Marcus D. Pohlmann and Michael P. Kirby. Racial Politics at the Crossroads: Memphis Elects Dr. W.W. Herenton (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), xi + 269 pp.; ISBN 0-87049-926-2 (paper).

In Racial Politics at the Crossroads: Memphis Elects Dr. W.W. Herenton, Marcus D. Pohlmann and Michael P. Kirby provide a comprehensive analysis of the narrow and racially polarized election of Memphis, Tennessee’s first black mayor, Dr. Herenton. In 1991, Memphis’s black community elected a black mayor almost twenty-five years after the candidacy of the first black mayoral candidate. Dr. W.W. Herenton defeated nine-year incumbent Richard C. (Dick) Hackett by approximately 142 votes. Rather than merely providing an assessment of this one election, the authors discuss the history of institutional obstacles, ideological divisions in the black community and southern racism that prevented black mayoral victories in earlier years even after the city’s black population surpassed its white population. Thus, this text is a significant contribution to the African American, southern, and urban political and historical literature.