Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in a TIME article about the historical significance of Ralph Warnock’s election to the U.S. Senate in January of this year. Anderson places Warnock’s election in the context of previous advances toward racial equity and democracy in the U.S. during the Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras, in particular. She also warns of increased efforts at voter suppression following a historic turnout in the January special election.

Anderson is the author, most recently, of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018) and White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury, 2016). Read an excerpt from the TIME piece below along with the full article: “‘Another Milestone in the Long, Long Road.’ Rev. Raphael Warnock’s Georgia Senate Victory Made History in Multiple Ways.”

“Prior to the mid-1960s, ‘In states like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, you would have single digit percentages of African Americans registered to vote and counties that were overwhelmingly Black with zero number of African Americans registered to vote because of the terror and the disenfranchising policies put in place, like poll taxes and literacy tests,’ says Anderson. ‘When you really think about American democracy, we didn’t really get close to it until after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.‘”