August 6

1965—President Lyndon Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act which was designed to guarantee the right of African-Americans to vote. The Act ended a wide range of discriminatory voting practices in the South including literacy tests. The Act was probably the most significant piece of civil rights legislation ever passed. It was renewed for another 25 years in July of 2006. It was weakened a bit by a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision but remains in effect.

PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON

JACKSON, Mich. (AP)—Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick walked out of prison early Tuesday offering big smiles and a bear hug for a relative there to greet him. He’s free on parole but facing a federal corruption trial that could send him back behind bars.

Kilpatrick, 41, left the Southern Michigan Prison facility in Jackson after serving more than a year for violating probation in a 2008 criminal case.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP)—Their lives never intersected, but they were both daughters of Newark: two successful young women nearly the same age, both with good jobs and dedicated to improving their communities. Now, both are scheduled to be buried this week.

One grew up in the city's vibrant Portuguese immigrant enclave, fulfilling a dream to work in law enforcement. The other, an award-winning young musician, was raised in and around Newark before following her family South to become a grade-school teacher in Charlottesville, Va.

DAWN REDDICK and DEBORA FERREIRA

by Jesse Washington

(AP)—Black activists Cornel West and Tavis Smiley are planning a 15-city “Poverty Tour” to bring attention to the needy and to what they say are the failings of President Barack Obama.

West, a Princeton University professor, and Smiley, host of a PBS talk show, expect to begin the bus trip Aug. 5 at a Native American reservation in Wisconsin. With visits to soup kitchens, housing projects, farms, families and low-wage workers, they say they hope to create momentum for large-scale job creation programs and put poverty on the 2012 election agenda.

HITTING THE ROAD—In this Feb. 26, 2005 photo, Princeton University professor Dr. Cornel West, right, talks to television and radio personality Tavis Smiley during the State of Black Union 2005 conference at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)

Smiley said that as budgets are cut in Washington, “poor people are being rendered invisible.” Obama and Congress must pay more attention, he said.

“It’s not just about the president,” Smiley said. “Having said this, it would be nice to hear the president say the word ‘poor.’ To say the word ‘poverty.’ We get conversations about the middle class. Well, the new poor are the former middle class. But we can’t get this president or any leaders to say the words ‘poor’ or ‘poverty,’ much less do anything about it.”