The Second, Selective Reconstruction: Administrative Procedures and the Justice Department's Enforcement of the Voting Rights Act

The appointment of federal examiners under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a novel administrative authority that Congress granted to the Justice Department to enforce voter registration of black southerners, was largely limited to jurisdictions in which the department had already pursued federal litigation under the previous Civil Rights Acts. Out of procedural concerns, the attorneys of the Department's Civil Rights Division became increasingly path-dependent in their enforcement activities as they concentrated bureaucratic resources in three of the volatile southern states. They left the remainder of the south that experienced comparable incidents of authoritarian repression and violence with little to no federal intervention. These findings are presented with geospatial illustrations to reveal the limitations in the territorial reach of federal law enforcement. I argue that the circumspection was caused by the department's continued reliance on litigation as a benchmark for establishing the existence of racial discrimination. Both the signed complaints from the local black citizens and the President's political deference to the southern Democrats in Congress had little influence on the department's decisions for appointing examiners.