The Respect Rundown

by Maria Wood The military stands as a model of integration, with people of all races and ethnicities serving together for the common purpose of protecting the nation. But it wasn’t always that way. African American and white soldiers were split into separate military...

by Jodi L. Miller Changes in voting practices or requirements to vote often seem minor. But those minor changes can have a big impact and are, in fact, examples of voter suppression. For instance, one voter suppression tactic is closure of polling places. Is that a...

by Michael Barbella With the 2018 mid-term election, former felons in Florida regained their long-lost right to vote when 64 percent of Florida voters backed the passage of State Constitutional Amendment 4, which overturned a Civil War-era ban on ex-convicts voting....

by Toni Sutton-Deangelico History was made on December 3, 2015 when Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter announced that all combat roles in the military would be open to women. This new inclusion allowed all women who were fit for combat to be assigned to those roles...

There is no mention of an “affirmative right to vote” in the U.S. Constitution; however, countless lives have been lost in the pursuit of obtaining the franchise. While many believe the country is stronger when everyone exercises the franchise, there are some that...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote: “Voting is the foundation stone for political action. Our vote would place in Congress true representatives of the people who would legislate for the Medicare, housing, schools and jobs required by all men of any color.”...

Across the country, more than six million people have been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C. non-profit that addresses disparities in the criminal justice system. That disenfranchisement typically...

In the fall 2017 edition of Respect, we tackled the issue of voter suppression and reported on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Since then, that commission, which only met twice and was plagued with controversy and eight lawsuits, has been...

The current White House Administration has issued policies that target the transgender community. Most recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a memo advising of the White House’s position that federal statutes prohibiting discrimination based on sex do not...

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 34 states have laws requiring voters to show some form of ID at the polls. Some state laws specifically require photo identification, others states do not. (New Jersey requires no document to vote.) In the...