The Shadow of Selma: Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

The programme for the upcoming conference on Selma and the Voting Rights Act is now available. See the panels and plenary session below, or download the full programme here. The Northumbria University website notes that the American Studies programme will host "its own 'Shadow of Selma' initiative with a major international conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma protests and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The conference runs on April 8 and 9 and culminates with a public lecture by celebrated journalist and author Gary Younge at The Sage, Gateshead. Younge’s lecture will also launch the 60th Anniversary Conference of the British Association for American Studies, which is coming to Northumbria for the first time."*

The Shadow of Selma: 

Selma and the Voting Rights Act, 1965-2015

Northumbria University American Studies International Conference

April 8-9 2015
Sponsorship: Northumbria University and the US Embassy, London

WED. 8TH APRIL
City Campus East 1 Room 007

9.00-9.20 Coffee & Tea

9.20-9.30 Introduction from Professor Brian Ward

9.30-11.00: PANEL A: Selma and Grassroots Organisation

Chair: Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa (Middle Tennessee State University)

Dr. Ben Houston (Newcastle University)
“Before the Bridge: Grassroots Activism in Selma”

Professor Alma Billingslea-Brown (Spelman College)
“Selma: Bridge, Boundary and Beyond”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30–1.00 PANEL B: Selma and Media Coverage

Chair: Dr. Joe Street (Northumbria University)

Mark Walmsley (Leeds University)
“‘They Couldn’t Just Write it the Way it Wasn’t Anymore’: Examining Mainstream Coverage of the 1965 Selma Campaign”

Professor Aniko Bodroghkozy (University of Virginia)
“Mediating Selma: 1965, 2015”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-4.00 PANEL C: Responses to Selma and the Voting Rights Act

Chair: Dr. Randall Stephens (Northumbria University)

Professor Tony Badger (Northumbria University)
“Backlash or Adjustment? The White South responds to Selma”

Professor Clive Webb (University of Sussex)
“‘We cannot escape the same challenge’: Britain, France and the US Voting Rights Act”

Dr. George Lewis (Leicester University)
“Sidelining Selma’s Segregationists: Memory, Strategy, Ideology and Agency”

7.00 Conference Dinner at Blackfriars Restaurant

THU. 9TH APRIL

9.00-9.30 Coffee & Tea

09.30-11.00 PANEL D: The Supreme Court, Voting Rights, and Economic Citizenship

Chair: Kristine McCusker (Middle Tennessee State University)

J. Douglas Smith (Colburn Music Conservatory)
“The Dirksen Amendment and the Effective Repeal of the Voting Rights Act”

Dr. Lynn Itagaki (Ohio State University)
“Shareholder, Debtor, Voter: Economic Citizenship in the Roberts Court Deregulation of Campaign Finance Reform and The Voting Rights Act”

11.00-11.30 Coffee & Tea

11.30-1.00 PANEL E: Race, Voting, and Wealth in the South Since 1965

Chair: Professor Brian Ward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Devin Fergus (Ohio State University)
"The Third Reconstruction: The Racial Wealth Gap and the Post-Civil Rights US South"

Dr. George Derek Musgrove (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) (co-author with Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University)
“The decline of ‘freedom politics’ in the midst of the Second Redemption: black voter mobilization and white voter suppression in the Alabama Black Belt, 1965-2010”

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.30 PANEL F: Shelby County vs. Holder (2013) and the South Today

Chair: Dr. Nick Hayward (Northumbria University)

Dr. Barbara Combs (University of Mississippi)
“Purpose Nor Effect: How the Rise of Colorblind Racism Opened the Door For the Supreme Court Decision in Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder”

Dr. James Hall (Rochester Institute of Technology)
“A Newer New South:  Reading Shelby County v. Holder in Post Racial America”
 
5.00-6.30 Keynote (at the Baltic, with the British Association of American Studies Conference): Gary Younge (The Guardian)

States of Exception in American History, Cambridge Unniversity, May 15-16

The purpose of the conference is to explore the role of ‘states of exception’ in American political development.  ‘Exceptions’ will be interpreted broadly to include both suspensions of the rule of law in the face of emergencies, and jurisdictional grey zones in which persons or territories have been denied the full range of rights and obligations provided for under the Constitution. The conference will aim to weave together the different strands of research of contributors from the UK, United States, Canada, and France and includes a public lecture by Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago Law School.  His topic: Perilous Times: The View from Inside the NSA.

This conference launches the Consortium on the History of State and Society (CHOSAS), a multi-year initiative involving the American University of Paris, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, and University of Michigan.

The conference programme appears below.  We have also attached, for your convenience, a PDF version of the programme.  Please feel free to circulate it to colleagues and students who may be interested.

A link to the registration page can be found on the conference web page, accessible through this link:  States of Exception in American History

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University of Cambridge

Latimer Room, Clare College

15-16 May 2015

Friday 15 May

08.00-08.30 – Tea/coffee

08.30-08:45 – Introduction – Joel Isaac, University of Cambridge

08.45-10.45 – Session I: The Political Theory of Emergency

David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto

Carl Schmitt in America

Nomi Claire Lazar, University of Ottawa

A Pox on Our Institutions? Quarantine and the Political Theory of Emergency

Chair and Commentator: Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

10.45-11.00 – Tea/coffee

11.00-13.00 – Session II: States of Exception in the History of Political Thought

John Fabian Witt, Yale University

“To Save the Country": A Lost Theory of Emergency Constitutionalism

Stephen Sawyer, American University of Paris

Representation Beyond Politics: Democratic Norms, Terror, and Exceptional Circumstances in Ralph W. Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Louis Blanc

Joel Isaac, University of Cambridge

Constitutional Dictatorship in American Political Thought, 1919-1950

Chair and Commentator: Duncan Kelly, University of Cambridge

13.00-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-16.30 – Session III: Geographies of Exception

Paul A. Kramer, Vanderbilt University

Black Site Blues: Borders, Bases, War Zones, and Other Spaces of Exception in Modern US History

Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

Neither Public Nor Private:  Delegated Governance as a State of Exception

Chair and Commentator: Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge

16.30-18.00 – Free (Pub) Time

18.00-19.30 – Public Lecture

Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago

Perilous Times: The View From Inside the NSA

Introduction: Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge

Saturday 16 May

08.00-08.30 – Tea/coffee

08.30-10.30 – Session IV: Experiences of Persons Without Rights

Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa

Three Americans and the UN Conventions on Refugees and the Stateless

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, City University of New York

Within the Walls of America’s Prison

Chair and Commentator: Nicholas Guyatt, University of Cambridge

10.30-11.00 – Tea/coffee

11.00-13.00 – Session V: Exceptions and Theories of State-Building

William J. Novak, University of Michigan; Steve Sawyer, American University of Paris; and James Sparrow, University of Chicago

Democratic States of Unexception:  Towards a New Genealogy of the American Political

Desmond King, University of Oxford, and Robert Lieberman, John Hopkins University

Facilitating Expansion or Enforcing Reversal? How States of Exception Shaped American Federal State Development

Chair and Commentator: Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridg

13.00-14.30 – Lunch

14.30-16.30 – Session VI: Reflections and Future Directions

Ira Katznelson, Columbia University and Social Science Research Council

David Runciman, University of Cambridge

Chair: Gareth Davies, University of Oxford

Conference on Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015

“This act,” proclaimed President Johnson to Congress on August 6, 1965, “flows from a clear and simple wrong. Its only purpose is to right that wrong. Millions of Americans are denied the right to vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify. The right is one which no American, true to our principles, can deny.” *

From 8th - 9th April, 2015 Northumbria University’s History and American Studies programmes will host a conference on “Selma and the Voting Right Act, 1965-2015.” 

LBJ signing VR Act, Aug '65. Courtesy of senate.gov.

Where do things stand half a century later? Two years ago Andrew Cohen, contributing editor at the Atlantic, reflected on the law's longer term meaning:

It is undeniable that the Voting Rights Act dramatically sped up the process of preserving and protecting the vote for minority citizens. How much has been achieved? "In some circumstances, minorities register to vote and cast ballots at levels that surpass those of white voters," noted a 2006 House Report which accompanied the act's renewal. But the law was -- and still is today -- a means and not an end. And in the same way that opposition to integration did not immediately end following the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, opposition to minority voting rights did not magically disappear with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. In many important ways -- right down to the argument that Section 5 is unconstitutional because it treats states unequally -- the conflict has never really gone away.*

Now, 50 years on, many other commentators and scholars are weighing in about the continued significance of the act and wondering if the right to vote is now in jeopardy as it seldom has been since the mid-1960s. (See here, here, and here.)  It is certainly a fitting moment to reflect on the law and its meaning and relevance for the US today. More on the event: 

Northumbria University are gathering together a range of elite scholars whose work probes the impact of the celebrated civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, and the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act by the US Congress. The symposium will feature new assessments of the Selma campaign, the broader struggle for Voting and Citizenship Rights, and the subsequent transformations of southern and US politics. It will bring together scholars in the United States and United Kingdom from multiple disciplines and will spur new international collaborations that will provide original and exciting contributions to African-American and American history.

The conference will begin at 9am on Wednesday, 8 April and the symposium will conclude on Thursday, 9 April with a plenary lecture from the internationally-renowned journalist Gary Younge.

This event both closes the Selma symposium and opens the 60th anniversary conference of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), which is also being hosted by Northumbria University. For more information about the BAAS Conference or to book your place, please click here.

Obamascare

Nick Hayward

Behind the Obama and Democrat obituaries and the gleeful Republican taunts about a comprehensive repudiation of Obama’s policies, lie some less well-publicised, but nonetheless significant, aspects of Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Fox News broadcasts President Obama addressing the
nation on Nov 5th, 2014, after the sweeping Republican
victories in the midterm elections

Turnout in midterms rarely ever attains the levels of voting in presidential contests but the early figures for this week’s poll suggests that the numbers have slumped further, possibly to a point where barely one-third of the electorate turned out to vote. It is generally accepted that amongst those most difficult to galvanise into voting are poorer sections of American society, the young, ethnic minorities and women – the very groups amongst which Obama’s Democrats have scored some notable successes in garnering support. So, turnout was always going to be a worry for the Democrats. And yet these elections were fought with additional obstacles to voting in place, the effects of which were felt most by these very groups. Tuesday’s elections were contested under a raft of new electoral rules introduced by many states following the Supreme Court’s landmark Shelby County v Holder 2013 judgement suspending those elements of the Voting Rights Act, which had sought to protect vulnerable groups from discrimination in electoral practices designed to prevent them from registering to vote or from actually voting. Early voting was curbed by some states and tougher voter ID requirements were also introduced. The conclusions of one group of academics looking at these new electoral laws are not uncommon amongst informed commentaries on the subject:

Specifically, the Republican Party has proved incapable of expanding its appeal among the much faster growing minority electorate—which just so happens to exhibit notably lower turnout rates vis-à-vis the stagnant non-Hispanic white electorate that is more supportive of Republican candidates. Faced with this reality, the GOP appears to have opted for coalition maintenance instead of coalition expansion (Karol 2009), by embracing several restrictive voting reforms whose true purpose is to marginally curtail the participation of voters typically aligned with the Democratic Party.*

If you own a gun, a car, a passport or have been in the military, it isn’t so difficult to vote in Texas, but if you have no acceptable photo ID, can’t find you birth certificate and only have the likes of utility bills with your name and address, then the obstacles are considerable.

Of course, much more was happening in these elections. Sure, amongst Democrats there was considerable disappointment with the Obama Presidency and its failure to live up to expectations and this will have depressed the turnout somewhat.  And yet, at the same time as Democrats in fierce battles with Republican opponents seemed to adopt a strategy of tacking rightwards and shunned the notion of trumpeting the Obama achievements on healthcare and the economy, voters were swinging behind a raft of progressive measures covering the minimum wage, personal & medical marijuana use, prison sentencing, abortion and gun control in both blue and red states. So the socially liberal American voter is there and voting: did Democrat candidates lack the nerve to go out and rally them? Or, was it a more wily game where, knowing who was most likely to turn out, the Democrats decided to pitch for some of the traditional Republican vote? Either way, it didn’t work.

This post also appeared on the Northumbria University Politics blog.  Nick Hayward is Principal Lecturer in Politics at Northumbria and teaches on the American Studies programme. He was Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at the State University of New York, Fredonia, 2002-3. He is currently researching British and American post-war views of Empire.