How the Nation Built and Broke the Voting Rights Act

Rising Up With Sonali · Oct 15, 2026

FEATURING MICHAEL G. MILLER - While the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution gave Black people in the US the right to vote, it was another hundred years before the Civil Rights movement forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, cementing that right. 

But, as the US Supreme Court tilted further and further to the right, it set its sights on the VRA, chipping away at pieces of it, beginning in 2013 with its ruling in Shelby County Vs. Holder. 

The history of the VRA and its decimation is told in a new book by Michael Miller, a professor of political science at Barnard…