Boston Public Schools Civil Rights Unit Supporting Material: Voting Rights

Document 1: Quotations by Southern whites William Simmons, spokesman for Mississippi White Citizens' Council Hodding Carter, editor-publisher of the Delta Democrat, Greenville, Mississippi, quoted in the Delta Democrat Times, Greenville, Mississippi, February 10.

• Document 1: Quotations by Southern whites
  • William Simmons, spokesman for Mississippi White Citizens' Council
  • Hodding Carter, editor-publisher of the Delta Democrat, Greenville, Mississippi, quoted in the Delta Democrat Times, Greenville, Mississippi, February 10.
• Document 2: "A Soldier Who Came Home to Die," Chapter 10, Ray Sprigle, 1948, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Document 3: "1964: Three Civil Rights Activists Found Dead," BBC News
• Document 4: Trying to Vote in Mississippi (from Eyes on the Prize study guide), p. 69.
• Document 5: "Part of the Government Activity": Testimony from an African-American Taxpayer Unable to Vote in Alabama
• Document 6: "There Was a Purpose in My Being There," Mr. Gustave Hulkower, Tucson, Arizona, white civil rights activist
• Document 7: "I Didn't Know Anything About Voting," Fannie Lou Hamer on the Mississippi Voter Registration Campaign (audio and text file)
• Document 8: Voter registration posters
  • http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/civilrights1/voter_register_poster.jpg
  • http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/scans/GM0001-01.jpg
  • http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/scans/GM0001-02.jpg
• Document 9: Mississippi Freedom Summer images
  • http://www.newseum.org/mississippi
  • http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgfs.htm
• Document 10: PBS: The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow - Voting Then and Now Activity (includes literacy test)
• Document 11: Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution
• Document 12: The Enforcement Acts (Scroll down to the Enforcement Act of 1970 and the Civil Rights Act of 1971.)
• Document 13: Statistics on voter turnout and elected representatives:
  • Voter Registration Rates (1965 vs. 1988)
  • Number of Black Southern Legislators, 1868-1900 and 1960-1992

Additional Background Information:

• Document 14: United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, "Before the Voting Rights Act"
• Document 15: Fighting Back: A Black Lawyer Argues Against Disenfranchisement-Early Evidence of Voter Discrimination After the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment
• Document 16: Mississippi and Freedom Summer
• Document 17: United States Voting Rights timelines
  • http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html
  • http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/gen/12999res20050304.html