LiberationPrimary SourceFBA Grio Verified Source

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Name: Black Boy
Author: Richard Wright

United States Congress

1965

Liberation

3-Minute Summary

Prohibited discriminatory voting practices that had disenfranchised Black voters for nearly a century. Section 5 required jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal preclearance before changing voting laws — a provision gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Why It Matters

The Voting Rights Act restored what the 15th Amendment had promised in 1870. Its partial dismantling in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) demonstrates that civil rights gains are not permanent without continued vigilance.

Important Passages

'No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.'

Where to Read

Congress.gov (free)

Verified: National Archives, Congress.gov

Key People

Lyndon B. Johnson

John Lewis

Fannie Lou Hamer

Selma marchers

Key Policies & Events

Section 5 preclearanceLiteracy test banFederal examinersShelby County v. Holder (2013)

Related FBA Leaders

John Lewis Fannie Lou Hamer

Black Boy

Richard Wright

1945

Resistance

3-Minute Summary

Wright's autobiography of his childhood in the Jim Crow South — the hunger, the violence, the deliberate crushing of Black ambition — and his eventual escape to Chicago. One of the most powerful accounts of what it meant to grow up Black in the American South.

Why It Matters

Wright's account of how Jim Crow worked psychologically — how it trained Black people to be small, to hide their intelligence, to perform deference — is the most visceral literary documentation of segregation's human cost.

Important Passages

'I had been what my surroundings had demanded, what my family — conforming to the dictates of the whites above them — had exacted of me, and what the whites had said that I must be.'

Where to Read

Available at public libraries and online booksellers

Key People

Richard Wright

Key Policies & Events

Jim CrowGreat MigrationSegregation in Mississippi

All 100 Readings Resistance Collection