h its predecessors, the 1964 Civil Rights Act had only
touched lightly on the serious obstacles in the way of black voters.
Although some 450,000 Negroes were added to the voting rolls in the
southern states in the year following passage of the 1964 law, the
civil rights advocates were calling for stronger legislation. With
bipartisan support, the President introduced a measure aimed directly
at states that discriminated against black voters, providing for the
abolition of literacy tests, appointment of federal examiners to
register voters for all elections, and assignment of federal
supervisors for those elections. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, adopted
in February 1964, had eliminated the poll tax in federal elections,
and the President's new measure carried a strong condemnation of the
use of the poll tax in state elections as well.

In all of his efforts the President had the unwitting support of the
segregationists, who treated the nation to another sordid racial
spectacular. In February 1965 Alabama police jailed Martin Luther
King, Jr., and some 2,000 members of his voting rights drive, and a
generally outraged nation watched King's later clash with the police
over a voting rights march. This time he and his followers were
stopped at a bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers using tear
gas and clubs. The incident climaxed months of violence that saw the
murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi; the
harassment of the Mississippi Summer Project, a voting registration
campaign sponsored by several leading civil rights organizations; and
ended in the assassination of a white Unitarian minister, James (p. 589)
Reeb, of Washington, D.C., one of the hundreds of clergymen, students,
and other Americans who had joined in the King demonstrations.
Addressing a joint session of Congress on the voting rights bill, the
President alluded to the Selma incident, declaring: "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."[23-28]

[Footnote 23-28: Lyndon B. Johnson, "Speech Before
Joint Session of Congress," 15 Mar 65, _Public
Papers of the Presidents: Johnson, 1965_, I:284.]

[Illustration: MEDICAL EXAMINATION. _Navy doctor on duty, Yokosuka,
Japan._]

The President's bill passed easily with bipartisan suppor