Vote or Die - I'm a Black man in Arizona participating in the most consequential election of my lifetime whether certain white men want me to or not.

You knew some vote-or-die, do-it-to-honor the-sacrifices-of-the-ancestors, you-can't-complain-if-youdon't-participate Black folks. But you also knew scores who didn't trouble themselves with participating at all. Into your 30s you felt somewhere between those philosophical poles, among those who, each election cycle, needed convincing that their vote mattered a good gotdamn.

- By Bruce Davison / Magnum Photos

I've voted in four different states. Now I'm a Black man in Arizona participating in the most consequential election of my lifetime whether certain white men want me to or not.

Oregon

You knew some vote-or-die, do-it-to-honor the-sacrifices-of-the-ancestors, you-can't-complain-if-youdon't-participate Black folks. But you also knew scores who didn't trouble themselves with participating at all. Into your 30s you felt somewhere between those philosophical poles, among those who, each election cycle, needed convincing that their vote mattered a good gotdamn.

Why? Despite your mother, grandfather, and great-grandparents all migrating from the Cradle of the Confederacy to your birthplace of Oregon by 1960, none ever told of being bitten by attack dogs or knocked on their back by the surge of a fire hose; of suffering the degradation of a Whites Only water fountain; of a Klansupported governor or the specter of hanging as "strange fruit." Maybe to protect you. Maybe to forget. Maybe in favor of inculcating you with something stronger than a civic duty-a religious one-none of those elders mentioned having braved vitriol or violence outside a polling station, facing a poll tax or literacy test, seeing their vote rendered inconsequential in a gerrymandered district. Your great-grandparents and grandfather were active citizens but never schooled you on the state's political milieu or impressed upon you the obligation of voting ASAP.

By the time you could cast your first ballot-1996-you were a crack-dealing college student, and voting for Clinton, or one of the local candidates you couldn't be bothered to learn about, felt somewhere between a risk of your freedom and an assured waste of time. It was an easy-ass, foolish-ass decision. You never talked politics with your live-in girlfriend or homeboys. And nobody discussed them in the barbershop, the parks, the open gyms.