This Black History Month, we’re sharing powerful essays and books we’ve been reading about Black voting rights and reform, all written by Black authors. 

We encourage readers to consider these (and many other great texts on the ongoing voting rights movement) as we think about the larger picture of building a fairer, more functional democracy:

Deb Otis, Director of Research and Policy:

I recently read the new anthology Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy, and I particularly enjoyed Aimee Allison’s essay, On Political Representation. Allison is the founder of She The People, an organization focused on building power for women of color. 

Allison’s essay focuses on the concept of “democratic faith,” or the trust that an inclusive multi-racial democracy is possible and that we still have time to create that reality. Allison acknowledges that “democratic faith is born of heartbreak” as she explores her own childhood discovery of racial violence, and also uplifts hundreds of years of work by Black women leaders who shared the vision of democratic faith. 

Allison suggests we must work to remove barriers for Black women running for office, better represent the promise of multiracial democracy in art and media, invest in on-the-ground organizing in multiracial coalitions, pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and grant self-determination to Americans living in U.S. territories. 

This piece is a powerful reminder of the grand tradition of democratic faith in our country, as stewarded by Black women leaders.

David Daley, Senior Fellow:

Gilda Daniels served as deputy chief of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. She currently serves as a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore, and we were lucky to have her participation in a FairVote webinar last summer. Her award-winning book, Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America, brings a rigorous, prosecutorial eye to this important story. 

It’s not only that Daniels systematically dismantles the way that myths of “voter fraud” and “election integrity” are used to justify modern barriers to the ballot box. The real power of this book comes from its historic sweep, and the way Daniels shows how so many of these techniques have deep roots in the horrors of Jim Crow. 

Ryan Suto, Senior Policy Advisor:

In Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie Glaude recounts how by 1968, James Baldwin worried that the passage of (albeit critically important) federal legislation like the Voting Rights Act allowed White Americans an ability to congratulate themselves for delivering unto the nation the “more perfect Union” we have long promised. Glaude is a professor in Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies, and a former president of the American Academy of Religion.

Glaude wrote of Baldwin’s arguments, “For white people in this country, ‘America’ is an identity worth protecting at any cost.” Martin Luther King, Jr. held the same concern; Glaude quotes a fundraising speech of his from a month before his assassination: “I must honestly confess that I go through moments of disappointment when I have to recognize that there aren’t enough white persons in our country that are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege.”

56 years later, Baldwin’s concerns that White Americans would see a few efforts toward equity as sufficient work toward addressing the structures which were built to suppress Black America – and thus lose interest in further efforts – rings as true as ever to me. 

In an era where federal courts are seeking to ban the factual recognition that race has an impact in essential democratic activities like redistricting, ballot access, and political representation, Glaude’s Begin Again shows not how much progress we have made since the Civil Rights Era, but rather how much stands in the way of the progress that era promised.