For Black Georgians, voting restrictions are more of the same. These slave narratives prove it

Georgia's controversial sweeping elections bill has been signed into law. And historians and critics are likening the measures to the start of a new Jim Crow era, saying it's a direct attack on the right to vote for Black Georgians in future elections.

According to Adrienne Jones, a political science professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, firsthand accounts of slavery and Jim Crow America are a reflection of where our democracy could be headed if voting restriction laws keep being passed in state legislatures around the country. "Reading slave narratives, you're experiencing the lives of people who are cut off from participation in their society, who did not have full citizenship. It allows us to view what society will be like from a fully disempowered state," she told CNN. "The right to vote was essential in the transition from being a slave to being a citizen. And now these rights are in danger again."