Just Freedom

The story of an extraordinary

expansion of voting rights and the obstacles holding back its implementation



When

Florida citizens voted in 2018 to pass Amendment 4 to the state constitution, which

promised to restore voting rights to people with past felony convictions, the

decision was celebrated as a civil rights victory and the nation's largest

expansion of voting rights in almost 50 years. In Just Freedom, Daniel

Rivero details the advocacy and action that led to this moment--and shows what

went wrong in the years after the amendment's passing.



The

story begins in the Reconstruction era with Florida's 1868 lifetime voting ban

for people with past felony convictions. The infamous 2000 Bush/Gore election

brought the ban to national attention, sparking a wave of activism against it. Rivero

follows the 18-year path to Amendment 4 through the grassroots work of people

including Howard Simon of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and

Desmond Meade, a formerly incarcerated man and president of the Florida Rights

Restoration Coalition.

A

journalist who has covered this story for many years, Rivero uses court

documents, meeting transcripts, archival videos, interviews, and eyewitness courtroom

scenes and street marches to peel back the layers and reveal the motives that supported

and opposed this human rights initiative. He shows how political polarization,

implementation challenges, and monetary interests have stalled the amendment

from becoming fully realized to this day.



At

once a contemporary legal tale and a series of interwoven stories of people at

the center of the fight, this is the account of how 1.4 million Floridians gained

the right to vote--and the obstacles still preventing them from doing so. Just

Freedom will raise questions and provoke conversations about the lasting

hold of Jim Crow-era policies, the power of money, and the nature of the

American criminal justice system.



A

volume in the series Government and Politics in the South, edited by Sharon D.

Wright Austin and Angela K. Lewis-Maddox