Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.
In advance of the volatile November elections, 582 students, faculty, and other attendees logged on for a bracing Zoom lecture titled 鈥淥ne Person, No Vote,鈥� delivered by historian and best-selling author Carol Anderson of Emory University. Jointly sponsoring the event were the Carroll School鈥檚 Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics and 涩里番下载鈥檚 Lowell Humanities Series, along with the History Department. Anderson chronicled a history of U.S. policies and practices aimed at suppressing the vote among Black Americans, which she argues is now warping democracy in this country.
During the September 30 lecture, she noted that by 1940, only three percent of Black adults in the South were registered to vote鈥攁 figure that ballooned to almost 60 percent in the wake of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But with the Supreme Court鈥檚 gutting of that federal law, in 2013, barriers to voting began to mount once again, according to Anderson. She cited previously unlawful measures such as restrictive 鈥淰oter ID鈥� laws that disproportionately affect African Americans鈥攆or example, by requiring the kinds of identifications that are less available聽in their communities.
鈥淭his is how you craft an electorate, and how you depress the Black vote,鈥� Anderson told the 涩里番下载 audience. Professor Martin Summers of the History Department, a cultural historian of 19th- and 20th-century America, served as moderator of the program.
Winston Center director Monetta Edwards said: 鈥淭his talk was especially timely and important for our students to hear. Dr. Anderson honed in on the fact that voting is their power.鈥� Edwards emphasized that聽students affiliated with the Winston Center, including Winston Ambassadors and Jenks Leadership members, made sure to exercise that power this year. They spearheaded a nonpartisan campaign, primarily through social media, to provide fellow students with information about voter registration and to otherwise get out the vote.
Students also read Anderson鈥檚 book聽One Person, No Vote, and signed up for a pre-lecture Zoom with the author. 鈥淎ll of that helped them gain critical thinking around this topic and inspired them to influence change,鈥� said Edwards.
鈥擶illiam Bole, Carroll School News