FIGURE 26.1 Black Voter Registration in the South, 1947–1976 After World War II, the percentage of black adults registered to vote in the South slowly but steadily increased, largely as a result of grassroots voting drives. Despite the Kennedy administration’s support for voter registration drives, a majority of southern blacks remained prohibited from voting in 1964. The passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act removed barriers such as literacy tests and poll taxes, strengthened the federal government’s enforcement powers, and enabled more than 60 percent of southern blacks to vote by the late 1960s. Source: Data from David Garrow, Protest at Selma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), and U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1976.