Public Policy and Presidential Politics
By Jonathan Holloway - Yale
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261
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Lecture Description
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.
Course Description
The purpose of this course is to examine the African American experience in the United States from 1863 to the present. Prominent themes include the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction; African Americans' urbanization experiences; the development of the modern civil rights movement and its aftermath; and the thought and leadership of Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.
