Suitts recasts the context and much of the content of disfranchisement in Alabama as an unremitting, decades-long sectional battle in white-only politics between the state’s rural Black Belt and north Alabama counties. He uncovers important Black and white heroes and villains who collectively shaped the arc of voting rights in Alabama and ultimately across the nation. A War of Sections offers a new understanding of the political dynamics of resistance and change through which a southern state’s long-standing democratic failures ironically provided motivation for and instruction to a reluctant nation regarding unmatched ways to advance universal voting. Along the way, the book introduces from this unheard past some prophetic voices that speak to the paramount issues of America’s commitment to the universal right to vote—then and now.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781588384911
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Publication Date: 01-15-2024
Pages: 560
Product Dimensions: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.38d
About the Author
STEVE SUITTS is an adjunct at the Institute for Liberal Arts of Emory University and has been chief strategist for Better Schools Better Jobs, a Mississippi-based education advocacy project of the New Venture Fund. Suitts began his career as a staff member of the Selma Project. He was founding director of the Alabama Civil Liberties Union; the executive director of the Southern Regional Council; and program coordinator, vice president, and senior fellow of the Southern Education Foundation. He is the author of Hugo Black of Alabama: How His Roots and Early Career Shaped the Great Champion of the Constitution and Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement. He was the executive producer and one of the writers of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a thirteen-hour public radio series that received a Peabody Award. STEVE SUITTS is an adjunct at the Institute for Liberal Arts of Emory University and has been chief strategist for Better Schools Better Jobs, a Mississippi-based education advocacy project of the New Venture Fund. Suitts began his career as a staff member of the Selma Project. He was founding director of the Alabama Civil Liberties Union; the executive director of the Southern Regional Council; and program coordinator, vice president, and senior fellow of the Southern Education Foundation. He is the author of Hugo Black of Alabama: How His Roots and Early Career Shaped the Great Champion of the Constitution and Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement. He was the executive producer and one of the writers of Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a thirteen-hour public radio series that received a Peabody Award.