Resources

The following is our recommended list of Resources. Our list compiles select writings by leading academics, organizers, journalists, and litigators on topics relevant to the Right to Vote Initiative, including right-to-vote amendment language and the history of the right to vote and race.  We also feature webinars and other up-to-date resources.

By Jesse (Rev.) Jackson Sr. | December 5, 2017

JACKSON: Right to Vote Needs Constitutional Protection Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 18, 2017

“The right to vote is central to the legitimacy of any democratic system. Yet in the United States Constitution there is no federal right to vote. Voting rights are determined by the states. And in the states we witness a fierce struggle between those who seek to suppress the vote and those who seek to protect and extend it.”

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By Jon Grinspan | November 9, 2017

The Right to Vote Is Never Safe N.Y. Times, Nov. 4, 2017

“The Voting Rights Act allowed the federal government to work to close the gap between theoretical rights and real participation for black Southerners. . . . The Cold War abroad, and low levels of partisanship at home, gave Americans reason to tell themselves an easy fable about a stable, broadening democracy. But this period was unusual, and the longer-term trend of volatile voting rights has re-emerged in the 21st century. Americans are again debating the right to vote, and focusing on state voting laws, in ways we haven’t for nearly a century.”

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By Peggy Cooper Davis | May 28, 2017

“Who Are We The People?” Pamphlet (Nov. 2016)

Prepared by Professor Peggy Cooper Davis and her students in the Constitutional Personhood Project at NYU Law for use during a 2016 Teach-In with Bob Moses of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), this pamphlet sets forth the historical context for understanding the right to vote.  Learn more about the Teach-In here.

“In slavery, black people were treated as property without rights, without privileges, without personhood.  In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court endorsed this practice when it held that black people had no rights that government was required to respect.  African Americans were not Constitutional People, the Court said, but Constitutional Property.  Black and white Union soldiers fought a Civil War against Confederate secessionists to end the practice of treating human beings as property.  With Union victory, the Nation was reconstructed to guarantee human equality and dignity.  Since Reconstruction, the Nation has struggled to define and secure the Constitutional Personhood of every man, woman, and child.  At the heart of that struggle is the right to vote.”

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By Gilda Daniels | March 17, 2017

Unfinished Business: Protecting Voting Rights in the Twenty-First Century 81 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1928 (2013)

Professor Gilda Daniels reviews recent assaults on the right to vote in the post-Shelby era and suggests a path forward.

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By Cheryl Harris | March 17, 2017

Whiteness as Property 106 Harv. L. Rev. 1707, 1744-45 (1993)

Professor Cheryl Harris notes a time period during which the United States experienced a simultaneous expansion of the right to vote for white voters and the contraction of the right to vote for African Americans:

“[On the eve of the Civil War], the franchise . . . was broadened to extend voting rights to unpropertied white men at the same time that Black voters were specifically disenfranchised, arguably shifting the property required for voting from land to whiteness.”

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