Dr. Khalilah Brown- Dean
"Lessons From the Past, Prospects for the Future: Voting Rights and Election 2016"
4:00 pm - Student Union 104
On March 7, 1965, state troopers attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama (the seat of Dallas County government). Television networks broadcast images of the attack around the world, attracting widespread attention and demonstrations in support of the voting rights cause. These events—as well as the deaths of activists Jimmy Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, and James Reeb in Selma—produced sufficient public pressure for Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965.
Brown-Dean examines the impact of the Voting Rights Act on minority voter turnout, racially polaraized voting, policy outcomes, and the election of minority elected officials and explores how contemporary challenges to ballot access may shape outcomes of the historic 2016 Presidential election.
Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, Associate Professor of Political Science at Quinnipiac University, is an award-winning political analyst, advisor, and commentator for many outlets such as NPR, Fox News Radio, and The New York Times. She has authored numerous academic and popular pieces including “Felon Disenfranchisement after Bush v. Gove: Changes and Trends,” in Election Administration in the United States: The State of Reform After Bush v. Gove<http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/election-administration-united-states-state-reform-after-ibush-v-gorei>, edited by Michael Alvarez and Bernard Grofman (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and “Counting Bodies and Ballots: Prison Gerrymandering and the Paradox of Urban Political Representation” forthcoming in Urban Citizenship and American Democracy: The Historical and Institutional Roots of Local Politics and Policy by Amy Bridges and Michael Javen Fortner (SUNY Press). She is co-author of a Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report<http://jointcenter.org/blog/50-years-voting-rights-act> on the contemporary status of voting rights in the United States that was presented during the 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Alabama.
For more information, contact: Africana Studies Institute at africana@uconn.edu