The Voting Rights Act is a historic civil rights law designed to ensure that the right to vote is not denied on account of race or color.

Key milestones in the struggle for voting rights include:

• 1866: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 grants citizenship to all native-born Americans but does not explicitly guarantee the right to vote.
• 1869: Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment, giving African American men the right to vote.
• 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law. It permanently bars barriers to political participation by racial and ethnic minorities, prohibits any election practice that denies the right to vote on account of race, and requires jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their election laws.

2010–2016

Objections to voting laws

Since 2010, the Department of Justice has issued 18 Section 5 objections to voting laws in Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Attorney General Eric Holder has discussed these voting rights challenges.

Sources:

• ACLU: Voting Rights Act major dates in history
• NAACP: The Voting Rights Act of 1965