The Forgotten Legacy of Shirley Chisholm

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tera W. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Woman ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
Key Events

This chapter sets up the basic dilemma of the Democratic primary contest: how would the competition between an African American man and a white woman affect the liberal coalition of African Americans, white liberals, feminists, and organized labor in place since the 1970s? It decries the deterioration of the Democratic race into a debate over which group, African Americans or women, was more aggrieved and reminds us of the historical consequences of division. Recounting key events from the Civil War era, the chapter argues that the Democratic Party would do better to recall instead the legacy of Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 ran a principled campaign for president on a platform of antiracist, antisexist, pro-labor, and pro-peace policies.

A Discussion of Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-210
Author(s):  
Michael Leo Owens
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Black Political Behavior

Charge: As Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird note, collectively more than 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats according to surveys, and no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 13% of the Black vote since 1968. This is true despite the fact that at the individual level many African Americans are increasingly politically moderate and even conservative. Against this backdrop, what explains the enduring nature of African American support for the Democratic Party? In Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, White and Laird answer this question by developing the concept of “racialized social constraint,” a unifying behavioral norm meant to empower African Americans as a group and developed through a shared history of struggle against oppression and for freedom and equality. White and Laird consider the historical development of this norm, how it is enforced, and its efficacy both in creating party loyalty and as a path to Black political power in the United States. On the cusp of perhaps the most consequential presidential election in American history, one for which African American turnout was crucial, we asked a range of leading political scientists to assess the relative strengths, weaknesses, and ramifications of this argument.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
William L. Barney
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Political Force ◽  
National Convention ◽  
Secession Crisis ◽  
Do So ◽  
Abolition Movement

Sectional tensions over slavery persisted since the writing of the Constitution and exploded into secession and the Civil War in 1860–61. The resistance to slavery of African Americans, both enslaved and free, prodded the consciences of enough Northern whites to produce the abolition movement and emerge as a political force in its own right. Southerners recognized that the morality of slavery was at the heart of the issue and sought in vain to make Northerners acknowledge slavery as a morally just institution and allow it to grow and expand. The Northern refusal to do so fueled the rise of the Republican Party and split the Democratic Party at its national convention in the spring of 1860, setting the stage for the election of Abraham Lincoln and the outbreak of the secession crisis.

The Timothy 0. Webster Papers and the Pearce Civil War Collection: Using Civil War Military Collections for Women's History

Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-381
Author(s):  
Julie L. Holcomb
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Working Class ◽  
African American Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
Final Part ◽  
American Women ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil War Era

Working-class and rural white women and free and enslaved African American women left few material traces, making it difficult for scholars to document their experience of the Civil War. This three-part article uses the story of the Timothy O. Webster Papers, which is part of the Pearce Civil War Collection at Navarro College in Corsi-cana, Texas, to examine the possibilities and limitations of recovering women's experience of the war from military collections. The first part examines the practice of collecting Civil War documents, the history of the Pearce Civil War Collection, and the collection and preservation of the Webster letters. In the second part, I begin to reconstruct Harriet's story using letters from the Webster Papers. The final part returns to the archive to consider how archivists might aid scholars in recovering the story of Civil War-era women from military collections.

Our Country

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant R. Brodrecht
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Union ◽  
Christian Nation

Our Country explores northern evangelical thought and sentiment in relation to the concept of Union during the Civil War era. The book complements our understanding of northern motivation during the Civil War and contributes to a fuller understanding of the eventual “failure” of Reconstruction to provide a secure basis for African Americans’ equal inclusion in American society. In short, the book contends that mainstream northern evangelicals consistently subordinated concern for racial justice to an overarching understanding of the Union as a specifically Christian nation that existed in a covenantal relationship to God under their proprietary care. The book joins recent scholarship that gives primacy to the Union, while it challenges interpretations that understand northern evangelicals primarily in terms of abolitionist millennialism. Mainstream evangelicals did not enter Reconstruction with the primary aim of achieving racial justice. Rather, they entered Reconstruction expecting to see the emergence of a speedily restored, prosperous, and culturally homogeneous Union, a Union strengthened by God through the defeat of secession and the removal of slavery as secession’s cause. That restored Union was to be one in which evangelical religious and political assumptions would be even more culturally dominant than they had been during the antebellum years. Focused on much else besides racial justice, northern evangelicals acted as a brake on the abolitionist vision for a racially equitable and inclusive American Union throughout the entire Civil War era.

“Benefit of the Doubt”: African-American Civil War Veterans and Pensions

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry M. Logue ◽  
Peter Blanck
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Pension System ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Union Army ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Pension Income ◽  
Two Stages

Laws that provided pensions for Union army veterans were putatively color-blind, but whites and African Americans experienced the pension system differently. Black veterans were less likely to apply for pensions during the program's early years. Yet, no matter when they applied, they encountered two stages of bias, first from examining physicians and then, far more systematically, from Pension Bureau reviewers. The evidence suggests that pension income reduced mortality among African-American veterans, underscoring the tangible results of justice denied.

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