We celebrate our right to vote in November and as we head deeper into the month and fall season, we take this opportunity to highlight the importance of this almost sacred right, one that underrepresented communities have regularly employed to gain a measure of recognition and dignity in society, both here in the United States and abroad.
For historically disenfranchised groups, the right to vote has regularly served as a symbol of freedom and a weapon in the fight for recognition, dignity, and citizenship. Taken for granted in privileged communities, it has presented marginalized groups the opportunity to gain a measure of justice in a society where their needs are not prioritized. In some cases, a degree of political power, representation, and leverage, in others, simply an outlet to voice their position. Nevertheless, if the last election cycle has taught us anything, it is that the importance of suffrage cannot be overstated, especially in societies where the erosion of civil and human rights continues in broad daylight across the world seemingly with impunity.
Below is a small sampling of photographs from our archival collection of community members exercising, monitoring, and demanding their right to vote. Also, we included a photo of Tom Bradley after he was elected to represent the 10th District of Los Angeles in 1963.
Teresa and Gilbert Lindsay. Los Angeles, 1963
Ken Orduna oversees the training of deputy voting registrars. Los Angeles, 1972
We finished digitizing the Richard Cross Collection
By the end of last month, we added 388 color images of Central America to the Richard Cross Digital Collection, marking the end of the second project of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center supported by an NEH grant. We digitized, created metadata, and made publicly available a total of 12,110 images (almost 1,000 above our NEH-three-year target!). You can browse all those images at our Richard Cross Digital Collection site of the University Library at CSUN, and if you are curious about Richard Cross’s photographic career, you can read his biography on our Curriculum website. Here are some of the last photos uploaded to the library database.
People wait in line to vote. El Salvador, 1982
National guardsmen pose with rifles. El Salvador, 1981
Catch up with the two latest episodes of the center’s podcast, Emancipated. In episode 12, Marta Valier talks to reporter Laura Gottesdiener. What does it mean, she asks, if you are a Honduran man or woman, and your town is run by a legally elected and corrupted official? Gottesdiener looks at the local and structural impact of corruption and drug trafficking on land use and employment in Honduras.
In episode 13, Marta Valier talks to anthropologist Amelia Frank-Vitale to discuss the historic caravan of 2018, when thousands of migrants traveled in solidarity through Central America and Mexico, forging a movement that reclaimed the right to mobility using civil rights tactics.
Caravanas del Diablo Exhibition
There is still time to visit the exhibition Caravanas del Diablo by our affiliate photographer Ada Trillo at the Museum of Social Justice in Los Angles. You can listen to Ada's interview about her photographs documenting the Caravans in previous episodes of our podcast.