African Americans’ right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment was reaffirmed with the establishment of the far-reaching Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which banned onerous literacy tests and other restrictive measures that were a noticeable facet of the Jim Crow era.[1] In particular, Section 4 of the VRA prevents areas where “less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein” were registered by or voted in the 1964 election from restricting or denying individuals the right to vote.[2] This was done in order to deter “the purpose ... of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”[3]

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