For Questions below, use the following information and the excerpt from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s address to Congress on March 15, 1965. Although the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted African American men the right to vote, was ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the law would not be fully realized for almost a century. Many southern states continued to prevent African Americans from voting by the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means. In the 1960’s African Americans began a series of peaceful protests to fight for their constitutional... Show more For Questions below, use the following information and the excerpt from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s address to Congress on March 15, 1965. Although the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted African American men the right to vote, was ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the law would not be fully realized for almost a century. Many southern states continued to prevent African Americans from voting by the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means. In the 1960’s African Americans began a series of peaceful protests to fight for their constitutional rights. During March 1965, African Americans were staging a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery when they were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers and other white racists who tried to prevent them from speaking out for voting rights for African Americans. This atrocity became known as Bloody Sunday. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a notorious segregationist, refused to protect the peaceful protesters, and in response, President Johnson gave this address to Congress one week later: “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 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… . The bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right… . Their cause must be our cause too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Show less
For Questions below, use the following information and the excerpt from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s address to Congress on March 15, 1965. Although the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted African American men the right to vote, was ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the law would not be fully realized for almost a century. Many southern states continued to prevent African Americans from voting by the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means. In the 1960’s African Americans began a series of peaceful protests to fight for their constitutional rights.
During March 1965, African Americans were staging a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery when they were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers and other white racists who tried to prevent them from speaking out for voting rights for African Americans. This atrocity became known as Bloody Sunday. Alabama Governor George Wallace, a notorious segregationist, refused to protect the peaceful protesters, and in response, President Johnson gave this address to Congress one week later:
“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 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… .
The bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right… .
Their cause must be our cause too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”
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