A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia / Edition 1

by Laughlin McDonald

Overview

A Voting Rights Odyssey is the story of the efforts of the white leadership in Georgia to maintain white supremacy by denying blacks the right to vote and hold elected office. Narrated chronologically, most of the story is told by those who participated; from Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, to Carl Sanders, Governor of Georgia, to Emma Gresham, Mayor of Keysville in rural Burke County.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521011792
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.63(d)

Table of Contents

1. The voting rights act of 1965: a great divide; 2. After the civil war: recreating 'the white man's Georgia'; 3. The dawning of a new day: abolition of the white primary; 4. Passage of the civil rights act of 1957: the white response; 5. One person, one vote: the end of the county unit system and the malapportioned legislature and congressional delegation; 6. The election code of 1964: twilight of the county unit legislature; 7. The voting rights scene outside the golden dome; 8. The voting rights act: how it works; 9. Increased black registration: the white response; 10. 1970 extension of the voting rights act: more white resistance; 11. The 1975 extension of the voting rights act: the private enforcement campaign; 12. Redistricting in the 1980s; 13. 1982: voting rights in the balance; 14. Continued enforcement of the voting rights act; 15. The demise of Georgia's nineteenth-century voter registration system: taking stock of the impact of the voting rights act; 16. Recreating the past: the challenge to the majority vote requirement; 17. The white backlash: redistricting in the 1990s; 18. Keysville, Georgia - a voting rights crusade.

Editorial Reviews

"Pulls no punches. . . A valuable addition to civil rights history." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"...accessible and engaging to all readers...This third person history reflects the choice of an unassuming, thoughtful lawyer who possesses a courtly deference to others as the real heroes of good deeds." Southern Changes

"Laughlin writes with a historians breadth of knowledge and mastery of research, an advocate's passion and the acute perceptions of a veteran participant in civil rights litigation." Columbia College Today

"Pulls no punches. . . A valuable addition to civil rights history." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"...helps explain why Georgia's redistributing battles have become so befuddling." The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

..."McDonald's stories evoke drama, as when he relates how Georgia's white supremacist legislature expelled Julian Bond, a black, from the Statehouse in 1965 after Bond was elected to the House. McDonald's expertise as a lawyer is evident throughout the book. His story's larger point is that legislatures can't always be counted on to do the right thing. Blacks won freedom, for the most part, in the courts. In telling his adopted state's story, McDonald finds hope."...Is Knight-Ridder Newspapers, 11/23/2003

From the Publisher