April 8: VIRTUAL. After a depressing but candid presentation last week by BSC President Daniel Coleman, we turn to a cheerier topic tomorrow: suppression of voting rights in the deep south. Steve Suitts, who has spoken to us twice before (on his books Hugo Black of Alabama: How His Roots and Early Career Shaped the Great Champion of the Constitution and Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement), will Zoom in from Atlanta to speak about his new book, A War of Sections: How Deep South Political Suppression Shaped Voting Rights in America, which has been described as a sweeping reinterpretation of the history of disenfranchisement. Steve is a native of Winston County, Alabama, and a graduate of The University of Alabama. He is a writer, historian, educator, biographer, civil libertarian and non-profit executive. His first job was as a staff member of the Selma Project. He founded the Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, was Director of the Southern Regional Council for two decades, was administrator of the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta, and is an Adjunct Instructor in the Institute for Liberal Arts at Emory University. He was chief strategist for Better Schools Better Jobs, and was Executive Producer and one of the writers for Will the Circle Be Unbroken, a thirteen-hour public radio series that won a Peabody Award for its history of the civil rights movement in five Deep South cities. Steve is incredibly insightful, and brings a wealth of research and analysis to any project. Don’t miss this important topic tomorrow!

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