Historians have long been engaged in telling the story of the struggle for the vote. In the wake of recent contested elections, the suppression of the vote has returned to the headlines, as awareness of the deep structural barriers to the ballot, particularly for poor, black, and Latino voters, has called attention to the historical roots of issues related to voting access.
Perhaps most notably, former state legislator Stacey Abrams’s campaign for Georgia’s gubernatorial race drew national attention after she narrowly lost to then-secretary of state Brian Kemp, who had removed hundreds of thousands of voters from the official rolls. After her loss, Abrams created Fair Fight, a multimillion-dollar initiative to combat voter suppression in twenty states.
At an annual conference of the Organization of American Historians, leading scholars Carol Anderson, Kevin M. Kruse, Heather Cox Richardson, and Heather Anne Thompson had a conversation with Abrams about the long history of voter suppression at the Library Company of Philadelphia. This book is a transcript of that extraordinary conversation, edited by Jim Downs.
Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections offers an enlightening, history-informed conversation about voter disenfranchisement in the United States. By gathering scholars and activists whose work has provided sharp analyses of this issue, we see how historians in general explore contentious topics and provide historical context for students and the broader public.
The book also includes a “top ten” selection of essays and articles by such writers as journalist Ari Berman, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Blight, and civil rights icon John Lewis.
About the author
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON is a native Detroiter and historian on faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the departments of history and Afro-American and African studies and at the Residential College. Her recent book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, profiled on television and radio programs across the country, won the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the J. Willard Hurst Prize, and a New York City Bar Association book prize. The book was also named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Book Prize in History, and the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and it was named on fourteen best books of 2016 lists including those compiled by the New York Times, Newsweek, Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, Bloomberg, the Marshall Project, the Baltimore City Paper, Book Scroll, and the Christian Science Monitor. Additionally, Blood in the Water appeared on the Best Human Rights Books of 2016 list and received starred reviews from Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. Blood in the Water has also been optioned by Tri Star Pictures and will be adapted for film by acclaimed screenwriters Anna Waterhouse and Joe Schrapnel.
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