Your Ticket to Freedom: Youth and the Voting Rights Revolution

In 1962 the SCLC took advantage of the enthusiasm of young civil rights activists, as well as their political leverage, by mobilizing young Georgia voters. The state—home to the SCLC, SNCC, a vibrant NAACP, and a more progressive political environment than many other southern states—was also, perhaps not coincidentally, one of the only states that had enfranchised young people under the age of 21. Within a decade, politicians, education leaders, civil rights organizations, and young grassroots activists would win that right for youth throughout the country, while working to ensure the voting rights of black Americans and rid the country of such disfranchising mechanisms as literacy tests and stringent residency requirements. And in the early 1980s civil rights leaders focused on voter registration efforts among young people as crucial strategies for revitalizing the movement and making possible real reform. Few scholars have examined the movement to lower the voting age to 18. Those who have offer little analysis and emphasize the Vietnam War’s impact on the movement and the constitutional questions surrounding the legislation. That scholarship also re-asserts unexamined assumptions; the movement lacked grassroots support and had little effect on American politics. Scholars have missed important connections between the long Black Freedom struggle and the youth franchise movement. Drawing on media, political, and archival sources, and building on a growing scholarship that recognizes the contributions of young people to political movements, this paper suggests that the campaign to lower the voting age to 18 can be better understood in the context of a long history of youth political activism, especially for civil rights—including voting rights—and that it should be regarded as an important moment in American socio-political history; one that continues to shape American society today.