The Right to Vote: Protection or Suppression Since 1965

Less than a week before the U.S. presidential election, the Gilder Lehrman Center will host a panel discussion titled “The Right to Vote: Protection or Suppression Since 1965.” The goal is to explore tensions between efforts to abridge and efforts to ensure the electoral franchise, focusing on the period between 1965 Civil Rights Act and the present. To place current trends in voting suppression in historical context, patterns dating to the aftermath of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era also will be addressed.