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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
African American man casting a ballot following the Fifteenth Amendment.

Echoes of 1891 in 2022

Using the congressional filibuster to prevent voting rights legislation isn't new. It has roots in the 19th century.
by Daniel W. Crofts via Muster on January 25, 2022
Man is being carried by a lot of people while sitting on a chair

What Made Gilded Age Politics So Acrimonious?

Fearful of increasing participation, elites of the era attempted to rein in democracy.
by Chris Lehmann via The New Republic on June 21, 2021
People signing the declaration of independence

Our 250-Year Fight for Multiracial Democracy

We say we’re for it. We’ve never truly had it. These next few years will determine its fate.
by Matt Ford via The New Republic on May 17, 2021
Chinese immigrants working in a market stop to pose for a photo

The California Klan’s Anti-Asian Crusade

Whereas southern Klansmen assaulted Black Americans and their white allies, western vigilantes targeted those they deemed a greater threat: Chinese immigrants.
by Kevin Waite via The Atlantic on April 6, 2021
Recruiting poster for USCT featuring a lithograph of African American soldiers.

In 1868, Black Suffrage Was on the Ballot

At the height of the Reconstruction, the pressing issue of the election was Black male suffrage.
by Jordan Grant via Smithsonian on February 19, 2021
Ulysses S. Grant statue in front of the capitol
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Grant — Not Lincoln or Roosevelt — May Hold the Key to Biden’s Success

Biden needs to stare down White supremacy, which requires strenuous enforcement of the laws.
by Judith Giesberg via Made By History on February 3, 2021

Black Political Activism and the Fight for Voting Rights in Missouri

Nick Sacco takes a moment to remember the 15th Amendment.
by Nick Sacco via Muster on September 29, 2020
Program for the National American Woman Suffrage Association procession in Washington, DC, 1913, featuring a woman on a horse heralding votes for women and leading marchers toward the capitol.

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

A new book chronicles the twists and turns of the 75-year-path to securing the vote for women.
by Ellen Carol DuBois, Lila Thulin via Smithsonian on March 18, 2020

The Achievements, and Compromises, of Two Reconstruction-era Amendments

While they advanced African American rights, they had serious flaws, Eric Foner writes.
by John Fabian Witt via Washington Post on October 31, 2019
Woman gets help filling out voter registration form.
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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

Welcome To Jim Crow 2.0

Georgia GOP candidate Brian Kemp is using a tried-and-tested formula designed to erode and corrode American democracy.
by Carol Anderson via HuffPost on October 19, 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
A prison cell with a television tuned to election coverage.
original

Why Felon Disenfranchisement Doesn't Violate the Constitution

The justification can be found in an obscure section of the Fourteenth Amendment.
by Sara Mayeux on December 21, 2017

The Racist Roots of Virginia's Felon Disenfranchisement

A century ago, the commonwealth's leaders weren't circumspect about their motives.
by Matt Ford via The Atlantic on April 27, 2016

The Price of Union

The undefeatable South.
by Nicholas Lemann via The New Yorker on November 2, 2015

Killing Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, elites used racist appeals to silence calls for redistribution and worker empowerment.
by Heather Cox Richardson via Jacobin on August 19, 2015
Photo of Jimmy Lee Jackson.

The Killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson

How a post-Civil War massacre impacted racial justice in America.
by Debo Adegbile via The Marshall Project on February 27, 2015
This editorial cartoon from a January 1879 edition of Harper's Weekly depicting a white man misspelling words on a sign announcing Black voters must pass a literacy test, while a Black man looks on laughing.

The Racial History Of The 'Grandfather Clause'

Companies and individuals are considered grandfathered and exempt from new sets of regulations all the time. But the term and the concept dates to a darker era.
by Alan Greenblatt via NPR on October 22, 2013
Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Supreme Court Has Murdered the Constitution

America’s founding document is now an all-but-meaningless scrap of paper. Happy Fourth!
by Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect on July 4, 2024
An 1863 illustration from “Le Monde illustré” of formerly enslaved people celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation.

What If Reconstruction Didn’t End Till 1920?

Historian Manisha Sinha argues that the Second Republic lasted decades longer than most histories state and achieved wider gains.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on June 11, 2024
Portrait of Lydia Maria Child reading a book. Courtesy the Smithsonian/NMAAHC

Lydia Maria Child and the Vexed Role of the Woman Abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today.
by Lydia Moland via Aeon on March 27, 2023
Demonstrators outside the Supreme Court holding signs that read "People Over Politics."
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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

Lydia Maria Child Taught Americans to Make Do With Less

A popular writer’s 1829 self-help book ‘The Frugal Housewife’ was based on the same democratic principles that made her a champion of the abolitionist cause.
by Lydia Moland via The Wall Street Journal on November 10, 2022
illustration of a hand with a shredded ballot

John Roberts’s Long Game

Is this the end of the Voting Rights Act?
by Linda Greenhouse via The Atlantic on September 20, 2022
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
Colorful portrait collage of Harriet Tubman with stars in the background

The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project

The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project explores the meaning of freedom through the example of one extraordinary life.
by Janell Hobson via Ms. Magazine on February 1, 2022
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signs state legislation on voting rights.

The Strange Career of Voting Rights in Texas

Republicans in Texas, and indeed around the country, remain hell-bent on going back to the future.
by Derek C. Catsam via The Activist History Review on October 20, 2021
John Marshall Harlan and Robert James Harlan

The Black Hero Behind One of the Greatest Supreme Court Justices

John Marshall Harlan's relationship with an enslaved man who grew up in his home showed how respect could transcend barriers and point a path to freedom.
by Peter S. Canellos via Politico Magazine on June 6, 2021
Bus station with 'colored waiting room' sign.

Plessy v. Ferguson at 125

One hundred and twenty five years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, there are still lessons to be gleaned from the case.
by Kenneth Mack, Rachel Reed via Harvard Law Bulletin on May 19, 2021
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