Without Justice for All by Reed Adolph;

Without Justice for All by Reed Adolph;

Author:Reed, Adolph;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group


9

The Voting Rights Movement in Perspective

Alex Willingham

SINCE THE MID-1980S, our expectations have grown about the prospects of a voting rights movement that could have broad impact on democracy in the United States. This little understood movement—focusing on electoral officeholding—grew during the 1980s to become a bone fide successor to the great civil rights movement and the main avenue for political advancement by racial minorities. Mass protests were replaced with political organizing, and the struggle for empowerment became a priority in communities never before involved in public decisionmaking. This movement has been a key factor in the politicization, since midcentury, of American racial minorities and directly responsible for the expansion and realignment of all forces active in politics.

The voting rights movement is not well understood today. It is seldom seen as a distinctive political activity or credited for its impact on the election process. When we do examine the movement, however, we find a classic American reform effort that responds to inequities and to dreams of a better day. It engages, and expands, the nation's thinking about a defect in the body politic. It is driven by forceful agitation, acquires legitimacy, and enjoys formal concessions from the political powers. The voting rights movement has become a rich arena for intellectual work in jurisprudence, intergovernmental relations and federalism, policy analysis, democratic theory, and the potentials and constraints of popular mobilization. I argue that it is time—after three decades—to integrate voting rights advocacy into our teachings about American democracy on a par with such vintage efforts as abolitionism, women's suffrage, the great labor organizing movements of the 1930s, and, indeed, the civil rights movement itself.



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