The Federal Government Weighs In.

Even though blacks were guaranteed the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1870, racial discrimination in voting was still widespread after World War II. Congress and the president finally began to act to redress these problems in the 1950s. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 sought to deal with continued discrimination by empowering the attorney general of the United States to bring suits on a case-by-case basis, rather than relying solely on private challenges. But even with the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1964, which sought to streamline this process, case-by-case challenges were not very effective. Voting rights suits were difficult, time consuming, and slow to resolve. Preparation for a trial often required thousands of man-hours to comb voter registration records. In addition, even when the cases were carried to conclusion and the state...