This episode of The Justice Briefing is different. Instead of starting with a current event and working backward to the history, Dr. Jemar Tisby does what he loves most: he tells stories.

Diving back into primary source research for his new Substack series, History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Rights Edition, left him feeling like a grad student again, brimming with material he could not wait to share. So he devoted a full episode to three of those stories.

The first is about the Congress that refused to seat more than sixty former Confederates in December 1865, overrode a president more than a dozen times, and wrote insurrection into the official record.

The second is about the 1868 Charleston constitutional convention, the only one in American history with a Black majority, where recently emancipated men wrote the most democratic document South Carolina had ever seen and included the children of the people who had enslaved them.

The third is about Amos T. Akerman, a former Confederate and enslaver who became attorney general and prosecuted the first Ku Klux Klan out of existence for forty years.

Taken together, the three stories make one argument: Congress has the power, it lacks the will, and history has the receipts.

Topics Addressed

• Why the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan disbanded in the mid-1870s and did not reconstitute until 1915
• The 1868 South Carolina constitutional convention: 76 Black delegates out of 124, and the only Black-majority state legislature in U.S. history
• What Black delegates actually wrote into the state constitution, including free public schools, protected suffrage, women's property rights, and a permanent ban on secession
• The three Enforcement Acts, and why the Ku Klux Klan Act finally worked by naming the state itself as the defendant

Resources Referenced

• Here's What Congress Did When Members Had a Spine
• When Black People Wrote the Constitution
• When the Department of Justice Prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan Out of Existence
• The Spirit of Justice by Jemar Tisby: bit.ly/spiritofjustice
• A Way Forward: Hope in Uncertain Times, Nashville, August 28-30, with Rep. Justin Pearson, Shane Claiborne, and others. Free, but registration is required: Register here

Support This Work

History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Rights Edition runs weekly through the 2026 midterms, roughly twelve installments in all. The episodes are free. The articles are free. The research is not.

If this is the kind of work you want more of, become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com. It is $5.83 a month on the annual plan. Less than six dollars for history from a PhD historian who spent years learning the tools of the discipline to bring it to you.

Stay informed. Stay faithful. Stay in the fight.

On the 61st anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Jemar Tisby closes a full history of the law by turning to the fight over it right now.

What took blood and marches to win in 1965 has been taken apart in the thirteen years since 2013, from Shelby County to Louisiana v. Callais, and almost nobody marched.

Dr. Tisby refuses to end there. He points to the faith leaders already mobilizing to protect the ballot before the November midterms, from William Barber's 100 days of action to the poll chaplains and peacekeepers being trained in local churches, and he names the moment for what it is: the civil rights movement of our generation.

The episode also launches History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition, Dr. Tisby's three-month series tracing the struggle over the vote from Reconstruction to today.

• Why 2026 is the civil rights movement of our generation, and how the April march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge echoed 1965
• How the Voting Rights Act was taken apart in thirteen years, from Shelby County to Louisiana v. Callais
• Faith leaders mobilizing before the midterms, including William Barber's 100 days of action
• Poll chaplains and peacekeepers: protecting voters, protecting ballots, and protecting the system itself
• The launch of History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition on Footnotes
• The closing charge: register, check your registration, and take somebody with you

• The Washington Informer, "Faith leaders start 100-day countdown to Nov. 3 election," featuring Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Tony Lee of Community of Hope AME Church: https://www.washingtoninformer.com/faith-leaders-midterm-vote/
• Black Church PAC and its Freedom Summer events: https://www.blackchurchpac.org/
• All Roads Lead South Coalition, organizers of the 2026 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge
• History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition, Dr. Tisby's new Footnotes series: https://JemarTisby.Substack.com

The Justice Briefing runs on readers and listeners, not advertisers. If it helps you make sense of this moment, the best way to support it is to subscribe to Footnotes at JemarTisby.Substack.com. The annual plan comes to $5.83 a month, it keeps this work independent, and it puts every installment of History Rhymes: Democracy and Voting Edition in your inbox from now through the midterms.

The DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee just voted to have South Carolina lead off the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, and Dr. Jemar Tisby explains why that decision matters more than the news cycle will let on.

He walks through what a primary actually does, why the order of states determines momentum, money, and makes the case that this is a win for the party.

In this episode:

• What a primary actually is, and why it is not a direct vote for the nominee
• Why the order of states determines momentum, media coverage, donor confidence, and who drops out
• The South Carolina versus Nevada split and the case Latino leaders made for Nevada
• The progressive objection to a Southern first primary and what it assumes about Black Southern voters
• Six things candidates should do over the next 18 months to earn Black votes

Resources referenced:

• Previous episode: "What Every Social Movement Must Do"
• Dr. Tisby's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@JTisby

Support the show:

There are no ads on The Justice Briefing and no sponsors. Paid subscribers are the ones who make this work possible. If the breakdown of the 2028 primary calendar was useful to you weeks before it becomes a headline, become a paid subscriber at JemarTisby.Substack.com.