Voting Rights Act
The United States Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed requiring would-be voters to take literacy tests and provided for federal registration of African American voters in areas that had less than 50% of eligible voters registered. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965.The VRA was made necessary by the practices of the Democratic Party in the southern states. Although the right to vote is guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, the Democratic Party argued that Primary elections were an internal party affair, and that the party was a "private club", so that the government had no authority over its criteria for membership and other factors relevant to participating in primary elections.
The campaign to bring about federal intervention to rectify this situation was initiated by Amelia Boynton Robinson, culminating in the Selma to Montgomery marches.