Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act in 1965 authorized the U.S. attorney general to send federal examiners to register black voters under certain circumstances. It also suspended state literacy tests in states in which less than 50% of the voting-age population had registered to vote in the 1964 election. Finally it removed other voter-qualification tests that had been used to keep primarily blacks from voting, mostly throughout the southern part of the U.S.

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