Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act at the Capitol Rotunda, with Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and congressional leaders present. Section 5 of the Act required nine Southern states — including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia — to obtain advance approval from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court before changing any voting law or procedure. Within three years, Black voter registration in the covered states had roughly doubled, and federal examiners registered more than 300,000 new voters in the first year alone.