Voting+Rights

Voting Registration Rights
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro.php

Thesis Statement-What was the Voting Rights Act?
 * Voting Rights Act suspended poll taxes, literacy tests, & federal supervision of voters.
 * It got signed on August 6, 1965 by President Johnson.

What African Americans had to do to vote. Reverend George Lee was shot in the face for leading a voter registration in 1955. Medgar Evers stopped white people from voting in Native Mississippi. He got shot in front of his house by a white segregationist in 1963.  What the government did to help. More then 90,000 African Americans practiced voting during the summer of 1963.  After Voting Rights were given back.
 * For African Americans to vote they had to take a literacy test.
 * Most of the time they got beaten, harassed, and threatened.
 * They got fired from their jobs and some lost their homes.
 * In Alabama they had to take a four page oath.
 * The COFO (Council of Federated Organization) gave a mock election (Freedom Vote).
 * When they were free to vote all the numbers went up.
 * It was called "the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation passed by congress."