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Americans With Past Convictions Fight to Regain Right to Vote

A Tennessee woman tries to regain her right to vote after a conviction, and entrepreneur Topeka Sam talks about what she learned while in prison.
Janiqua Thompson
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We examine how past criminal convictions bar many Americans from voting in Tennessee, one of the hardest states to regain the right to vote after serving time behind bars.

Host Lawrence Bartley sits down with Topeka Sam, a formerly incarcerated entrepreneur who works to support people who are released from prison, about her journey, lessons she’s learned and her efforts to build financial literacy in the community.

In an animated essay, Ravi Shankar explains why nothing has made him feel more American than going to jail.

And finally, voting doesn’t just occur in the free world, as Bartley explains in his closing message, recalling a time when he ran his own campaign on the inside to serve on a committee charged with improving conditions in the prison where he was incarcerated.