Give Us the Ballot The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

by Berman, Ari

• ISBN13: 9780374158279
• ISBN10: 0374158274
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-08-04
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, Nonfiction

A New York Times Notable Book of 2015
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2015
An NPR Best Book of 2015

Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time.

In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day. The act enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. And yet, fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power, with lawmakers devising new strategies to keep minorities out of the voting booth and with the Supreme Court declaring a key part of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.

Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.

Author Biography

Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation and an investigative journalism fellow at the Nation Institute. His first book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, was published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, and he is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and NPR.

Table of Contents

Prologue
1. The Second Emancipation
2. The Second Reconstruction
3. The Southern Strategy
4. Hands That Pick Cotton
5. The Counterrevolution
6. Challenging the Consensus
7. The Realignment
8. The Counterrevolution (II)
9. Old Poison, New Bottles
10. After Shelby