WASHINGTON — There’s a heaviness hanging over this year’s Congressional Black Caucus conference, as U.S. Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana and other caucus members talk strategy ahead of the midterms just months away. “Be angry enough to fight. Angry enough to vote,” Carter said Wednesday, the first day of the annual convening in the nation’s […]
Voting
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy, Voting
Black Voters in Georgia Are Mobilizing as Voting Rights Face New Threats
Decisions made in courts across the country are changing the rules of voting and shifting Black political power. Capital B is tracking the fight for voting rights to show who is affected, where power is shifting, and what the changes mean for Black communities nationwide. For voting rights stories from across the country, visit our […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy, Voting
Black Voting Power Is Under Attack, So Thousands Came to D.C. to Fight Back
WASHINGTON — Shirley Lee traveled nearly 1,500 miles from Houston to the nation’s capital. Wearing a cowboy hat emblazoned with an American flag, she said that she wasn’t going to miss this year’s March on Washington. “It’s my 70th birthday on Sunday, so [being here] is my birthday present to me,” Lee told Capital B. […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Delaware Gives Black Voters New Protections Against Election Discrimination
WILMINGTON, Delaware — Wearing his Sunday best, Corey Gordon Jr. drove 30 minutes to Shiloh Baptist Church in Wilmington, Delaware, to witness a historic event that would impact his fundamental right to vote. The 22-year-old graduate of the University of Delaware saw firsthand how anti-diversity backlash could unsettle a campus. Over the past year, the […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
What Lindsey Graham’s Death Means for Black South Carolina Voters
South Carolina native Lawrence Moore remembers when he saw his father cast a ballot for the first time in 1968. It was a few years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. Black voter registration was surging across the South. Those years taught Moore, now 70 and a […]
Posted inVoting
NAACP Launches $20 Million Plan to Mobilize 6.5 Million Black Voters
As Black voters stand to lose representation, one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the U.S. is leaning on a playbook that allowed it to radically increase Black political participation at the height of Jim Crow. Thirty-three congressional districts. Twenty-thousand volunteers. A $20 million investment. Those are some of the details behind what the […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Black Organizers Are Preparing for a New Era of Voting Rights Battles
The mobilization effort was swift once it became clear that Black Georgians stood to lose political representation. LaTosha Brown and other voting rights advocates sprang into action after Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on May 13 called a special session to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps in ways that could erode Black voters’ […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
The Plaintiffs Behind Alabama’s Voting Rights Case Are Ready to Fight Again
This story first appeared on For the Record: A Black Oral History Archive. The archive is a collection of over 100 firsthand stories of Black life in America. MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Evan Milligan was visiting Berlin when he learned that he had won a voting rights case against the state of Alabama at the U.S. Supreme […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Georgia Republicans Back Away From Redistricting Plan After Outcry
Efforts to begin redrawing Georgia’s voting district maps through a special session of the General Assembly have been canceled. The Republicans’ plan, which many feared would disenfranchise Black and brown voters, had already sparked multiple protests Wednesday at the Georgia State Capitol. “Changes to Georgia’s maps should take place only when members of the General […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
Louisiana Republicans Eliminate the District Black Voters Fought to Win
NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Republicans on Friday approved a new congressional map that erodes Black voting power in the state. The map eliminates a majority-Black district established in 2024 that gave residents there an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. Friday’s move comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court found that the lines […]
