In the weeks following passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a joyful calm, mixed with a great celebratory jubilee that included parades, barbecues, and church prayer meetings, characterized the principal response of inner-city African-Americans to the new law.

The statement is false.

Explanation:

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a U. S. federal law designed to ensure the equal participation of minorities, especially African Americans, in US elections.

Specifically, it abolished discriminatory illiteracy tests for potential voters, banned Gerrymandering if it discriminated against minorities, centralized federal voter registration in areas where less than 50% of the population were registered voters, and gave the U. S. Department of Justice various control over the Electoral law in areas where African Americans make up more than five percent of the population.

The debates surrounding the Voting Rights Act coincide with the culmination of the civil rights movement and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. Martin Luther King, the then leading African-American civil rights activist, already called for such a law at a meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson in December 1964. The president was positive about the project, but King said that such a law could not be implemented politically so shortly after the Civil Rights Act to end segregation. Johnson, who was recently re-elected with an overwhelming majority, initially wanted to focus on other areas such as poverty reduction and health care in his Great Society social reform reform project. After the events in Selma, however, he changed his attitude and assured King that he wanted to enforce the electoral law as soon as possible.

The House of Representatives passed the law on August 3, 1965 and the Senate on August 4. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it on August 6 at a ceremony at the Capitol, which was attended by numerous African-American civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King.