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AFAM 162: African American History: From Emancipation to the Present

Lecture 22 - Public Policy and Presidential Politics. In this lecture, Professor Holloway gives a political biography of Jesse Jackson as a way to help understand the shifting cultural politics of the 1960s, the rise of a different array of politics in the 1970s, and the high politics of the 1980s. Professor Holloway traces Jackson's ascension into Martin Luther King's inner-circle, his work in Chicago with Operation Breadbasket and then later with Operation PUSH, his reaction to King's assassination, his national economic boycotts, and his 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. In the second half of the lecture, Professor Holloway turns to the national stage, surveying the political and social milieu around President Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan's administrations, focusing specifically on the latter two. While Jimmy Carter diversified the executive branch of the federal government through White House appointments, Ronald Reagan had a more covert approach to racial politics. By claiming that the federal government was the real problem, and calling for a return to states' rights, Reagan implicitly supported the centralizing power of racists like Bull Connor and organizations like the KKK. Thus, Professor Holloway explains, as public race baiting fell out of favor, conservatives like Reagan adopted a way of talking about race without ever mentioning it. (from oyc.yale.edu)

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