A History of Latino Voting Rights, 1840-1980

FAIN: FT-255083-17

John Bezis-Selfa
Wheaton College (Norton, MA 02766-2322)

A book-length historical study of Latinos' ability to exercise the right to vote.

This book project, “A Latino Right to Vote," explores and seeks to explain how Latino struggles to preserve, gain, regain, and exercise the right to vote shaped how Latinos and Anglos have conceived of and defined citizenship and Latinos' place within the United States. Through this project, for which I seek a wide audience, I aim to bring Latinos, who most Americans and most historians have long considered marginal to our nation’s past, to its center and to make them central to questions that have long animated study of that past. Who has been able to participate directly in our democracy and on what terms? What has it meant to be a citizen?