The Price of the Ticket

Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics

Bibliographic Data

ID5705431
AuthorsC Carson (Stanford University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume100
Issue1
Pages302-302
Publication date2013-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jat025
OpenAlexW2036915887
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Focusing mainly on Chicago—which he calls “the epicenter of black politics for generations”—the political scientist Fredrick C. Harris has written a brief but provocative assessment of African American political strategies since the landmark civil rights reforms of the 1960s (p. 36). He laments that proponents of “independent black politics, [who] called for racial solidarity and asked blacks to remain skeptical of casting their lot with one political party,” gradually gave way to black politicians enthralled by “the vision of a progressive, multiracial coalition of progressive Democrats” (p. 5). This transformation, he argues, was evident in Harold Washington's modestly effective effort to attract white support for his successful campaign to become Chicago's first black mayor in 1983 and then in Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition that backed his 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. Harris notes that Washington and Jackson ultimately relied mostly on the support of black voters but acknowledges that these campaigns provided a necessary foundation for the 2008 election of the one-time Chicago organizer Barack Obama as the nation's first president of African ancestry. (Harris notes that Washington's media adviser David Axelrod would later become a key Obama adviser

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Skepticism · Sociology · Solidarity · White (mutation · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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