ABSTRACT
The Congress of the United States in 1956 had to decide if it was going to pursue civil rights legislation, despite the failure of such bills for more than a decade during the Truman administration. Meanwhile, the Civil Rights movement was expanding in all parts of the country. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other ministers established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an effort to end Jim Crow. From the point of view of contemporary civil rights leaders, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the various amendments that followed, were dealt a setback by the Supreme Court in 2013. The federally protected activities are attending school, patronizing a public place or facility, seeking employment, serving as a juror, or voting. The impact of the Voting Rights Act in covered jurisdictions was so substantial that by 1967 more than half of the African-American population in nine of the thirteen Southern states had been registered to vote.
