Courts and Law Downtown

Brooklyn Bar Association president-elect highlights voting rights issues at BHM event

February 5, 2024 Robert Abruzzese, Courthouse Editor

Antony Vaughn, Jr., is a litigation attorney and president-elect of the Brooklyn Bar Association. A Morehouse College graduate, he will put his experience as president of the Nathan R. Sobel American Inn of Court to use when he takes over the BBA in June. Vaughn will become the third Black person to take over the helm of the BBA, following Lynn Terrelonge and Armena Gayle, but just the first Black man to be president in the association's 153 years.Photo: Robert Abruzzese/Brooklyn Eagle

Antony Vaughn, Jr., is a litigation attorney and president-elect of the Brooklyn Bar Association. A Morehouse College graduate, he will put his experience as president of the Nathan R. Sobel American Inn of Court to use when he takes over the BBA in June. Vaughn will become the third Black person to take over the helm of the BBA, following Lynn Terrelonge and Armena Gayle, but just the first Black man to be president in the association's 153 years.
Photo: Robert Abruzzese/Brooklyn Eagle

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During a Black History Month event held at the Brooklyn courts, Anthony Vaughn Jr., the president-elect of the Brooklyn Bar Association, addressed voting rights, particularly as the issue affects students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Georgia.

Vaughn, who will become the first Black man and third Black person to become president of the BBA when he takes over in June, spoke passionately about the importance of hosting regular Black History Month celebrations and raising issues facing the community.

“At a time when our elected leaders on the local and national level continue to refer to Black History Month with a certain amount of cynicism, it seems we’re almost always observing examples where Black history is either filtered, diluted, distorted, or simply ignored,” Vaughn said.

He shared a personal story about his son, a student at Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia, to highlight the discriminatory nature of Georgia’s voter ID requirements.

The state’s law, amended after the 2020 presidential election, accepts driver’s licenses, even when they’re expired, as valid identification for voting but restricts acceptable student IDs to those issued by Georgia’s public colleges and universities. This law effectively disenfranchises students at private HBCUs, including Morehouse College, from participating in the electoral process.

“This is significant, especially in the city of Atlanta, because every one of the HBCU schools in Atlanta are private schools. So it is good enough for Georgia Tech, for Georgia State, but it is not good enough for the HBCUs,” Vaughn explained, pointing out the systemic barriers to voting faced by students at these institutions.

In his remarks, Vaughn expressed hope despite the challenges, concluding with a message of resilience: “Another barrier to the polls, but I remain hopeful because still we rise.”

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