INDEPENDENT2026

📚 Summer School · The Reading Room

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1965 · Landmark Laws

The Voting Rights Act

No more tricks to stop people from voting.

President Lyndon Johnson meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. around the Voting Rights Act.
The real thing · President Johnson with Martin Luther King Jr., Voting Rights Act, 1965. Public domain (U.S. government).
Remember this

Everyone gets to vote — for real, not just on paper.

✏️A person at a voting table being handed an impossibly hard test with a frowning official.
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Even after the rules said everyone could vote, some places used mean tricks — hard tests and made-up rules — to stop certain people from voting.

✏️Marchers crossing a big bridge together, holding hands, facing forward bravely.
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People marched to say: stop the tricks. Some were hurt for it. The whole country watched and said, this has to change.

✏️A referee blowing a whistle and throwing a flag at the unfair tricks, clearing the way to the voting booth.
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So Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. It threw out the tricks and put a referee in charge to make sure everyone really can vote.

✏️A long, happy line of every kind of American waiting to vote under a bright flag.
Illustration

A vote is your tiny piece of power. This law made sure nobody could take yours away.

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