Voting Rights Law: 25 Years of Change

Looking back to his college days 25 years ago, Roy Terry--now a clothing manufacturer--recalls vividly the one thing that separated him from the white students in Atlanta, where he attended Morehouse College.

The whites could vote; 75% of American blacks couldn’t vote, and he was one.

Then on Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, banning literacy tests, poll taxes, and other methods used to discourage blacks from voting.

“The thing we have gained from the Voting Rights Act is more leverage, more elected black officials,” Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Giving blacks the right to vote prompted politicians to establish special programs so that blacks would have more opportunities.

Terry was one of those who benefited. Not only could he vote, his family’s business improved its annual income, from about $100,000 in 1963 to more than $12 million, helped by government contracts to supply military camouflage and firefighters’ uniforms.

“Minority purchasing goals . . . that we participated in have been a benefit of the Voting Rights Act,” Terry said.

On the 25th anniversary of the law, more than 7,000 blacks hold elective local, state or federal offices, but the votes to put them there were not always easy to cast.

Some enthusiastic blacks traveled hundreds of miles to register, only to be met with violence.

“There was resentment that black people could participate in the process,” former Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first black woman to serve in Congress, said in an interview.

“Battles emerged at voting places, especially in the South, and often, polls were not located so that they were accessible for everyone,” she said.

Chisholm, a Democrat, was elected to the House in 1969 and served until 1982. She remembers the early days when Congress was run by “old line, diehard, white Southerners.”

“There was always a battle about color, making sure appropriations would be allocated fairly.

“Practically every piece of legislation required an amendment to specifically include women and blacks. It seemed ironic that in a democracy, we had to put in amendments to see that blacks and women wouldn’t get left out.”

Slowly and steadily, white candidates, especially those in the South, had come to grips with a new thrust in politics.

Blacks were running for office, and if they didn’t win, they could decide who would.

Yet, 25 years after the law was enacted, many blacks still think it has not carried them far enough.

Historians and political scientists say that blacks do not feel totally at home in either the Republican or Democratic party, and often prefer to place all their faith in black politicians.

Perhaps they are naive, Mary Frances Berry, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, suggested. Black politicians must consider not just the black voter, they are beholden to all their constituents.

“Many blacks thought the problems of race, economics and social conditions would be solved with the vote,” said Berry, “but when the kingdom was still closed after people got the key, they said, ‘doesn’t that mean we shouldn’t vote?’ ”

Berry said that more effort might be focused on peaceful demonstrations for change such as those that have forced several U.S. corporations to sell their holdings in South Africa.

Politicians say there are signs that the process begun 25 years ago will continue to gather strength.

On the South Africa question, black sensitivity has registered with President Bush and a Republican Party that is campaigning to woo African-Americans.

“We are united in our opposition to apartheid,” the President told magazine publishers recently.