Walking to Vote: Greensboro's Students and the Long Shadow of Louisiana v. Callais

On Thursday, October 15, 2026, the first day of early voting in North Carolina, hundreds of students from two HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), North Carolina A&T State University and Bennett College, along with students from UNC Greensboro, which is not an HBCU, left their campuses together and walked to the polls. They had to walk because the early-voting sites they used in 2024 had been taken away.

Video of the students' march, posted by Brian Krassenstein on X: watch the march.

A 45-Minute Walk to Union Square

The march began at A&T, the largest HBCU in the country. Students from Bennett, an HBCU for women, and from UNC Greensboro, a predominantly white public university, joined in. In 85-degree heat, they walked about 45 minutes to the Union Square Campus downtown, stepping into the street where sidewalks were broken or blocked. When they arrived, the line ran out the door.

Before they set out, they heard from Anita Earls, a candidate for the state Supreme Court, state Sen. Gladys Robinson and House Minority Leader Robert Reives. Reives urged each student to vote that day and bring a friend who had not. Organizer Xavier Jones put it plainly: officials can move the polls as far from campus as they like, and students will march every time.

How the Campus Sites Disappeared

The Guilford County Board of Elections declined to place early-voting sites at A&T and UNC Greensboro this year, even though both campuses had them in 2024. This was not new ground for A&T: the county says the campus hosted early voting in the general elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, and students won a site again for the 2020 primary. In 2016, the board cut the A&T site from 17 days to nine, and A&T and Bennett students marched to the polls then too. We found no record of an early-voting site at Bennett itself. The state elections board split 3-2 along party lines in January to deny A&T a site and refused again in August. At that hearing, Democratic board member Jeff Carmon asked whether anyone could name a single voter who would be better off with fewer chances to vote. Union Square, a downtown health-education center shared by A&T, UNC Greensboro and Guilford Technical Community College, was added as a compromise.

The stakes are high. North Carolina's ballot includes a close U.S. Senate race between Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley, along with a state Supreme Court seat. Early voting runs through October 31.

From the Map to the Polling Place

To see what is at stake, remember what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was built to do. Congress passed it to guarantee Black Americans access to the ballot after nearly a century of Jim Crow exclusion: poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, all-white districts and outright violence. Callais marks a serious erosion of that law.

In July, we looked at Louisiana v. Callais, the April 29 ruling in which a 6-3 Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's second majority-Black congressional district and made it far harder to challenge discriminatory maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Callais weakened Black voters' power at the level of the district line. Greensboro shows the same pressure at the level of the polling place.

These are two different tools. One redraws where Black votes count; the other makes those votes harder to cast. Both rest on the same retreat from federal protection. Since Shelby County v. Holder (2013) ended preclearance, counties like Guilford no longer need federal approval to change voting sites, and after Callais, the courts offer less help when the lines themselves are drawn against Black communities. What is left is what the students did on Thursday: organize, show up, and vote in numbers that cannot be ignored.

A Familiar Road

A&T students have walked this road before. In 1960, four A&T freshmen sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter a short distance from campus and helped launch the sit-in movement. Bennett College women organized alongside them. During the Black Lives Matter movement, HBCU students again marched on and from their campuses to protest the killing of Black people, especially the young. Sixty-six years after the sit-ins, their successors are still showing that the vote is won by people willing to walk for it. As we say at HistorianSpeaks, the past is present.

Previous Coverage

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 together gave Black Americans full civil and political rights under federal law. Our earlier pieces tell that story:

• Supreme Court Watch: *Louisiana v. Callais* (2026)
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Selma to Montgomery March, 1965, the campaign that pushed the Voting Rights Act through Congress
• "Bloody Sunday": The Selma to Montgomery March, 1965
• Annie Lee Cooper, Voting Rights Activist, 1965
• The Civil Rights Act of 1968