About.com:

VOTING RIGHTS ACT 40th ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

Date
August 4, 2005 - February 28, 2006

In recognition of the upcoming 40th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site opens an original exhibit chronicling the journey of African Americans toward guaranteed enfranchisement.

“Of Ballots Uncast: The African-American Struggle for the Right to Vote,” on display August 4, 2005 through March 7, 2006, calls attention to the obstacles African Americans faced while fighting to secure voting rights assurances as U.S. citizens. These legal and extralegal hindrances; such as poll taxes, gerrymandering, lynching and blatant intimidation; created hostile environments that prevented African Americans from exercising the constitutional right to vote afforded them through the 15th Amendment ratified in 1870. The nearly 100-year-long campaign would yield a succession of momentous events significant to American history, culminating with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.

“Of Ballots Uncast” is sponsored by the African American Experience Fund/National Park Foundation and the National Archives and Records Administration.

The exhibition features:

-An interactive recreation of the “Jelly Bean Test,” which, according to legend, required that hopeful African-American voters correctly guess the number of jelly beans in a jar;

-A replica of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the infamous “Blood Sunday” attack ordered by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace against peaceful marchers attempting the infamous trek from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965; -A transcript of John Lewis’ federal court testimony regarding the brutal “Bloody Sunday” attack against marchers, including Lewis who would years later be elected as a U.S. Congressman;

-President Johnson’s reading copy with handwritten changes of his speech “Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise,” appealing for support for the Voting Rights Act; and

-An ink pen used by President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the historic Voting Rights Act into law.

Admission is free to the exhibition located at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, Visitor Center, 450 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta. Exhibit hours are 9a-6p daily through August 4-15; and 9a-5p daily August 15, 2005—March 7, 2006 except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Days. For more information, call (404) 331-5190 or visit www.nps.gov/malu.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, operated by the National Park Service, preserves and interprets the places in Atlanta where civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was born, lived, worked, worshiped and is buried.