Voting Rights: Additional Readings


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READING

Sheyann Webb: A Story for First Grade
By Maggie Donovan

An elementary-appropriate reading about Sheyann Webb, who was eight years old and a third-grader when she put on her “marching shoes.”


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READING

Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines
By Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson

The Voting Rights Act came into being through intensive organizing and activism spearheaded by the Black community, including people often marginalized and not seen as central to our society. Learn about key points in the history of the 1965 Voting Rights Act missing from most textbooks. 


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READING

U.S. Flag An Act of Defiance for Voting Rights Activists
By Matt Herron

In the South during the civil rights movement, the American flag was a potent symbol of support for racial integration (and support for federal law). Southerners who believed in racial segregation displayed Confederate flags instead.


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READING

Mississippi at Atlantic City
By Charles M. Sherrod

This report by Charles Sherrod tells an engaging and profound story about the formation of the MFDP, the struggles faced by and within the African-American community, and the tremendous challenges yet to be addressed.


Mississippi Freedom Schools: A Project from the Past Suggests a Lesson for the Future
By David Levine

The 1964 Freedom Schools demonstrated that education can both help transform society and inspire young people to attack intellectual tasks with a vigor and emotional intensity that deepens learning.


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READING

Vernon F. Dahmer: Civil Rights Martyr and American Hero
By Joyce Ladner

These remarks were prepared by sociologist and SNCC veteran Joyce Ladner for a commemoration of Vernon Dahmer on January 8, 2016, hosted by the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.


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READING

The Selma Voting Rights Struggle: 15 Key Points from Bottom-Up History and Why It Matters Today
By Emilye Crosby

Key points in the history of the Selma voting rights struggle that formed the basis for the popular article, "Ten Things to Know About Selma Before You See the Film."


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READING

Dallas County Voters League
By Holly Jansen

A history of the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL), the group that bravely launched the fight for voting and economic rights in Selma in the 1920s.


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READING

From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Significance of the 1965-66 Alabama Freedom Movement
By Abayomi Azikiwe

Application of independent politics transformed the African American struggle. The campaign for the ballot in Dallas County, Alabama, did not begin when Dr. King and the SCLC intervened during early Jan. 1965. In fact, organizers from the SNCC had been working in Selma for at least two years prior to SCLC.


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READING

The 1965 Mississippi Congressional Challenge
From the CRMVet Archives

On January 4, 1965, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenged the seating of representatives from Mississippi at the convening of the 89th Congress.


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READING

May 7, 1955: Murder of Rev. George W. Lee
From the Zinn Education Project

Rev. George Washington Lee, one of the first African Americans registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi since Reconstruction, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. After countless threats against his life and demands that he remove his name from the voting rolls, Lee was murdered on May 7, 1955.


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READING

Bloody Selma
By Prathia Hall

In an excerpt from Hands on the Freedom Plow, Hall recalls voting rights organizing in Selma before and after law enforcement’s brutal beating of activists at the Edmund Pettus bridge on March 7, 1965.


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READING

The Alabama Project
From CRMVet.org

The plan to build and train a nonviolent army who would engage in large-scale civil disobedience to demand the removal of Governor Wallace and the immediate registration of every Alabama citizen over the age of 21 — and backlash against that plan from white Democrats.


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READING

Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark
By Deborah Menkart

Colia L. Clark, a committed Pan Africanist, has spent a lifetime in activist work in the areas of civil rights, human rights, womens rights, workers rights and rights for the homeless and youth. She recalls her work during the Civil Rights Movement with the NAACP, SNCC, the Black Belt Alabama Voter Project, and more.