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Rural voters are often portrayed as a monolith of White and conservative, although 22% of the rural population are non-White. Rural minorities, specifically Black rural voters, intersect two potentially competing identities informing political partisanship. First, place: there is a growing geographic schism between rural and urban voters, with rural voters aligning more closely with the Republican party. Second, race: there is a political gap between White and Black voters, with Black voters aligning more closely with the Democratic party. Using data from the 2019 and 2020 ANES Studies I investigate the effects of these intersecting identities on political identification accounting for rural resentment. Rural resentment, or feelings of a loss of political power to urban areas, is found among both White and Black rural voters. For Black rural voters, a strong race identity can buffer the effects of rural resentment, keeping them from pushing toward the Republican party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Reconstruction Revisionism Revisited" by Manisha Sinha in Reviews in American History delves into the complexities of defining and understanding the Reconstruction era in American history. Sinha challenges traditional narratives and offers a new perspective on Reconstruction, emphasizing the agency of Black people, the struggle for interracial democracy, and the interconnected reconstructions of democracy, capitalism, women's rights, and the West. The text highlights the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding Reconstruction, its impact on American society, and its relevance to contemporary challenges to democracy and racial equality. [Extracted from the article]

Wendy L. Rouse's book, "Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement," provides a comprehensive and multicultural perspective on the history of woman suffrage in the United States. Rouse argues that queer people played a crucial role in the movement, but their stories were often erased by other activists who wanted to present a respectable image. The book explores how suffragists challenged gender norms in their personal dress and style, examines the relationships and networks formed within the movement, and discusses how queer suffragists used public space to legitimize their identities. Rouse's work sheds light on the diversity of the suffrage movement and challenges previous scholarship that focused on middle- and upper-class white progressives. [Extracted from the article]

Recent election cycles show a reluctance among Black millennials to support the Democratic Party, which suggests that they are not captured by the party like their predecessors. While we know that African Americans have historically remained a loyal voting bloc, it is important to analyze whether there are generational differences with respect to Black Democratic Party loyalty. In this study, I analyze Black millennial partisanship identification and compare it to Black non-millennials (Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers). To test this, I employ a multi-method approach. My results show that while Black millennials continue to identify with the Democratic Party, they are not as loyal to the Democratic Party when compared to Black non-millennials. Further, I find that Black millennials are not changing loyalties to the Republican or a third party. Instead, Black millennials are willing to withhold their vote altogether if they are not satisfied with any Democratic candidates. My work has critical implications in how we understand Black politics and reveals that Democratic candidates will have to earn Black millennials vote going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a historical overview of the origins and evolution of the Juneteenth celebration in Texas. It explains that Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery and began in 1866 as Emancipation Day celebrations organized by Northern ministers and officials. The celebrations initially focused on gratitude and giving credit to God, President Lincoln, and the Union Army. However, the date of the event shifted to June 19 in the months following the 1867 celebration, and it became more politically oriented. The article also discusses the political motivations behind the celebrations in subsequent years, the limited celebrations due to violence and hostility towards Black voters, and the transformation of Emancipation Day into Juneteenth as a broader celebration of freedom and the Black community. [Extracted from the article]

The article provides a comprehensive overview of the life and work of Nick Chiles, a prominent figure in early 20th-century Kansas. Chiles was an African American entrepreneur, newspaperman, and activist who fought against discrimination and advocated for racial justice. He faced challenges and criticism from white newspapers and religious leaders but remained dedicated to his cause. Chiles's newspaper, the Topeka Plaindealer, played a significant role in promoting racial uplift and challenging racist ideologies. His activism and legacy should be remembered and celebrated. [Extracted from the article]

In Crawford v. Marion County (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that voter identification requirements are lawful on the grounds that, even if they do not prevent fraud, they can instill confidence in voting. However, this reasoning ignores the historical and contemporary racial biases in the enactment and administration of restrictive voting policies in the United States. This legacy likely colors the extent to which Black and white voters see reforms as deterring fraud versus increasing suppression, and as such, how confident they are in election outcomes. We examine how increasing voter restrictions affects voter fraud beliefs and voter confidence among Black and white voters. We find that the enactment of restrictive policies decreases fraud beliefs among white voters but has no effect on fraud beliefs for Black voters; however, Black voters are less confident in elections when conducted with more restrictive policies while white voters are not. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that the racial gap in the effects of restrictive voting policies on voter confidence is partially undergirded by racial elite signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a letter from the editor of the Urban Affairs Review, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the journal. The letter highlights the influential article by Zoltan Hajnal and Jessica Trounstine titled "What Underlies Urban Politics? Race, Class, Ideology, Partisanship, and the Urban Vote." The article explores the factors that drive urban politics, including race, class, ideology, and partisanship. The authors analyze two data sets to understand the patterns in urban elections and find that race and ethnicity play a significant role in shaping urban politics. They also discuss the competition between racial and ethnic groups, particularly Black voters, and the impact of race on policy areas in cities. The authors conclude that race continues to be an important organizing principle in urban politics, but more research is needed to fully understand the complexities of the urban electorate. [Extracted from the article]

"A New History of the American South" is a comprehensive and innovative book edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage that challenges outdated narratives and offers a more nuanced and critical perspective on the history of the American South. It explores the deep entanglement of the colonists in the slave system and the significant increase in the number of enslaved Africans brought to the region through the Atlantic slave trade. The book also delves into the post-war period, discussing the reassertion of white political power and the rise of segregationists. While it lacks in-depth coverage of culture, it is a valuable resource for understanding the complex history of the American South. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses Claire Jean Kim's book, "Bitter Fruit," which examines the racial tensions between black and Korean Americans in New York City during the 1990s. The book introduces the concept of "racial triangulation" to analyze the relationships between these two groups and emphasizes the importance of local and national political processes in shaping racial populations. However, the article points out some limitations of the book, such as its under-examination of violence in constructing black identities and its lack of focus on political economy. Overall, "Bitter Fruit" provides a valuable analysis of black-Korean conflict and challenges prevailing intellectual forces within political science. [Extracted from the article]

How does descriptive representation affect the voter turnout of African Americans? Though theories state that electing officials who belong to a minority group should lead to greater participation among that group's members via empowerment, the empirical evidence has been mixed. With three decades of voter turnout data, Census data, and data on Black elected officials in South Carolina, we address a number of questions about descriptive representation. Using the number of officials, their level of office, and when they were elected, we investigate how Black representatives affect turnout for Black voters. We find evidence of an empowering effect for African Americans, but find it depends on numbers and jurisdiction, with local representation associated with greater boosts to turnout than federal representation. These results help us reconcile the literature on empowerment by demonstrating the nuanced effects of descriptive representation across level and magnitude of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a brief history of the struggle for Black voting rights and against determined opposition in Georgia since the end of the Civil War. After a brief period during Reconstruction when there was significant Black voting and Black representation in the Georgia legislature, Black people were systematically denied both voting rights and representation in the state of Georgia. After 1944, when the US Supreme Court ruled against the all-white primary, and especially after 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, white Georgia politicians tried any number of strategies to limit minority voting strength, from efforts to limit Black registration, to manipulating election districts and voting rules to keep African Americans from winning elective office. These efforts continued, and in many ways increased after the Supreme Court in 2013 ended the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Nonetheless, the increasing demographic power of metro Atlanta, with its large minority population, was a key in 2020 to the narrow victory of Joseph Biden in the presidential race in Georgia, and the election of two liberal Democratic US Senators, including the first African American and Jew elected in the state's history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a voting rights campaign known as "Blocks for Freedom" that was launched in 1966 to help a group of rural African American women in Clay County, Mississippi, protect their right to vote. These Black women faced significant obstacles to vote even after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Local white vigilantes and county administrators used violence and the threat of informal economic sanctions to punish Black citizens who registered to vote. "Blocks for Freedom" sought to circumvent these limitations by creating jobs for Black women that would offer a living wage and protect their ability to cast ballots. Led by poor women in Mississippi and civil rights advocates in New York City, this innovative campaign shows how grassroots activists encountered voter suppression techniques employed to dilute the Black vote after the Civil Rights Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an edited intergenerational conversation among Courtland Cox, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; Nsé Ufot, former executive director of the New Georgia Project; and Charles V. Taylor Jr. executive director of the Mississippi State NAACP, on April 7, 2023. This discussion explores key issues in today's national politics, especially the role of southern Black and Brown voters and strategists, and calls for the emergence of a New Southern Strategy. Cox drew on his work with SNCC in Lowndes County, Alabama, in the 1960s, which focused on voter registration and the development of the Lowndes County Freedom Party, while Ufot discussed her work leading the New Georgia Project as they transformed Georgia's electorate, and Taylor highlighted his work on the 2015 Better Schools, Better Jobs Ballot Initiative 42 in Mississippi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces readers to the ongoing African American struggle for full voting rights from Reconstruction to the present. It explains some of the significant ways white supremacists (mis)used the legal and political system, along with violence and economic terrorism, to suppress the Black vote. The essay gives particular attention to the collective work of African Americans to secure voting rights during the modern Civil Rights Movement, with a focus on the organizing work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), mentored by Ella Baker. While many people give well-known leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson credit for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, SNCC workers immersed themselves in communities for bottom-up organizing to demand the vote and make it impossible for the country to continue to ignore the violent suppression of Black rights. The article concludes with contemporary voting rights challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, titled "Meeting the Moment for Democracy," discusses the author's personal experiences and reflections on voting as a Black woman in America. The author emphasizes the importance of voting as a birthright and a symbol of equality, while acknowledging the historical struggles faced by women and people of color to gain full access to the franchise. The article also highlights the challenges to democracy posed by former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud and the need for a diverse coalition of Americans to protect voting rights. The author calls on readers to defend democracy by participating in the upcoming election and championing the rights of all Americans. [Extracted from the article]

Recent partisan claims about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election highlight a need to better understand the determinants underlying Americans' trust in the electoral process. In this study, we focus on African Americans and conservatives, two groups that stand out both historically and contemporaneously for high levels of distrust in elections. Utilizing nationally representative survey data, we analyze the degree to which election distrust is associated with respondents' attitudes towards policies addressing voter access (photo ID requirements, vote by-mail, and felon voting), perceptions of disenfranchisement, and their personal experience while voting. We find evidence that distrust is not tied to one's personal voting experience, but rather to one's policy attitudes towards electoral access. Importantly, for conservative and Black voters, the policy remedies that would lead to increased trust for one group would only further exacerbate the concerns of the other, suggesting that distrust towards American elections will be difficult to attenuate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2024 marks the fifty-year anniversary of the publication of John Egerton's The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America (1974), a seminal work on regional and national identity. What did this book get right? What did it get wrong? Fifty years later, it still resonates. From states' rights to gun rights, from immigration to Black voter disfranchisement, from the resurgence of white supremacy to the ongoing significance of race in American life, various issues demonstrate not only how the South has Americanized but also how the nation on the whole has southernized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In politics, power is key. Engaging in competitive political environments and gaining political power through competition can have significant ramifications on an individual's financial and interpersonal life and influence how individuals behave politically. I hypothesize that competition for political power causes voters to place more value on the importance of participation, and it triggers a strong desire to seek economic status by using power, which mobilizes political participation. Using behavioral theory and three laboratory experiments, I find evidence supporting these effects. I take special care to distinguish these effects from those induced by endogenous formation of group identity, strategic voting, and other compelling behavioral theories. Substantively, I discuss the implications of these findings in the context of how the civil rights movement affected Black voters' participation, how the process of immigration affects immigrants' political behavior, and how empowering women in the political processes influences women's participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the memory and representation of Alton Sterling, a Black man killed by the police, challenging the narrative that equates Blackness with death. It emphasizes Sterling's identity as a father, son, partner, lover, comedian, and neighborhood CD salesman. The author discusses the concept of "premature ancestralhood" to highlight that the souls of Black individuals continue to live on. The article explores the work of Sun Ra and the Arkestra to understand and represent Blackness through sonic ethics and Afro-surrealist pedagogies. It aims to challenge notions of Blackness as stillborn and highlight the vibrancy and resilience of Black lives. [Extracted from the article]

In each such plebiscite, all white voters vote I yes i for white supremacy and all black voters vote I no i . Thus if a given white voter were to vote against, they would find themselves on the winning side and would enjoy some partial efficacy, just as they enjoy some partial efficacy when they vote in favor; by contrast, if a given black voter were to vote in favor, she would still be on the losing side and her vote would still be inefficacious, just as her actual vote against is inefficacious. Suppose that in a jurisdiction there are 2,000,001 white voters and 1,000,000 black voters, all of whom enjoy equally weighted votes. That is why it abstracts from all other features of a voter's situation (such as how the voter can expect other voters to behave) that are plausibly relevant to a I comprehensive i assessment of agential power. [Extracted from the article]

By the late nineteenth century, Black women used poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction to confront a white, patriarchal society and protest the lynchings of Black people and voting disenfranchisement of Black women. Woman's Era became the first periodical written by and for Black women, which preserved a piece of intellectual strategy as elite Black clubwomen's marketplace of ideas. This article explores the contributions of Woman's Era , which also was the first to integrate into one journal various literary forms, thereby lending credence globally to many voices regularly overlooked by the white and male-dominated Black press. Their writings were a form of literary activism helping to legitimize Black women as change agents who fought socially and politically for their communities and collective rights as enfranchised citizens. This article complements the historical canon about Black clubwomen's social and political contributions through literary interventions in their communities, states, nation, and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"America's Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy" by Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar explores the history of Atlanta from the post-reconstruction era to the present day. The book highlights the efforts of African Americans such as Tunis Campbell, William Edward Evans, and Lugenia Burns Hope who created businesses and community programs to improve the lives of African Americans in Atlanta. It also discusses the role of mayors William B. Hartsfield and Ivan Allen Jr in promoting racial progress and the economic and educational opportunities available to African Americans in the city. The book examines the concept of Afro-self-determinism and its development in response to neo-Confederate ideologies. Ogbar's work provides a comprehensive and well-researched history of Atlanta and its complex racial dynamics. [Extracted from the article]

"Workers of All Colors, Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism" by Lorenzo Costaguta explores the racial thought within German-speaking American socialists from the 1850s to the 1890s. The book reveals that these socialists, who were the majority of socialist party members before 1900, were deeply enmeshed in systems of white supremacy. While they opposed slavery, they cooperated with white Americans' efforts to maintain white supremacy. The book argues that American socialism before 1900 was a German American ethnic tradition and highlights missed opportunities to address racial oppression in the Americas. The book provides a corrective to the romanticized view of the "American radical tradition" and is recommended for university courses and book clubs. [Extracted from the article]

The article in the Journal of the Civil War Era focuses on various aspects of slavery, freedom, and violence during the Civil War. It includes articles that explore the lives of enslaved people, emancipation, military occupation in the border states, the impact of postwar violence on presidential elections, and the history of the Ku Klux Klan. The articles provide new insights into these topics, shedding light on the experiences and actions of enslaved individuals, the dynamics of Reconstruction-era debates, and the interplay between college fraternities and the Ku Klux Klan. The journal also announces editorial transitions, thanking outgoing editors and welcoming new ones. [Extracted from the article]