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A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

A scene from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"

You may think youve had enough of political documentaries for one pandemic year. But All In: The Fight for Democracy is the John Lewis: Good Trouble of films about the history of voter suppression in the United States.

We live in an era of the weaponization of voter suppression tactics, according to the film, which was directed by Lisa Cortes and twice-Oscar nominated Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola USA). The title says it all. The right to vote is the basis of our democracy. When you withhold it, you are doing something profoundly and quintessentially un-American. In the beginning of our Republic, we learn, only property-owning white men were allowed to vote, and therefore only about 6% of the population elected our officials and voted on the laws of the land.

Stacey Abrams, who lost a close, hotly contested and some say tainted gubernatorial election in Georgia in 2018 to its former secretary of state, tells us of her childhood when her parents, both college graduates, would take her and her five siblings to the polls to see them cast their votes. We hear about the time she and her parents were turned away at the gate of the governors residence where she was supposed to attend an event honoring Georgia valedictorians.

The film also features civil rights icon Andrew Young, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and historians such as Carol Anderson and Frances Fox Piven and provides an insightful history of voting rights in this country. The 15th Amendment gave the vote to the freed slaves, resulting in a spate of African American senators. But the Jim Crow laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries placed limitations on African American voters, using poll taxes, literacy tests, gerrymandering, threats of lynching and outright murder to discourage voting among Black communities.

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'All In: The Fight for Democracy' is required viewing in these times - STLtoday.com