Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma

by Karlyn Forner

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Pub Date Oct 13 2017 | Archive Date Oct 02 2017

Duke University Press | Duke University Press Books

History | Nonfiction (Adult)

Description

In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement —a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton-farming to cattle-raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.
Karlyn Forner is Project Manager of the SNCC Digital Gateway at Duke University Libraries.

Advance Praise

“Karlyn Forner’s valuable and informative Why the Vote Wasn’t Enough for Selma provides with great depth much-needed context for a struggle that is too often reduced to a 1965 protest march, and raises with great relevance for today the often-avoided issue of the undone work necessary to secure meaningful change. This is much more than a book about Alabama civil rights struggle. Read it and learn.” — Charles E. Cobb Jr., author of This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Available Editions

EDITION	Paperback
ISBN	9780822370055
PRICE	$27.95 (USD)
PAGES	344

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Featured Reviews

beth e, Librarian

Karlyn Forner has written a book that looks at the big picture in which Selma and the right to vote were contextualized.
Selma was supposed to be a major step forward in the fight for racial equality, but was in reality another step in a long march that continues today.
Forner situates racism in economic terms. These economic terms continue today - the poverty, lack of work, and limited access to resources - and they continue to haunt African-American communities.
Selma's citizens were in a state of flux as the economy changed from one of cotton to one of animal husbandry. African-Americans were the hardest hit.
The dream that the legislation allowing African-Americans to vote in Selma was not to be.
Forner is honest in her reflection and the book is richer for her copious sources.