Dec 24, 2009

Coming of Age in Mississippi | Compare and Contrast

1950s: Before 1965, fewer than six percent of African Americans in Mississippi are registered to vote.
1960s: After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thousands of southern African Americans register to vote. By 1968, some fifty-nine percent of eligible African-American voters in Mississippi are registered.

Today: In the late 1990s, of the total 1,975,000 of Mississippi voters, 670,000 are African American. Overall in the United States, 23.5 million African Americans are registered to vote, but only 63.5...