The Two Reconstructions

by Valelly, Richard M.

• ISBN13: 9780226845289
• ISBN10: 0226845281
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Winner of the 2005 J. David Greenstone Book Award from the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. Winner of the 2005 Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2005 V.O. Key, Jr. Award of the Southern Political Science Association The Reconstruction era marked a huge political leap for African Americans, who rapidly went from the status of slaves to voters and officeholders. Yet this hard-won progress lasted only a few decades. Ultimately a "second reconstruction"associated with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Actbecame necessary. How did the first reconstruction fail so utterly, setting the stage for the complete disenfranchisement of Southern black voters, and why did the second succeed? These are among the questions Richard M. Valelly answers in this fascinating history. The fate of black enfranchisement, he argues, has been closely intertwined with the strengths and constraints of our political institutions. Valelly shows how effective biracial coalitions have been the key to success and incisively traces how and why political parties and the national courts either rewarded or discouraged the formation of coalitions. Revamping our understanding of American race relations,The Two Reconstructionsbrilliantly explains a puzzle that lies at the heart of America's development as a political democracy.

Author Biography

Richard M. Valelly is professor of political science at Swarthmore College. He is author of Radicalism in the States, published by the University of Chicago Press, and his essays have appeared in the New Republic and the American Prospect.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
The Strange Career of African American Voting and Office-Holding	1	(22)
Forging the Coalition of 1867--1868	23	(24)
Incomplete Institutionalization	47	(26)
Party-Building during the First Reconstruction	73	(26)
The Limits of Jurisprudence-Building	99	(22)
The Vortex of Racial Disenfranchisement	121	(28)
Heralding the Second Reconstruction: The Coalition of 1948	149	(24)
The Coalition of 1961--1965	173	(26)
How the Second Reconstruction Stabilized	199	(26)
Institutions and Enfranchisement	225	(26)
Notes	251	(62)
Index	313