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New York Review Books
October 2014
On Sale: September 30, 2014
112 pages
ISBN: 159017769X
EAN: 9781590177693
Kindle: B00JI48WWW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Blackballed is Darryl Pinckneyβs meditation on a century and a half of participation by blacks in US electoral politics. In this combination of memoir, historical narrative, and contemporary political and social analysis, he investigates the struggle for black voting rights from Reconstruction through the civil rights movement to Barack Obamaβs two presidential campaigns. Drawing on the work of scholars, the memoirs of civil rights workers, and the speeches and writings of black leaders like Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, Andrew Young and John Lewis, Pinckney traces the disagreements among blacks about the best strategies for achieving equality in American society as well as the ways in which they gradually came to create the Democratic voting bloc that contributed to the election of the first black president. Interspersed through the narrative are Pinckneyβs own memories of growing up during the civil rights era and the reactions of his parents to the changes taking place in American society. He concludes with an examination of ongoing efforts by Republicans to suppress the black vote, with particular attention to the Supreme Courtβs recent decision striking down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also included here is Pinckneyβs essay βWhat Black Means Now,β on the history
of the black middle class, stereotypes about blacks and crime, and contemporary debates about βpost-blackness.β
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Saturday - October 11, 2014
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