Barack Obama and African American Empowerment

MANNING MARABLE is Professor of History and Political Science, and Public Affairs at Columbia University, USA, where he also serves as founding Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.

KRISTEN CLARKE is an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and is an expert on voting rights, election law and political participation matters.

This book examines the evolution of black leadership and politics since the Civil Rights Movement. It looks at the phenomenon of Barack Obama, from his striking emergence as a successful candidate for the Illinois State Senate to President of the United States, as part of the continuum of African American political leaders.

The nation's most influential intellectuals bring together original scholarship to look at the future of US politics and American race relations

Racializing Obama; M.Marable Background to the New Black Politics System Values and African-American Leadership; R.C.Smith The Limits of Black Pragmatism; R.Reft City Politics and Black Protest; D.S.Hyra Towards a Pragmatic Black Politics; F.Harris On Black Leadership, Black Politics, and the U.S. Immigration Debate; M.Sawyer The Political Orientations of Young African Americans; D.A.Bositis The Case for a Neo-Rainbow Electoral Strategy; D.Glover & B.Fletcher Jr. The Ethics of Colin Powell; G.Farred The Meaning of Barack Obama First Lady in Black; G.Horne & M.Horne The Race Problematic, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Narrative, and the Presidential; R.Hill From Idol to Obama; S.Ifill The 2008 Presidential Campaign and Beyond Race, Post-Black Politics, and the Obama Candidacy in the 2008; C.Fraser Sovereign Kinship and the President-Elect; J.James You May Not Get There With Me; K.Crayton Barack Obama and the Black Electorate in Georgia; K.M.Middlemass Obama's Candidacy and the Collateral Consequences of the 'Politics of Fear'; G.S.Parks & J.J.Rachlinski Race-Ing The Right to Vote; K.Clarke About the Authors About the Editors Index