Overview

In Defying Disfranchisement, R. Volney Riser documents a number of lawsuits challenging various requirements- including literacy tests, poll taxes, and white primaries- designed primarily to strip African American men of their right to vote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Twelve of these cases wended their way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that body coldly ignored the systematic disfranchisement of black southerners. Nevertheless, as Riser shows, the attempts themselves were stunning and demonstrate that even at one of their bleakest hours, African Americans sheltered and nurtured a hope that would lead to wholesale changes in the American legal and political landscape.

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9780807150108

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Reviews

A unique and valuable contribution to African American and southern history.--Journal of Southern History This study contributes to the common knowledge of black suffrage issues during the Jim Crow era by approaching the topic from a new angle. It proves that there was much local black voting rights activism prior to the formation of the NAACP, and it traces the story with engaging narrative, thorough primary source documentation, and excellent legal analysis.--American Historical Review A book that could easily be read and taught in conjunction with the great works that focus on civil rights in the United States.--Journal of American History

"A book that could easily be read and taught in conjunction with the great works that focus on civil rights in the United States.-- ""Journal of American History"" A unique and valuable contribution to African American and southern history.-- ""Journal of Southern History"" This study contributes to the common knowledge of black suffrage issues during the Jim Crow era by approaching the topic from a new angle. It proves that there was much local black voting rights activism prior to the formation of the NAACP, and it traces the story with engaging narrative, thorough primary source documentation, and excellent legal analysis.-- ""American Historical Review"""

Author Information

R. Volney Riser is cochair of the Department of History and Social Science at the University of West Alabama in Livingston.

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