Voting Rights & Wrongs: A Historical Overview
September 26, 2012 - October 31, 2012
1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
6, Wednesday
Location: UNF University Center
(Map it!)
Summary
New!
The scarcity of labor and widespread land ownership led to expanded voting rights in the British colonies along the Atlantic Coast of North America. After winning independence, newly formed states achieved universal manhood suffrage for white male citizens by 1840. Women sought suffrage in 1848 but it was 1920 before they gained the vote.
Their successful crusade occurred shortly after southern states had disenfranchised African Americans, but in 1965 passage of the Voting Rights bill removed the barriers they faced and eventually lowered the voting age to eighteen. Despite this expansion Americans fail to vote in percentages found in many modern democracies.
The power of money in elections and the high cost of campaigning exclude many who would run for office. Women and minorities still confront additional obstacles. We will explore these issues through discussion of documents and readings that the instructor will send you by email and we will view one film that conveys the struggle women endured to win the vote.
Maximum participants:
18
Course Fee & Supplies
Course Fee: $45
Instructor
Shirley Leckie Reed is professor emerita of history from the University of Central Florida where she taught women’s history, regional histories of the South and the West and courses on periods such as the Gilded Age and Progressivism. Shirley is the author of biographies on Elizabeth Bacon Custer, the wife and chief mythologizer of George Armstrong Custer and the western historian and Indian advocate Angie Debo. In addition Shirley has authored works on women and family life in the American Civil War. In particular, her examinations of frontier military life and women intellectuals have revised the history of the American West.
