National Archives Launches Voting Rights Records Portal
By Victoria Macchi | National Archives News
President Lyndon B. Johnson Signs the Voting Rights Act as Martin Luther King Jr. and Other Civil Rights Leaders Look on, President's Room, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, November 3, 2020—A new resource on Archives.gov highlights National Archives records related to voting rights and the African American vote. The portal, which launched last week, allows users to more easily access the documents that trace the country’s voting history, with a focus on several searchable sections: Laws and Court Cases, Organizations, People and Icons, Freedom Summer, and Selma Marches.
“During this important election cycle, the creation of the Voting Rights Portal was timely,” said Tina Ligon, the supervisory archivist who heads the team that worked on the project. “Work on this portal allowed staff the opportunity to learn more about this topic, including the role that the federal government played in the voting rights struggle.”
Team member Robert Nowatzki, an archives technician, said the tool facilitates the process for researchers and the broader public to locate the records within the agency’s millions of digitized pages.
“The National Archives’ new voting rights portal provides access to documents like the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment that moved our nation closer to its democratic ideals,” Nowatzki said.
Visit the Voting Rights Portal: https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/vote.
Read more about the project, which National Archives employees finished during full-time telework related to the COVID-19 health emergency, on the Rediscovering Black History blog.