Beyond the Voting Rights Act movingly recounts over 30 years of contemporary voting rights battles in the United States from the 1980s to the present day. The book places in context the modern-day battles against voter suppression laws that were embedded in American history and are still underway across the country. It tells a story of that struggle from the author’s perspective beginning as a young African American from Cleveland in the 1980s, who reluctantly became involved within this movement as a student activist and inadvertently rose to become an integral part of the ultimate legislative victory

• Acknowledgements 8
• Table of Contents 12
• About the Author and the Series Editor 14
• Foreword 16
• Chapter 1 The Promise of Democracy 21
• Chapter 2 “Our Time Has Come!” – Jesse Jackson and the Historic 1984 Campaign 34
• Chapter 3 Keeping Hope Alive and Breaking Barriers to Voting 48
• Chapter 4 Takin’ It to the Hill: The Battle over H.R. 2190 63
• Chapter 5 The Enemy of the Good: Stuck in the Middle 73
• Chapter 6 Back to Selma: Taking It to the Streets 89
• Chapter 7 The NVRA Filibuster Breakthrough and 1992 Elections 100
• Chapter 8 The Final Push for Passage of NVRA “Motor Voter” Bill 113
• Chapter 9 The States’ Resistance and the Battle for Compliance 132
• Chapter 10 The 2000 Florida Election Debacle 143
• Chapter 11 Post-2000 Election and the 9/11 Reconfiguration 163