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Reporting by: Caitlyn Arnwine (formerly Caitlyn Cobb). This article was written in 2025. View more on the #VRABlackHistory Series 2025 at end of article. Please note this is not a comprehensive article, but a shorter article meant to encourage more research on this topic. All sources and further reading provided. We hope you enjoy!
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February 23rd, 2025, we honored Carolyn Quilloin Coleman & Black Youth's Impact on the passage of the 26th Amendment. Youth voting rights were accomplished through unwavering determination, in which Black teenage girls played a pivotal and significant role. While the nation said youth were too coddled to vote, Black youth - especially with support from President Kennedy, the youngest President at the time- proved that wrong time and time again, galvanizing their communities, colleges, churches, and initiating boycotts by posting names and addresses of adverse businesses and promoting voting rights to unelect adverse administrations.
We often learn about the voting rights age being lowered to 18 as being made possible due to a simple protest by youth that served in the military that wanted the right to vote; that due to the logic of one being able to vote at the same age one is drafted. But in reality, it was a 30-year controversial push that led to the 26th Amendment's passage.
Not only were local, state, and federal administrations against the voting age being lowered, but high schoolers and social workers were as well. It took massive organizing, like that of Carolyn Quilloin Coleman who, in 1969, organized the NAACP-sponsored Youth Mobilization conference in Washington, D.C. 2,000 young Black youth attended from 33 states to lobby Congress in support of youth voting rights. Carolyn's activism began as an audacious teenager. As a senior in high school, Carolyn and two other Black high school students were arrested in Savannah for trying to eat lunch at a Whites-only dining room in Savannah in 1960.
Carolyn's arrest led to a 15-month boycott of the city's downtown businesses and led to massive voter registration drives to unseat racist local officials. Carolyn galvanized Savannah because she was young, brave, and a powerful organizer. She led the youth members of the NAACP and was lifted up by churches and the NAACP adult leadership, such as NAACP Executive Board Member Curtis Cooper, who noted, "I guess it was just a case of a little child leading us . . . when they did it [and] they got in jail, we began to respond."
Georgia was only one of two states that allowed people as young as 18 to vote at the time. Therefore, it provided even more opportunities for Carolyn: she helped organize fellow classmates on NAACP "ballot buses" to the local courthouse to register to vote as soon as they turned 18.
Local and national news covered these events, including pictures. Because of her efforts, a new mayor was elected, the Savannah City government repealed segregation laws, and Dr. King referred to Savannah as the least segregated city in the South in 1964.
Many of the Black youth that began organizing desegregation efforts would learn about the power of voting rights, and become voting rights advocates, organizing Freedom Rides, Conferences, Marches, voter registration drives, lobbying efforts, and more to galvanize a movement that led to the passage of the 26th Amendment.
Today, Gen Z and Millennials are the LARGEST voting bloc, and young people continue to lead the way about issues such as gun control and holding their state legislatures accountable. Organizations such as the Transformative Justice Coalition continue to urge young people to utilize their full voting power and encourage youth to realize a country in which their legislative branches truly reflect them.
As part of the epidemic of modern-day voter suppression, the rights enshrined in the 26th Amendment are constantly under attack by state legislatures through voter ID, proof-of-citizenship requirements specifically for new voters, and barriers to college student voting, such as eliminating college campus polling locations.
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