Voting Rights Act signed in the United States
Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, five months after the 'Bloody Sunday' police attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. The Act banned literacy tests, authorized federal oversight of voter registration in jurisdictions with histories of suppression, and required those jurisdictions to pre-clear any changes to voting rules with the Department of Justice. Black voter registration in Mississippi went from 6.7 percent in 1964 to 59.8 percent in 1967. The Act was the enforcement mechanism the 15th Amendment had been missing for 95 years.
The Supreme Court gutted the Act's pre-clearance requirement in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), ruling that the coverage formula was outdated. Within 24 hours, Texas announced it would enforce a voter-ID law previously blocked. The underlying pattern — right codified, enforcement eroded, re-codification needed — is the recurring bug of mass democracy.
06 · Mass Democracy
The constitutional frameworks of the 18th century initially granted the vote to a tiny slice — property-owning white men. Over the next 150 years, eligibility widened in staggered pushes: working-class men, non-white men, women, colonized peoples, and finally — in the U.S. — Black Southerners whose constitutional voting rights had been nullified for a century. The mechanism became 'one person, one vote, counted honestly.' Polling, mass media, and party systems all emerged to service that mechanism. By 1990 it was the default worldwide claim, even where the reality fell short.
Read the full era →