Dr. Carol Anderson,  Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Chair of African American Studies, recently published an opinion piece in The Guardian. Anderson analyzes parallels between the wave of anti-black lynchings and race riots in 1919 – which came to be known as the “Red Summer” – and today. An associated faculty member in the Department of History, Anderson is, most recently, the author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018). Read an excerpt from her timely article in The Guardian below, along with the full piece: “In 1919, the state failed to protect black Americans. A century later, it’s still failing.”

“As in 1919, we are dealing with an America where black and brown people must go into the streets to demand their rights because the institutions of democracy have failed to protect them. In 2020, we have a nation where large swaths of the executive, legislative and judicial branches at the federal and state levels have virtually abandoned millions of American citizens.”