This week author and journalist Carolyn Click joins us to talk about her new book, The Cost of the Vote: George Elmore and the Battle for the Ballot (2025, USC Press). Elmore's story is that of a man who believed, with uncommon boldness, that he and other Black Americans were guaranteed the right to vote. He volunteered to become the plaintiff in the NAACP lawsuit that successfully challenged the all-white Democratic primary in South Carolina in 1946.
Carolyn centers her story on Elmore, his family, his neighbors, and the activists and lawyers who filed the suit. Although Elmore's court challenge would prove successful, he and his family paid a steep personal price.
