cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34252194

George Chidi
Wed 6 Aug 2025 07.00 EDT

Though constitutional amendments passed after the American civil war ended slavery and commanded racial equality before the law, American lawmakers regularly found ways to keep Black citizens from exercising political power. Literacy tests, poll taxes, separate ballot boxes for Black and white voters, white-only primary elections, purges of Black voters from the rolls and discriminatory district lines rigged elections for white voters in the US’s Jim Crow era.

Each time a court struck down a state law or demanded the end of a discriminatory practice, obstructionist local lawmakers – mostly but not exclusively in southern states – would quickly adapt, often enacting new election changes without enough time for a court to intervene. Civil rights laws at the time held insufficient authority to stop the practice.

After years of campaigns for voting rights and racial equality across the south, the civil rights struggle came to a head in March 1965 in Selma, Alabama. The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Baptist deacon and local voting rights activist, at the hands of state troopers led 600 people to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

State troopers attacked demonstrators with truncheons and teargas. As networks broadcast the assault, the US watched future US representative John Lewis get beaten into unconsciousness by white police officers live on national television. Support crystalized for civil and voting rights after the events of the “Bloody Sunday” broadcast.