Dr. Carol Anderson was recently quoted in the TIME article “Georgia Has Enacted Sweeping Changes to Its Voting Law. Here’s Why Voting Rights Advocates Are Worried.” The article outlines reactions to recent legislation that places new requirements and restrictions on voting in the state of Georgia. The Republican supporters of the law describe it as preventing electoral fraud, while critics see the legislation as aiming to suppress and disenfranchise voters, especially Black and Brown voters. Read an excerpt quoting Anderson below along with the full piece.

“Carol Anderson, chair of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, describes the attempt by Georgia’s legislature as well as others around the country as similar to the Mississippi plan of 1890, which employed measures such as poll taxes and literacy tests to add barriers to the polls that especially affected Black Americans.

“’It didn’t say, ‘Okay, we’re just going to have the poll tax, and that ought to stop black people from voting.’ What it did was it had an array of policies that were designed and that worked together. If the poll tax didn’t get you, the literacy test would. If the literacy test didn’t get you, then the good character clause would,’ Anderson says. ‘It’s a web. You’re dodging and you’re hopping, but lord, don’t hit one of those things.’”