The Voting Rights War by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Author:Gloria J. Browne-Marshall [Browne-Marshall, Gloria J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2016-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

6

The Voting Rights Act

Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died.

—James Weldon Johnson, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1899)

There was a sacred price paid to achieve the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Few events in American political life have had as profound or as far-reaching consequences as has passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”1 The NAACP and the Justice Department of the United States would bring about sweeping changes only because of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In 1962 the NAACP LDF had twenty-nine cases before the Supreme Court, more than any other law firm in the country except the Solicitor General’s Office of the federal government.2

The NAACP LDF assisted local NAACP attorneys C. B. King and D. L. Hollowell in their suit against the White elected officials of Albany, Georgia, who had maintained segregated voting locations, in Anderson v. Courson.3 Race was a factor in every aspect of voting. In Anderson v. Martin (1964), the NAACP brought a lawsuit successfully challenging a Louisiana law that required ballots to specify the race of the candidates running for office. Louisiana defended its measure as necessary information for the electorate; moreover, “the labeling applie[d] equally to Negro and white.” However, the history of racism in America would undermine the chances for Black, as opposed to White, candidates.

The NAACP LDF persuaded a unanimous court in Anderson v. Martin that it was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment rights of Dupuy H. Anderson to require a candidate’s race to be on the campaign ballot.4 Jack Greenberg, LDF director, argued that the only reason to include race on a ballot was for discriminatory purposes, “so that people can react to it.”5 The Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s statute as a violation of the equal protection clause.

In Virginia, voting records and property tax assessments were segregated by race. E. Leslie Hamm sued. In Hamm v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1964), the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s decision to desegregate this basic information. The court said, “Separation of white and colored on the poll tax, residence-certificate and registration lists as well as on the assessment rolls renders these provisions invalid under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment.” Jack Greenberg argued the case for the plaintiffs.

However, the tactic of states’ demanding membership lists and accusing the NAACP of hiding communist activity had taken a toll on the organization. Membership in the NAACP was down. Finally, in 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NAACP in its fourth appeal in the 1956 case NAACP v. Alabama. The organization did not have to reveal its membership list, and it could continue doing business in the South without fear of White elected officials intent on reprisal against either the organization or its membership.6

As Black politicians rose to power, buoyed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the NAACP and NAACP LDF began their next fifty years of fighting to enforce legislation gained by tireless advocacy and the blood of the slaughtered.

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