The Chair of African American Studies at Emory University chronicles the historical disenfranchisement of African Americans since the passage of the 14th Amendment, with an emphasis on more recent obstacles since the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby ruling, which allowed districts to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.
Anderson has a gift for illustrating how specific historical injustices have repercussive, detrimental influence on contemporary American life ... Throughout One Person, Anderson’s tone, at turns urgent and indignant, seems to arise from the ease with which she can document abundantly—via investigative journalism, popular history and historical scholarship—the GOP’s determined efforts 'to purge American citizens and cull and homogenize the electorate.' The book’s final chapter is called The Resistance and that is likely our only recourse: To sustain American democracy, we must collectively resist state-run purges of legal voters. Anderson knows this, hammering her overarching claim through quotation of Abraham Lincoln: 'I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.'
One Person, No Vote reads like a speedy sequel of sorts to her previous book ... Her new book seems to have been written from a state of emergency, in an adrenaline-fueled sprint. Anderson is a stinging polemicist ... this trenchant little book will push you to think not just about the vote count but about who counts, too.
Indeed, her description of the perpetual war that blacks and now Latinos have fought to get and keep the right to vote is impeccably researched, deftly written and, sadly, prescient. What made me want to holler were the reams of evidence Anderson presents to prove an irrefutable point: Since Reconstruction, conservative whites have tried to strip minorities of their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, by any means necessary. ... One Person, No Vote is slim...but it punches above its weight, like a lecture from a professor with superb command of language. Anderson’s storytelling shines ... the book reminded me of the classic anti-establishment expression: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.
