This dynamic and comprehensive text from nationally renowned scholars continues to demonstrate the profound influence African Americans have had--and continue to have--on American politics. Using two interrelated themes--the idea of universal freedom and the concept of minority-majority coalitions--the text demonstrates how the presence of Africans in the United States affected the founding of the Republic and its political institutions and processes. The authors show that through the quest for their own freedom in the United States, African Americans have universalized and expanded the freedoms of all Americans.

New to the Ninth Edition

- Updated sections on intersectionality, dealing with issues of race and gender.

- Updated section on African American music, to include the role of Hip Hop.

- Updated sections on mass media coverage of African Americans and the African American celebrity impact on politics, adding new mention of the CROWN Act and the politics of Black hair.

- Updated section on the "Black Lives Matter" movement, adding a new section on the "Me Too" movement.

- Updated sections on African Americans in Congress, with a new mention of the Squad.

- Updated voting behavior through the 2020 elections, connecting the Obama years with the new administration.

- A comparison of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

- A discussion of the way in which race contributes to the polarization of American politics in the 2020 presidential campaign.

- An analysis of the racial attitudes of President Trump, and the institutionally racist policies of his administrations.

- Updated chapter on state and local politics, including a new section on state executive offices and Black mayors.

- Updated sections on material well-being indicators, adding a new section on the coronavirus pandemic and the Black community.

- The first overall assessment of the Obama administration in relation to domestic and foreign policy and racial politics.

Hanes Walton, Jr. (1941-2013), Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, was an architect of the modern study of African American politics. Over four decades of prodigious research (including 25 books) and conceptual refinement he helped to make the subfield of Black politics an important area of study in political science. His last book was The African American Electorate: A Statistical Portrait.

Robert C. Smith, Professor of Political Science Emeritus, San Francisco State University, is the author of multiple books and articles and of the Encyclopedia of African American Politics. His most recent books are Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same and John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Ethnic Incorporation and Avoidance, as well as the forthcoming From the Bayou to the Bay: The Autobiography of a Black Liberation Scholar and Power, Philosophy and Egalitarianism: Women, the Family and African Americans.

Sherri L. Wallace, Professor of Political Science, University of Louisville, has received awards for excellence in teaching and instructional design and has published articles on college textbook diversity, women of color in academe, race and politics, and community economic development.