Deuel Ross * | 25.2 | Citation: Deuel Ross, Voting Rights in Alabama, 2006 to 2022, 25 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 252 (2023).

Read Full Article

Alabama is the birthplace of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“VRA”). In the decades leading up to the passage of the VRA, the State of Alabama and local officials enforced a series of racially discriminatory laws and policies, including literacy tests, good moral character tests, and voucher (identification) requirements, with the intent and effect of locking Black Alabamians out of the political process. Efforts by Black civil rights activists to register themselves or other Black Americans to vote were often met with brutal resistance, violence, and reprisals from the State and local officials. While the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”) and local civil rights activists won several major voting rights cases in the 1940s and 1950s, the ability to freely register to vote and vote remained out of reach

for most Black people in Alabama.

***

* Deputy Director of Litigation, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (“LDF”).