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  • Features
    • From the President
    • World Class Fine
    • House busters
    • Landmark Voting Rights Act
    • Fight to increase minimum wage
    • Power to the people
  • Union Front
    • Auto glassworkers dog-tired
    • AK Steel workers OK new contract
    • Member minute
    • Local 1968 workers stay strong
    • Federal agency's e-mails show bias
    • Delphi Update
    • Ask a Working Woman survey
    • One on one with General Holiefield
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    • Still Solid
    • Skilled Trades
    • Workers' Words
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    • Solidarity Index / Past Issues

Landmark Voting Rights Act – 40 years later

Nothing is more fundamental to our democracy than the right to vote.

But more than 40 years after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) – which opened the ballot box to millions of blacks across the South – there’s still work to be done to prevent voter intimidation and suppression.

The House and Senate passed legislation this summer extending the temporary provisions of the VRA for 25 years. President Bush signed it into law July 28.

Named after Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer, who was beaten and jailed in 1962 trying to register to vote in Mississippi, the VRA has been renewed four times since 1970.

The UAW actively participated with our allies in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in spearheading the drive to enact this landmark measure, which renews key provisions requiring:

• The Justice Department to approve any changes in voting practices and procedures in various states.

• Voting materials to be made available in other languages where there are significant numbers of non-English-speaking citizens.

Jennifer John