STACEY ABRAMS AND THE FIGHT TO VOTE

What would Stacey Abrams’ Black political female predecessors say to her if they were alive today?

Todd and Freeman bring this scenario to life in their creative biography of Georgia-based politician Abrams. Voting rights champions across two centuries—Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Septima Poinsette Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer—speak to one another about Abrams as they reflect on the barriers that national and state governments have systematically erected to prevent specific populations from voting. While the text focuses on the Black vote, the backmatter describes many other groups that have been excluded from voting throughout American history. This biography begins with Abrams’ parents, who also, growing up in the Jim Crow South, faced obstacles that required courage and tenacity to overcome. Abrams’ parents taught their children to take care of one another and took them to the polls every election to show them that voting was how to take care of your community. The daughter of a librarian, Stacey loved books and using “big, juicy words.” As the book traces Abrams’ successes at Spelman College and her political accomplishments, the brightly colored digitally rendered illustrations, featuring striking portraits of Abrams and others that fill the page, emphasize her determination despite disappointments, and the more faded images of her political predecessors remind readers that they speak from the past. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A brilliant introduction to a powerful Black female politician and voting rights activist.