My book project, titled Stolen Representation: Black Disfranchisement and State Legislative Politics in the American South, examines the relationship between Black disfranchisement in the U.S. South after Reconstruction and state legislative behavior and representation. I draw on a wide variety of original quantitative data from historical state legislatures in the U.S. South, including roll call votes, committee assignments, and bill introductions, and supplement this quantitative data with both primary and secondary historical sources. Not only does the manuscript provide some of the clearest evidence to-date of the importance and power of Black political participation in the United States and the centrality of Black disfranchisement to the creation of the white supremacist "Solid South," but it also constitutes perhaps the most comprehensive examinations to-date of the relationship between the elective franchise and legislative politics.
The manuscript is under contract with Cambridge University Press. A prospectus for the book project can be found here: Stolen Representation Prospectus