One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson

President Eisenhower’s solution was the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first civil rights bill in eighty-odd years. This bill created the Commission on Civil Rights, upgraded the Department of Justice’s section on civil rights to a division, and authorized the US attorney general to sue those violating the voting rights of American citizens. The core of the 1957 Civil Rights Act gave the US Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to sue jurisdictions (cities or towns) that blocked citizens from voting based on the color of their skin. Sounds good—but the lawsuit mechanism had a number of problems. First, DOJ lawsuits would be a reaction to voting rights violations, not a preventative. In other words, the “crime” had to occur before the DOJ stepped in. This meant that skewed election results, where a racist candidate assumed office because black citizens had been systematically disenfranchised, could affect years of policy and lawmaking while the long, drawn-out court process slowly unfolded.