Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America

by Stacey Abrams

Dozens of Black men elected at every level of government during Reconstruction terrified the Southern white congressmen who knew expansions of Black power would shake the cultural and economic foundations of the former Confederacy. Instead, the Southern white congressmen used the 1876 presidential election to end the transformation of the South and restore the discrimination that had served them so well. Those who rage against and work against expanding the electorate know what’s at stake. The goal is to block access to the ballot and to policy making because letting the agitators inside might yield new laws to remedy inequality or injustice. The fear of these elected officials is a loss of power, grounded in an assortment of causes like racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or an inchoate desire to keep the world as it was when they sat at the peak of influence. They forget that the bygone days of political tranquility never truly existed—the agitators simply hadn’t amassed sufficient power to be heard. But they are getting closer to it every day.