Register Now for the Constitution Day Voting Rights Forum on September 15

Join us Friday for the Gilder Lehrman Institute's Voting Rights Forum! Register here to livestream the forum from your home or school on September 15 at 2 pm ET.

The Voting Rights Forum will be held at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The panelists—representing a wide range of expert perspective on American history and politics—will discuss the history and evolution of voting rights as well as contemporary issues concerning voting and federalism:

• John Avlon, CNN Senior Political Analyst

• Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

• Nicole Hemmer, Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the Study of the Presidency and Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

• The Hon. Myrna Pérez, United States Circuit Court Judge for the Second Circuit

• Bertrall Ross, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and Director, Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, University of Virginia

• Jeanette M. Senecal, Senior Director of Mission Impact, League of Women Voters

This forum is free and open to all—register here.

The Right to Vote: The Role of States and the US Constitution

The Gilder Lehrman Institute won the 2022 Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics Award for its project “The Right to Vote: The Role of States and the US Constitution.”

To fulfill the grant, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has created several new civics-oriented resources for students, teachers, and the general public:

• A series of essays by eminent historians for high school students that explore the role of state government and the US Constitution with regard to voting rights
• “Taking a Stand for Voting Rights: Six States, Six Stories, One Goal”, a unit of lesson plans that focuses on how individuals in six different states attempted to expand access to the vote for different groups—African Americans, American Indians, and women. The unit includes an active civics component in which students discuss and debate contemporary voting rights issues.
• Ten $500 “Voting Rights Prizes” offered for student work
• Who Can Vote?: A Brief History of Voting Rights in the US, a seven-panel Traveling Exhibition and an accompanying four-part digital exhibition
• Three two-hour teacher professional development sessions on voting rights (two in October 2023)
• A Voting Rights Forum (September 15, 2023) to coincide with Constitution Day