In a country that may be imperfect in many ways, it is important for us to look back, not only to the struggles of the civil rights movement, but also to the hope that its participants held for America to become a more perfect union. It is imperative to remember that a democracy cannot thrive unless all citizens participate. We the people have the power to create the change we want to see in our country. #VoiceYourVote in 2020 and in every election year.

History of African Americans and
the Right to Vote

The struggle for enfranchisement for African Americans is one steeped in blood, sweat and tears, and began immediately after the abolishment of slavery. This would become a fight that would drag on for decades and continue to be questioned and impeded through the present era.

While the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship for African Americans, “this did not always translate into the ability to vote” (Library of Congress).

Through underhanded practices, African Americans, especially in the southern states, formally the Confederate States of America, were systematically denied the right to take part in political elections. In order to combat this practice, the United States Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thus granting the right for African American men to vote. This momentarily allowed African Americans to gain political representation in many southern state legislatures during the immediate years after the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era.

Reflection Question:
What was the significance of African American men getting the right to vote before both white and black women?

In 1870, Hiram Revels became the first African American to serve in the United States Congress for the state of Mississippi. Soon, other black men from southern states would join both the United States Senate and House of Representatives for the 41st and 42nd United States Congress, including Jefferson Franklin Long, Georgia’s 1st African American Congressmen and the first African American to speak on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1871. A political organizer, Long aided in the fight for voting rights by encouraging African Americans in Georgia to register and vote. In 1867, 32 African Americans were elected to the Georgia state legislature.

The black political power of the Reconstruction era was short lived. With the removal of federal troops from the South in 1877, the Democratic Party regained control of Southern legislatures and began to reestablish white supremacy with the suppression of African American rights, including voting. A major tactic used in attempts to disenfranchise African Americans was the passing and enforcing of Black Codes, which were restrictive laws intended to limit the Freedom of African Americans by denying them equal rights and protections under the law. Others included poll taxes, literacy tests, whites-only primary elections, and death threats to deter African Americans from voting at the polls. The fight for black suffrage would continue for decades after the Fifteenth Amendment was passed.

For further reading about voting
restrictions in the South

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Reflection Question:
Compare and contrast the political progress of African Americans during the Reconstruction era and the post-Obama era as it pertains to voting rights and representation in elected office.

The Southern Regional Council (SRC) is an organization founded in 1919 that focuses on the “intractable issue of racial injustice in the south” (Southern Regional Council). Still in existence today, the organization was “unique in its focus on interracial cooperation and struggle against massive resistance in the South. In 1962, the Voter Education Project (VEP) was adopted as a program under SRC. The brainchild of then United States Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, VEP was originally crafted by Kennedy with the idea that by establishing a program focused on support for voter registration that the protest spurred by the ongoing Civil Rights Movement would be quelled.

The program was enacted to help distribute funds to various non-partisan civil rights organization in the effort to support voter registration drives. Some examples included SNCC’s voter registration project in Selma, Alabama in 1962-1963, in which VEP granted $5,000.00 toward the project–the equivalent of $40,000.00 today. This project was the catalyst for the Selma to Montgomery March, orchestrated in part by SCLC and SNCC that culminated in the infamous Bloody Sunday. The Albany Movement, organized by SNCC, NAACP and SCLC, and the Freedom Vote Campaign in 1963 are other examples of voter registration projects funded in part by VEP.

Voter Education & Advocacy

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Reflection Question:
For years "Get out and Vote" campaigns consisted of door-to-door canvassing, printed mailers, voter registration drives, and most recently social media ads. Many of these practices are still used today. Are they still effective? Why or why not? If not, how can these methods be innovative in order to increase the effort to mobilize voters?

Initially a 2 year pilot project, the VEP provided grants to Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), National Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Despite President Kennedy’s request that, with the formation of the VEP, these groups halt protest activities, only the NAACP complied.

When the VEP launched in Atlanta in 1962, only about 25% of voting age African Americans were registered throughout the South, with states like Mississippi having only about 6% of its voting age African Americans registered.

In its first two years, VEP efforts increased African American voter registration in Southern states from roughly 25% to roughly 40%, with nearly 800,000 new African American voters registered. Despite the success of the initial VEP campaign, the organizations funded by the VEP continued to face brutality and police repression against their voter registration campaigns. The collective national frustration over the dangers VEP volunteers faced ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After its initial two year pilot project, the SRC proposed making the VEP a permanent program, expanding its goals to maximum voter registration, leadership training, and citizenship education and opening offices throughout the Southern states. The VEP continued to work under the auspices of the Southern Regional Council until 1971, in large part due to the United States Tax Reform Bill of 1969, when it became an independent organization under the leadership of former SNCC chair and current United States Congressman John Lewis. As a separate organization, VEP continued to help fund voting initiatives throughout the South, and grew to become an authoritative source for statistics on southern elections.

While the VEP continued to be a nonpartisan organization, under Lewis’s leadership the VEP expanded its services to the poor and people of color outside of the African American community. Along with former SNCC activist and Georgia state Representative Julian Bond, Lewis toured the South on VEP’s Voter Mobilization Tours. The two men traveled door-to-door, encouraging southerners to register and vote.
The economic recession of the 1970s hit the VEP hard, forcing the VEP to reduce office staff and restructure its activities. Later in the decade, the VEP was able to participate in national voter campaigns, expanding its reach to television and radio. John Lewis resigned as Executive Director in 1977 to run for Congress, and the VEP continued to struggle financially, nearly closing its doors in 1981. Though Executive Director Geraldine Thompson managed to temporarily salvage the VEP during the 1980s, the VEP finally ceased operating in 1992.

Reflection Question:
Does the past struggle for voting rights mandate that you exercise the right yourself? Is not voting disrespectful to this legacy? Why or why not?

VEP Campaign Posters & Flyers

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Despite these legal victories, Southern legislatures continued to pass voting laws designed to disenfranchise African Americans. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 banned intimidating, coercing, or otherwise interfering with the rights of voters and established the Commission on Civil Rights as well as the Office of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. 1964 brought about passage of another Civil Rights Act that further expanded the federal government's authority to protect civil rights, as well as ratification of the 24th Amendment, which prohibited the poll tax.

Despite this progress, African American voters throughout the South continued to face violence and retaliatory job loss when they tried to register to vote. When law enforcement wasn't directly participating in this intimidation, they often looked the other way. Organizations, including SNCC and SCLC, began to mobilize throughout the South in a meaningful way, but, wherever these organizations arrived, violence followed. By the 1960s, however, the violence and intimidation that Southern governments had traditionally employed began to appear more frequently in the mainstream press, turning the tide of public opinion in support of the goals of the Civil Rights movement. Pivotal events like the burning of churches in southwest Georgia in 1962, the murder of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963 and Bloody Sunday in 1965 illustrated the mortal cost of attaining equal rights for African Americans.

As a direct result of the efforts of VEP, SCLC, NAACP, SNCC and various other civil rights organizations, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by president Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965–a little over 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and 95 years after the Fifteenth Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. Though the bill faced resistance from Southern legislators, overall public opinion was squarely on the side of the Civil Rights movement. This law aided in dismembering the legal barriers (such as poll taxes and literacy tests) at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from participation in voting.

The legislation expanded protections for African Americans under both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. By the end of 1965, 250,000 African Americans were registered to vote – only one third were by federal examiners, thus the other two-thirds were a direct result of grassroots efforts from organizations like SNCC, NAACP, SCLC and help from VEP. This would usher in a new era of politics as it related to African American and political life.

Reflection Question:
In 1965 the Voting Rights Act outlawed poll taxes and literacy test that sought to disenfranchise African American and minority votes. What are some modern day hurdles minority voters face today and how can they overcome these obstacles?

Voting Rights Act & Beyond: African Americans in the Political Arena

While the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been extended several times, it has also faced roll-backs. Nevertheless, the initial signing of the act led to an increased number of African American voters, candidates and elected officials, including Maynard Jackson, the first African American elected mayor of a major southern city–Atlanta; Shirley Chisholm, first African American woman elected to Congress and the first African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties; Grace Towns Hamilton, the first African American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly; Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States of America and; potentially Kamala Harris, who has the possibility of becoming the first African American woman Vice President of the United States.

One of the quickest and most notable effects of the passage of the Voting Rights Act was the creation of an African American voting bloc with the power to sway elections. Registration across all races increased throughout the South, but pluralities of African American voters ushered in a wave of African American legislators and became a deciding factor in Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign victory and Barack Obama's historic election in 2008.

Political Posters Throughout the Years

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Atlanta Politicians in Focus

Julian Bond

During his time at Morehouse College, Julian Bond was instrumental in the establishment of SNCC, helped to lead the Atlanta Student Movement, and assisted in the creation of the Appeal for Human Rights. In 1965, Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. However, members of the state house voted to not seat him in 1966 due to his endorsement of SNCC’s policy regarding opposition to the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The Supreme Court would later decide that the Georgia House of Representatives was required to seat him. Bond was elected for four terms in the state house from 1967 to 1975. After his tenure in the Georgia House, he was a state senator for six terms from 1975 to 1987. After his career in politics, Bond served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and chairman of the NAACP.

In 2001, Shirley Franklin was elected to be Atlanta’s first woman mayor and first African American woman mayor of a major Southern city. She served two terms as mayor from 2002 to 2010. Prior to becoming mayor, Franklin served as the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs under Mayor Maynard Jackson and then Chief Administrative Officer and City Manager under Mayor Andrew Young. During her tenure, she helped to balance the city’s budget, repair the sewer system, make Atlanta a “green” city, helped launch the Atlanta Beltline, and helped to acquire the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection for the college.

Grace Towns Hamilton was elected as the first African American woman representative in the Georgia General Assembly in 1965. She would serve until 1984. During her tenure, Hamilton represented the Vine City area of Atlanta, served on various committees, such as the Reapportionment Committee and the Appropriations Committee, and sponsored numerous bills during her time in the Georgia General Assembly in an effort to expand Black leadership and political representation in city, county, and state governments. She was a principal architect for the 1973 Atlanta City Charter, which allowed Blacks to be elected to the Atlanta City Council in numbers proportionate to their part of the city’s population. Grace Towns Hamilton was a key figure in changing and promoting the city of Atlanta.

Maynard Jackson

In 1973, Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. became the first African American mayor of Atlanta. He served two consecutive terms (1974-1982) and served a third term from 1990 to 1994. Under his leadership, numerous appointments of women and African Americans were made to high offices for the first time in Atlanta's history. Some of his most notable accomplishments include the construction of Atlanta's airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, overhauling social departments of the Atlanta’s city government, such as the police department, and working to bring the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games to Atlanta.

Leroy Johnson

In 1962, Leroy Johnson was the first African American elected to the Georgia state legislature in more than fifty years, since William Rogers in 1907, and the first to be elected to the Georgia State Senate since 1874. He served District 38 of the Atlanta, Fulton County area. Prior to being a senator, Johnson attended Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University and worked as an attorney.

John Lewis

Before becoming a congressman for the state of Georgia, John Lewis was the chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) during the Civil Rights Movement and served as an executive director of VEP (Voter Education Project). In 1981, Lewis was elected to the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives for the 5th District in Georgia. John Lewis has been reelected 14 times to the U.S. House. During his tenure, he has worked on various bills and served on the Committee on Ways and Means, as well as been a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Jefferson Franklin Long

Jefferson Franklin Long was the second African American in the United States elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1871. Long was the first African American elected from Georgia, and the first to speak on the floor of the U.S. House. He would be the only African American to represent Georgia in the U.S. Congress until the election of Andrew Young in 1972.

Andrew Young

Andrew Young was an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement, serving as the executive director of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Young went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th District from 1973 to 1977. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. He became the first African American to have the position and served from 1977 to 1979. Young was elected mayor of Atlanta in 1981, the second African American to be elected. He served as mayor from 1982 to 1990.

Though two lower courts upheld the constitutionality of Section 5, Shelby County appealed these rulings and in 2013 the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional because the coverage formula used to determine which jurisdictions should be covered by Section 5 was based on an old formula. Despite the majority opinion written by the Court declaring that "The conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions," (Shelby v. Holder, 2013) within 24 hours of the ruling Texas announced implementation of a strict voter ID law. Mississippi and Alabama also began enforcing voter ID laws they had previously been barred from enacting due to Voting Rights Act protections. Although the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Congress and the President can enact legislation to restore its full protections. State governments can also enact legislation to supplement protections guaranteed by the federal government.

In the face of suppression efforts, voter education efforts, canvassing and practicing your right to vote are more important than ever for their right to vote and to hold elected office, regardless of race, class, sexual identity, gender, or ability. For more information about voting and how you can register, check out our voting resources on the next page.

For additional voting resources, check out the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library LibGuide on voting. To view additional voting rights images from our collections, check out our exhibit collection and Voter Education Project collection!

Reflection Question:
Looking forward, what is the biggest legislative hurdle facing African Americans and other minorities today? What legislation would – if you could – write and why?