Achieving the 26th Amendment: A History with Primary Sources

This book is a collection of primary source documents and analysis that illustrates the forgotten history of the fight to lower the voting age to eighteen in the twentieth-century United States.

Proposed, passed, and ratified in 1971, the 26th Amendment gave the right to vote to 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds and prohibited discrimination in voting “on account of age.” Recognizing young Americans as first-class citizens with a political voice, it was the last time the United States extended voti...