LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965

WHEREAS, It is the sense of this Legislative Body to commemorate the
50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and
WHEREAS, By 1965, concerted efforts to break the grip of state disen-
franchisement had been under way in the United States for some time, but
had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved
almost entirely ineffectual; numerous acts of violence, terrorism and
the murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia and Mississippi
gained national attention; and
WHEREAS, Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state
troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded
President Lyndon B. Johnson and the United States Congress to overcome
Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation;
the President issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings
began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights
Act; and
WHEREAS, On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the
resulting legislation into law; this landmark piece of federal legis-
lation in the United States prohibits racial discrimination in voting;
Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections; and
WHEREAS, Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Four-
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the
Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout
the country, especially in the South; according to the United States
Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective
piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country; and
WHEREAS, The Act contains numerous provisions that regulate the admin-
istration of elections, the Act's general provisions provide nationwide
protections for voting rights; Section 2, for instance, prohibits any
state or local government from imposing any voting law that results in
discrimination against racial or language minorities; additionally, the
Act specifically outlaws literacy tests and similar devices that were
historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities; and
WHEREAS, The Act also contains special provisions that apply to only
certain jurisdictions; a core special provision is the Section 5
preclearance requirement, which prohibits certain jurisdictions from
implementing any change affecting voting without receiving preapproval
from the United States Attorney General or the United States District
Court for the District of Columbia that the change does not discriminate
against protected minorities; and
WHEREAS, Another special provision requires jurisdictions containing
significant language-minority populations to provide bilingual ballots
and other election materials; Section 5 and most other special
provisions apply to jurisdictions encompassed by the coverage formula
which was originally designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in
the most egregious voting discrimination in 1965, and Congress updated
the formula in 1970 and 1975; and
WHEREAS, The Voting Rights Act of 1965's effects were wide and power-
ful; by 1968, nearly 60 percent of eligible African Americans were
registered to vote in Mississippi, and other southern states showed
similar improvement; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.