Story by Anna Mudd
Photos by Lucas Pruitt
Graphic by Stephanie Mayer
In 2000, Dennis Gaddy pleaded guilty to committing securities fraud and was sentenced to five years in prison.
The life he knew—a job working in sales and marketing, with a bit of motivational speaking–was upended.
“I made some serious errors in the management of money, and I had to pay for that,” Gaddy said.
Facing his family after the conviction was difficult. “I have been married 38 years to the same woman and have two grown children,” he said. “To me, it was humiliating.”
In 2004, Gaddy stepped out through the doors of the Wake Correctional Center for good. Unlike many who reenter society after prison, Gaddy came home to a support network.
“I didn’t have the obstacles that people normally have,” he said. “I have a loving family, a place to stay and a community church.”
But what he also didn’t have was what he needed to integrate back into society.
The right to vote.
150-year history
In 1876, North Carolina added provisions to its Constitution prohibiting those convicted of felonies from voting. Before this, only those who had committed “infamous” crimes were disenfranchised. This became a tool to prevent black men from voting after the Civil War.
In 1973, three African American legislators—Henry Frye, Henry Michaux and Joy Johnson—pushed legislation to give automatic voting rights restoration to people once they were released from custody.
These legislators only succeeded in changing the law to allow for voting right reinstatement after people completed their full criminal sentences, including probation, suspended sentences or parole.
It was nearly 50 years before anyone else pushed back on this voting rights restriction.
Coming to terms with prison
When Gaddy first got to prison, regaining the right to vote wasn’t on the forefront of his mind. It took a year or two for him to come to terms with being there.
For years before prison, he helped people— training them to be positive and to develop to their full potential.
After accepting where he was, he saw a new opportunity: to coach the men around him.
It was reinvigorating. He spent Sunday nights teaching a class on leadership and personal development, reminding his fellow inmates that there is life after prison. What he didn’t realize is that he was also preparing for his own life after incarceration.
When he left prison, Gaddy organized a nonprofit — the Community Success Initiative — continuing the work he began there, getting inmates back on their feet. CSI’s mission is to be a support system by providing direct services post-conviction, including training in job readiness, goal setting and financial literacy to about 300 people a year. It also advocates for removing the barriers people face coming home from prison.
One barrier is not having a voice in democracy.
“I was born and raised in a very civic-minded family, I learned that the vote was your voice, and it still is,” Gaddy said.
His mother’s car was a 1957 Chevrolet, they called “Lizzie.” He can still see it clearly. A hot summer day in the 1960s. His mother at the wheel; Lizzie bumping along the dirt roads of Robeson County as they drive house to house getting everyone they can registered to vote.
When Gaddy was in the 10th grade, his mother worked closely with Rep. Joy Johnson on various voting rights projects at the time.
His father was the local precinct chair, and each Election Day for 50 years he counted votes by hand, bundled them up, and took them to the Board of Elections. Gaddy still remembers being a young boy, peering into the smoke-filled rooms, watching the men count the votes and write the numbers on the board.
When the right to vote was taken away from him, it was shattering.
The Bigger Picture
Gaddy was on probation from 2005 to 2012, missing seven years of voting. “In 2008, I didn’t have a chance to vote for the first African American president, and that was devastating,” Gaddy said.
Gaddy is one of 56,000 North Carolinians on post-conviction supervision, who left prison thinking they had paid their debt, ready to participate in society again.
African Americans make up 42 percent of those disenfranchised due to post-conviction supervision, while they only comprise 22 percent of the state’s population.
Some states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, do not remove people from the electorate when they leave prison. Vermont and Maine don’t disenfranchise people even while they are in prison. None of these less-restrictive laws exist in the South. One distinguishing factor in these states – the number of African Americans.
“These are states with very low African American populations,” said Frank Baumgartner, UNC-Chapel Hill political science professor. “It doesn’t come to mind in those states to disenfranchise people in prison, because they are not trying to manipulate the size or characteristics of the electorate because there is no racial component.”
Gaddy has been in numerous courtrooms with his clients over the years, and each time he walks into one he notices that there are more African Americans advancing to sentencing, a stark recognition that is impossible to overlook.
So Gaddy picked up the cause.
In 2019, Gaddy and the CSI, alongside Justice Served NC, Inc., the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, and Wash Away Unemployment filed suit against the state law disenfranchising people even after being released from prison.
“Without a plaintiff there is no lawsuit. You can’t have a lawsuit like this if there is not plaintiff there to explain what this law is and does to communities,” plaintiff’s attorney R. Stanton Jones said.
The case
The plaintiffs filed a complaint against the law extending post-conviction disenfranchisement on Nov. 20, 2019. They argued that this law violated North Carolina’s constitutional protections of free elections, equal protection, freedom of speech and assembly, and the ban on property qualifications. And, that it disproportionately affects African Americans.
The trial lasted four days.
Gaddy, who led the movement, was among the several plaintiffs who testified.
“I don’t think we could have picked a better lead plaintiff than Dennis Gaddy and CSI,” said Diana Powell, executive director of Justice Served NC Inc. “It was extremely important hearing his testimony about how all of this came to him while he was incarcerated and how deeply he believes people entangled in the system deserve a second chance.”
One argument brought up by the defense struck a nerve.
“The state argued in court, that that law in 1973 could not have had discriminatory intent because it was introduced by black legislators,” Baumgartner said. “It was very troubling to see that because it’s a false argument.”
Defenders of the state law disagree, saying the plaintiff’s argument really takes issue with the North Carolina Constitution. Sam Hayes, general counsel to House Speaker Tim Moore, said the 1973 legislation is actually “the vehicle by which rights of citizenship are restored following a felony conviction” and that “without it, there is no mechanism for doing so.”
“Most North Carolinians would agree that we should not be adding upwards of 56,000 felons to the state’s voter rolls before they have paid their debt to society,” Hayes said in an interview. “The trial court’s order has needlessly created confusion in advance of the upcoming municipal elections.”
On Aug. 23, 2021, a Superior Court in Raleigh voted to expand voting rights to people when they complete their prison sentences.
When Gaddy heard the verdict, he was sitting at his dining room table.
“It felt like we were free,” Gaddy said. “I was almost frozen in time and couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Powell hopes the ruling will serve as an example to other states with similar felony disenfranchisement laws. “That’s our vision, if we went all the way with this case that other states can look at it as a model, and take it and move forward. That we can change the world.”
Now What?
The day after the verdict was announced was a Tuesday. Every Tuesday, CSI holds a weekly goal setting workshop for clients. The classroom — one of the biggest in the NCWorks Career Center — was large, it seemed oversized for the group of 15 men who stopped their conversations as Gaddy entered the room.
“For the very first time I could walk into one of our workshops and the fact that those men were in those seats, regardless if they were on probation or parole, were eligible to vote,” Gaddy said.
And so, that is exactly what he told them.
His announcement about the decision was met with applause, the men in front of him praising him for his dedication and victory.
To that Gaddy replied, “Well, thank you for the applause but it is really not for me. It’s for you.”
A week later, the state Court of Appeals paused this expansion of voting rights. The plaintiffs appealed to the state Supreme Court.
On Sept. 12, the state Supreme Court ruled that any individual who had registered to vote in the period between the ruling and the Appeals Court’s stay are approved to stay on voting registers for upcoming municipal elections.
