Historic Firsts in U.S. Elections:Trailblazing Candidates in Gubernatorial, Congressional, and Mayoral Campaigns examines barrier-breaking figures across various types of elective offices and constituent groups. The moment in which historic firsts enter the electoral arena, and the unique campaigns that ensue, are shown to be symbolically empowering. These change agents on the campaign trail become lighting rods for more liberal policies, and their candidacies are tied to questions of representation, electability, and performance. The distinctive combinations of race, ethnicity, and gender identities represented here translate into voter excitement to go to the polls and participate in other ways. Original chapters by respected scholars and practitioners consider how recent breakthrough elections are similar to yet different from past elections for gubernatorial, congressional, and mayoral offices. The shadow of Donald Trump's wildly unconventional U.S. presidency looms over this groundbreaking analysis, linking local to national level politics. For students of politics across the curriculum, this book expands the theoretical capacity of intersectionality research and links it to voter mobilization and electoral success.

Historic Firsts in U.S. Elections:Trailblazing Candidates in Gubernatorial, Congressional, and Mayoral Campaigns examines barrier-breaking figures across various types of elective offices and constituent groups. The moment in which historic firsts enter the electoral arena, and the unique campaigns that ensue, are shown to be symbolically empowering. These change agents on the campaign trail become lighting rods for more liberal policies, and their candidacies are tied to questions of representation, electability, and performance. The distinctive combinations of race, ethnicity, and gender identities represented here translate into voter excitement to go to the polls and participate in other ways. Original chapters by respected scholars and practitioners consider how recent breakthrough elections are similar to yet different from past elections for gubernatorial, congressional, and mayoral offices. The shadow of Donald Trump's wildly unconventional U.S. presidency looms over this groundbreaking analysis, linking local to national level politics. For students of politics across the curriculum, this book expands the theoretical capacity of intersectionality research and links it to voter mobilization and electoral success.

Where much of the scholarship on lynching and its victims has focused on African American men, "Gender and Lynching" is the first to examine African American women in this history. The authors probe the reasons and circumstances surrounding the death and torture of African American female victims, employing such methodological approaches as comparative historical work, content and media analysis, and literary criticism.

The powerful imagery of lynching is likely to be with us for long time, and with it, a desire for deeper understanding. Where much of the scholarship on lynching and its victims has focused on African American men, Gender and Lynching centers African American women and reclaims their life stories via oral history and community narratives.

The authors probe the reasons and circumstances surrounding the death and torture of African American female victims, relying on such methodological approaches as comparative historical work, content and media analysis, as well as literary criticism.

The 2008 presidential election made American history. Yet before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, there were other "historic firsts": Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, and Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988. While unsuccessful, these campaigns were significant, as they rallied American voters across various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. One can also argue that they heightened the electoral prospects of future candidates. Can "historic firsts" bring formerly politically inactive people (those who previously saw no connection between campaigns and their own lives) into the electoral process, making it both relevant and meaningful? In Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes Politics, Evelyn M. Simien makes the compelling argument that voters from various racial, ethnic, and sex groups take pride in and derive psychic benefit from such historic candidacies. They make linkages between the candidates in question and their own understanding of representation, and these linkages act to mobilize citizens to vote and become actively involved in campaigns. Where conventional approaches to the study of American political elections tend to focus on socioeconomic factors, or to study race or gender as isolated factors, Simien's approach is intersectional, bringing together literature on both race and gender. In particular she compares the campaigns of Jackson, Chisholm, Obama and Clinton, and she draws upon archival material from campaign speeches, advertising, and newspaper articles, to voter turnout reports, exit polls, and national surveys to discover how race and gender determined the electoral context for the campaigns. In the process, she reveals the differences that exist within and between various racial, ethnic and sex groups in the American political process at the presidential level.