Black Politics

Essay by courtlyne3College, UndergraduateA, December 2014

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This paper will address the position of black politician when it comes to race consciousness and deracialization, through the past, present and future. My position is to focus on how racial consciences used by politicians throughout the years have made it possible for politicians today to even having the option of running a deradicalized campaign and will still be a key ideology for the future.

Going back to the Reconstruction Era until the mid 1980's the identity of the black politician was very distinct. Before the Civil War began, Blacks had only been able to vote in a few northern states, and there were no black officeholders. The months after the Union victory in April 1865 saw extensive mobilization within the black community, with meetings, parades and petitions calling for legal and political rights, including the right to vote. During the first two years of Reconstruction, blacks organized Equal Rights Leagues throughout the South and held state and local conventions to protest discriminatory treatment and demand suffrage.

During the Radical Reconstruction (1867-77) decade, Congress granted African American men the status and rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, as guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Beginning in 1867, branches of the Union League, which encouraged the political activism of African Americans, spread throughout the South. Many black leaders during Reconstruction had gained their freedom before the Civil War, had worked as skilled slave craftsmen or had served in the Union Army. A large number of black political leaders came from the church, having worked as ministers during slavery or in the early years of Reconstruction, when the church served as the center of the black community. In 1868 Hiram Rhodes Revels, a born free educator and minister became the first black man...