Voting Rights Act of 1965
In the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement increased pressure on the federal government to protect the voting rights of racial minorities. In 1957, Congress passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This legislation authorized the Attorney General to sue for injunctive relief on behalf of persons whose Fifteenth Amendment rights were denied, created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice to enforce civil rights through litigation, and created the Commission on Civil Rights to investigate voting rights deprivations. Further protections were enacted in the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which allowed federal courts to appoint referees to conduct voter registration in jurisdictions that engaged in voting discrimination against racial minorities.
Abraham Akaka
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and each state has an unpaid appointed advisory board on the commission, with term limits on their service. Hawaii had been represented on the advisory board prior to its admission to statehood on August 21, 1959. When new board members were appointed in 1962, Akaka was appointed chairman, at which point he became active on a national level, joining the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 1963 march on Washington, D.C. In 1965, Akaka provided flower leis worn by King and his advisors on the third Selma Civil Rights March.