Legislative · Federal
Voting Rights Act of 1965 restores federal enforcement of the franchise
- Direction
- +2 — major benefit to Freedmen
- Force
- 1.00 — enacted, vetoed, or final
- Status
- Decided
- Date
- 1965-08-06
Why this rating
Signed August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act banned the literacy tests and other devices used to disenfranchise Black voters and restored federal enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment. Rated +2: a direct, material, large-scale re-enfranchisement of the lineage, undoing nearly a century of disenfranchisement following Reconstruction.
Summary
Signed August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act banned the literacy tests and other devices used to disenfranchise Black voters and restored federal enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment. Rated +2: a direct, material, large-scale re-enfranchisement of the lineage, undoing nearly a century of disenfranchisement following Reconstruction.
Sources
- Voting Rights Act (1965) — National Archives — official record · primary · historical
Rated under the published impact rubric. Direction records what a measure would do if fully effective; force records how far it has actually travelled. Neither is inferred — both trace to the sources above. Think something here is wrong? Tell us and we will log the correction.