AFRICAN-AMERICAN EVOLUTION

Evolution of African-American Political Power in Cleveland, Ohio

Evolution of African-American Political Power in Cleveland, Ohio

Introduction

Since World War II this tradition of leadership on the national level has re-emerged after the election of Oscar DePriest in Chicago and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in New York. Today the African Americans in Congress and those that are mayors and state legislators represent the greatest Black level of full participation in American society. The Presidential Campaign of Jessie Jackson in 1984 demonstrated this newly won position of strength.

Literature Review

There is a special relationship between African Americans and some of the leading American cities. Often this relationship goes back to the founding of the cities as frontier trading posts or farming settlements in swamps. Four of the most important American cities are Washington, the capital of the nation; New York, the financial centre and largest city; Chicago, the hub of the nation and second largest city; and Los Angeles, the Mecca of the west and third largest city. All of these great cities have special historical links to the African American population from the earliest colonial period to the founding of the nation in 1786 and its rise as an industrial power in the 19th and 20th centuries. Like many of America's leading cities today, Washington, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are examples of historical African American ties to America's early development as well as the growing political power emerging from the concentration of Americans of African descent in the urban areas. New York has the largest and most diverse population of African Americans. Over the past decade Black mayors have been elected in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles (Fenno, 2003: 44).

Internal Migration

Many of the largest cities in America have received waves of new migrants from within the United States. These newcomers have often crowded into already crowded inner city neighbourhoods in the industrial centres of the East, the Midwest and the West. As a result, cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, St. Louis, Newark, Los Angeles and Oakland have large African American populations. Although most of these cities have had African American residents for centuries, there has been a rapid increase over the last twenty-five or thirty years. Since World War II, there has been an enormous movement from rural areas to the cities by all Americans but this is especially true of African Americans. In contrast, white Americans have moved from the city centre to the suburbs since the 1950's. This has created an ethnic mix in urban America that has often established a Black centre city and white suburbs. As a result of this urban population shift over the last twenty-five years, there has also been a decisive change in political power. Since 1967, when Carl Stokes became the first Black Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, there has been a steady increase in African Americans who have been elected mayors of the largest American cities.

Today there are hundreds of African Americans who have been elected to run American ...