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What did the Act of 1965 do?: A Summary of Landmark Legislation

In the mid-1960s, a quarter of a million new Black voters were registered by the end of 1965 alone, a direct result of one of the era's most significant federal statutes. To understand what did the Act of 1965 do, one must consider that several landmark acts were signed into law that year as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society program. The most significant acts addressed voting rights, immigration, and higher education, fundamentally reshaping American society and legal protections for decades.