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A few years ago, Charles Zelden, a legal scholar, author , and expert on election law, created a booklist at Legal for Legal History Blog of the best books on the history of election law and voting rights.  Check Over the last few years, this booklist has become even more relevant than before. Check out Zeldin's blog post booklist because he provides outstanding summaries for each of highlights the struggles Americans have had securing the books on right to the listvote. The first nine books on the list are his choices,  but but we added one more book to round it outthe Top Ten Booklist.

We would love to hear any suggestions that you may have included links to improve this listAmazon, but a number of these books are fairly expensive.  Leave us a smart recommendation in the comment section and we will be happy to revise itSee if you can check them out from your local library.

13. Alexander Keyssar Stephen F. Lawson, The Right To Vote [https: The Contested History of Democracy //www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739100874/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0739100874&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=80ea29e492a023c79f0ad4d6ce4dbc30 Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the United States South, 1944-1969] (Basic Lexington Books, 20001999)Black Ballots is an in-depth look at suffrage expansion in the South from World War II through the Johnson administration. Steven Lawson focuses on the "Second Reconstruction"―the struggle of blacks to gain political power in the South through the ballot-which both whites and black perceived to be a key element in the civil rights process.

24. Charles l R. ZeldenVolney Riser, Voting  [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080715010X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=080715010X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=6472e2b4f3f818dffdd1b371b546626f Defying Disfranchisement: Black Voting Rights on Trial Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908] (HackettLSU Press, 20042010)In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jim Crow strengthened rapidly and several southern states adopted new constitutions designed primarily to strip African American men of their right to vote. Since the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited eliminating voters based on race, the South concocted property requirements, literacy tests, poll taxes, white primaries, and white control of the voting apparatus to eliminate the region's black vote almost entirely. Desperate to save their ballots, black political leaders, attorneys, preachers, and activists fought back in the courts, sustaining that resistance until the nascent NAACP took over the legal battle.

35. Stephen F Richard C. LawsonCortner, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969  The Apportionment Cases (Lexington BooksW. W. Norton & Co., 19991970)Check your library or look for a used copy.

48. R Christopher Malone, [https://www.amazon. Volney Risercom/gp/product/0415956978/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0415956978&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=7ead7eea28e7eaea575cc1459b48efef Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Defying Disfranchisement: Black Party and Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890-1908 Antebellum North] (LSU PressRoutledge, 20102008)<i>Between Freedom and Bondage</i> looks at the fluctuations of black suffrage in the antebellum North, using the four states of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island as examples. In each of these states, a different outcome was obtained for blacks in their quest to share the vote. By analyzing the various outcomes of state struggles, Malone offers a framework for understanding and explaining how the issue of voting rights for blacks unfolded between the drafting of the Constitution and the end of the Civil War.

5. Richard C. Cortner, The Apportionment Cases (W. W. Norton & Co., 1970) - Does not appear to be published anymore.  Check your library or look for a used copy. 69. Charles L. Zelden, Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy (U. Press of Kansas, 2008  [HB]; abridged and updated, 2010)   7. Richard L. Hasen, The Voting Warshttps: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown (Yale Univ//www. Press, 2012)   8amazon. Christopher Malone, Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North (Routledge, 2008) 9. Charles L. Zelden, The com/gp/product/0700613404/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0700613404&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=36d03feafe138973fc0b86b943191012 The Battle for the Black Ballot: Smith v. Allwright and the Defeat of the Texas All-White Primary Primary] (U. Press of Kansas, 2005)The history of voting rights in America is a checkerboard marked by dogged progress against persistent prejudice toward an expanding inclusiveness. The Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright is a crucial chapter in that broader story and marked a major turning point for the modern civil rights movement. Charles Zelden's concise and thoughtful retelling of this episode reveals why.

  10.  Marjorie Spruill Wheeler,  New  [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195082451/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0195082451&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=f16b20f091d376e7c1509331c593d812 New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in Southern States States] (Oxford University Press, 1993)There is currently a great deal of interest in the Southern suffrage movement, but until now historians have had no comprehensive history of the woman suffrage movement in the South, the region where suffragists had the hardest fight and the least success. This important new book focuses on eleven of the movement's most prominent leaders at the regional and national levels, exploring the range of opinions within this group, with particular emphasis on race and states' rights. Wheeler insists that the suffragists were motivated primarily by the desire to secure public affirmation of female equality and to protect the interests of women, children, and the poor in the tradition of noblesse oblige in a New South they perceived as misgoverned by crass and materialistic men.