Summary: With the mark of this pen, and a touching rhetorical flourish, Lyndon Johnson signed a historic law empowering the Justice Department to send federal officials to supervise voter registration—the first federal intervention in Southern state electoral affairs since the 1870s. The act outlawed educational requirements for voting in states or counties where fewer than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered or had voted in 1964. Section 9 of the act also banned changes to future voting laws without a “preclearance” check by a U.S. District Court or the Attorney General to ensure that the proposed change would not impinge the ability of minorities to register.
Johnson symbolically chose to sign the Voting Rights Bill in the President’s Room, just off the Senate chamber, where Abraham Lincoln had signed legislation freeing slaves employed by the Confederacy on August 6, 1861. Moments later, in a ceremony broadcast nationwide from the Capitol Rotunda, Johnson acknowledged that the vast majority of Africans “came in chains” to this country. “And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds. Today the Negro story and the American story fuse and blend.” Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach immediately dispatched officials to register voters in nine southern counties. As a result, African-American voter registration surged by over 250,000 within a year of this bill’s passage.
[Lyndon B. Johnson]. 1965 Voting Rights Act Signing Pen. One of the pens used by Johnson in signing the bill into law (S 1564-PL 89-110) on August 6, 1965. Has: “The President – The White House” molded into the clear handle in white lettering. Archivally framed.
Inventory# 20829 $6,000
Historical Background:
The civil rights movement began to achieve significant victories at the national level in 1954, with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In early 1964, the states ratified the 25th amendment, making the hated poll tax, which disfranchised poor whites and blacks in the South, unconstitutional. Later that year, President Johnson signed the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and education, based on race and sex. But it did not address the right to vote.
In 1964, a coalition of civil rights groups—including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (S.N.C.C.)—launched a voter registration drive in the deep South—Freedom Summer. Violence occurred in Alabama and Mississippi. Murdered civil rights workers in Mississippi were shown on magazine covers and on the nightly news, drawing widespread attention to the injustices of Jim Crown rule in the South. In January, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, during which he and other activists were assaulted with tear gas and cattle prods.
On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, speaking passionately in support of voting rights legislation.
“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of Democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause.
At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many of them were brutally assaulted. One good man--a man of God--was killed.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our Democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government--the government of the greatest nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country--to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man …
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans--not as Democrats or Republicans; we're met here as Americans to solve that problem … To deny a man his hopes because of his color or race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice, it is to deny Americans and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom … Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right.”
President Johnson closed his speech by quoting the lyrics from one of the protestors’ songs, “We Shall Overcome.” As historian Robert Dallek writes, “A moment of stunned silence followed, as the audience absorbed the fact that the President had embraced the anthem of black protest. And then almost the entire chamber rose in unison … tears rolled down the cheeks of senators, congressmen, and observers …” After a lengthy filibuster organized by Southerners, the Senate passed the Voting Rights Act by a margin of 77-19 on May 26, 1965. The House followed suit—333-85—on July 9.
Historical References:
Dallek, Robert. Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (New York, 2004), 204-208.
