Presidential Leadership and African Americans examines the leadership styles of eight American presidents and shows how the decisions made by each affected the lives and opportunities of the nation's black citizens. Beginning with George Washington and concluding with the landmark election of Barack Obama, Goethals traces the evolving attitudes and morality that influenced the actions of each president on matters of race, and shows how their personal backgrounds as well as their individual historical, economic, and cultural contexts combined to shape their values, judgments, and decisions, and.
"With lively prose and sensitivity to context, this book offers a sweeping, authoritative history of the Obama presidency, focusing particularly on its impact and meaning vis-áa-vis African Americans. This interpretative account captures the America that made Obama's White House years possible, while at the same time rendering the America that resolutely resisted the idea of a Black chief executive, thus making conceivable the ascent of his most unlikely of successors"--
She argues that Lincoln was a consistent friend of African-American freedom, and she speculates on how Reconstruction would have differed had Lincoln lived through his second term.
CHOICE 2000 Outstanding Academic Title Written by two preeminent scholars of the subject, this book provides a panoramic view of the theory, research, and praxis of African American leadership. Walters and Smith offer a great deal to students of black leadership, as well as important strategy and policy recommendations for black leaders. The book first presents a comprehensive assessment of the social science research literature on black leadership. It finds that older studies (1930s to 1960s) dealt with the nascent formation of leadership theory, where blacks were located predominantly in the context of southern politics and had to adopt a conservative to moderate leadership style. The authors also review and evaluate research on black leadership from the 1970s to the present and suggest attention be given to studies of leadership that involve community level leadership, female leaders, black mayors, and black conservatives. African American Leadership also focuses on the practice of black leadership. It begins with an analysis of the roles of black leadership and historical analysis of strategies or "strategy shift." The authors then provide illustrative case studies of the styles of black leadership. They examine the continued utilization of mass mobilization in the form of boycotts, direct action, and mass demonstrations and marches. The issue of collective black leadership or the framework of unity—an illusive but necessary form of community organization—is also explored, and serious attention is given to issues, recruitment, and deployment.
Black voters can make or break a presidential election--look at the close electoral results in 2000 and the difference the disenfranchised Black vote in Florida alone might have made. Black candidates can influence a presidential election--look at the effect that Jesse Jackson had on the Democratic party, the platform, and the electorate in 1984 and 1988, and the contributions to the Democratic debates that Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton made in 2004. American presidential politics can't get along without the Black vote--witness the controversy over candidates' appearing (or not) at the NAACP convention, or the extent to which candidates court (or not) the Black vote in a variety of venues. It all goes back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which formally gave African Americans the right to vote, even if after all these years that right is continuously contested. In Freedom Is Not Enough (a quote from Lyndon Johnson's 1965 commencement address to Howard University just before he signed the Voting Rights Act), Ronald W. Walters traces the history of the Black vote since 1965, celebrates its fortieth anniversary in 2005, and shows why passing a law is not the same as ensuring its enforcement, legitimacy, and opportunity.
A theoretical examination of the concepts of the citizen, citizenship, and leadership, A Crisis of Leadership and the Role of Citizens in Black America: Leaders of the New School proposes to develop a prototype or model of effective Black leadership. Furthermore, it examines “citizenship habits” of the Black community based on their economic standing, educational attainment, participation in the criminal justice system, and health and family structure. It tracks data in these four categories from 1970 to today, measuring effective leadership by the improvement or decline in the majority of African Americans standing in these four categories. This book concludes that African Americans have negative perceptions of themselves as U.S. citizens, which thus produce “bad citizenship habits.” Additionally, ineffective Black leaders since the Civil Rights era have been unwilling to demonstrate the purpose and significance of service, particularly to the poor and disadvantaged members of the Black community. Contemporary Black leaders (post–Civil Rights Era) have focused primarily on self-promotion, careerism, and middle-class interests. A new type of leader is needed, one that stresses unity and reinforces commitment to the group as a whole by establishing new institutions that introduce community-building.
Black Political Mobilization accounts for the political success of black Americans in the South. Minion Morrison returns to Mississippi, the center of much of the political activism of the 1960s, to analyze the remarkable improvement in black electoral participation in the years following passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mississippi's substantial black population has experienced marked electoral success despite a history of strict racial exclusion. The dramatic and widespread nature of mobilization there makes it one of the most illustrative case studies for exploring this period of political change in America. Mississippi represents a broader phenomenon of political change that sustains a new leadership class in the Southern region. Three rural Mississippi towns serve as the focal point for the study. They each have a population of under 2,000, have overwhelming Afro-American voting majorities, are poor and largely agricultural, have been affected by the civil rights movement of the '60s, and have elected a black mayor since 1973. The towns are prime examples of the character and process of minority electoral politics and mobilization in the rural South: A new class of black leaders is nurtured and installed in office in an environment where a newly and highly mobilized constituency takes advantage of its majority status in the electorate. This book combines good theory with lively interviews and rich case histories to highlight an essentially new variety of participatory democracy in American politics and government.
How can African American church leaders maximize their leadership potential? What are current models for effective leadership in the African American Christian community? This book answers those questions and more with up-to-date research and current best practices regarding leadership principles and strategies. African American church communities and those who interact with and work with these communities will find this book particularly useful. ParkerBooks are written to equip and encourage African American ministry leaders.
2016 NAACP Image Award Nominee, Essence Top 10 books of 2015, African American Literary Show Inc. 2015 Best Non Fiction Award When the award-winning The Presidency in Black and White first appeared, readers were captivated by journalist April Ryan’s compelling behind-the-scenes look at race relations from the epicenter of American power and policy making—the White House. As a White House correspondent since 1997, Ryan provides unique insights on the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. In the updated paperback edition, Ryan contributes a new afterword, chronicling the country’s growing racial divide, the end of the Obama era, the increasingly contentious Trump White House, and prospects for race relations in the Trump presidency.
Rethinking How to Build Inclusive Organizations Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people's experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing? How do we build inclusive organizations? Inspired by and developed in conjunction with the research and programming for Harvard Business School's commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the HBS African American Student Union, this groundbreaking book shines new light on these and other timely questions and illuminates the present-day dynamics of race in the workplace. Contributions from top scholars, researchers, and practitioners in leadership, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and education test the relevance of long-held assumptions and reconsider the research approaches and interventions needed to understand and advance African Americans in work settings and leadership roles. At a time when--following a peak in 2002--there are fewer African American men and women in corporate leadership roles, Race, Work, and Leadership will stimulate new scholarship and dialogue on the organizational and leadership challenges of African Americans and become the indispensable reference for anyone committed to understanding, studying, and acting on the challenges facing leaders who are building inclusive organizations.
