Why Voting Matters

Why Voting Matters

by | Jun 22, 2026 | Family Legacy, Start Here, Voting Rights

"If votes didn't matter, people would never have worked so hard to deny them."

People often ask why voting matters.

For me, the answer is personal.

It is personal because I know the names of the people in my family who were denied the vote. I know the names of those who fought to protect it. And I know what it feels like to spend years encouraging others to use a right that so many Americans take for granted.

When I began researching my great-great-grandfather, Smallwood Ackiss, I was searching for family history. What I found was something much larger.

In an 1867 poll book from Princess Anne County, Virginia, I found his name.

"Ackiss, Smallwood."

More than 150 years after the election, I was looking at the official record of my great-great-grandfather's first vote.

That moment carried enormous meaning.

Just a few years earlier, Smallwood had been enslaved. Like millions of other African Americans, he had lived in a country where he could be bought, sold, and denied the most basic rights of citizenship. Yet on October 22, 1867, he stood in line with other newly enfranchised Black men and cast a ballot in an election that would help shape Virginia's future.

I often wonder what he was thinking that day.

Did he understand how historic the moment was? Did he realize that future generations of his family would still be talking about that vote more than a century later?

I know what that vote means to me.

It reminds me that voting is not merely a political act. It is an act of citizenship. It is a declaration that your voice matters.

My mother, Evelyn Butts, understood that.

By the time she came of age, African Americans technically had the right to vote, but Virginia had found other ways to make voting difficult. The poll tax required citizens to pay before they could cast a ballot. For many families, especially poor families, it was one more barrier standing between them and full participation in American democracy.

My mother refused to accept that.

She registered voters. She educated citizens about their rights. And when the opportunity came, she challenged the poll tax itself. Her lawsuit became part of the Supreme Court case that ended the poll tax in state and local elections.

She often reminded people that rights mean very little if citizens are unable or unwilling to exercise them.

Years later, I found myself carrying that lesson into my own life.

While living in Nebraska, I spent years registering voters and encouraging people to participate in elections. During one voter registration drive in 2008, I spoke with a young man who had attended school with my youngest daughter.

He told me his vote did not matter.

He believed that the people in power did not care what he thought.

I understood his frustration, but I also thought about Smallwood Ackiss and Evelyn Butts.

Smallwood had lived in a world where he could not vote.

My mother had lived in a world where voting came with obstacles deliberately designed to discourage participation.

This young man lived in a world where the challenge was different. The obstacle was not slavery. It was not a poll tax. It was the belief that participation would make no difference.

That conversation has stayed with me for years.

Every generation faces its own challenges. The barriers change. The arguments change. The frustrations change.

But the question remains the same. Will we participate?

Voting does not guarantee that we will get the outcome we want. It does not guarantee that elected officials will always make the right decisions. It does not guarantee that our side will win.

What it does guarantee is that we have a voice.

When I think about my great-great-grandfather casting his first ballot in 1867, I am reminded that voting is both a right and a responsibility. When I think about my mother challenging the poll tax, I am reminded that every generation must protect that right. And when I think about the young man in Nebraska, I am reminded that the greatest threat to voting is often the belief that it no longer matters.

I disagree.

It mattered to Smallwood Ackiss. It mattered to Evelyn Butts. And it still matters today.

"If votes didn't matter, people would never have worked so hard to deny them."

 

The First Vote

The First Vote

by | Jun 13, 2026 | Family Legacy, Start Here, Voting Rights

The First Vote

Smallwood Ackiss, Willis Augustus Hodges, and the Long Struggle for Political Power in Virginia

When I started researching my great-great-grandfather's first vote, I thought the story would be about Smallwood Ackiss.

I was wrong.

Instead, I found myself fascinated by a man I had never heard of before: Willis Augustus Hodges.

The discovery began with a poll book from Princess Anne County dated October 22, 1867.

As I scanned the names, I suddenly saw it.

"Ackiss, Smallwood."

There it was in black and white. More than 150 years after the election, I was looking at the official record showing that my great-great-grandfather had voted. Voter number three.

I sat there for a moment thinking about what that must have meant.

Just a few years earlier, Smallwood had been enslaved in Princess Anne County. During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army and served in Company E of the 23rd United States Colored Troops. Now he was standing in line with other Black men, casting a ballot for the first time.

The poll book lists 144 African American men who voted in the Third District that day. Smallwood was among them.

What I did not know at the time was that this single document would lead me to one of the most remarkable Virginians I have ever researched.

His name was Willis Augustus Hodges.

I have lived in Virginia most of my life. I attended Virginia schools. I have spent years researching Black history, civil rights, and Virginia politics. Yet somehow, I reached my seventies without ever hearing his name.

That surprised me.

Willis Augustus Hodges was born free in Princess Anne County in 1815. He was an abolitionist, newspaper publisher, political activist, and advocate for equal rights long before the Civil War. He spent decades speaking out against slavery and fighting for citizenship and political rights for African Americans.

His activism came at a cost.

After Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831, free Black families throughout Virginia faced growing suspicion and hostility. The Hodges family was among those who moved between Virginia and New York as conditions became increasingly dangerous for free African Americans.

Yet despite everything he experienced, Hodges never gave up on Virginia.

At one point, he wrote:

"With all thy faults, I still love thee."

That sentence stayed with me.

It would have been understandable if Hodges had walked away. Instead, he kept returning and kept fighting for a better future for the Commonwealth.

As I continued researching, I began asking a different question.

How did hundreds of newly enfranchised Black men in Princess Anne County unite behind Hodges in 1867?

The more I learned, the more I realized the story did not begin in 1867.

It began earlier.

In 1865, African American men in Norfolk organized the Colored Monitor Union Club and demanded full citizenship, including the right to vote. Similar organizations formed in Hampton, Richmond, and other Virginia communities. Later that year, Black leaders from across Virginia met at a Colored State Convention in Alexandria and declared that voting was an essential right of citizenship.

They were not waiting for someone else to define freedom for them.

They were defining it for themselves.

What struck me was how organized these efforts already were. Clubs were being formed. Meetings were being held. Political ideas were being shared across communities.

By the time Smallwood Ackiss cast his first vote in October 1867, the groundwork had already been laid.

Suddenly, the election results made more sense.

Across Princess Anne County, Black voters rallied behind Willis Augustus Hodges. This was not an isolated event. Evidence from other Virginia communities suggests that newly enfranchised African Americans were participating in politics at remarkably high rates.

I cannot help but wonder about the conversations that took place before election day.

Did men gather in churches to discuss the candidates?

Did veterans of the United States Colored Troops encourage others to register?

Did community leaders travel from neighborhood to neighborhood, spreading the word?

I do not know.

What I do know is that when the votes were counted, Willis Augustus Hodges received overwhelming support from Black voters throughout Princess Anne County.

The election revealed something many white Virginians had underestimated: African Americans intended to exercise their new political rights and use them collectively.

African Americans were not simply participating in politics.

They were becoming a political force.

Interestingly, some white Virginia Unionists had already recognized that fact.

In 1865, alarmed by the rapid return of former Confederates to positions of influence, some white Unionists concluded that African American suffrage was essential if they hoped to remain politically competitive. They supported extending the vote to Black men not only because it was the right thing to do, but because they recognized the political power Black voters could bring to a coalition committed to a different future for Virginia.

That observation struck me because it sounds familiar.

Throughout American history, coalitions have formed when different groups discover that their interests overlap.

Black Virginians wanted citizenship, voting rights, and equal protection under the law.

White Unionists wanted a government that would remain loyal to the principles for which the Union had fought.

Together, they helped create one of the most significant political movements in Virginia's history.

For a time, it worked.

Willis Augustus Hodges helped write a new constitution for Virginia. He advocated voting rights, equal treatment under the law, and public education. His leadership made him a target of ridicule in newspapers that opposed Reconstruction and Black political participation.

Then the backlash began.

As I continued researching, I discovered something else that surprised me.

Many people associate Virginia's disfranchisement efforts with the Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902. Yet the process began much earlier.

In 1876, Virginia adopted a poll tax requirement and additional restrictions that reduced voter participation and contributed to a decline in African American political representation.

The effort to limit Black political influence did not happen overnight.

It happened step by step.

The Constitution of 1902 would accelerate that process and help usher in the Jim Crow era.

When I looked at the timeline, I could not help but think about my own family.

In 1867, Smallwood Ackiss cast his first vote.

Nine years later, Virginia began erecting barriers designed to reduce the political influence of voters like him.

Nearly a century later, my mother, Evelyn Butts, would help challenge one of those barriers when she fought Virginia's poll tax all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

The more I learn, the more I realize these are not separate stories but different chapters in the same story.

As I look at the name "Ackiss, Smallwood" in that poll book, I find myself thinking about more than the past.

I think about the present.

The issues facing voters today are different from those faced by Smallwood Ackiss in 1867 or by Evelyn Butts in the 1960s. History never repeats itself exactly, but certain patterns remain familiar. People organize, coalitions form, political power shifts, and others react. Debates emerge over participation, representation, and influence.

The names change. The issues change. The parties change.

Yet the fundamental question remains the same:

Who gets a voice in shaping the future?

When Smallwood Ackiss cast his first vote on October 22, 1867, he was doing more than choosing a candidate. He was claiming a place in American democracy.

More than 150 years later, that lesson still matters because democracy ultimately depends on who is able—and willing—to participate in it.

 

Why I Wrote Small’s Big Journey

Why I Wrote Small’s Big Journey

by | May 26, 2026 | Voting Rights

Some stories stay with a family for generations.

They are told in pieces at the table, at gatherings, in quiet moments when someone decides it is time to remember.

The story of my great-great-grandfather, Smallwood “Small” Ackiss, is one of those stories.

He was born into slavery in Virginia. He lived through a time when freedom was uncertain, and the future was not promised. But he endured. He worked. He believed in something more.

When the Civil War came, he joined the United States Colored Troops and fought for that freedom.

After the war, he returned home and built a life rooted in faith, family, and hard work. And in 1867, he stood in line and voted for the very first time, claiming a right that had once been denied to him.

That moment matters. Because his courage did not end with him.

Generations later, his great-granddaughter, my mother, Evelyn Butts, took that same fight to the United States Supreme Court and helped end the poll tax, a barrier that had kept so many from voting.

This is the legacy I come from.

And it is the story I wanted children to understand.

I wrote Small’s Big Journey because I believe children deserve to know that history is not just something that happened long ago, it lives in families, in choices, and in the courage passed from one generation to the next.

I also wrote it because some parts of our history are not always fully recorded. For those born into slavery, details like exact birthplaces were not always preserved. But their lives, their strength, and their impact are no less real.

This book is my way of honoring that truth.

It is a story about freedom, about perseverance, and about what it means to stand for something, even when the path is difficult.

And now, I’m honored to share it. Small’s Big Journey is now available for preorder:

https://smallwoodcharlottepress.com/

Books will ship beginning May 1, 2026.

 

Thank you for being part of this journey.

The First Sign I Ever Carried

The First Sign I Ever Carried

by | May 26, 2026 | Start Here, Voting Rights

Norfolk, Virginia, 1961. I am on the right, age twelve, holding my first protest sign, standing beside Rowena Warren Stancil during a demonstration at Foreman Field.

Every so often, a photograph reminds us not just of where we were, but of who we were becoming. This is the story behind one such photo — and the first time I ever carried a protest sign.

There is a photograph of me at twelve years old standing beside my mother’s friend, Rowena Warren Stancil. We are holding protest signs next to a bus. Hers reads, “$50,000 Reward for the First Black Kiwanian in Norfolk.” Mine says, “In War We Fight Together. Why Not Sit Together in Peace?”

I am young, neatly dressed, and serious. I did not know then that this small moment would become one of the clearest markers of who I was becoming.

The protest took place in 1961 at Foreman Field, on the local campus of the College of William and Mary in Norfolk. Every year before football season, the Kiwanis Club sponsored an exhibition game there between the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Colts.

That year, Mama and several of her friends decided to protest the game for three reasons. First, the seating in the stands was segregated. Second, the Washington Redskins—alone among NFL teams at the time—refused to hire Black players. And third, the Kiwanis Club itself was an all-white organization, yet this event was being held in a state-supported facility.

The Colts made it known they would not play if the seating remained segregated. The NAACP met with Colts management and, after being assured that the stands would not include a “colored” section, announced that it would not support a demonstration at the event.

But not everyone believed the issue was settled.

Joe Jordan, Ed Dawley, and Len Holt believed that making a fuss was still necessary. They printed flyers announcing a protest and, in a move that was both bold and controversial, put the name and phone number of the NAACP president, Robert D. Robertson, on the flyer and told people to call him. Robertson responded by getting an injunction to stop the flyers from being distributed.

Mama did not believe that an injunction or polite assurances meant the deeper problems had been solved. She brought my sisters and me to the protest anyway.

That day, at twelve years old, I carried a sign for the first time.

I did not fully understand all the politics or the negotiations happening behind the scenes. But I understood something simpler and more important: things were not fair, and grown people I respected were willing to stand in public and say so.

Miss Rowena stood beside me holding her sign about the Kiwanis Club. I held mine about war and peace. The words had been chosen carefully. They were not angry words. They were moral words. They asked a question that did not need much explaining.

Before the game, two Black players from the Colts—Lenny Moore and Johnny Sample—came out to talk to us while we were protesting. That mattered. They did not have to do that. They acknowledged us. Then they went back inside and helped the Colts trample the Redskins, 41–7.

It would take many years for me to fully understand how much courage it took for my mother and her friends to do what they did, and how much pressure surrounded even small acts of protest in those days.

No one paid us to be there. No one paid my mother. No one paid Miss Rowena. No one paid the people who stood and handed out flyers or held signs or took the risk of being seen. THEN AND NOW, PEOPLE DEMONSTRATE BECAUSE THEY CARE, NOT BECAUSE SOMEONE IS HANDING THEM MONEY.

We were there because we believed that citizenship meant participation, and that silence was a kind of consent.

I am 77 years old now. That was my first protest, but it was not my last. It was the beginning of a lifetime of believing that ordinary people have both the right and the responsibility to stand up in public for what is right—even when it is uncomfortable, even when it is inconvenient, even when powerful institutions say the problem has already been solved.

When people today talk about protest as if it is something un-American, I think about that photograph. I think about a twelve-year-old girl holding a sign that asked a simple, honest question.

And I think about how this country itself was born not from quiet agreement, but from people who were willing to make a fuss.

If you have a memory of the first time you stood up for something you believed in, I’d love to hear it in the comments.

I Lived Through the Shift

I Lived Through the Shift

by | May 24, 2026 | Voting Rights

I have been thinking deeply about the conversations happening inside the Democratic Party and how much of it connects to changes I have witnessed during my lifetime. This is a personal reflection from someone who lived through the Civil Rights era and watched the political realignment that followed.

For many Americans, the political realignment that followed the Civil Rights era is something they learned about in school or read about years later. For me, it unfolded in real time.

I was born into Jim Crow America. I grew up in a country where segregation was legal and opportunities were unequal by design. Black families understood clearly that rights could be restricted, delayed, or denied altogether. In my family, civil rights were never abstract political debates. They shaped everyday life.

I remember the protests. I remember the tension people carried. I remember hearing adults talk about politics not as entertainment, but as something tied directly to whether you could vote, find decent work, or simply be treated fairly.

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law, they changed the country in ways that still shape us today. Those laws were necessary and long overdue, but they also accelerated a political transformation that many Americans are still trying to understand.

When I was young, many white Southern conservatives were still Democrats, even while opposing civil rights reforms. The Democratic Party was a complicated coalition that included people with completely different views on race and equality. But after national Democrats embraced civil rights legislation, many white Southern voters slowly began leaving the party. Over time, many found a political home in the Republican Party, especially as cultural resentment, religion, and fears about social change became stronger forces in American politics.

At the same time, Black Americans increasingly aligned themselves with Democrats because the party, despite its flaws and internal disagreements, had become more associated with protecting voting rights and expanding civil rights protections.

But the shift was never only about race.

As the years passed, the Democratic Party also became more closely associated with women’s rights, reproductive freedom, workplace equality, LGBTQ rights, and broader cultural changes happening across the country. Republicans, meanwhile, increasingly presented themselves as defenders of traditional culture, religion, and small-town identity.

I do not believe Democrats lost support in parts of rural America or the South because equal rights for women were wrong. Women deserved equal opportunity, equal protection under the law, and the ability to make decisions about their own lives. But I do believe many culturally conservative voters began feeling that the Democratic Party no longer reflected their communities, values, or way of life.

Over time, politics stopped being only about economics or government programs. Identity, religion, culture, and belonging became just as powerful in shaping how people voted and where they felt politically at home.

Today, I hear many Democrats discussing how to reconnect with working-class voters, rural communities, and Middle America. I understand why those conversations are happening. A political party cannot remain competitive if it loses the ability to connect with large parts of the country.

But I also carry another concern.

I worry about what lessons some leaders may take from recent election losses.

Will the party begin to view civil rights, diversity, inclusion, or women’s rights as political liabilities instead of moral commitments? Will some conclude that the very groups who became central to the modern Democratic coalition are now somehow expendable? Will efforts to regain culturally conservative voters come at the expense of people who spent generations fighting simply to be treated as full participants in American democracy?

Those questions matter deeply to me because I have lived long enough to know that progress can move backward.

I remember poll taxes. I remember segregated schools. I remember a time when Black Americans were told to wait patiently for rights that others already enjoyed. I remember when women had fewer protections, fewer opportunities, and fewer choices about their own lives.

None of those changes happened automatically. People organized, marched, spoke out, and pushed this country to live up to its promises. Some lost jobs. Some lost relationships. Some lost their safety. Some lost their lives.

That history is why I become uneasy when conversations about civil rights or women’s rights are reduced to electoral strategy or “messaging problems.”

At the same time, I do not believe Democrats can afford to dismiss the frustrations of rural or working-class Americans either. Most people want to feel respected. They want to feel seen. They want to believe there is still a place for them and their communities in the country’s future.

The challenge facing Democrats now is larger than simply winning the next election. The challenge is whether the party can build a coalition broad enough to compete politically without abandoning the principles and people that helped define it in the modern civil rights era.

That balance will not be easy.

But for those of us who lived through the beginning of this transformation, these debates do not feel theoretical. We have already seen how quickly this country can divide itself over who belongs, whose rights matter, and whose voices deserve to be heard.

And many of us worry that America may be entering another one of those periods again.

Why I Still Don’t Understand the Virginia Redistricting Election Timeline

Why I Still Don’t Understand the Virginia Redistricting Election Timeline

by | May 20, 2026 | Voting Rights

What continues to bother me about the Virginia redistricting referendum situation is not just the ruling itself, but the timeline.

By January 2026, the courts had already recognized serious legal questions about whether the amendment had even been placed on the ballot within the required constitutional timeframe. Lawsuits had already been filed. Judges were already ruling on it. This was not something discovered at the last minute, right before Election Day.

Yet the election was still allowed to move forward.

On January 27, a judge ruled the amendment unlawful and blocked it from appearing on the April ballot. Then the case was appealed. On February 13, the Virginia Supreme Court allowed the referendum to proceed. On February 19, another judge again ruled the amendment unlawful on different grounds. Then on March 2, the court basically said the election could move forward and the legal issues could be sorted out afterward.

Early voting started on March 6. That is the part I still struggle with. People keep talking about “avoiding confusion,” but honestly, what would have been more confusing than allowing Virginians to vote in an election that was still under serious legal dispute?

At that point, early voting had not even started yet. There was still time to stop, fully review the issue, and either approve the process or move the election date.

Instead, everybody moved forward under uncertainty.

More than $15 million was spent. Campaigns organized around the election. Election officials prepared for it. Voters participated in good faith believing the process had been cleared to proceed. Once the courts allowed the election to continue, most ordinary people naturally assumed the legal problems either had been resolved or were not serious enough to stop the election.

That matters.

The courts knew they still had the power to overturn things later if they chose to. They also knew there was always the possibility voters themselves might reject the amendment anyway, making the whole controversy irrelevant.

So I keep coming back to the same question:
If the courts knew as early as January that the timing might be unconstitutional, why not fully deal with it before voting started?

I understand there were probably concerns about the upcoming primaries, redistricting deadlines, and keeping the election calendar moving. But to me, that makes early clarity even more important, not less.

The larger the consequences, the more important it becomes to settle the legality before people vote.

What troubles me most is the growing feeling that institutions are becoming more focused on keeping the machinery running than making sure the public has confidence in the process itself.

At some point, protecting trust in democracy requires more than telling people to trust the system. It requires resolving major legal questions before voters spend their time, money, energy, and votes participating in an election that may still be legally unsettled.

Why the Struggle Over Who Gets to Vote Has Never Truly Ended

Why the Struggle Over Who Gets to Vote Has Never Truly Ended

by | May 18, 2026 | Voting Rights

Voting rights are rarely lost all at once. They erode quietly, through small changes, fading memory, and the belief that progress is permanent. History suggests otherwise.

In the United States, the right to vote has never simply existed. It has been defined, restricted, contested, and reclaimed across generations.

At the nation’s founding, political power rested in the hands of white male property owners. The vote was not designed to include everyone; it was designed to preserve influence among those who already held it. Democracy, in its earliest form here, was deliberately narrow.

Over time, that boundary shifted, but never easily and never without resistance.

After the Civil War, Black men were granted the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment. Almost immediately, that right was met with obstruction. Laws, intimidation, and violence followed. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and legal barriers did not emerge by accident; they were constructed to limit participation while preserving the appearance of democracy. The Constitution promised citizenship. Practice often enforced exclusion.

Women secured the vote in 1920 after decades of organizing and sacrifice. Native Americans were recognized as citizens in 1924, yet many still faced barriers that delayed meaningful access to the ballot. Every expansion of democracy required pressure. None of it was freely given. None of it was guaranteed to last.

History shows a consistent pattern: democracy expands when forced and contracts when vigilance weakens.

In our own time, debates over voting rules and access have again moved to the center of public life. Supporters describe these measures as necessary protections. Critics recognize an older dynamic: rules that, whether intentionally or not, narrow participation. When participation narrows, power concentrates. That pattern is not new.

Ignoring the role race has played, and continues to play, does not erase disparities. It allows them to persist without scrutiny. Progress, once achieved, does not sustain itself. It must be defended.

I learned this not first from history books, but from watching those before me understand that a barrier to the ballot is never merely administrative. It is a decision about whose voice carries weight.

This is not a partisan claim. It is a historical one.

Rights in the United States are rarely stripped away in a single act. More often, they erode gradually, through incremental rules, shifting requirements, and the quiet assumption that the work is finished. Each generation inherits both the gains and the unfinished obligations of the last.

Democracy has become more inclusive over time. That is undeniable. But history asks a harder question: will we recognize when the boundary begins to move again?

A democracy survives through participation, vigilance, and memory.

The right to vote has always been contested. When memory fades, erosion begins quietly and incrementally, often without announcement. Rights are rarely lost in a single moment; they are worn down over time.

The ballot is more than a procedure. It is the measure of who belongs and whose voice carries power.

When citizens stop watching, boundaries shift. When they remain attentive, democracy endures.

In the months ahead, we will be reminded again that barriers to the ballot are never abstract. They shape real lives, real voices, and the direction of a nation.

History does not repeat itself exactly, but it does follow patterns. The direction it moves, as it always has, depends on whether people choose to notice.

From Small’s First Vote to Today: Why This Supreme Court Decision Matters

From Small’s First Vote to Today: Why This Supreme Court Decision Matters

by | May 17, 2026 | Voting Rights

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision that feels like a step backward, and I do not say that lightly.

I think about my great-great-grandfather, Smallwood “Small” Ackiss, who was born into slavery and, after the Civil War, became one of the first Black men in his community to vote, something that was not given but claimed at great cost.

I also think about his great-granddaughter, Evelyn Butts, who challenged the poll tax all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end a system that made people pay to vote.

That history is not distant to me, it is my family, and that is why today’s decision lands the way it does.

The Court has made it harder to challenge voting maps that weaken the power of minority voters, because what once could be shown through a harmful effect will now often require proof of intentional discrimination.

Anyone who understands our history knows how difficult that is, because discrimination has rarely announced itself plainly and has instead adapted, using neutral language while producing unequal results.

This decision does not erase the right to vote, but it changes how that right is protected, and for me, that is where the concern lies.

From Small’s first vote to Evelyn’s fight, the lesson has always been the same: access alone is not enough, protection matters, participation matters, and vigilance matters.

We have seen barriers before, some obvious and some carefully constructed, and the question now is not only what the Court has done, but what we do next, how we participate, and whether we choose to use the rights that so many fought to secure.

We Fought for the Right to Vote, Now We Have to Use it

We Fought for the Right to Vote, Now We Have to Use it

by | May 17, 2026 | Voting Rights

Black communities in this country understand something deeply: what it means to be denied the right to vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, and barriers that were never subtle were all designed to keep people out of the democratic process.

That history is not distant. It lives through family stories, community memory, and the lived experiences passed from one generation to the next. People fought against those barriers at enormous personal cost. Some risked their jobs, their safety, and even their lives so future generations could participate fully in American democracy.

Because of that struggle, doors that had long been closed were finally forced open. That matters. But it also raises an important question for us today: what are we doing with the access that so many fought to secure?

We now have more opportunities to vote than at almost any other time in our history. People can vote early, vote by mail, or vote on Election Day itself. Information about candidates and issues is more accessible than ever before. Yet participation still falls short of what it could and should be.

We cannot ignore that reality.

We know what voter suppression looks like because our communities have lived through it. At the same time, when access exists, we also have to recognize responsibility. The struggle was never only about removing barriers. It was about making participation possible.

And once participation becomes possible, it must be used.

We do not honor the sacrifices of those who fought for voting rights by standing still or tuning out. We honor them by showing up, paying attention, staying engaged, and participating in the process they worked so hard to open to us.

Because the right to vote is not simply something that was won in the past. It is something that must continue to be exercised, protected, and valued in every generation.