Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics (American Political Challenges)

Black voters can make or break a presidential electionlook at the close electoral results in 2000 and the difference the disenfranchised Black vote in Florida alone might have made. Black candidates can influence a presidential electionlook at the effect that Jesse Jackson had on the Democratic party, the platform, and the electorate in 1984 and 1988, and the contributions to the Democratic debates that Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton made in 2004. American presidential politics can't get along without the Black votewitness the controversy over candidates' appearing (or not) at the NAACP convention, or the extent to which candidates court (or not) the Black vote in a variety of venues. It all goes back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which formally gave African Americans the right to vote, even if after all these years that right is continuously contested. In Freedom Is Not Enough (a quote from Lyndon Johnson's 1965 commencement address to Howard University just before signing the Voting Rights Act), Ron Walters traces the history of the Black vote since 1965, celebrates its fortieth anniversary in 2005, and shows why passing a law is not the same as ensuring its enforcement, legitimacy, and opportunity. Review Walters carefully explains why the Democratic Party's most faithful constituency--African Americans--is the least rewarded and appreciated and what can be done about it. His solution: an independent political strategy for African Americans.--Mary Frances Berry, University of Pennsylvania Professor Ronald Walters reminds us of the empowerment objective of black voting, that was so much the goal of those whose work and sacrifices led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. That goal was at the center of my campaigns for President of the United States in 1984 and 1988, and Walters expertly summarizes and even codifies them, suggesting that if other such campaigns are mounted in the context of a movement for social change, they may also fuel the large turnouts necessary to use elections as a potent resource to improve the lives of those who participate.--Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. The most American thing you can do is vote. History informs the present, action shapes the future. Freedom is Not Enough reminds us we must understand where we've been as a society if we are to move forward to realize a new American dream for all people.--Russell Simmons, chairman and CEO, Rush Communications; co-founder and chairman, Hip-Hop Summit Action Network; co-founder and president, Rush Ph About the Author Ronald W. Walters is director of the African American Leadership Institute and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. His many books include Black Presidential Politics, winner of the American Political Science Association's Ralph Bunche Prize and White Nationalism, Black Interests, an "academic best seller," covered by C-SPAN. Walters is a political analysts who appears regularly in major print media, on National Public Radio's "News and Notes" with Ed Gordon, and writes a syndicated column for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.