Please join Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. CC’73, LAW’76, and Professor Frank A. Guridy, newly appointed executive director of the Holder Initiative, as they discuss Attorney General Holder's new book, Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote. You will also have the opportunity to hear from the new dean of Columbia College, Josef Sorett.
The first 100 students to check in will receive a signed copy of Eric Holder's book. (CUID required)
6:00 - 7:00 p.m. | Frank Guridy in Conversation with Eric Holder on Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote & Audience Q & A
7:00–8:00 p.m. | Reception (reshrements will be served)
Registration for this event is required.
Please Note: This event is open to CU affiliates only.
About Our Unfinished March
A brutal, bloody, and at times hopeful history of the vote; a primer on the opponents fighting to take it away; and a playbook for how we can save our democracy before it’s too late—from the former U.S. Attorney General on the front lines of this fight
Voting is our most important right as Americans—“the right that protects all the others,” as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act—but it’s also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. After the 2020 election, President Trump’s effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril.
But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won: first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynchings and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away since Shelby—a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted.
Full of surprising history, intensive analysis, and actionable plans for the future, this is a powerful primer on our most urgent political struggle from one of the country’s leading advocates.