Barack Obama and African American Empowerment

This book examines the evolution of black leadership and politics since the Civil Rights Movement. It looks at the phenomenon of Barack Obama, from his striking emergence as a successful candidate for the Illinois State Senate to President of the United States, as part of the continuum of African American political leaders.

"In this misunderstood age of Obama, we need intellectual clarity, political courage, and genuine compassion for the poor. This vaulable book satisfies these needs. Don't miss it!" - Cornel West, Princeton University

"Manning Marable's new book, Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America's New Leadership, is a prophetic, searing, and timely analysis of race in the election of President Barack Obama. These authors hold no punches in providing a compelling, realistic, and apt assessment of how race has impacted America and how Barack Obama's election has helped us rethink some of our assumptions about it. This is a book that must be read not only by scholars and activists, but by anyone who is seriously concerned abotu understanding the dilemma of race in the twenty-first century. Its penetrating essays are the most provacative, thoughtful, and insightful that I have seen on the rise of Barack Obama and black political power." - Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Founding and Executive Director, Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice

"Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black America s New Leadership is a must read for any serious student of contemporary African American politics. As an excellent compilation by leading African American scholars, it digs deep, and goes beyond the superficial, one sided analysis of Barack Obama posited by cable television talking heads, and mainstream publications. In short, it helps us to begin to understand one of the defining events in U.S. history." - Marc H. Morial, President, National Urban League and Former Mayor of New Orleans

"Manning Marable has assembled an impressive array of thinkers to insightfully probe the varied dimensions of American black politics in the Age of Obama. While keeping their eyes on the nation's first black president, they also look to the larger landscape of social and political forces, and figures, that gave rise to the Obama phenomenon and to which Obama and all other black politicians must respond. This book is a brilliant primer of progressive black political analysis, and a forceful reminder that race is still a formidable feature of American life in a time where too many believe that we have completely overcome our brutal racial past." - Michael Eric Dyson, author of Presidential Race: Barack Obama and Blackness in America

MANNING MARABLE is Professor of History and Political Science, and Public Affairs at Columbia University, USA, where he also serves as founding Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies.  
  
KRISTEN CLARKE is an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and is an expert on voting rights, election law and political participation matters.