Megan Stevens – Unsettled Feeling & Critical Insight

by Megan Stevens

Context

When dealing with a topic in history as complicated as race, it can be difficult to pin-point just one aspect to plan a lesson around. While intending to use the lesson in a, specifically, United States Government course helps narrow it down, there are still countless options. In selecting the theme for this lesson the goal was to simultaneously choose a topic that was relevant to American politics today as well as provide a breadth of information to best help students understand an important aspect of race in the American political sphere. In choosing to focus upon voter turnout amongst black citizens, the lesson is able to cover topics such as gerrymandering, voter identification laws, poll closures, and mass incarceration.

While these components impact minority voters of many backgrounds, this lesson will focus specifically on black Americans for three reasons. The first is that, despite the fact that voter turnout for minorities is low in general, the specific factors chosen to explore are most commonly highlighted for their impact on black citizens in particular. The second is the history of voter suppression suffered by black Americans, particularly during the Jim Crow Era in the South. The last is simply the idea that, in order to best understand the topics being analyzed, it helps students to focus their attention on how these variables could impact people of a similar background rather than balance their impact on various different cultural and ethnic groups. The students will also be given background information on the topic in order to ground their interpretation of the sources. This background information can also serve helpful for those attempting to implement the lesson and therefore will be included in a similar fashion here.

Prior to the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many states—particularly in the South—incorporated laws preventing black Americans from exercising their right to vote. Policies such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses were employed with the intention of disenfranchising citizens of color. Voting is a powerful tool in a democratic republic. Enfranchisement allows for citizens to elect representatives that will have the power to pass legislation that could create positive change for and protect the constituencies they represent. These constituents, therefore, have a means through which to hold government officials accountable to their promises. Elections are a forceful means for citizens to have their voices heard on a regular basis.

Despite the undeniable progress America has seen since the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment—banning the practice of poll taxes—some barriers to voting still remain. Each of these barriers serves a different political purpose. Voter Identification Laws are passed as a means for promising protections against voter fraud. The idea behind this is that, if citizens are forced to present IDs at the polls, the likelihood that elections can be tampered with by improper voting practices can be tapered.¹ Poll Closures come typically as a means of cutting costs or as a result of actions such as early voting and absentee ballots lowering demand for polling locations on election day.² Mass incarceration—or rather, the percentage of those incarcerated—comes from attempts by politicians to represent themselves as tough on crime. This is something that many voters deemed as a positive quality throughout the end of the twentieth century as well as the beginning of the twenty-first.³ Gerrymandering allows for politicians to ensure a higher likelihood of re-election for members of their party within their state—ideally guaranteeing their ability to hold the majority within their states’ legislature.

While not all of these barriers are employed to intentionally disenfranchise a portion of the population—as did the legislation of the Jim Crow era did—it is undeniable that these policies may have an adverse effect on black citizens. Throughout this lesson, students will explore how these different policies could create an environment in which it is more difficult for minority voters—specifically African Americans—to exercise their right to vote. Although this may be true, it is improper to see these circumstances as irreparable. Both through the actions of the people effected as well as the interventions of organizations—such as the ACLU—citizens have made sure to make their voices heard despite these barriers.

In addition to this, in situations where the rights of African Americans have been seen to have been violated by these policies, organizations—such as the ACLU and NAACP among many others—step in to pursue legal recourse and potentially have these policies overturned (typically in the courts).⁴ Federal courts have served as important ground to fight against potential disenfranchisement. Interest groups and advocacy organizations—such as the Sentencing Project—also serve as a tool to inform Americans of the potential outcomes causes by these barriers’ existence. Their websites offer statistics and articles that make this information more readily available to the public.⁵

Bibliography

Forman, James Jr. Locking Up Our Own. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017.

Gotsch, Kara. “Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System.” The Sentencing Project, The Sentencing Project, 19 Apr. 2018, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/.

Hicks, William D., et al. “A Principle or a Strategy? Voter Identification Laws and Partisan Competition in the American States.” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 1, 2015, pp. 18–33. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24371969.

Ross, Bertrall. “PARTISAN GERRYMANDERING, THE FIRST AMENDMENT, AND THE POLITICAL OUTSIDER.” Columbia Law Review 118, no. 7 (2018): 2187-218. www.jstor.org/stable/26524958.

Documents

by Megan Stevens

Context

This lesson focuses on gender within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In crafting this lesson, there is an attempt to provide students with a provocative question that both represents the current political landscape while also asking them to tap into their historical knowledge of women’s rights and path to full citizenship. The lesson revolves around three key components to gendered history in the United States—labor participation, social norms, and political participation. The sources have been chosen with care in order to represent the obstacles that women face in each of these categories.

In regards to labor, it focuses not just on early hindrances to women’s participation in the workforce but also on current data and statistics comparing the professional lives of men and women. The perceptions of women’s issues during the twenty-first century in the labor force revolves around the equal pay gap and the remnants of traditional motherhood inhibiting equal participation. Typically, this is caused by prejudices held by employers about women being able to balance their life to “have it all”. The data represented within the lesson is meant to demonstrate how these conceptions have real life implications–which can be seen through the employment rates of women (as well as mothers), occupations deemed as appropriate for women, and income disparities. The roots of these ideas come from generations of reinforcement. The purpose of the lesson is not simply to highlight barriers to the representation of women that still remain, but to trace their historical significance that brought us to this point.

For women to work, in the twentieth century, meant relegating a women’s responsibilities to the family to the back burner.¹ They were judged to have selfishly relinquished their role as mother in order to serve their own ambitions. Many women who chose to enter the labor force in this era did so out of economic necessity.² In reaction to this, a number of social reform women’s organizations advocated for legislation restricting women’s participation for their own protection.³ The belief was that if men were providing for their families appropriately, there would be no motivation for women to leave their protective sphere within the home.⁴ There was little acceptance of the notion that women’s work outside of the home could provide them with a sense of autonomy and citizenship never achievable otherwise.

For the category of social norms, the decision was made to focus largely on primary sources that would have been viewed by a large portion of the public. The public nature of these sources represents their acceptability among the population of the time. While some of these sources are written, others are advertisements and post cards that would have received wide-spread viewership. There was also a decision to include sources from a variety of decades in the mid to late twentieth century. While it may be far-fetched, one of the goals of having some more recent sources (from the 70s and 80s) is to have the students make the connection that the citizens who were young when these ads and articles were published represent the largest percentage of frequent voters today. Therefore, the impressions of women dictated within these sources could have had an impact on their perception of women’s ability to perform the work public offices require–especially that of the president.

In addition to this, the sources also try and highlight gender norms as they have impacted women’s participation in the labor force and politics. Men’s work was deemed as occupying the public sphere.⁵ Women’s work, on the other hand, was relegated to the private sphere that the home represented.⁶ The roles of women were as wives and mothers above all else. As a result of this, the identity of women was attached to those who occupied her home with her–her husband and her children. To break from these roles required women to participate in activities that were deemed as selfish—that sacrificed the well-being of their families for their own happiness and independence. Some sources selected are meant to demonstrate the backlash that these women received. In particular, the post cards demonstrating attitudes towards suffragettes at the turn of the twentieth century show families in disarray due to the mother figure’s participation in a movement to fight for her own rights.⁷

Lastly, political participation is perhaps the most important of the three categories as it most closely relates to the essential question itself. There are a variety of scholars who have commented on the reasons as to why women struggle to get elected as well as tend to have historically lower voter turnout than their male counterparts.⁸ The decision to select the primary sources and secondary sources for this portion of the lesson was one that was weighed carefully. The secondary sources have excerpts within them that can be pulled not only to provide students insight into why women struggle to get elected, but also includes thought-provoking information that will allow students to contemplate the reasons why these problems exist. In doing so, it is attempting to paint as full a picture as possible within a short period of time that one class period alots. The students will be able to work hands on with both primary and secondary sources in order to come to a conclusion on the essential question: Why hasn’t there been a female president?

Bibliography

Helmbold, Lois Rita, and Ann Schofield. “Women’s Labor History, 1790-1945.” Reviews in American History, vol. 17, no. 4, 1989, pp. 501–518. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2703424.

Kessler-Harris, Alicia. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

“Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive: Holidays.” Edited by Catherine H Palczewski, University of Northern Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, sites.uni.edu/palczews/NEW%20postcard%20webpage/CryingBaby.html.

Perlez, Jane., “WOMEN, POWER AND POLITICS.” New York Times, June 24, 1984, vol. cxxii, no. 46,085. p. 22.

Scanzoni, John, and Greer Litton Fox. “Sex Roles, Family and Society: The Seventies and Beyond.” Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 42, no. 4, 1980, pp. 743–756. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/351822.

Author: Megan Stevens

Obstacles to Voting

by Megan Stevens

Context

Bibliography

Documents