was the voting rights act of 1965 national
Introduction. The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States.n 1965, at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there were six African-American members of the U.S. House of Representativesandno blacks in the U.S. Senate.