具有里程碑意义的美国选举权法案本周四签署满50周年。法案当中规定联邦对寻求行使投票权的非裔美国人提供保护。
1965年8月6日林登·约翰逊总统签署该法案，在几个州清除了美国黑人投票的法律障碍，尽管之前他们的投票权在美国宪法第15修正案中已被承认。许多存在选举权障碍的州位于美国南部，当地种族歧视的历史可以追溯到奴隶制时代。
1965年3月,警察在阿拉巴马州塞尔马粗暴袭击了在埃德蒙·佩特斯大桥举行的投票权和平示威。这一事件引发了全国哗然，导致约翰逊总统在议会两院发表历史性的演讲，敦促通过选举权法案。
投票权法案被认为是美国民权法案颁布以来最有效的一个法案。它标志着长达十年之久的民权运动的高峰，当时非洲裔美国人公开要求结束美国社会所有方面的种族歧视和种族隔离。
Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the landmark U.S. Voting Rights Act, which provided federal protections for African Americans who sought to exercise their right to vote.
The August 6, 1965 signing of the bill by President Lyndon B. Johnson outlawed legal barriers erected by several states that effectively barred African Americans from the voting booth, despite them being granted those rights
under the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Many of those states were located in the southern United States, which had a long history of racial discrimination dating back to region's era of slavery.
Passage of the Voting Rights Act came after police brutally attacked demonstrators who had begun a peaceful voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in March of that year. The incident sparked a national outcry, leading to a historic speech by President Johnson before a joint session of Congress urging passage of the law.
The Voting Rights Act is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the United States. It marked the high point of the decade-long Civil Rights Movement, when African Americans publicly demonstrated to bring an end to official racial discrimination and segregation in all aspects of U.S. society.
