ABSTRACT
The national data on black officeholding paint a deceptively dreary picture. Blacks have become major players in the American political process and in the years since the 1960s have advanced more impressively in politics than in any other arena. Those memorials are testimony to the power of the black vote—its impact on white as well as black officeholding. Blacks are the nation’s most solidly Democratic voting bloc. Blacks are becoming more powerful politically both because their numbers are growing and because they have become politically mobilized. Black political participation will rise and fall in response to particular candidates. Black enfranchisement in the South after 1965 changed the political identity of towns, cities, and counties throughout the region. Majority-black settings governed by whites became places in which blacks lived, worked—and, for the first time, voted. Black allegiance to the Democratic Party—across social classes—has been extremely stable since 1964.
