Join Professor Alyssa Arnell’s U.S. History to 1865 class, open to the GCC community on Election Day! As the 2026 midterm elections arrive, this open class invites the GCC community to examine the ways in which disenfranchised people in the early United States invoked citizenship when the right to vote was denied to them. During the first half of the nineteenth century, voting rights narrowed for many free Black men and the small number of women who had exercised them, even as political participation expanded for most white men. Indigenous nations sought to protect their sovereignty and territorial rights, sometimes by adopting written constitutions that drew upon American constitutional forms.

Citizenship was not simply something the government granted—it was also something people claimed and demanded. Men and women asserted their right to possess firearms and demanded to be heard in court. They purchased land and defended their property rights. The Cherokee Nation adopted a written constitution based on the U.S. version to defend its own political authority.

As we prepare to vote in the upcoming election, we will ask what it means to demand representation without the ballot and reflect on the importance of exercising our individual political power today. Free lunch for all attendees!