CAREER: We Dare Defend Our Rights: The Political Use of Law in the Enforcement of Voting Rights

Tulane University, New Orleans LA

Investigators

Abstract

Recent elections have shown that political organizations still matter. The Civil and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960’s made racially exclusionary practices illegal; nevertheless, they did not automatically enforce rights. Whites subsequently adapted and deployed new methods of political exclusion. The contemporary social and political context is different, but the ambiguity and indeterminacy of voting rights are not. State voter ID laws, limits on early voting, restrictions on registration, voter roll purges, disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering have become ordinary yet systemic barriers to minority participation. Voting rights are again being challenged and new de jure and de facto voter suppression techniques are again on the rise. Yet so too are the number of political organizations attempting to build, sustain, and employ the strategic capacity necessary for successful legal mobilization. Understanding how the Alabama Democratic Conference developed, sustained, and employed statewide strategic capacity and effectively capitalized on the support structure for legal mobilization for over twenty years will inform our understanding of social movement theory and provide insights that can be adapted to fit the needs of rights advocacy groups across the United States and in other western-style democracies. This research project will create a repository of research materials on minority political organizations and their legal campaigns. A short documentary will be created and disseminated to a wide audience, from local to national civic and political organizations and from secondary schools to graduate seminars. Lastly, this research project will incorporate underrepresented students at all stages of the research, increasing their sense of belonging, which is highly correlated with academic outcomes, and imparting research and job readiness skills. This CAREER award focuses on collecting and analyzing data on how a minority political organization sustained a statewide legal campaign for over twenty years (1965-1989) culminating in the most successful political usage of law to enforce voting rights in American history. To guide examination of the ADC, this project relies on prior social movement research under two theoretical headings: the support structure for legal mobilization and strategic capacity. This research project will employ grounded theory, an interpretative analytic approach, and snowball sampling as a complimentary research strategy. This project will provide insight into unresolved questions about how different elements of the support structure for legal mobilization are correlated with successful insurgency at both the state and federal levels. This analysis will advance our understanding of the mechanisms through which strategic capacity is created and our understanding of leadership and organizational structures as sources of strategic capacity. Finally, this research will advance our understanding of how different aspects of strategic capacity interact with the different elements of the support structure for legal mobilization at the state and federal level. In truth, we do not know much about the legal campaigns of minority voting rights organizations. This research project will fill this crucial gap in the socio-legal research literature and answer key questions regarding the political use of law for political purposes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.