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Published September 1985 | public
Journal Article

In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks & Electoral Politics, 1965-1982 [Book Review]

Abstract

In his well-received Black Ballots (1976), Steven F. Lawson traced the course of federal legal actions to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment from the outlawing of the white primary in 1944 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965. This sequel chronicles the efforts to register and mobilize black voters from 1965 to 1969, largely in Alabama and Mississippi, and the battles over federal legal protection for voting rights workers and those concerning the administration and the three renewals of the VRA from 1970 to 1982. Based on a wide reading in manuscript collections, government reports, secondary literature, printed court opinions, and oral histories, the book does not draw on newspapers, unpublished court records, or very extensive interviews by the author, and it contains no systematic analyses of legislative or electoral behavior. Rather misleadingly titled, it does not examine the campaigns of southern black candidates outside Alabama and Mississippi, or even in those states after 1971, or assess, except in the most general way, the consequences for economic and social policies of the victories of black or black-backed white candidates.

Additional Information

© 1985 Georgia Historical Society. Book review of: In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks & Electoral Politics, 1965-1982. By Steven F. Lawson. Contemporary American History Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Pp. xix, 391. ISBN: 978-0-231-04627-5

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
March 5, 2024