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Map of New York state from 1813

Suppressing the Black Vote in 1811

As more Black men gained the right to vote in New York, the state began to change its laws to reduce their power or disenfranchise them completely.
by Livia Gershon, Sarah L. H. Gronningsater via JSTOR Daily on February 23, 2024
Demonstrators hold Confederate flags near the monument for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Va., after it was spray-painted with the phrase "Black Lives Matter."

Confederate Monuments Caused Voting Decline In Black Areas

As Confederate monuments were erected, people turned out to vote in lower numbers in predominantly Black areas.
by Alexander N. Taylor via Mississippi Free Press on August 9, 2023
Protest sign reading "We never left Jim Crow."

Voter Fraud Propagandists Are Recycling Jim Crow Rhetoric

The conservative plot to suppress the Black vote has relied on racist caricatures, then and now.
by Nick Tabor via The New Republic on February 4, 2022
Civil rights era photo of young people protesting for voting rights in between black and white photos of black people lined up to vote

American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread

Black civil-rights activists—and especially Black women—delivered on the promise of the Founding. Their victories are in peril.
by Vann R. Newkirk II via The Atlantic on February 11, 2021
Rudy Giuliani and a graphic that says "multiple pathways to victory."

Disenfranchisement: An American Tradition

Invoking the specter of voter fraud to undermine democratic participation is a tactic as old as the United States itself.
by Julilly Kohler-Hausmann via Dissent on January 10, 2021
Illustration of a black man laying on the ground while three men step on him, 1868.

Echoes of the Reconstruction Era: The Political Violence of 1868

The 1868 Election was the first one in which hundreds of thousands of African American men voted. It also began an unfortunate history of voter suppression.
by Patrick Young via Emerging Civil War on November 6, 2020
Photo of people protesting and demanding all votes are counted the day after Election Day at McPherson Square, near the White House.
partner

President Trump’s False Claims About Election Fraud Are Dangerous

Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the vote has a familiar ring. It evokes an egregious example of election fraud in the 1890s.
by Sid Bedingfield via Made By History on November 5, 2020
Women around a table of papers and forms, with a League of Women Voters banner on the wall.

What the First Women Voters Experienced When Registering for the 1920 Election

The process varied by state, with some making accommodations for the new voting bloc and others creating additional obstacles.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on July 30, 2020
Robert E. Lee Memorial covered in graffiti and projections and surrounded by protesters.

The Racism of Confederate Monuments Extends to Voter Suppression

GOP-led state legislatures have not only prevented voters from exercising their rights as citizens, they have usurped local control to remove monuments legally.
by Karen L. Cox via Karen L. Cox Blog on June 30, 2020
Illustration of a mob of white men burning down a building.

What a White-Supremacist Coup Looks Like

In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, the victory of racial prejudice over democratic principle and the rule of law was unnervingly complete.
by Caleb Crain via The New Yorker on April 20, 2020

Fighting to Vote

Voting rights are often associated with the Civil Rights Movement, but this fight extends throughout American history.
by Michael Tomasky via New York Review of Books on October 22, 2018
Woman gets help filling out voter registration form.
partner

Voter Fraud Isn’t a Problem in America. Low Turnout Is.

For centuries, voter fraud has been used as an excuse to restrict the vote.
by Allan J. Lichtman via Made By History on October 22, 2018
Newspaper cartoon of Ku Klux Klan

The Deadliest Massacre in Reconstruction-Era Louisiana Happened 150 Years Ago

In September 1868, Southern white Democrats hunted down around 200 African-Americans in an effort to suppress voter turnout.
by Lorraine Boissoneault via Smithsonian on September 28, 2018

Today’s Voter Suppression Tactics Have A 150 Year History

Rebels in the post-Civil War South perfected the art of excluding voters, but it was yankees in the North who developed the script.
by Gregory P. Downs via Talking Points Memo on July 26, 2018

I Tried to Help Black People Vote. Jeff Sessions Tried to Put Me in Jail

Jeff Sessions tried to jail an activist couple trying to ensure the black residents of Alabama the right to vote.
by Evelyn Turner via USA Today on February 7, 2017

How the 2000 Election in Florida Led to a New Wave of Voter Disenfranchisement

A botched voter purge prevented thousands from voting—and empowered a new generation of voting-rights critics.
by Ari Berman via The Nation on July 28, 2015
Annie Mae Edwards and her children—Helen, Barbara, Johnnie Ruth, and Gene, with an unidentified woman.

A Forgotten Eyewitness to Civil-Rights-Era Mississippi

As resistance to integration mounted, Florence Mars bought a camera and began to photograph many subjects, including the trial of the killers of Emmett Till.
by Paige Williams via The New Yorker on November 3, 2024
Recently freed African Americans receive rations.

The Origins of the Socialist Slur

Reconstruction-era opponents of racial equality popularized the charge that protecting civil rights would amount to the end of capitalism.
by Heather Cox Richardson via The Atlantic on September 26, 2023
Former President Donald Trump with his attorneys inside the courtroom during his arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Court on April 4, 2023.

A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan Acts

These 1870s laws to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, now being used against Trump.
by Joseph Kelly via The Conversation on August 4, 2023
Lithograph of African Americans gathering the dead and wounded from the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana, on April 13, 1873, originally published in Harper's Weekly.

The 1873 Colfax Massacre Was a Racist Attack on Black People’s Democratic Rights

In northern Louisiana, white supremacists slaughtered 150 African Americans, brutally thwarting their hopes for autonomy and self-governance.
by Keri Leigh Merritt, Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall via Jacobin on April 13, 2023
Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court holding signs that read "People Over Politics."
partner

A Post-Reconstruction Proposal That Would Have Restored Power to the People

Largely forgotten today, Albion W. Tourgée’s legislation could have prevented Moore v. Harper.
by Brook Thomas via Made By History on December 19, 2022
George Wallace pointing to map of United States with "Wallace Country" written on it.

How the Right Turned “Freedom” Into a Dog Whistle

A new book traces the long history of cloaking racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on December 8, 2022
Supporters cheer during an election night watch party for Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) in Atlanta
partner

Warnock’s Win Points to the Need For Ongoing Political Organizing

Georgia’s own history highlights what out-organizing voter suppression really entails.
by Dan Berger via Made By History on December 7, 2022
African Americans campaigning for Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, and Confederate symbols in Georgia.

Minority Rule(s)

Georgia’s competitive runoff election is the result of centuries of white supremacist efforts.
by Anthony Conwright via The Forum on December 6, 2022
Portraits of white men.

How 155 Angry White Men Chained Alabama to Its Confederate Past

Their plan required not only a social and legal division along racial lines but a political one, too — a separation that persists today.
by Kyle Whitmire via al.com on December 5, 2022
Side-by-side of Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock
partner

The Racist Origins of Georgia’s Runoff Elections

Sen. Raphael Warnock and challenger Herschel Walker, both Black, square off in a contest designed to empower White voters.
by Steven F. Lawson via Made By History on December 5, 2022
A hand demonstrates a push lever system in voting booth, and students wait in line to vote in a mock election held at Morgan State University in Baltimore

The Forgotten First Voting Rights Act

How the defeat of the 1890 Lodge bill presaged today’s age of ballot-driven backlash.
by Ed Burmila via The Forum on October 17, 2022
The American flag depicted upside down, in a beige color scheme.

Making the Constitution Safe for Democracy

The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment offers severe penalties for menacing the right to vote—if anyone can figure out how to enforce it.
by Anthony Conwright via The Forum on August 17, 2022
Drawing of a voting booth on top of a gerrymandered district with a saw cutting the floor out from under it.

American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic

The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022
4 photo collage illustrating the partnership between the White League and the Ku Klux Klan in engaging in vigilante terrorism and racial violence

Colfax, Cruikshank, and the Latter-Day War on Reconstruction

Unearthing the deep roots of racialized voter suppression—and explaining how they shape ballot access today.
by David Daley via The Forum on August 3, 2022
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