African Americans and political participation: a reference handbook

In: Political participation in America

Abstract

This handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of the various mechanisms African Americans have used to participate in American political affairs from the colonial era to the present. African American participation in U.S. electoral politics as voters, candidates, and officeholders is at an all-time high. However, political activism by the nation's longest standing minority has been practiced throughout history, even in the colonial and slavery eras of disenfranchisement and institutionalized oppression. With contributions by many of the field's experts, this concise, provocative volume explores the evolution and current status of African American political action. Focusing on distinct types of activity (protest politics, grassroots movements, electoral politics, political office holding), it charts the unique development of African Americans as they progressed from slaves to citizens to wielders of ever-growing influence. As the book vividly demonstrates, African American efforts to act on their own political behalf didn't begin in the 60s.; Even in the colonial and slavery eras, people of color courageously launched petitions, instigated job actions on plantations, and staged full-blown revolts, creating a legacy of activism that expanded through the Abolition movement, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the post-WWII civil rights movement, and up to the present.