In August 1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson had introduced. The act was passed as part of Johnson’s Great Society program. The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government the power to inspect voter registration procedures and to protect all citizens’ right to vote. The act was meant to protect African American voters in particular. Some state officials had used literacy tests, intimidation, and expensive poll taxes to keep African Americans from voting. The act suspended literacy and other voter tests and authorized federal supervision of voter registration in areas where tests had been used and where fewer than half of the voting-age residents were registered or had voted. Within three years, more than half of all African American voters in the South had registered to vote.
