In a sweeping reinterpretation of the history of disfranchisement, Steve Suitts illuminates how a century of political conflicts in Alabama came to shape both some of America’s best achievements in voting rights and its continuing struggles over voter suppression. A War of Sections tells the unknown political history symbolized today by the annual pilgrimage of presidents and celebrities across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It is the story of how that crucial, tragic day in Selma in 1965 was only the flashpoint of a much longer history of failures and successes involving conflicts not only between Blacks and whites in Alabama but between white political factions warring in the state over voting rights. Suitts recasts the context and much of the content of disfranchisement in Alabama as an unremitting, decades- long sectional battle in white-only politics between the state’s rural Black Belt and north Alabama counties. He uncovers important Black and white heroes and villains who collectively shaped the arc of voting rights in Alabama and ultimately across the nation. A War of Sections offers a new understanding of the political dynamics of resistance and change through which a southern state’s longstanding democratic failures ironically provided motivation for and instruction to a reluctant nation regarding unmatched ways to advance universal voting. Along the way, the book introduces from this unheard past some prophetic voices that speak to the paramount issues of America’s commitment to the universal right to vote—then and now.

Remembered by some as the "most remarkable Supreme Court justice of the twentieth century," Justice Hugo L. Black was an early proponent of a judicial revolution that rebuilt America by expanding individual rights under the law and empowering the federal government to address America’s economic and social problems. In large part through Black’s persistence and influence, the Supreme Court’s reinterpretation of the Bill of Rights and other key amendments helped to unleash human productivity, economic prosperity, and civil rights across the nation. Justice Black almost always carried a pocket edition of the Constitution. In his reverence for and belief in it, Black called it "the best document in the world" to guide a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." He believed that everyone should own a copy of the Constitution. This modern pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution and its amendments is inspired by Justice Black’s habit and example. The introduction is by biographer Steve Suitts, author of Hugo Black of Alabama: How His Roots and Early Career Shaped the Great Champion of the Constitution.

In a sweeping reinterpretation of the history of disfranchisement, Steve Suitts illuminates how a century of political conflicts in Alabama came to shape both some of America’s best achievements in voting rights and its continuing struggles over voter suppression. A War of Sections tells the unknown political history symbolized today by the annual pilgrimage of presidents and celebrities across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It is the story of how that crucial, tragic day in Selma in 1965 was only the flashpoint of a much longer history of failures and successes involving conflicts not only between Blacks and whites in Alabama but between white political factions warring in the state over voting rights. Suitts recasts the context and much of the content of disfranchisement in Alabama as an unremitting, decades- long sectional battle in white-only politics between the state’s rural Black Belt and north Alabama counties. He uncovers important Black and white heroes and villains who collectively shaped the arc of voting rights in Alabama and ultimately across the nation. A War of Sections offers a new understanding of the political dynamics of resistance and change through which a southern state’s longstanding democratic failures ironically provided motivation for and instruction to a reluctant nation regarding unmatched ways to advance universal voting. Along the way, the book introduces from this unheard past some prophetic voices that speak to the paramount issues of America’s commitment to the universal right to vote—then and now.

In a fascinating memoir, retired Episcopal priest Francis X. Walter shares his journey from the days of the Great Depression in Mobile, Alabama, across decades of Deep South segregation, and into the interracial struggles for racial justice in Alabama. The founder of the Selma Inter-religious Project, Walter grew up in multiethnic, segregated Mobile and learned life lessons at theology schools in Sewanee and New York. Those disparate educations were a prelude to his years as an Episcopal priest navigating how to serve white parishes in Alabama while challenging systemic racism.