美國選舉權法案簽署50週年

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.具有里程碑意義的美國選舉權法案本週四簽署滿50週年。法案當中規定聯邦對尋求行使投票權的非裔美國人提供保護。

1965年8月6日林登·約翰遜總統簽署該法案，在幾個州清除了美國黑人投票的法律障礙，儘管之前他們的投票權在美國憲法第15修正案中已被承認。許多存在選舉權障礙的州位於美國南部，當地種族歧視的歷史可以追溯到奴隸制時代。

1965年3月,警察在阿拉巴馬州塞爾馬粗暴襲擊了在埃德蒙·佩特斯大橋舉行的投票權和平示威。這一事件引發了全國譁然，導致約翰遜總統在議會兩院發表歷史性的演講，敦促通過選舉權法案。

投票權法案被認爲是美國民權法案頒佈以來最有效的一個法案。它標誌着長達十年之久的民權運動的高峯，當時非洲裔美國人公開要求結束美國社會所有方面的種族歧視和種族隔離。