'Our duty must be clear'.

• Position: PAIRING A PRIMARY & A SECONDARY SOURCE - Excerpt

On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers attacked marchers who set out from Selma to Montgomery to demand equal voting rights for African-Americans. The event, which became known as Bloody Sunday, captured the nation's attention. Eight days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed Congress to propose the Voting Rights Act. Below is an excerpt from that historic speech. Read it along with the Upfront article about the events in Selma. Then answer the questions below.

Address by President Lyndon B. Johnson, March 15, 1965

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause. At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama....

Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument: Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.

Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country, men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes....

Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books-- and I have helped to put three of them there--can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it.

In such a case, our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath.

Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote....

To those who seek to...