The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed practices that prevented many African-Americans from voting throughout much of the South, ending literacy tests and poll taxes that had been selectively applied to keep blacks from voting.
But almost 50 years later, there's a debate about whether some provisions of that law are still needed. Just yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department used it to block a law in Texas that would have required voters to show government issued photo IDs at the polls.
via npr.org
