August 6 is the 43rd anniversary of the signing into law of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Designed to combat race-based (and as later amended, ethnic-based) discrimination in voting, the act has proven to be one of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation ever adopted. In fact, one can argue that the VRA of 1965 is one of the most significant pieces of federal legislation period. Adopted at a time when, despite decades of reform efforts, African Americans were still substantially disfranchised in many southern states, the act prohibited government policies that had the intent and/or effect of excluding or diluting the vote of minorities, outlawed such exclusionary devises as poll taxes and literacy tests, and provided the federal government the tools to force radical changes in state election laws and procedures in the South and later in the nation as a whole. More to the point, the act has proven very successful in achieving these goals. Over the last four decades, it has literally transformed the political landscape of America by fostering the rapid integration of African American and later language-minority voters into the electoral process.
Imagine a world in which the color of your skin or your ethnic background or your religious values could be used as grounds to keep you from the voting booth. Today this seems like fiction, but forty years ago, it was still reality for millions of minority citizens. Sure, as the election of 2000 showed, we still have problems with running our elections, but the days of outright vote denial based on race or ethnic background are over. In this context, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 really has earned its reputation as one of the best and most important pieces of federal legislation in American history.
In contemplating the Voting Rights Act, the words of President Lyndon B. Johnson at the signing of the act are appropriate: “At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the 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…. No law that we now have on the books … can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it…. There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong–deadly wrong–to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States’ rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.”

Charles L. Zelden is professor of history at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He is the author of Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2008), The Battle for the Black Ballot: Smith v Allwright and the Defeat of the Texas All White Primary (University Press of Kansas, 2004), and Voting Rights on Trial (ABC-CLIO, 2002).