Whereas, from 1954–1968, African-Americans in the South suffered from the oppressive effects of Jim Crow laws designed to prevent political, economic, and social mobility; Whereas African-Americans were subject to violence, poll taxes, literacy tests, all White primaries, property ownership tests, grandfather clauses, voter roll purges, and the prevention of former prisoners from voting; Whereas in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect the rights of African-Americans and other traditionally disenfranchised groups to vote; Whereas in 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated section four of the Voting Rights Act, dismantling the pre-clearance provision in the law that protected voters in States that historically have suppressed the rights of minorities to vote; Whereas, since the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 have been vacated, many States have gerrymandered districts, disproportionately affecting minority voting power; Whereas these gerrymandered districts have been found to have a discriminatory impact on traditionally disenfranchised minorities through tactics that include cracking , diluting their voting power across many districts, and packing , concentrating minority voters’ power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts; Whereas the courts have found the congressional and, in some cases, State legislative district maps in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin to be gerrymandered districts that were created with the intent of interfering with the constitutional right to vote; Whereas the Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court decision calls on Congress to fix the Voting Rights Act formula of 1965; Whereas in 33 States some form of restrictive voting law has been instituted since 2013