“Voter Suppression – A Recent Phenomenon or an American Legacy,” an article by WMU-Cooley Law School Associate Professor Renalia DuBose, has been selected for publication by the University of Baltimore Law Review in February 2021.
The timely article celebrates two momentous events in the United States - record voter participation in the 2020 Presidential election and the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the right to vote.
In the article, attitudes of early governing officials, as well as federal documents regarding equality and citizenship in Colonial America are examined, as they are critical to the right to vote. The reputation of the United States as the global standard-bearer of democracy is questioned as the United States has not consistently pursued universal suffrage. A historical analysis of voter expansion and voter suppression in the United States is detailed. In the article, Professor DuBose offers strategies to advance voter participation and to address voter suppression.
DuBose, who teaches at WMU-Cooley’s Tampa Bay, Florida campus, is a retired 34-year public educator/administrator and assistant superintendent in central Florida urban school districts, and a member of the Florida Bar. She is the daughter of a Baptist preacher who attended Selma University in the 1960s and studied under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to learn nonviolent strategies to desegregate schools and workplaces and increase voter participation in Pensacola, Florida. Her father was honored by the governor of Florida as a 50-year civil rights pioneer. Because of her background, Renalia DuBose has been involved in voter participation initiatives for almost 50 years.
