Johnson Champions Voting Rights: We Shall Overcome

President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, eight days after Bloody Sunday in Selma, and uttered words that stunned the nation: 'And we shall overcome.' The phrase, borrowed from the civil rights movement's anthem, signaled that the federal government had fully embraced the cause. Johnson's speech demanded immediate passage of voting rights legislation, declaring that 'it is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote.' Martin Luther King Jr. watched the speech on television and wept. The Voting Rights Act, signed into law on August 6, 1965, outlawed literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices, authorized federal registrars to enroll voters in counties where less than 50 percent of eligible minorities were registered, and required jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. Within four years, Black voter registration in Mississippi jumped from 6.7 percent to 59.8 percent.