Agenda - 09-01-20; 4-d - Resolution Celebrating the 55th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

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RES-2020-051 3 ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS RESOLUTION Celebrating the 551h Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act WHEREAS, on February 26, 1869, the United States Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and subsequently ratified the Amendment on February 3, 1870, to grant African American men the right to vote; and WHEREAS, African American males exercised the franchise and held political offices in many states, particularly Southern states, throughout the 1880s; and WHEREAS, in the 1890s, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and other devices to disenfranchise African American men were written into the constitutions of former Confederate states; and WHEREAS, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, African American women were granted the right to vote along with white women; and WHEREAS, African Americans who attempted to register to vote experienced harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, physical violence and murder, including by lynching; and WHEREAS, African American men and women nevertheless sought to secure their right to vote through such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League, as well as through the efforts of people such as A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and Septima Clark; and WHEREAS, in the 196os, the widely broadcast irreprehensible violence against demonstrators brought heightened attention to the issue of voting rights - including the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner on June 21, 1964, and the attack on March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday; and WHEREAS, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, an "act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution," ninety-five years after it had been ratified; and WHEREAS, the Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests and provided for the appointment of federal examiners with the power to register qualified citizens to vote in those jurisdictions covered according to a formula provided by the statute; and WHEREAS, Section 5 of the Act required covered jurisdictions to obtain preclearance from the District Court for the District of Columbia or the United States Attorney General for any new voting procedures and practices; and WHEREAS, Section 2 of the Act, closely following the language of the 15th Amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition on the denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color; and