Newkirk will address the timely and important topic of what our political system looks like in action by discussing the ways that voting rights have always been out of reach for people of color in the United States and how the battle over the right to vote still shapes politics today.

Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He has covered the battles for voting rights since the 2013 Shelby County Supreme Court decision, the fate of communities on the front lines of climate change and disasters, and the Black vote in the 2018 and 2020 elections; he also wrote the September 2019 cover story for The Atlantic on black land loss. He is the host of The Atlantic’s podcast Floodlines, a narrative series about Hurricane Katrina. His forthcoming book, Children of the Flood, chronicles Black America’s fight against climate crises.

Tune in to watch on campus at overflow.byu.edu or register to attend the Zoom meeting here.