The African American Electorate
A Statistical History
- Hanes Walton - University of Michigan, USA
- Sherman C. Puckett
- Donald R. Deskins - University of Michigan, USA
How have African Americans voted over time? What types of candidates and issues have been effective in drawing people to vote? These are just two of the questions that The African American Electorate: A Statistical History attempts to answer by bringing together all of the extant, fugitive and recently discovered registration data on African-American voters from Colonial America to the present. This pioneering work also traces the history of the laws dealing with enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of African Americans and provides the election return data for African-American candidates in national and sub-national elections over this same time span.
Combining insightful narrative, tabular data, and original maps, The African American Electorate offers students and researchers the opportunity, for the first time, to explore the relationship between voters and political candidates, identify critical variables, and situate African Americans’ voting behavior and political phenomena in the context of America’s political history.
"This unique and original resource investigates the African American voting experience from colonial times
to the present...Overall, this source is a cross between a reference work and an in-depth academic analysis. With its hundreds of charts and footnotes, it has elements of both. The level of depth here makes this resource more appropriate for academic libraries."
"This work stands out by going beyond a strict linear examination of the African American electorate to present an overlapping analysis that reflects the historical ebbs and flows of participation and disenfranchisement. An outstanding contribution to research on the African American electorate."