Аннотация:The two pioneering monographs on the harassment of black elected officials written by Mary R. Sawyer (The Dilemma of Black Politics [1977] and The Harassment of Black Elected Officials: Ten Years Later [1987]) that launched the new subfield of African American politics have now come full circle with George Derek Musgrove's profound scholarly study. It is a solid work simply because it reveals the darker side of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its subsequent renewals. In addition, this work is timely, coming out on the eve of the historic 2012 presidential election, where one political party, with its theme of voter fraud despite its nonexistence, implements the use of voter identification cards, which impacts and circumscribes the voting rights of the African American electorate, other minority electorates, the elderly, the poor, and those without transportation to the voting booth. This new technique to forestall and deny voting rights was initially designed to enable party supporters to attain realignment, and in this historic 2012 election the party hoped to defeat the first African American president in his reelection bid. Musgrove reveals how, to attain this reduction and repression of minority voters, the party politicized the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights via a conservative majority-based leadership.
