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What Did the Founders Mean by “Democracy”?

The main issue they were debating was how democratic a representative body should be. And their answer was “not very democratic at all.”
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.

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.

How Tea Helped Women Sell Suffrage

Private-labeled teas helped fund success during the suffragist movement. Today’s activists might learn from their model.
Exhibit

Voting Rights: A Retrospective

Voting, a right not initially enshrined in the Constitution, has been secured, revoked, and contested since the nation's founding era.

How Midwestern Suffragists Used Anti-Immigrant Fervor to Help Gain the Vote

Women fighting for the ballot saw German men as backward, ignorant, and less worthy of citizenship than themselves.

A House Still Divided

In 1858, Lincoln warned that America could not remain “half slave and half free.” The threat today is as existential as it was before the Civil War.

Citizens: 150 Years of the 14th Amendment

In 1868, black activists had already been promoting birthright as the basis of their national belonging for nearly half a century.
Manuscript of the Fourteenth Amendment.

We Should Embrace the Ambiguity of the 14th Amendment

A hundred and fifty years after its ratification, some of its promises remain unfulfilled—but one day it may still be interpreted anew.

The End of Civil Rights

The attorney general is pushing an agenda that could erase many of the legal gains of modern America's defining movement.
Surveyor and enslaved people working in Barbados.
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‘Whiteness’ Was Created to Keep Black People From Voting

When slaves got close to voting rights, slaveowners changed the rules of the game.

How Restaurants Helped American Women Get the Vote

The history of suffragist dining spaces in the U.S.

Still a Long Time Coming

Selma and the unfulfilled promise of civil rights.
LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

What Everyone Gets Wrong About LBJ’s Great Society

It wasn't some radical left-wing pipedream. It was moderate; and it worked.

When the South Was the Most Progressive Region in America

Elections in the late 1860s gave birth to real, if short-lived, interracial democracy—the likes of which America had never seen.
Voters casting ballots in 2008.

How Letting Felons Vote Is Changing Virginia

Governor McAuliffe has embarked on a campaign to grant clemency more often, and to restore the civil rights of convicted felons.
Whites at a Trump campaign rally.

Does the White Working Class Really Vote Against Its Own Interests?

Trump has revived an age-old debate about why some people choose race over class—and how far they will go to protect the system.
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.

How the Kim Kardashians of Yesteryear Helped Women Get the Vote

Now all but forgotten, a group of New York socialites was instrumental to the success of the suffrage movement.
original

"What is Sport to You is Death to Us."

In 1867, African-Americans in Virginia stood up for their new political rights in the face of threats from their white neighbors.

History Frowns on Partisan Gerrymandering

On the eve of a major redistricting case at the Supreme Court, a look back at what the nation's founders would have thought.

How About Erecting Monuments to the Heroes of Reconstruction?

Americans should build this pivotal post–Civil War era into the new politics of historical memory.
Allegorical lithograph entitled "Reconstruction," by J. L. Giles in 1867.
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Why the Second American Revolution Deserves as Much Attention as the First

The first revolution articulated American ideals. The second enacted them.
Reconstruction era political cartoon.

The Political Cartoon That Explains the Battle Over Reconstruction

Take a deep dive into this drawing by famed illustrator Thomas Nast.

Slavery, Democracy, and the Racialized Roots of the Electoral College

The Electoral College was created to help white Southerners maintain their disproportionate influence in national governance.

Why Did White Workers Leave the Democratic Party?

Historian Judith Stein debunks liberal myths about racism, the New Deal, and why the Democrats moved right.
An African American group at the county convention of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964.

Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Killing Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, elites used racist appeals to silence calls for redistribution and worker empowerment.

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.
Photo of Jimmy Lee Jackson.

The Killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson

How a post-Civil War massacre impacted racial justice in America.

The New Racism

A glimpse inside the Alabama State House suggests that the civil rights movement may have reached its end.

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