Profs & Pints DC: The Fight Against Voter Suppression

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Fight Against Voter Suppression,” on past efforts to disenfranchise marginalized populations and ways to combat new threats to fair democracy, with Jatia Wrighten, assistant professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University and scholar of Black representation in state legislatures.

In today’s fast-moving world, understanding how your vote fits into the bigger picture isn’t just smart. It’s also powerful. Learn how voting trends and debates over voting rights are shaping the future of our country with Jatia Wrighten, whose research focuses on Black women, state legislatures, and leadership.

Professor Wrighten will start with an overview of the history of voter suppression, discussing the three primary ways in which African Americans and other marginalized groups have been disenfranchised: poll taxes, literacy tests, and “grandfather clauses” perpetuating past generations’ unequal access to the vote.

Then we’ll look at the present and how voting laws are quickly…