates, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, attended the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City and challenged the attendance of the all-white Mississippi representation. CORE, SNCC and NAACP also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start. Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. This attempt to frighten others from joining the campaign failed and by late 1964 over 70,000 students had taken part in Freedom Summer. The following year, President Lyndon Baines Johnson attempted to persuade Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act. This proposed legislation removed the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes." Although opposed by politicians from the Deep South, the Voting Rights Act was passed by large majorities in the House of Representatives (333 to 48) and the Senate (77 to 19). The legislation empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to put on the voting list.

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A group of student volunteers waiting for buses to take them to Mississippi (1964)

24 The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African American to vote in Birmingham. On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

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Addie Mae Collins

Denise McNair

Carole Robertson

Cynthia Wesley

25 In 1963 leaders of the civil rights movement decided to organize what became known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Bayard Rustin was given overall control of the march and he managed to persuade the leaders of all the various civil rights groups to participate in the planned protest meeting at the Lincoln Memorial. The decision to appoint Bayard Rustin as chief organizer was controversial. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP was one of those who was against the appointment. He argued that being a former member of the American Communist Party made him an easy target for the right-wing press. Although Rustin had left the party in 1941, he still retained his contacts with its leaders such as Benjamin Davis. Wilkins also feared that the fact that Rustin had been imprisoned several times for both refusing to fight in the armed forces and for acts of homosexuality, would be used against him in the days leading up to the march. However, Martin Luther King and Philip Randolph insisted that he was the best person for the job. Wilkins was right to be concerned about a possible smear campaign against Rustin. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, had been keeping a file on Rustin for many years. An FBI undercover agent managed to take a photograph of Rustin talking to King while he was having a bath. This photograph was then used to support false stories being circulated that Rustin was having a homosexual relationship with King. This information was now passed on to white politicians in the Deep South who feared that a successful march on Washington would persuade President Lyndon B. Johnson to sponsor a proposed new civil rights act. Storm Thurmond led the

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campaign against Rustin making several speeches where he described him as a "communist, draft dodger and homosexual". Most newspapers condemned the idea of a mass march on Washington. An editorial in the New York Herald Tribune warned that: "If Negro leaders persist in their announced plans to march 100,000-strong on the capital they will be jeopardizing their cause. The ugly part of this particular mass protest is its implication of unconstrained violence if Congress doesn't deliver." The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28th August, 1963, was a great success. Estimates on the size of the crowd varied from between 250,000 to 400,000. Speakers included Philip Randolph (AFL-CIO), Martin Luther King (SCLC), Floyd McKissick (CORE), John Lewis (SNCC), Roy Wilkins (NAACP), Witney Young (National Urban League) and Walter Reuther (AFL-CIO). King was the final speaker and made his famous I Have a Dream speech

26 After the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson during the voter registration drive by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) it was decided to dramatize the need for a federal registration law. With the help of Martin Luther King and Ralph David Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), leaders of the SCCC organised a protest march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. The first march on 1st February, 1965, led to the arrest of 770 people. A second march, led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, on 7th March, was attacked by mounted police. The sight of state troopers using nightsticks and tear gas was filmed by television cameras and the event became known as Bloody Sunday. Martin Luther King led another march of 1,500 people two days later. After crossing the Pettus Bridge the marchers were faced by a barricade of state troopers. King disappointed many of his younger followers when he decided to turn back in order to avoid a confrontation with the troopers. Soon afterwards, one of white ministers on the march, James J. Reeb, was murdered. President Lyndon B. Johnson now decided to take action and sent troops, marshals and FBI Agents to protect the protesters. On Thursday, 25th March, King led 25,000 people to the Alabama State Capitol and handed a petition to Governor George Wallace, demanding voting rights for African Americans. That night, the Ku Klux Klan killed Viola Liuzzo while returning from the march. On 6th August, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. This removed the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes." The legislation now empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to put on the voting list.

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27 In 1964 the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) organised its Freedom Summer campaign. Its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. CORE, SNCC and NAACP also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start. Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. 28 The Civil Rights Act (1957) provided for the establishment of the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and he recommend corrective measures.

29 The Civil Rights Act (1960) enabled federal judges to appoint referees to hear persons claiming that state election officials had denied them the right to register and vote. The act was ineffective and therefore it was necessary for President Lyndon B. Johnson to persuade Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act (1965).

30 In the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward his promised legislation. The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much." Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was still being debated by Congress when he was

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assassinated in November, 1963. The new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a poor record on civil rights issues, took up the cause. His main opponent was his long-time friend and mentor, Richard B. Russell, who told the Senate: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Russell organized 18 Southern Democratic senators in filibustering this bill.

However, on the 15th June, 1964, Richard B. Russell privately told Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey, the two leading supporters of the Civil Rights Act, that he would bring an end to the filibuster that was blocking the vote on the bill. This resulted in a vote being taken and it was passed by 73 votes to 27. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin. The Civil Rights Act also attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law.

31 In July 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The legislation attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law. The following year, President Lyndon Baines Johnson attempted to persuade Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act. This proposed legislation removed the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes."

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"By the way, what's the big word?"

Bill Mauldin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1964)

Voting Rights Timeline

Voting Rights Act Timeline

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March 4, 2005

1700s | 1800s | 1900s | 2000s

DATE EVENT WHAT HAPPENED

1776 White men with property have the right to vote but Catholics, Jews, Quakers and others are barred from voting.

1790 The Naturalization Act bars Asian Americans from becoming citizens.

1792 New Hampshire eliminates property ownership requirements, which gives more white men the opportunity to vote.

New Hampshire becomes the first state to eliminate the rule that only property owners and taxpayers can vote. Following New Hampshire's lead, other states begin to shift away from such restrictions in an effort to open the electorate to more white males.

1812 Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry redraws voting district lines to favor the Republican-dominated legislature against the Federalist Party.

Today, the term "gerrymander" means the drawing of legislative district lines, usually in a bizarre manner, to give an unfair advantage to one group or political party. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 in Davis v. Bandemer that the question of partisan gerrymandering could be settled in a court of law, no court has ever invalidated a redistricting plan on the basis of partisan gerrymandering.

1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the Mexican American War, giving Mexicans in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas U.S. citizenship.

Mexicans living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Nevada are guaranteed U.S. citizenship in 1848, but their voting rights are denied when English proficiency is required to vote. Property and literacy requirements are imposed to keep them from voting, along with violence and intimidation.

1856 Property qualifications for voting are eliminated in certain elections in North Carolina, giving all white men there the opportunity to vote.

North Carolina becomes the last state to eliminate the rule that citizens must own property in order to vote in certain elections, effectively extending the right to vote to all white men within the United States (with the exception of those convicted of certain crimes).

April 9, 1866

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 grants citizenship, but not the right to vote, to all native-born Americans.

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1868 The Louisiana Republican Party platform

includes a plank embracing equality for African Americans. John W. Menard is elected to Congress from Louisiana but is barred from taking his seat by white members of Congress. Oscar J. Dunn, a former slave, is elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana.

February 26, 1869

Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment giving African American men the equal right to vote.

The Fifteenth Amendment states: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. "In addition to the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, the Fifteenth Amendment is one of the major tools which enabled African Americans to more fully participate in democracy.

1870 Hiram Revels is the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate and Joseph Hayne Rainey becomes the first African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jasper J. Wright is elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court.

February 3, 1870

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified by the states, giving freed slaves and other African Americans the equal right to vote.

1871 The forty-second Congress includes five black members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

March 1877

The Hayes-Tilden compromise marks the beginning of the end of Reconstruction and effectively gives white Democrats free reign to subjugate blacks and newly-freed slaves.

Disputed returns from the November 1876 presidential election, in which Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but fell one electoral vote short of the 185 needed to win the presidency, provoke a Constitutional crisis. The crisis is resolved when Hayes agrees to recognize Democratic administrations in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina - and return federal troops to their barracks - in exchange for Democrats in Congress accepting him as President.

1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act denying citizenship and voting rights to Chinese Americans.

November 3, 1884

In a setback to Native American voting rights, the Supreme Court rules in Elk v. Wilkins that John Elk, a Native American from Nebraska, cannot vote.

The court rules that Elk is not allowed to vote in Nebraska because his intention to become a citizen requires approval from the United States. The court also states that Elk is not a citizen because he does not "owe allegiance to the United States," and that the Fifteenth Amendment does not apply to him.

1887 Congress passes the Dawes General Allotment Act which grants citizenship only to those Native Americans who give up their tribal affiliations.

The Dawes General Allotment Act seeks to open Indian lands for white settlement and to coerce Native Americans to assimilate into white society.

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1888 The Florida legislature adopts multiple

disfranchising provisions which cause voter turnout among adult African American men to plummet from 62 percent to 11 percent over the next four years.

The disfranchising provisions adopted by the Florida legislature in 1888 included a poll tax and an "eight box law," under which voters were required to place ballots in correct boxes which were then shifted throughout the day.

1890 The Indian Naturalization Act grants citizenship to Native Americans by an application process.

1896 The adoption of a new "grandfather clause" by Louisiana legislators disfranchises African American voters. The percent of registered black voters drops from 44.8% in 1896 to 4.0% four years later. In addition to Louisiana, statewide disfranchising conventions specifically designed to undermine black voters are held in Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama and Virginia from 1890 to 1902.

Adopted as an amendment to the state constitution, Louisiana's grandfather clause prompts a huge decrease in registered African American voters. The provision requires voters to register between January 1, 1897 and January 1, 1898, and only allows literate property owners to register. Illiterate or non-property owning voters whose fathers or grandfathers could vote in 1867 also are allowed to register. Because nearly all African Americans were slaves two generations earlier, the measure effectively disfranchises all black voters who cannot read or write or who do not own more than $300 in property.

June 21, 1915

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Guinn v. United States that Oklahoma's "grandfather clause," which is used to disfranchise black men, is unconstitutional.

Oklahoma's "grandfather clause," designed to disfranchise people of color and enforce segregation, is found unconstitutional in Guinn v. United States . The clause allows illiterate men to vote if they can prove that their grandfathers could vote. Because the grandfathers of most African American men in 1915 had been slaves, they did not have the right to vote. Consequently, the clause enabled illiterate white men to vote but not illiterate African Americans.

July 20, 1917

In a setback to Native American voting rights, the Minnesota Supreme Court rules in Opsahl v. Johnson to deny members of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe the right to vote.

The Minnesota Supreme Court rules that members of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe cannot participate in county elections because tribal members have not "yielded obedience and submission to the [Minnesota] laws."

May 26, 1920

Native Americans in North Dakota who had abandoned their tribal ties secure the right to vote in Swift v. Leach .

The North Dakota Supreme Court rules that 273 Indians of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are eligible to vote under the North Dakota Constitution because they "had adopted and observed the habits and mode of life of civilized people."

August 26, 1920

The Nineteenth Amendment, adopted by Congress on June 4, 1919, is finally ratified by the states and becomes national law, giving women the right to vote.

Voting rights for women were first proposed in July 1848, at the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention organized by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. It took 72 years of protest and activism for the Nineteenth Amendment to become law. The measure was ratified by a single vote margin in the Tennessee state legislature on August 18, 1920 and because national law eight days later.

November 13, 1922

In Takao Ozawa v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Naturalization Act of 1790, which means that aliens are ineligible for citizenship.

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February 19, 1923

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bhagat Singh Thind v. The United States that Asian Indians are eligible for citizenship, which technically gives them the right to vote.

Bhagat Singh Thind was born in Punjab, came to America in 1913, and later joined the U.S. Army. Thind applied for U.S. citizenship in 1920 and was approved, but a naturalization examiner appealed the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court then ruled in Singh's favor.

June 2, 1924

The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 declares all non-citizen Indians born within the United States to be citizens, giving them the right to vote.

Despite passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, the right to vote is still governed by state law, and many Native Americans are effectively barred from voting until 1948.

December 6, 1937

In a setback to African American voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Breedlove v. Suttles to uphold the constitutionality of Georgia poll taxes.

Because many African Americans can not afford to pay poll taxes, they are effectively denied the right to vote. Challenged as violating both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Georgia's poll tax is upheld, making Breedlove v. Suttles a major obstacle to African American voting rights.

1940 Only 3% of eligible African Americans in the South are registered to vote.

Decemeber 17, 1943

In a major civil rights victory, the Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed, giving Chinese immigrants the right to citizenship and the right to vote.

December 6, 1944

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Smith v. Allwrigh t that it is unconstitutional for political parties in Texas to discriminate based on race.

In Smith v. Allright , t he U.S. Supreme Court rules that excluding African Americans from membership in the Democratic Party and from participating in primary elections is unconstitutional. According to the Court, primary elections are essential parts of the election process and subject to the Fifteenth Amendment.

1946 Filipinos are granted the right to become U.S. citizens.

April 1, 1946

The federal court rules in King v. Chapman that white primary systems in Georgia are unconstitutional.

In King v. Chapman , the federal court overturned Georgia's white primary systems saying, "The exclusions of voters made by the party by the primary rules become exclusions enforced by the State and when these exclusions are prohibited by the Fifteenth Amendment based on race or color, the persons making them effective violate under color of State law a right secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States within the meaning of the statute..."

June 10, 1946

The U.S. Supreme Court permits unequal voting districts in Colegrove v. Green , thereby unfairly denying citizens equal representation in Congress.

After the Illinois legislature redrew Congressional district lines and put more citizens in some districts than others, the redistricting was challenged as unfairly denying equal representation. In a setback to voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Illinois redistricting as constitutional by ruling that the way legislative districts are drawn is a political question best left to state legislatures, not the courts.

1947 Only 125,000 African Americans in Georgia, or 18.8% of the population, are registered to vote.

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1947 South Carolina's effort to save its white

primary is invalidated by federal court in Elmore v. Rice .

In an effort to remove federal court jurisdiction from its primaries and thereby preserve its discriminatory white primary system, South Carolina had repealed all of its primary election laws. Ruling in Elmore v. Rice , the federal court still invalidated the white primary.

1952 The McCarran-Walter Act gives first generation Japanese Americans the right to become citizens.

The racial restrictions of the 1790 Naturalization Law are repealed by the McCarran-Walter Act, giving first generation Japanese Americans the right to citizenship.

May 17, 1954

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

By ruling that racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment, the decision overturns the doctrine of "separate but equal" established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

August 29, 1957

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957, giving the U.S. Attorney General the authority to bring lawsuits on behalf of African Americans denied the right to vote.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is the first such measure to pass Congress since adoption of the federal civil rights laws of 1875. Among other things, the Act authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to sue to correct discrimination and intimidation of potential voters.

June 8, 1959

In a major setback to voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections that literacy tests for voting in North Carolina do not violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

May 6, 1960

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

The Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires election officials to have all records relating to voter registration and permits the Department of Justice to inspect them. The Act also allows African Americans whose registration was previously rejected by local election officials to apply to a federal court or voting referee.

March 26, 1962

In Baker v. Carr , t he U.S. Supreme Court rules that courts can direct legislatures to redraw district boundaries to ensure citizens' political rights.

Despite 60 year-old district boundaries that are unrepresentative of the true distribution of the population, Tennessee still uses them to elect members of its legislature. This gives rural citizens greater clout compared to urban residents, and conveniently dilutes the voting power of ethnic minorities and urban blacks. In Baker v. Carr, the Court rules that courts can order district boundaries to be redrawn, marking a major step forward for African American voting rights.

March 18, 1963

In Gray v. Sanders t he U.S. Supreme Court finds that Georgia's "county unit" system of voting is unconstitutional and articulates the essential concept of "one person, one vote."

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Georgia's ""county unit"" voting system violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under this system, the state gave greater weight to rural votes and smaller urban counties than urban votes and larger rural counties. Because urban districts are much larger, individual voters had less say compared to rural voters over who got nominated in statewide primaries. Writing for the majority, Justice Douglas states: ""The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing - one person, one vote.""

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August 28, 1963

The "March on Washington" led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. receives worldwide attention.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and says, "Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. "

February 4, 1964

Poll taxes are outlawed with the adoption of the 24th Amendment.

June 15, 1964

In Reynolds v. Sims , a major voting rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the one person, one vote rule applies to legislative bodies.

Noting that "the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights," the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama legislative boundaries that had not been changed since 1900.

July 2, 1964

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, and gender in voting, public places, the workplace and schools.

January 15, 1965

A Jackson, Mississippi, federal grand jury hands down indictments for the June 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers-James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

Among those convicted are Deputy Sheriff Price, sentenced to six years in jail. Ku Klux Klan leader Sam Bowers and KKK member Wayne Roberts are sentenced to 10 years each. Mississippi made national news again in January 2005 when Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old preacher and reputed Klansman, was arrested on murder charges regarding the 1964 slaying.

March 7, 1965

More than 500 non-violent civil rights marchers are attacked by law enforcement officers while attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to dramatize the need for African American voting rights and to protest the fatal police shooting of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, more than 500 peaceful demonstrators were brutally beaten on the outskirts of Selma, Alabama, after marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The dramatic events of "Bloody Sunday" were broadcast on national television and one week later President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a televised speech before Congress denouncing the assault as "wrong, deadly wrong." Five months later, he signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law, making August 6, 2005, the historic 40th anniversary of the Act.

August 6, 1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, permanently barring direct barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race, and requiring jurisdictions with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval of changes in their election laws before they can take effect.

The Voting Rights Act is enacted as a permanent federal statute that allows for direct action to ensure the protection of minority voting rights. The Act forbids literacy tests and other barriers to registration that have restricted minority access to voting. The Act also empowers the Department of Justice and the courts to monitor problem jurisdictions and ensures that private citizens can seek redress through the courts to remedy violations of minority voting rights.

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1965 By the end of 1965, 250,000 new black

voters are registered, one-third of them by Federal examiners.

Black voter registration dramatically impacts politics in localities throughout the South. For example, in Dallas County, Alabama, where civil rights marchers were brutally attacked in Selma, the number of registered African American voters increased from 383 before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, to approximately 8,000 - which was slightly more than half the black voting age population in the county - by November 1965.

March 7, 1966

In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the enforcement clause of the Fifteenth Amendment gives Congress "full remedial powers" to prevent racial discrimination in voting, and holds that the Voting Rights Act is a "legitimate response" to the "insidious and pervasive evil" which has denied blacks the right to vote since adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. The Court further finds that Section 5 of the Act, which requires state and local officials in targeted jurisdictions to obtain federal preclearance before implementating changes in voting, was designed "to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims."

1967 African American voter registration jumps from 6.7% in Mississippi before passage of the Voting Rights Act, to 59.8% in 1967.

1968 Nine African Americans are elected to Congress, the largest number since 1875.

The group includes Shirley Chisolm of New York, the first black woman to be elected to Congress.

March 3, 1969

In Allen v. State Board of Elections , t he Supreme Court interprets Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act broadly to require preclearance for a wide range of election practices.

1970 Congress renews the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act for five years, and they are signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

While there has been some progress made in registration and voting, Congress finds that many states purposefully ignore the preclearance provisions of Section 5.

1971 Following the election of 12 African Americans to Congress in 1970, Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr. of Michigan establishes the Congressional Black Caucus to secure a larger voice for African Americans in public affairs.

July 5, 1971

The 26th Amendment gives 18-year-olds the right to vot

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3/10/2010 | VOTING RIGHTS

Support the National Popular Vote » Voting Rights Act Timeline E-mail ShareLinkedInDiggFacebookMixxYahoo! Buzz"Twitter"StumbleUponTechnoratiRedditPermalinkPrint March 4, 2005 1700s | 1800s | 1900s | 2000s DATE EVENT WHAT HAPPENED 1776 White men with property have the right to vote but Catholics, Jews, Quakers and others are barred from voting. 1790 The Naturalization Act bars Asian Americans from becoming citizens. 1792 New Hampshire eliminates property ownership requirements, which gives more white men the opportunity to vote. New Hampshire becomes the first state to eliminate the rule that only property owners and taxpayers can vote. Following New Hampshire's lead, other states begin to shift away from such restrictions in an effort to open the electorate to more white males. 1812 Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry redraws voting district lines to favor the Republican-dominated legislature against the Federalist Party. Today, the term "gerrymander" means the drawing of legislative district lines, usually in a bizarre manner, to give an unfair advantage to one group or political party. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 in Davis v. Bandemer that the question of partisan gerrymandering could be settled in a court of law, no court has ever invalidated a redistricting plan on the basis of partisan gerrymandering. 1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the Mexican American War, giving Mexicans in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas U.S. citizenship. Mexicans living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Nevada are guaranteed U.S. citizenship in 1848, but their voting rights are denied when English proficiency is required to vote. Property and literacy requirements are imposed to keep them from voting, along with violence and intimidation. 1856 Property qualifications for voting are eliminated in certain elections in North Carolina, giving all white men there the opportunity to vote. North Carolina becomes the last state to eliminate the rule that citizens must own property in order to vote in certain elections, effectively extending the right to vote to all white men within the United States (with the exception of those convicted of certain crimes). April 9, 1866 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 grants citizenship, but not the right to vote, to all native-born Americans. 1868 The Louisiana Republican Party platform includes a plank embracing equality for African Americans. John W. Menard is elected to Congress from Louisiana but is barred from taking his seat by white members of Congress. Oscar J. Dunn, a former slave, is elected lieutenant governor of Louisiana. February 26, 1869 Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment giving African American men the equal right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment states: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. "In addition to the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolishes slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, the Fifteenth Amendment is one of the major tools which enabled African Americans to more fully participate in democracy.

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1870 Hiram Revels is the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate and Joseph Hayne Rainey becomes the first African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jasper J. Wright is elected to the South Carolina Supreme Court. February 3, 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified by the states, giving freed slaves and other African Americans the equal right to vote. 1871 The forty-second Congress includes five black members of the U.S. House of Representatives. March 1877 The Hayes-Tilden compromise marks the beginning of the end of Reconstruction and effectively gives white Democrats free reign to subjugate blacks and newly-freed slaves. Disputed returns from the November 1876 presidential election, in which Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but fell one electoral vote short of the 185 needed to win the presidency, provoke a Constitutional crisis. The crisis is resolved when Hayes agrees to recognize Democratic administrations in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina - and return federal troops to their barracks - in exchange for Democrats in Congress accepting him as President. 1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act denying citizenship and voting rights to Chinese Americans. November 3, 1884 In a setback to Native American voting rights, the Supreme Court rules in Elk v. Wilkins that John Elk, a Native American from Nebraska, cannot vote. The court rules that Elk is not allowed to vote in Nebraska because his intention to become a citizen requires approval from the United States. The court also states that Elk is not a citizen because he does not "owe allegiance to the United States," and that the Fifteenth Amendment does not apply to him. 1887 Congress passes the Dawes General Allotment Act which grants citizenship only to those Native Americans who give up their tribal affiliations. The Dawes General Allotment Act seeks to open Indian lands for white settlement and to coerce Native Americans to assimilate into white society. 1888 The Florida legislature adopts multiple disfranchising provisions which cause voter turnout among adult African American men to plummet from 62 percent to 11 percent over the next four years. The disfranchising provisions adopted by the Florida legislature in 1888 included a poll tax and an "eight box law," under which voters were required to place ballots in correct boxes which were then shifted throughout the day. 1890 The Indian Naturalization Act grants citizenship to Native Americans by an application process. 1896 The adoption of a new "grandfather clause" by Louisiana legislators disfranchises African American voters. The percent of registered black voters drops from 44.8% in 1896 to 4.0% four years later. In addition to Louisiana, statewide disfranchising conventions specifically designed to undermine black voters are held in Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama and Virginia from 1890 to 1902. Adopted as an amendment to the state constitution, Louisiana's grandfather clause prompts a huge decrease in registered African American voters. The provision requires voters to register between January 1, 1897 and January 1, 1898, and only allows literate property owners to register. Illiterate or non-property owning voters whose fathers or grandfathers could vote in 1867 also are allowed to register. Because nearly all African Americans were slaves two generations earlier, the measure effectively disfranchises all black voters who cannot read or write or who do not own more than $300 in property. June 21, 1915 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Guinn v. United States that Oklahoma's "grandfather clause," which is used to disfranchise black men, is unconstitutional. Oklahoma's "grandfather clause," designed to disfranchise people of color and enforce segregation, is found unconstitutional in Guinn v. United States . The clause allows illiterate men to vote if they can prove that their grandfathers could vote. Because the grandfathers of most African American men in 1915 had been slaves, they did not have the right to vote. Consequently, the clause enabled illiterate white men to vote but not illiterate African Americans. July 20, 1917 In a setback to Native American voting rights, the Minnesota Supreme Court rules in Opsahl v. Johnson to deny members of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe the right to vote. The Minnesota Supreme Court rules that members of the Red Lake Chippewa Tribe cannot participate in county elections because tribal members have not "yielded obedience and submission to the [Minnesota] laws." May 26,

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1920 Native Americans in North Dakota who had abandoned their tribal ties secure the right to vote in Swift v. Leach . The North Dakota Supreme Court rules that 273 Indians of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe are eligible to vote under the North Dakota Constitution because they "had adopted and observed the habits and mode of life of civilized people." August 26, 1920 The Nineteenth Amendment, adopted by Congress on June 4, 1919, is finally ratified by the states and becomes national law, giving women the right to vote. Voting rights for women were first proposed in July 1848, at the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention organized by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. It took 72 years of protest and activism for the Nineteenth Amendment to become law. The measure was ratified by a single vote margin in the Tennessee state legislature on August 18, 1920 and because national law eight days later. November 13, 1922 In Takao Ozawa v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Naturalization Act of 1790, which means that aliens are ineligible for citizenship. February 19, 1923 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bhagat Singh Thind v. The United States that Asian Indians are eligible for citizenship, which technically gives them the right to vote. Bhagat Singh Thind was born in Punjab, came to America in 1913, and later joined the U.S. Army. Thind applied for U.S. citizenship in 1920 and was approved, but a naturalization examiner appealed the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court then ruled in Singh's favor. June 2, 1924 The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 declares all non-citizen Indians born within the United States to be citizens, giving them the right to vote. Despite passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, the right to vote is still governed by state law, and many Native Americans are effectively barred from voting until 1948. December 6, 1937 In a setback to African American voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Breedlove v. Suttles to uphold the constitutionality of Georgia poll taxes. Because many African Americans can not afford to pay poll taxes, they are effectively denied the right to vote. Challenged as violating both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Georgia's poll tax is upheld, making Breedlove v. Suttles a major obstacle to African American voting rights. 1940 Only 3% of eligible African Americans in the South are registered to vote. Decemeber 17, 1943 In a major civil rights victory, the Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed, giving Chinese immigrants the right to citizenship and the right to vote. December 6, 1944 The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Smith v. Allwrigh t that it is unconstitutional for political parties in Texas to discriminate based on race. In Smith v. Allright , t he U.S. Supreme Court rules that excluding African Americans from membership in the Democratic Party and from participating in primary elections is unconstitutional. According to the Court, primary elections are essential parts of the election process and subject to the Fifteenth Amendment. 1946 Filipinos are granted the right to become U.S. citizens. April 1, 1946 The federal court rules in King v. Chapman that white primary systems in Georgia are unconstitutional. In King v. Chapman , the federal court overturned Georgia's white primary systems saying, "The exclusions of voters made by the party by the primary rules become exclusions enforced by the State and when these exclusions are prohibited by the Fifteenth Amendment based on race or color, the persons making them effective violate under color of State law a right secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States within the meaning of the statute..." June 10, 1946 The U.S. Supreme Court permits unequal voting districts in Colegrove v. Green , thereby unfairly denying citizens equal representation in Congress. After the Illinois legislature redrew Congressional district lines and put more citizens in some districts than others, the redistricting was challenged as unfairly denying equal representation. In a setback to voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Illinois redistricting as constitutional by ruling that the way legislative districts are drawn is a political question best left to state legislatures, not the courts.

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1947 Only 125,000 African Americans in Georgia, or 18.8% of the population, are registered to vote. 1947 South Carolina's effort to save its white primary is invalidated by federal court in Elmore v. Rice . In an effort to remove federal court jurisdiction from its primaries and thereby preserve its discriminatory white primary system, South Carolina had repealed all of its primary election laws. Ruling in Elmore v. Rice , the federal court still invalidated the white primary. 1952 The McCarran-Walter Act gives first generation Japanese Americans the right to become citizens. The racial restrictions of the 1790 Naturalization Law are repealed by the McCarran-Walter Act, giving first generation Japanese Americans the right to citizenship. May 17, 1954 The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. By ruling that racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment, the decision overturns the doctrine of "separate but equal" established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. August 29, 1957 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957, giving the U.S. Attorney General the authority to bring lawsuits on behalf of African Americans denied the right to vote. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is the first such measure to pass Congress since adoption of the federal civil rights laws of 1875. Among other things, the Act authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to sue to correct discrimination and intimidation of potential voters. June 8, 1959 In a major setback to voting rights, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections that literacy tests for voting in North Carolina do not violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. May 6, 1960 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1960. The Civil Rights Act of 1960 requires election officials to have all records relating to voter registration and permits the Department of Justice to inspect them. The Act also allows African Americans whose registration was previously rejected by local election officials to apply to a federal court or voting referee. March 26, 1962 In Baker v. Carr , t he U.S. Supreme Court rules that courts can direct legislatures to redraw district boundaries to ensure citizens' political rights. Despite 60 year-old district boundaries that are unrepresentative of the true distribution of the population, Tennessee still uses them to elect members of its legislature. This gives rural citizens greater clout compared to urban residents, and conveniently dilutes the voting power of ethnic minorities and urban blacks. In Baker v. Carr, the Court rules that courts can order district boundaries to be redrawn, marking a major step forward for African American voting rights. March 18, 1963 In Gray v. Sanders t he U.S. Supreme Court finds that Georgia's "county unit" system of voting is unconstitutional and articulates the essential concept of "one person, one vote." The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Georgia's ""county unit"" voting system violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under this system, the state gave greater weight to rural votes and smaller urban counties than urban votes and larger rural counties. Because urban districts are much larger, individual voters had less say compared to rural voters over who got nominated in statewide primaries. Writing for the majority, Justice Douglas states: ""The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing - one person, one vote."" August 28, 1963 The "March on Washington" led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. receives worldwide attention. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and says, "Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. " February 4, 1964 Poll taxes are outlawed with the adoption of the 24th Amendment.

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June 15, 1964 In Reynolds v. Sims , a major voting rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the one person, one vote rule applies to legislative bodies. Noting that "the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights," the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama legislative boundaries that had not been changed since 1900. July 2, 1964 Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, and gender in voting, public places, the workplace and schools. January 15, 1965 A Jackson, Mississippi, federal grand jury hands down indictments for the June 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers-James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Among those convicted are Deputy Sheriff Price, sentenced to six years in jail. Ku Klux Klan leader Sam Bowers and KKK member Wayne Roberts are sentenced to 10 years each. Mississippi made national news again in January 2005 when Edgar Ray Killen, a 79-year-old preacher and reputed Klansman, was arrested on murder charges regarding the 1964 slaying. March 7, 1965 More than 500 non-violent civil rights marchers are attacked by law enforcement officers while attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to dramatize the need for African American voting rights and to protest the fatal police shooting of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, more than 500 peaceful demonstrators were brutally beaten on the outskirts of Selma, Alabama, after marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The dramatic events of "Bloody Sunday" were broadcast on national television and one week later President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a televised speech before Congress denouncing the assault as "wrong, deadly wrong." Five months later, he signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law, making August 6, 2005, the historic 40th anniversary of the Act. August 6, 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, permanently barring direct barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibiting any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race, and requiring jurisdictions with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval of changes in their election laws before they can take effect. The Voting Rights Act is enacted as a permanent federal statute that allows for direct action to ensure the protection of minority voting rights. The Act forbids literacy tests and other barriers to registration that have restricted minority access to voting. The Act also empowers the Department of Justice and the courts to monitor problem jurisdictions and ensures that private citizens can seek redress through the courts to remedy violations of minority voting rights. 1965 By the end of 1965, 250,000 new black voters are registered, one-third of them by Federal examiners. Black voter registration dramatically impacts politics in localities throughout the South. For example, in Dallas County, Alabama, where civil rights marchers were brutally attacked in Selma, the number of registered African American voters increased from 383 before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, to approximately 8,000 - which was slightly more than half the black voting age population in the county - by November 1965. March 7, 1966 In South Carolina v. Katzenbach, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the enforcement clause of the Fifteenth Amendment gives Congress "full remedial powers" to prevent racial discrimination in voting, and holds that the Voting Rights Act is a "legitimate response" to the "insidious and pervasive evil" which has denied blacks the right to vote since adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. The Court further finds that Section 5 of the Act, which requires state and local officials in targeted jurisdictions to obtain federal preclearance before implementating changes in voting, was designed "to shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of the evil to its victims." 1967 African American voter registration jumps from 6.7% in Mississippi before passage of the Voting Rights Act, to 59.8% in 1967. 1968 Nine African Americans are elected to Congress, the largest number since 1875. The group includes Shirley Chisolm of New York, the first black woman to be elected to Congress.

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March 3, 1969 In Allen v. State Board of Elections , t he Supreme Court interprets Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act broadly to require preclearance for a wide range of election practices. 1970 Congress renews the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act for five years, and they are signed into law by President Richard Nixon. While there has been some progress made in registration and voting, Congress finds that many states purposefully ignore the preclearance provisions of Section 5. 1971 Following the election of 12 African Americans to Congress in 1970, Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr. of Michigan establishes the Congressional Black Caucus to secure a larger voice for African Americans in public affairs. July 5, 1971 The 26th Amendment gives 18-year-olds the right to vot Related ContentAll Cases News Blogs Legal Docs Multimedia More press » 4/1/2010 | South Carolina | Voting Rights ACLU Urges Department Of Justice To Object To Changes In County Board Elections In South Carolina »folder » 4/1/2010 | South Carolina | Voting Rights ACLU Letter to DOJ Objecting to Changes in Fairfax County Board of Trustees Elections »folder » 3/26/2010 | Ex-Offenders, Felon Enfranchisement ACLU Statement Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in Support of the Democracy Restoration Act (H.R. 3335) »press » 3/16/2010 | Ex-Offenders House Holds Hearing Today On Voting Rights »blog » 3/10/2010 | Voting Rights One Person, One Vote »folder » 3/10/2010 | Voting Rights Support the National Popular Vote » 32 The 2010 Census: April 1, 2010 Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States provides that the “actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of 10 years, in such manner as they shall by Law direct.” 2010 Census Road Tour The 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour is part of the largest civic outreach and awareness campaign in U.S. history -- stopping and exhibiting at more than 800 events nationwide. The National Road Tour vehicle will be traveling to Super Bowl events in South Florida and the NCAA Final Four to motivate America's growing and increasingly diverse population to complete and mail back the 10-question census form when it arrives in mailboxes March 15-17. Traveling for a total of 1,547 days and more than 150,000 miles across the country, 13 road tour vehicles will provide the public with an educational, engaging and interactive experience that brings the 2010 Census to life.

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At each event across the country, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the 2010 Census and understand the benefits a complete count can bring to communities everywhere; view a sample 2010 Census form and learn how the collected information is used; and contribute stories and photos to the Portrait of America project to explain why "I count!" and view messages from other road tour participants. http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/media-advisories/rt-super-bowl-xliv-miami.html Demographic Analysis and The Census Two principal means of learning about the size of the U.S. population are the decennial census and demographic analysis, which in turn uses the vital registration system of the U.S., compiling demographic information from historical data supplemented with the results from earlier censuses. The four sources of demographic information are: (1) birth registrations, (2) death registrations (3) estimates of immigration and (4) estimates of emigration. This information provides another look at the size of the population, and all four of the data sources allow separate estimates of males and females, different age groups, and, traditionally, different racial groups. In the past, demographic analysis has been used as one tool to evaluate the census. Past census publications present estimates of “net undercount” for age, gender, and race groups, under the assumption that differences between the demographic analysis and the census reflected census coverage weaknesses. Through their ongoing research, Census Bureau demographers have found, however, some weaknesses with demographic analysis to evaluate a census. Two seem most important. First, the undocumented immigrant population is not included in the record systems, thus becoming subject to various survey-based, indirect sources of estimates. Second, the measurement of racial groups on the records has deviated from that of the US decennial censuses, making estimation of individual racial groups different from what a perfect census might obtain with its racial measurements. A great conference at Census Bureau headquarters a few days ago gathered experts to give advice about how the 2010 demographic analysis results should be presented. Based on this workshop the Census Bureau is assembling multiple estimates of population counts by age, gender, and race, to reflect the real uncertainties about the current status. Thus, instead of one population count based on demographic analysis, in December, 2010, we’ll present several – an honest statement of what we know and what we don’t know. We also won’t refer to the differences between the demographic analysis estimates and the census counts as the net undercount of the census. Instead, it’s best to view demographic analysis as another way to estimate population sizes, with its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

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Bertrand Russell, in commenting on how science progresses, once noted that the more scientists know, the more they also know what they don’t know. By giving the country multiple estimates, we’ll be reflecting this higher state of understanding the difficulties of demographic analysis. http://blogs.census.gov/2010census/demographic-analysis/ Undercounts: The Non-response Follow Up Category It is estimated that in 2000 only about 70 % of the population returned their information, leaving several areas seriously under-counted and under-represented. The final census counts will not be based solely on the questionnaires that are completed and mailed back by households. If a household does not mail back the questionnaire by the third week of April 2010, a trained Census Bureau enumerator will visit the household, starting in May 2010. Enumerators will try six times if necessary to reach a knowledgeable household member, visiting housing units multiple days at different hours. When the enumerator makes contact, he or she will collect the census data by interview. If enumerators can’t contact a household, they will seek information in any way possible to estimate the number of people in the household. The Census Bureau expects that in order to get ready for non-response follow up, it will test about 3 million applicants for skills in map reading, arithmetic, and reasoning skills, perform FBI criminal background checks, fingerprint those who are hired for another check, and hopefully have a work force of a little over 1 million people at the end of the process. No other activity of this scale has ever been mounted in this nation. The Census Bureau will continue to focus on hiring locally, and will try to ensure that the census taker and local resident relate to each other with a high degree of comfort, culturally and linguistically. At the end of this process, every household will have some information about its occupants recorded. Of course, the best and most cost-effective information the Census Bureau obtains will come from questionnaires mailed back by households. Returning the completed questionnaire is the best thing to do for the success of the 2010 Census. http://blogs.census.gov/2010census/non-response-follow-up/