{"id":13613,"date":"2021-02-17T14:38:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T20:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.wnpt.org\/mediaupdate\/?p=13613"},"modified":"2021-02-17T17:09:47","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T23:09:47","slug":"fight-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.wnpt.org\/mediaupdate\/2021\/02\/17\/fight-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"NPT\u2019s \u2018Fight to Vote: Black Voter Suppression in Tennessee\u2019 airs Feb. 22"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Fight to Vote: Black Voter Suppression in Tennessee<\/strong> premieres Monday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m.<\/strong> on NPT with an encore broadcast Sunday, Feb. 28, at 6:30 p.m.; <\/strong>streaming at video.wnpt.org<\/a>. Focusing mainly on the challenges poor and Black people faced getting access to the ballot box in the decades after the Civil War, the half-hour documentary aims to encourage discussions about voting rights today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right to vote in Tennessee has been uneven, inconsistent and contested since statehood. Tennessee was the first Southern state to grant African American men the vote, but the last to ratify the 15th Amendment declaring the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In that year, 1997, Tennessee was ranked as the 10th easiest state in which to vote; in 2020, the state ranked 46th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the stories told in The Fight to Vote: Black Voter Suppression in Tennessee<\/strong> is that of Elbert Williams, a member of the NAACP in 1940s Haywood County who lost his life as a result of his efforts to register African American voters. The documentary also traces suppression efforts into the 1960s, when Black sharecroppers took shelter in tents after being evicted for attempting to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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