George and Ann RichardsCivil War Era Center

Allison Mashell Mitchell received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia, and specializes in twentieth-century African American history, focusing on Black electoral politics, political realignment, southern history, and civil rights studies. Her dissertation, “Battle for the Ballot: A History of Black Electoral Politics and Voter Suppression in Florida, 1940-2000s” uses Florida as a case study to analyze the role of Black Americans in political realignment in the South from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1944 Smith v. Allwright ruling to the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election. Along the way, it traces Black Floridians’ tumultuous relationship with the Democratic Party and capricious interactions with the GOP since World War Two. She challenges the traditional periodization and white American-centered narratives of political realignment scholarship by emphasizing points of contention in state-level and southern politics that display the inherent failure of the U.S. two-party system. Allison received her BA in History and African American Studies at the University of Florida. Her work has been supported by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida, and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University.