American Voting Rights Part 2: The First Challenges to the Voting Rights Act

Since the November 2020 election, Voting Rights has been ever-present in the daily news cycle because of the attempts across a majority of state legislatures to enact legislation to alleges to enhance voting security but continues the harmful historical pattern of minority voter discrimination.

In the series, American Voting Rights, Jonathan discusses the history of voting rights between the Civil War and the Civil Rights era which led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act. The episode includes a brief description of the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act which enabled broad and unprecedented federal oversight of state election legislation through the Enforcement Clause of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

As this series progresses from the Civil Rights era when the Voting Rights Act was enacted through to the most recent Supreme Court opinions that dismantled the law, a key question to keep in mind is whether the Civil Rights advancements of the 1960s represented true progress or merely a brief moment in history when the interests of white Americans converged with the interests of Black Americans.

For the Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, click here.

Sign up here to get updates about each episode of Pod Save our History or go to jonathandicarlo.substack.com.

For any comments or feedback, write to [email protected]

Contact info: