Dr. Charles S. Bullock, III has won the 2018 V.O. Key Award for his book titled “The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act”. This award is given out annually to the best book on Southern Politics. Dr. Bullock is the only three-time winner of this award in the history of the Southern Political Science Association. His co-author, Dr. Keith Gaddie, received both his MA and PhD in Political Science from SPIA and is now a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma.

In tracing the development of the Voting Rights Act from its inception, Charles S. Bullock III, Ronald Keith Gaddie, and Justin J. Wert explore the political and legal aspects of the Jim Crow electoral regime. Detailing both the subsequent struggle to enact the law and its impact, they explain why the Voting Rights Act was necessary. Bullock, Gaddie, and Wert draw on court cases and election data to bring their discussion to the present with an examination of the 2006 revision and renewal of the act, and its role in shaping the southern political environment in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, when Barack Obama was chosen. Bullock, Gaddie, and Wert go on to closely evaluate the 2013 Shelby County decision, describing how the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court created an appellate environment that made the act ripe for a challenge. For more information about the book, click here.

Dr. Bullock holds the Richard B. Russell Chair in Political Science and is Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and University Professor at the University of Georgia. He has been at the University of Georgia since 1968 with the exception of one year when he served as legislative assistant to Congressman Bill Stuckey and two years when he was Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston.