Voting Rights Timeline

  • 1864/1865: The U. S. Congress passes and the states ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution abolishing slavery
  • 1866/1868: The U. S. Congress passes and the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution granting citizenship to former slaves
  • 1865-1877: The era of Reconstruction and the beginning of blacks’ right to vote
  • 1870: The U. S. Congress passes and the states ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting African-American men the right to vote
  • 1870/1871: The U. S. Congress passes the Enforcement Acts prohibiting actions by states, groups, or individuals interfering with African Americans’ right to vote
  • 1874: The end of Reconstruction in Alabama results in a decline of African Americans’ right to vote
  • 1877: The end of Reconstruction across the South results in a decline of African Americans’ right to vote
  • 1895-1915: Booker T. Washington: a covert supporter for African Americans’ right to vote
  • 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson – The U. S. Supreme Court ruling that made racial segregation the law of the land
  • 1901: Alabama passes a Disfranchisement Constitution resulting in the elimination of over 95 percent of its African-American voters
  • 1909 (February 12): The founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
  • 1915: Guinn v. United States – The U. S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the grandfather clause
  • 1915: A revival of the Ku Klux Klan targets African-American voters
  • 1927: Nixon v. Herndon - The initial U. S. Supreme Court decision overturning the white primary
  • 1932: Nixon v. Condon – The second U. S. Supreme Court decision declaring the white primary unconstitutional
  • 1935: Grovey v. Townsend – The U. S. Supreme Court decision upholding the white primary
  • 1936: African American voters began “the great switch” from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the presidential election of 1936
  • 1940: A decade of voting rights activism in Alabama
  • 1941: United States v. Classic - The third U. S. Supreme Court ruling against the white primary
  • 1941-1945: World War II fuels a voting rights movement across the United States
  • 1944: Arthur Madison, African-American attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, disbarred for challenging the literary test
  • 1944: Smith v. Allright – The final U. S. Supreme Court case declaring the white primary unconstitutional
  • 1946: The Alabama legislature adopts the Boswell Amendment to circumvent Smith v. Allright
  • 1947: The Committee on Civil Rights calls for elimination of the poll tax
  • 1954: E.D. Nixon campaigned to become the first black to serve on the local Democratic Executive Committee in Montgomery, Alabama
  • 1954: Brown v. Board of Education - The U. S. Supreme Court case overturns Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring state laws that established separate public schools for white and black students unconstitutional
  • 1955: The murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager tortured and murdered for alleged disrespect of a white woman spurs a mood of protest helping to lead to the modern civil rights movement
  • 1955: The arrest of Rosa Parks and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
  • 1955-1956: The modern civil rights movement begins
  • 1956: The NAACP banned from Alabama
  • 1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized
  • 1960: John F. Kennedy’s election to the presidency aided by the African-American vote
  • 1960: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed
  • 1960: The U. S. Congress targets voting rights in the 1960 Civil Rights Act
  • 1961: The Voter Election Project (VEP) established
  • 1963: The murder of four black girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama launches new thrust on voting rights by the SCLC
  • 1964: The 1964 Civil Rights Act includes a section upholding African Americans’ right to vote
  • 1965 (January): Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come to Selma at the request of the Dallas County Voters League to assist efforts to local voter registration efforts
  • 1965 (February 28): The murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson provides the inspiration for the Selma-to-Montgomery March
  • 1965: (March 7): State Troopers and sheriff’s posse attack almost 600 marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80 to Montgomery; known as “Bloody Sunday.”
  • 1965: (March 8): U.S. Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson issues a federal injunction against the march until a hearing could be held
  • 1965: (March 9): Martin Luther King, Jr. leads almost 2,000 marchers to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, kneels to pray, and directs the marchers back to Brown Chapel AME Church in compliance with Judge Johnson’s injunction against the march; known as “Turnaround Tuesday”
  • 1965: (March 9): James Reeb, white minister from Boston, assaulted in Selma during the voting rights campaign and dies two days later
  • 1965: (March 9-March 23): SNCC relocates from Selma to Montgomery and launches almost daily student (including Alabama State College and Tuskegee Institute) voting rights protests to the Alabama State capitol and other sites in Montgomery
  • 1965: (March 17) U. S. Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson lifts the injunction allowing the Selma to Montgomery march to proceed
  • 1965: (March 21-24) Marchers leave Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma and walk 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery arriving at the City of St. Jude on March 24
  • 1965: (March 25) Marchers leave the City of St. Jude arriving at the Alabama State capitol
  • 1965: (March 25) Viola Luizzo, white mother of five from Detroit, killed in Lowndes County, Alabama while transporting marchers from Montgomery back to Selma
  • 1965: (August 6) President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1965 Voting Rights Act
  • 1965: (August 20) Jonathan Daniels, white seminarian from New Hampshire, killed in Lowndes County, Alabama.
  • 1966: (January 3) Sammy Younge, Jr., twenty-one year old Tuskegee student and voting rights activist, shot in the back of the head by a Tuskegee gas station attendant for using a white only restroom.