Hey, this is Kai. On our last show we introduced you to one of the dozens of

students who have gone on hunger strike as a way to illustrate the urgency of the

voting rights debate in Congress. They wanted to vote up or down on the Freedom to

Vote Act. As of this recording, that has not happened and in fact a number of

them were arrested alongside faith leaders as they protested peacefully at the Capitol.

I'm sure Fox News will shortly be calling them rioters.

Anyway, with this news as backdrop, I want to share a conversation I had back in 2020 with historian Carol Anderson. We talked about our book,

one person, no vote, how voter suppression is destroying our democracy.

Dr. Anderson walked me through the long history of voter suppression in the United States

and of the legislative effort to expand democracy. I think it is useful context for this week's

news. Dr. Anderson, welcome back.

Thank you so much for having me.

I have decades worth of history. I want you to walk me through here so there's

a lot to cover but before we do that I'm just curious for you I mean how did you get

started studying this why did this, why did voting rights and voter

suppression become something that was the focus of your work?

I am a human rights scholar. I am attracted to the fractured citizenship of African Americans and how that came to be.

And so the first few books really looked at that and then came that 2016 election and the pundits were saying well you know

black folks just didn't show up well you know they just you black folks just didn't show up. Well, you know, they just didn't show up because you know, they really weren't filling Hillary because you know, she's like, oh, Hillary. And it enraged me because I knew that this was the first presidential election in 50 years without

the protection of the Voting Rights Act.

And so to have a narrative basically of black pathology, black folks just didn't show up,

instead of really looking at the structures and the policies that made that happen.

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