This lesson was originally published in 2015 and was updated in 2025.
NOTE: If you are short on time, watch the video and complete this See, Think, Wonder activity: What did you notice? What did the story make you think? What would you want to learn more about?
Read the transcript here. You may also want to read Steps of history retraced at ‘Bloody Sunday’ commemoration from 2015.
The 50th anniversary of the marches for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, brought a new focus to the relationship between race and voting today.
“We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation’s racial history still casts its long shadow upon us,” President Barack Obama said in an address commemorating the marches.
Up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, poll taxes, literacy tests and voter ID laws hindered the constitutional right of racial minorities to vote.
When protesters gathered at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965, police attacked them, shocking the nation. Following the marches, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests and established greater oversight of state voting laws.
Fifty years later, the percentage of people of color in the electorate has expanded, but party alignment by race has become more pronounced, according to John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC.
In 2012, the percentage of turnout among black voters exceeded that of white voters for the first time. And as turnout has expanded, the number of black Republican voters has dwindled; a 2012 Gallup poll showed that only 2 percent of black voters identify as Republican.
As of 2015, 34 states have voter ID laws, including a large percentage of southern states. These laws disproportionately keep minority and young people from voting and Obama has criticized the laws as prohibitive to voters.
A 2013 Supreme Court decision weakened the Voting Rights Act by stating that states no longer required federal oversight to change election laws, including voter ID laws.
Warm up questions
- Who is allowed to vote in this country?
- What are some restrictions on voting?
- How do you get an ID?
Critical thinking questions
- Why are voting rights important?
- What resources does a person need to get identification? Who might have a difficult time obtaining an ID?
- How does voting access determine who wins an election?
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