Course description

In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the states from denying the right to vote "on account of" race. But the states of the former Confederacy devised ways to evade this prohibition, and beginning in 1890 they adopted new constitutions that effectively disfranchised Black Americans for 75 years. With few exceptions, Congress and the Supreme Court did not interfere. Not until the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 did the Fifteenth Amendment come alive, vigorously enforced by the US Department of Justice and upheld by the court. But the tide has turned in the twenty-first century. The Supreme Court in 2013 nullified a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, enabling states to impose new impediments on access to the polls in 2022 and to dilute minority voting strength through partisan redistricting (gerrymandering). We examine the history of race and voting rights in US law, from antebellum laws and the Fifteenth Amendment to the Voting Rights Act, and the retreat from those rights by Congress and the Supreme Court, first in the era of Jim Crow and again now. For complete and current details about this Harvard Extension course, see the description in the DCE Course Search.

Instructors

Director of Intellectual Property, Harvard Business School Publishing

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