The Right to Choose

One of the most important figures of the 70s feminist movement may be unrecognizable by her real name.  More commonly known as “Jane Roe,” Norma McCorvey shook up the social climate of the 70s when she agreed to be a plaintiff in the landmark case Roe v. Wade.  In 1972, McCorvey filed a lawsuit claiming that Texas law criminalizing most abortions violated her constitutional rights. Setting a foundation for abortion mandates in the 30 years since the case was settled in 1973, Roe v. Wade not only argued for a woman’s right to privacy in regards to abortion, but also established a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy until the period of viability (the period when a fetus is potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, usually around 24-27 weeks).  

After having given her first two children up for adoption, McCorvey, 21, was pregnant with her third when she decided she wanted to have an abortion rather than part with another of her children.  McCorvey, according to an interview with independent news network wnd.com, was then swept up into a whirlwind of litigations after she was put into contact with two pro-abortion lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who were looking for a pregnant mother to help them plead their case.

One of the most contentious decisions made by the court, Roe v. Wade sparked a national debate that continues today, about issues including whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in deciding the legality of abortion, and what the role religious/moral views should take in the political sphere. The case restructured national politics, dividing the country along pro-life and pro-choice lines, and formed grassroots movements on both sides.

In the decades since the case was settled, McCorvey has completely reversed her stance on abortion and joined the pro-life movement.  Although her opinion in the 70s was enough to dictate how much control any American woman could have over her body, her voice is now just one among a sea of activists in the tumultuous debates over women’s rights and abortion.

During this most recent election cycle, abortion joined topics like the economy and unemployment as one of the weightiest issues that affected voters’ choices.  As recently as October 2012, polls of female voters in swing states—a coveted demographic for both candidates—indicated that though women were equally concerned as men about broad-reaching issues like the economy and unemployment, they considered abortion the most important issue for women, by a wide margin.

A mid-2011 Gallup poll acted as a Litmus test for people’s reactions to various abortion restrictions, many that have become major issues closer to the election cycle. Of the abortion restrictions tested in the poll, informing women of certain risks of an abortion in advance was the most widely favored, at 87%. Seven out of ten Americans favored establishing a full-day waiting period for women seeking abortions, while nearly two-thirds favored making the specific procedure known as "partial birth abortion" illegal.

On the other hand, more extreme measures failed to receive broad public support. Almost 60% of people opposed eliminating funds to organizations who offer abortion services, which was particularly pertinent after Presidential candidate Mitt Romney proposed eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood and overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Romney campaign asserted its anti-abortion stance, though Romney also said he would be willing to compromise in circumstances of rape, incest, or danger to the mother.  Once early voting began, pro-choice activists became even more vocal on the dangers they foresee for women if Romney was elected. 

A recent New York Times editorial suggested that overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling would be relatively easy if a Republican won the presidency. Four of the justices are now over 70, and if one of them retired and was replaced by a more socially conservative justice, pro-choice options could be phased out completely.  Then, the article suggests, the nation’s abortion policy would revert to the pre-Roe v. Wade era, when abortion was illegal in many states. Some states that already held certain bans on abortion could then extend their rights and completely prohibit abortions.

The 2011 poll also indicates a divide on whether healthcare providers and pharmacists should be allowed to opt out of providing services/drugs that could result in an abortion. 46% of people polled said they would favor giving healthcare providers a choice, in contrast with 51% who said that health care providers should provide those services no matter what.  

This issue came to a head with Obama’s Affordable Care Act, whose “preventive services” mandate maintains that religious institutions must offer affordable healthcare services for their employees, even if these services cover reproductive rights—including birth control, abortion, and sterilization—that a religious organization opposes. The Affordable Care Act waged a war between the government and bishops/clergymen arguing that their religious freedom under the first amendment was under attack. The Catholic Church often formed the hub of debates on reigning social issues such as reproductive rights under the healthcare act and gay marriage.

Recently, pro-life supporters have formed a new argument to pledge to the Supreme Court.  Supporters have pushed a personhood clause, which would attribute “legal personhood” to a fetus, equating the life of a fetus to the life of any other child/person.  If the Supreme Court accepted this new definition of personhood, the ruling would affect any other abortion legislation, perhaps defining abortion as an act of manslaughter.

Do you think Norma McCorvey had any idea that the abortion debate would still be so highly debated more than thirty years after her case was filed?

Post by Lori Keong, student worker/blogger, Russell Library

1957 Civil Rights Act

It was 55 years ago today that Senator Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat from South Carolina, launched the longest filibuster in American history in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Taking the Senate floor at 8:54 PM on August 28 armed with throat lozenges and malted milk balls, Thurmond would continue speaking, with only brief interruptions for questions from other Senators, until 9:12 PM the next night – a filibuster lasting 24 hours and 18 minutes. This surpassed by almost two hours the previous record set by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse four years prior. During his daylong near-monologue, Thurmond read the election laws of all 48 states, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, George Washington’s Farewell Address, and his mother’s biscuit recipe.

The Act Thurmond opposed so vehemently was, in the canon of federal civil rights legislation, a minor entry. Though aimed at ensuring suffrage for African-Americans in the South, it did not seek to ban racially discriminatory practices such as the poll tax and dubious “literacy tests” administered in Southern states. The 1957 Civil Rights Act did, however, establish a Civil Rights Division within the U.S. Department of Justice to protect the rights of would-be black voters. Today that division is still known for enforcing federal voting rights, anti-discrimination, and hate crimes laws in federal court. John Doar, a Civil Rights Division lawyer in the 1960s and Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division during the Johnson administration, described the division’s early activities and test cases in a 1997 article for the Florida State University Law Review.

The 1957 Civil Rights Act was not nearly the watershed moment for civil rights its 1964 successor – which banned both race and gender discrimination in employment and service – or the 1965 Voting Rights Act would prove to be. Indeed, between 1957 and 1960 black voter registration in the South inched up just three percent, a tiny increase compared to the strides made after 1965. Still, it was the first federal civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, after which racial laws in the South had taken something of a backward lurch for several generations, and as such, Thurmond spoke for a number of Southern Senators in opposing the Act’s passage. Yet many of his fellow Southerners were angered by Thurmond’s filibuster; they had informally agreed not to filibuster the bill but to water it down instead. Time reported on September 9 that Herman Talmadge, the junior Democratic Senator from Georgia and an ardent segregationist himself, had derided Thurmond’s effort as a “grandstand of longwinded speeches” which could “in the long run wreak unspeakable havoc upon my people.” Even Thurmond’s staffers had not been informed of his plan.

The filibuster, though long, failed to derail a deeply compromised Civil Rights Act. The Senate approved the final bill by a 62-15 vote just hours after Thurmond yielded the floor, and it would pass the House by a 270-97 margin before reaching President Eisenhower’s desk for enactment into law. The Act would be strengthened in 1960 and replaced by further-reaching civil rights legislation over the next decade. Thurmond, however, would continue a long and storied career in the Senate. He became a Republican in September 1964, largely in reaction to the beefed-up Civil Rights Act of that year championed by President Johnson, and served in the Senate until January 3, 2003. Thurmond died later that year, aged 100 and after some 48 years in office. His record for Senate service would be surpassed by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia in 2006, but his filibuster record stands unchallenged, now a relic of an era in which such procedures were far more commonplace than they are today.

The Right to Vote

90 years ago today, on February 27, 1922 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Leser v. Garnett, upholding as valid the 19th Amendment which granted women the right to vote.

The impetus for the case began on October 12, when Cecilia Streett Waters and Mary D. Randolph became Maryland’s first registered female voters. Though in accord with the newly amended federal constitution, they were violating the state constitution which limited the franchise to men. Oscar Leser, among others, sued the state board of registry to have the women’s registrations invalidated. Upon petitioning to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs challenged the 19th Amendment using three claims.

(1) Congress’s power to amend the Constitution did not allow it to expand the franchise so drastically as to entirely subvert state autonomy in election procedures.

(2) A state whose own constitution limits the vote to men cannot legally ratify a contrary amendment to the federal constitution (as Pennsylvania and West Virginia had done).

(3) Tennessee and West Virginia’s ratifying resolutions were inoperative due to procedural missteps.

In a succinct opinion on behalf of a unanimous court, Justice Louis Brandeis rejected all three contentions. With regard to the first, the Court recognized that the 19th Amendment’s language had clearly paralleled that of the 15th (guaranteeing the right vote would not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) and thus was permissible. For the second claim, Brandeis noted that states were employing a “federal function” in ratifying federal constitutional amendments and that consistency with state law was not required. On the last claim, the Court stepped back from what it saw as a matter for state officials to decide, while noting that Connecticut and Vermont’s subsequent ratifications, in September 1920 and February 1921 respectively, would render the problem of Tennessee and West Virginia moot anyway. With these three declarations, the Court endorsed the legitimacy of the 19th Amendment and of women’s suffrage.

Since Leser v. Garnett, all remaining states have ratified the 19th Amendment, from Delaware in 1923 to Mississippi in 1984. Later in 1922, Georgia would send to Washington the nation’s first female U.S. Senator, a one-day Democratic appointee named Rebecca Felton. The first elected female Senator, Hattie Caraway of Arkansas, would not arrive for another decade. There are currently 89 women in Congress, and women now make up a larger share of the electorate (roughly 52-53%) than men.

Packing the Court

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic relief programs revolutionized the relationship of private markets to the state and dramatically expanded the scope of services American citizens would come to expect from their federal government. In its own time, the New Deal proved extraordinarily controversial. Though occurring amid a recession of unparalleled duration and severity, such direct governmental intervention in the American economy seemed to many unusual in the wake of 1920s conservatism. In this vein, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down several major New Deal initiatives—both by the federal and state governments—between 1934 and 1936 as unconstitutional expansions of government power. While certain measures, like a federal law restricting gold ownership and the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, passed Supreme Court scrutiny, a litany of others (including the National Industrial Recovery Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, and New York’s minimum wage law) were struck down.

By late 1936, popular media divided the Court into two warring factions. The conservative “Four Horsemen” —Justices Pierce Butler, James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter— who consistently opposed New Deal relief efforts, and the liberal “Three Musketeers” —Justices Louis Brandeis, Harlan Stone, and Benjamin Cardozo— who were more amenable to Roosevelt’s programs. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Owen Roberts were considered the Court’s “swing votes,” though the former more often allied with the Musketeers and the latter with the Horsemen. After Roosevelt’s smashing reelection mandate on November 3rd over Kansas Governor Alf Landon, die-hard New Dealers and White House aides began planning for an assertive push against Supreme Court obstruction in the President’s second term.

75 years ago yesterday, February 5, 1937 the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill was proposed in Congress. Modeled closely on a proposal Justice McReynolds had offered in 1914 as Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, the bill would permit the President to expand the Supreme Court’s membership from nine to 15. He could appoint a new Justice for each sitting Justice over age 70. At the time, all Four Horsemen as well as Brandeis and Hughes, fit the bill – which meant six new appointments. Derided by opponents as Roosevelt’s “court packing plan,” the bill received an early boost from Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson, an Arkansas Democrat and key Roosevelt ally. Meanwhile Vice President John Nance Garner led the effort for House passage. Roosevelt explained and endorsed the bill in his March 9, 1937 Fireside Chat, and as far as pundits were concerned, the fight was on.

What Happened Next?
A series of events through the spring and summer derailed Roosevelt’s plan, though some in ways that helped his greater judicial agenda. On March 29, the Court issued a 5-4 opinion in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish that upheld Washington state’s minimum wage law. Justice Roberts had provided the liberal side a crucial fifth vote, a stark reversal from his stance on New York’s law the previous year; his jurisprudential change of heart would be known as “the switch in time that saved nine.” With Roberts beginning to side more reliably with Hughes and the Musketeers during the Court’s decisions near the end of that term, court packing no longer seemed necessary even to many Democrats. Then on May 18, Justice Van Devanter announced his retirement at age 78, granting Roosevelt the immediate opportunity to appoint a New Deal-friendly replacement and robbing his court packing plan of any perceived urgency. The same day, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill by a 10-8 vote, issuing a scathing report that called it “a needless, futile and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle.” The final blow to court packing came on July 14, when Senate Majority Leader Robinson died suddenly at age 64. Garner informed the President that “You are beat. You haven’t got the votes.” The White House abandoned the legislation in late July and prepared for confirmation of Roosevelt’s new Supreme Court nominee, Hugo Black.

The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist characterizes the failure of Roosevelt’s court packing plan as a lost battle en route to a victorious war for the administration. Though taking on the Supreme Court shattered the President’s post-election political capital and divided the New Deal coalition heading into a sharp 1937-1938 recession, Roosevelt would eventually appoint eight Justices and cement a lasting liberal majority on the Court. Two Roosevelt appointees, Justice Black and Justice William Douglas, would serve into the 1970s, and the Court remained accordingly liberal-minded until about that time. More importantly, legislative interventions such as minimum wages, workplace regulations, and welfare expenditures that faced uphill constitutional battles in the 1930s have become staples of federal power, facing little credible opposition since 1937, though some vocal and popular political elements today espouse reversing these and other New Deal legacies.

Medicare Proposed

50 years ago today, on January 11, 1962, President John F. Kennedy formally endorsed the passage of Medicare, the government-funded health care program for seniors – which today enrolls approximately 48 million Americans. At the time of Kennedy’s State of the Union address, half of Americans aged 65 or older lacked health coverage, and nearly 30% lived below the federal poverty level. “Social security has long helped to meet the hardships of retirement, death and disability,” Kennedy noted. “I now urge that its coverage be extended without further delay to provide health insurance for the elderly.”

Health care has been a dominant issue in American politics for generations. Theodore Roosevelt supported including health care reform in the Progressive Party’s national platform in 1912. Franklin Roosevelt considered the exclusion of a national health program from the Social Security Act of 1935 a questionable concession. After the introduction of Congress’s first-ever national health bill, the Wagner National Health Act, in 1939, Roosevelt resolved to push for such a reform in his third term, though World War II would delay that effort until his Economic Bill of Rights campaign went underway in 1944.

But, it was Harry Truman who would most concertedly pursue universal health care. Truman endorsed the Wagner-Murray-Dingell Act, a medical plan covering doctors, nurses, laboratories, and dental care for all Americans not already covered by comparable insurance. Hopes for passage were dashed when Republicans won Congress in 1946, and as the policy battleground shifted from the hospital to the workplace during debates on the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, Truman’s push lost focus. Although he once again backed national health care in his 1949 State of the Union, Truman remarked years later that:

I have had some bitter disappointments as President, but the one that has troubled me most, in a personal way, has been the failure to defeat the organized opposition to a National compulsory health insurance program. But this opposition has only delayed and cannot stop the adoption of an indispensable Federal health insurance plan.

The greatest obstacle to government health care programs had always been the American Medical Association, which opposed all varieties of national health care proposed during the 1930s-50s. When Kennedy’s White House sought a piecemeal approach in promoting Medicare – a program intended only to aid the age group at the time likeliest to lack health insurance – it once again collided with vociferous AMA opposition. In May 1962, the Palm Beach Post reported that Kennedy viewed the argument as one between the AMA and “the people,” though the President noted confidently that “I think more and more doctors are supporting it.” At the time, Kennedy told reporters he was open to a televised debate with former President Eisenhower on Medicare. Two months later, Medicare failed in a 52-48 Senate vote, an outcome the St. Petersburg Times called Kennedy’s “biggest legislative defeat” to date.

Ultimately, Medicare would pass (with Medicaid for the indigent) as part of the Social Security Act of 1965. After resounding Democratic victories in the 1964 election, President Johnson redoubled his Medicare efforts; the Act passed 307-116 in the House and 70-24 in the Senate. Johnson presented the nation’s first Medicare card to Truman, in a nod to the former President’s efforts to reform health care.

46 years into its existence and 50 after a President endorsed its creation, Medicare faces new fiscal challenges and a daunting future of rising health costs and an expanding elderly population. President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, seeks to vastly expand health coverage by 2014 via subsidies, insurance exchanges, and more widely available Medicaid plans. But today, millions of seniors and even working-age adults fear that Medicare will be unable to pay their future health costs. It is perhaps of historical interest in this era of fiscal uncertainty to recall the spirit in which Medicare came to be, and the legacy its founders sought to establish.

Where is Medicare in the Russell Library's Collections?

The quick answer seems to be everywhere. Discussions over various proposals for medicare (or other such health insurance programs) occur in collections documenting the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s -- Richard B. Russell, Jr., Herman Talmadge, Williamson Stuckey, John Flynt, Robert Stephens, Mack Mattingly and J. Roy Rowland just to name a few.

One of my favorite parts of the Talmadge collection to search through is the Flexys series -- which is largely constituent mail divided by topic, collected from 1965 through 1980. These letters let researchers tap into what the public in Georgia was thinking about major events during this period -- and Medicare was on their minds, just take a look and see.

As always, if you have any questions about how to navigate our collections just shoot us an email at russlib@uga.edu or call us at (706) 542-5788.

November 17, 1961: The Albany Movement

Fifty years ago today, civil rights activists in Albany, Georgia, aided by national groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and NAACP, formed a coalition known as the Albany Movement to desegregate the city of about 50,000 people. Though voter registration drives and civil rights petitions had spread throughout Albany since at least the 1940s, the arrival of national SNCC voter registration activists Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, and Charles Jones began a new phase in local civil rights activity. With local osteopath William G. Anderson, the Albany Movement’s elected president, these youths initiated a drive to fully and immediately desegregate Albany.

Below: This Clifford Baldowski cartoon, published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1958, depicts Governor Marvin Griffin chasing Martin Luther King in a wheel labeled "Albany Movement" along slats labeled "Incident After Incident--". A man holding a book titled "1955-1958 Graftin' Years" looks on.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. joined the movement on December 15th, nearly a month into its existence, after enduring criticism from groups like the SNCC that he had maintained “a safe distance” from previous on-the-ground activism, including the previous summer’s Freedom Rides. Though he had only planned to stay for a short time, King and scores of other activists were jailed the next day for their peaceful demonstrations at bus stations, libraries, and lunch counters. King refused bail until the city conceded to key desegregation measures. Albany’s police chief, Laurie Pritchett, had carefully studied King’s leadership style and past actions taken by the Civil Rights Movement and hoped to subvert their activities. He ordered police officers to refrain from violence and disperse prisoners among a number of rural jails in southwest Georgia to avoid the national publicity typically connected to urban mass arrests. The Birmingham Post-Herald lauded Pritchett for his approach and stated that “the manner in which Albany’s chief of police has enforced the law and maintained order has won the admiration of … thousands.”

Convinced the city had accepted the movement’s demands, King paid bail and left Albany. Some months later, it became clear that Albany’s white leadership had no intention of repealing its Jim Crow ordinances, and King and fellow Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) officer Ralph Abernathy returned to the city in July 1962 for sentencing related to the December 1961 charge. They were offered a choice: further jail time or a $178 fine. Both opted for incarceration, but an anonymous white attorney paid the men’s fines, prompting their forcible release. King and the SCLC left Albany in August, convinced the movement had failed. Local activists like Sherrod felt differently, however. Black voter registration efforts in Albany proved so successful that an African-American businessman, Thomas Chatmon, forced a runoff election for city council that autumn, and the city repealed all segregation ordinances the following spring. Sherrod would go on to serve on the city council himself from 1976 to 1990, and Reagon made a name for himself in the 1970s as an antiwar and environmental activist.

For King, the Albany Movement’s purported failure reaped dividends in Birmingham, where he and the SCLC would pursue methods similar to those employed in Albany, garnering more national attention than any previous chapter in the civil rights movement had attained.

Thanks to the Civil Rights Digital Library for many of the links provided in this post, especially the WSB newsfilm clips -- amazing to watch. And for one more treat, here is a link to a program hosted on campus called "Beyond the Movement" -- with participants from the Albany Movement reflecting on their experiences:

http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/635/656056941.mov

Iran-Contra

Yesterday marked the 25th anniversary of the news media’s discovery of the Iran-Contra affair, first exposed by the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa on November 3, 1986. The arms-for-hostages scandal nearly crippled the Reagan administration and catalyzed what may have been the greatest drop in a President’s approval rating in polling history. Over the course of that November, Reagan’s approval rating in the New York Times/CBS poll fell from 67 percent to 46 percent.

The affair began on August 20, 1985 with the first sale by Pentagon officials of TOW anti-tank missiles to the government of Iran. The sale violated a U.S. arms embargo against Iran, in place since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent taking of American hostages in Tehran. The sale’s purported intent was to secure the release of six American hostages being held by the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah, a group backed by the Iranian Armed Guard. Another layer of complexity came when Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council devised a plan to divert proceeds from the weapons sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, a paramilitary group seeking to depose the democratically elected (but Soviet-allied) Sandinistas from power. Further sales occurred between September 1985 and October 1986, with at least 2,500 TOW missiles and several hundred Hawk anti-aircraft missile spare parts shipped to Iran in exchange for hostages released. Directly funding Contras with intent to overthrow Nicaragua’s government ran afoul of federal law as the 1982 Boland Amendment explicitly banned such support.

The executive branch was aware of the affair’s questionable legal status. Notes taken by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger on December 7, 1985 recorded that Reagan said “he could answer charges of illegality but he couldn’t answer charge [sic] that ‘big strong Reagan passed up a chance to free hostages.’” Wherever possible, the U.S. sought to organize sales to Iran through foreign entities. Once the Ash-Shiraa story made international news, North and Hall spent the remainder of November shredding potentially incriminating documents. The White House fired both on November 25, denying that the Iran-Contra arrangement had been an arms-for-hostages deal. Reagan himself would admit that “mistakes were made”in a televised address on March 4, 1987. The scandal dissipated during the course of 1987, even as Nicaragua sued the U.S. in the International Court of Justice.North was convicted in 1989 of three felony counts, while National Security Advisor John Poindexter was convicted of four 1990; both convictions were overturned on appeal. The “Teflon President,” recovered his popularity. Reagan left office in January 1989 with a 64 percent approval rating.

Return to Vietnam

On March 16, 1968 U.S. Army forces invaded a village in South Vietnam, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians in an event known as the My Lai Massacre. Twenty-six soldiers were later charged with criminal offenses for their roles in the murders, but only Lt. William Calley was convicted and sentenced to life in prison forty years ago today - on March 29, 1971.

Many Americans were outraged over the conviction, arguing that Calley was a scapegoat for the Army’s continued failures in Vietnam. Constituent letters flooded the offices of politicians and five state legislatures requested clemency for the soldier. Calley’s sentence was ultimately reduced to ten years. He served less than four years under house arrest in his quarters at Fort Benning before winning an appeal for his release in 1974.

In the column above Georgia Congressman William “Bill” Stuckey expressed his sentiments on the original sentencing of Lt. William Calley. Stuckey uses this incident to frame his growing dislike for ongoing operations in Vietnam. He writes, “If the government is not going to support our fighting men, then I can no longer justify drafting them into an impossible situation.”

Right: This Clifford Baldowski cartoon depicts prisoners locked behind bars in "murderers' row" looking on as William L. Calley, Jr., is walking out of the prison doors. Selected from The Clifford Baldowski Editorial Cartoon Collection, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies.

Post by Jan Levinson, Outreach Archivist, Russell Library

The Right to Vote

Forty years ago today -- on March 10, 1971-- the U.S. Senate approved the 26th amendment to the Constitution, which proposed lowering the voting age to 18. The House of Representatives acted likewise, and on June 30, 1971 the amendment received ratification by the 38 required states, and became law.

The Congress had faced mounting pressure to pass the measure as the war in Vietnam raged on. “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” was a frequent saying of proponents of the amendment who felt it was unjust to draft young men to fight in a war when they lacked the means to advocate for an end to the war or their conscripted service in it.

The roots of the movement originated in 1940. President Franklin Roosevelt instituted a national conscription, requiring that all men between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five register for one year’s military service – to be selected by a national lottery. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the required term of service for those conscripted was extended and the age range was expanded to men ages eighteen to sixty-four.

Post by Jan Levinson, Outreach Archivist, Russell Library