Blacks in American Electoral Politics

Abstract

African Americans have been engaged in US political campaigns and elections since the beginning of the nation despite numerous obstacles along the way. During the slavery era, only “free” Blacks in a few Northern states and even fewer in Southern states had the legal right to vote although they could be involved in campaigns. Despite some African Americans having fought on the side of the rebels in the Revolutionary War, as the US electoral system and US society evolved, slavery, racial discrimination, and prejudice were pervasive and made it difficult if not impossible for widespread formal participation by African Americans and other minority groups such as Native Americans. Millions of enslaved Blacks were excluded from any role in US elections or its political system. It would take Constitutional amendments (the 13th, 14th, 15th, 24th, and 26th), hard-won congressional action (Voting Rights Act of 1965), Supreme Court rulings (South Carolina v. Katzenbach, Evenwel v. Abbott, Smith v. Allwright, and United States v. Reese among others), massive protests, and a massive social movement of heartbreaking sacrifices, over many decades for African Americans to be included legally and substantially in US electoral politics. As Hanes Walton argues, Black politics has been a continuous collective effort at addressing the causes of Black exclusion, inequality, and marginalization, and winning policy and political remedies. Despite significant and revolutionary gains made in the political and electoral arenas, conservative and racially-driven efforts to pass or implement voter suppression policies and laws, such as felony disenfranchisement, voter ID laws, and congressional districts drawn to disempower African Americans, continue today.