California archives exhibit marks 60 years since Voting Rights Act was signed

After voting rights protesters were beaten in Selma, Alabama, on what would become known as Bloody Sunday, California Assemblyman John Burton wanted the Legislature to weigh in from 2,000 miles away.

Burton, who later served as state Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, proposed a resolution in March 1965 calling for U.S. marshals to go to Alabama and “protect the Negro citizens of that state and other civil rights demonstrators in their peaceful attempts to secure the right to vote.”

The typewritten proposal is among the documents featured in a new exhibit that opened Wednesday in the California State Archives building downtown to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The exhibit, titled “The Journey of Democracy,” includes display cases and framed photos in the entrance to the archives’ research room. The snapshots span the century from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, said Sebastian Nelson, an archivist who helped assemble the exhibit.

“When we think about the civil rights era and what was happening in the Deep South, we don’t always think about what was happening in California — what was happening, you know, across the street in the state Legislature,” Nelson said, referring to Burton’s resolution.

The exhibit also features six photographs of the ceremony in which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965.

The displays will be up for at least a year and accessible to the public for free from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, Nelson said.

The Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees the state archives, is hosting an event about the Voting Rights Act on the afternoon of Aug. 25, said Jim Patrick, an agency spokesperson. A panel at the event will include former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, he said. Members of the public must register in advance to attend.

The exhibit on the fourth floor of the California State Archives building, also home to the California Museum, does not overlook unflattering moments in California’s history with voting rights.

Visitors to the exhibit can see an 1870 resolution introduced by State Sen. William Gwin Jr. to oppose the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting rights. Gwin’s father was a slaveowner and one of California’s first U.S. senators, according to the exhibit.

The 15th Amendment was ratified that year without California’s support. The state symbolically ratified it in 1962.

“A lot of our records can be used to look at the real history of California, rather than the picture postcard,” Nelson said.