African-Americans won the guaranteed right to vote on Aug. 6, 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

The bill banned restrictions on African-Americans that were designed to deny Blacks their right to vote in federal, state and local elections.

At the polls, often potential voters would be “told by election officials that they gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that the officials were late or absent, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or had filled out an application incorrectly," according to the History Channel.

Decades after the signing of the Act, controversy still surrounds voting rights as more and more states are imposing voter identification laws which have been called an act of minority voter suppression.

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(Photo: Cecil Stoughton/ White House Press Office)