Voters leave a polling place in Louisiana during the November 2024 election. The Trump administration is pushing federal legislation that would require individuals to prove their citizenship to register to vote. (Photo by Matthew Perschall/Louisiana Illuminator) OTTAWA, Kan. — When Kansas began requiring residents to prove their U.S. citizenship before voting more than a decade ago, Steven Wayne Fish tried and failed. A first-time father in his 30s at the time, he wanted a say in debates over public school funding despite having never voted before. But Fish, who was born on a since-decommissioned Air Force base in Illinois, couldn’t find his birth certificate, leaving him unable to register for the 2014 general election. A federal court eventually blocked the Kansas law following a lawsuit in which Fish was the namesake plaintiff. For years, the Fish legal case served as a warning to politicians who wanted voters to produce documents proving their citizenship. That’s changing, as ...
The Selma, Ala. Jackson Home, a civil rights landmark, has been acquired by The Henry Ford at Greenfield Village | The Henry Ford at Greenfield Village photo This is the third in a series of articles by Michigan Advance throughout February celebrating Black History Month. Starting this summer, visitors to The Henry Ford in Dearborn will be able to see the home where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in Selma, Ala. during the Civil Rights Movement — down to the pajamas that he wore while there — bringing a key location in Black history to Michigan. The Jackson Family Home will open as a part of the museum’s Greenfield Village in June, a part of the open-air museum that features seven historical districts, including structures like Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, the Logan County Courthouse where a young Abraham Lincoln practiced law and a real Ford Model T car. The actual house, a single-story Southern-style bungalow home, was designed by one of the only...