It's Not Just What You Have, but Who You Know: Networks, Social Proximity to Elites, and Voting in State and Local Elections

These files were used for the analysis in Pietryka and DeBats' "It's Not Just What You Have, but Who You Know: Networks, Social Proximity to Elites, and Voting in State and Local Elections." The .tsv files represent the data from Alexandria and Newport. The .R file provides the code to run the models reported in the main text using the R statistical computing software

Session 8. African American Voting in Kentucky and Virginia: 1867-1902

In 1867, African American men voted for the first time in Virginia. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised African American men across the United States, including in Kentucky. Poll books, which document those who voted in late nineteenth and early twentieth century elections, can be used to address questions ranging from voting methods to the early impacts of the Fifteenth Amendment. Cara Griggs will discuss how she uses these records to teach about resources that are useful for researching African Americans in Virginia in the decades following the Civil War. Don DeBats and Sarah John will show that, when matched with other records, poll books reveal high levels of Black political participation into the 1890s, directly challenging the idea of the Fifteenth Amendment’s failure