Voting Rights Act
ORG
Voting Rights Act
Representative Lynn Westmoreland, a former builder, acknowledges that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone achievement of the civil rights movement, was necessary in its day to register blacks and overturn decades of laws preventing them from voting. The Voting Rights Act, a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was intended to break down barriers that had kept blacks from registering to vote. Before the act, civil rights organizations estimate, there were fewer than 300 black elected officials in the United States, with virtually none in the South.