The next year Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, authorizing the federal government to oversee voter registration and other political practices and enforce rights in states with a history of under-representation of minority voters. Work began to register African Americans across the South, and they began to be elected to office again after decades of exclusion. By this time, nearly 6.5 million African Americans had left the South in the Great Migration to escape its oppression and seek work opportunities in the North, Midwest and West, changing the demographics of numerous cities and regions.