Fifty-nine years ago on Thursday, white state troopers brutalized voting rights protesters as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Footage of the carnage — one officer cracked 25-year-old John Lewis’ skull with a billy club — enraged the country, and galvanized widespread support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, […]
Black voters
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
Why Super Tuesday Is a ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for the General Election
Kristin Powell vividly remembers watching the Super Tuesday returns in February 2008 and being consumed by a single question: Can he actually make it? A college student spending a semester in Italy at the time, Powell was referring to Barack Obama, the youthful U.S. senator from Illinois who was challenging the establishment darling Hillary Clinton […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
‘New Literacy Test’: The Black Organizers Waging War on Disinformation
Every time an election looms, Baton Rouge resident Ashley Shelton notices the red flags — the signs sprinkled around the city and other parts of Louisiana that give the wrong information about when voters can cast their ballots. She doesn’t know who the bad actors are. But whenever she sees one of these signs — […]
Posted inElections, Politics & Policy
‘A Lot to Be Concerned About’: Jim Clyburn on the Stakes of the 2024 Election
Black South Carolinians saved President Joe Biden’s struggling 2020 White House bid. Now, on Saturday, in this cycle’s first sanctioned Democratic primary, the state’s Black electorate will have an opportunity to set the tone of the 2024 race and center the issues that matter most to Black communities, including the right to vote, health care, […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Can Biden Reclaim Black Voters’ Support in 2024?
South Carolina activist Lawrence Moore and other Black residents in the state are worried about losing the right to vote. And they don’t think President Joe Biden is taking a strong enough stand. The Columbia resident and longtime Democrat’s irritation is particularly acute because the Palmetto State is a major site of the assault on […]