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Friend,
Desmond Meade was visiting his hometown on St. Croix in 2014, several bottles of rum he had collected for friends in Florida on the table beside him, when he got the news.
The former drug user who had been convicted of a felony was building himself a new life. He had climbed out of homelessness, incarceration and addiction. He had graduated from college and gotten into law school. But the underpinnings he had constructed were shaky. He was already on academic probation, and now came word from the law school that he had failed a key class. He was being expelled.
At that moment, Meade stared at the bottles of rum. He reached into his pocket, thick with cash. He thought about going on a bender and spending the money on drugs.
Then Meade, whose journey since that day has made him a national leader in strengthening the foundations of democracy, thought again.
“The thing going through my mind was, how could I even go back to the states now? You know, so many people looked up to me,” Meade said. “I had the money in my pocket to buy all the drugs I wanted. That was a prime opportunity for me to relapse. But I didn’t. I picked up the phone and I called someone.”
When Meade got back to his home in Florida, not only did he manage to get reinstated in law school; a test determined that he had a learning disability. He got help and went from almost being kicked out of school to making the dean’s list. He graduated. And just four years later, he made history.
In 2018, Meade led thousands of volunteers in securing passage of Amendment 4, a Florida ballot initiative that restored the right to vote to people who had completed their sentences for felony convictions. The movement had begun with Meade and a small group of volunteers handing out pamphlets and painting signs.
Then it took off.
Approved by more than 64% of Florida’s voters, Amendment 4 re-enfranchised as many as 1.5 million people in the state who are disproportionately people of color. It was the largest expansion of voting rights in the country since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that outlawed discrimination in voting.
In September, Meade became one of 25 people named as a 2021 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Commonly known as “genius” grants, the fellowships are among the nation’s most prestigious awards for intellectual and artistic achievement.
A year earlier, the organization Meade heads, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), received a $1 million Vote Your Voice grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center to support its important work. Meade’s story is told in the latest episode of a new season of the SPLC’s Sounds Like Hate podcast.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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