For the freedom of her race : Black women and electoral politics in Illinois, 1877-1932

Focusing on Chicago and downstate Illinois politics during the incredibly oppressive decades between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932--a period that is often described as the nadir of black life in America--Lisa Materson demonstrates the impact that migrating southern black women had on midwestern and national politics, first in the Republican Party and later in the Democratic Party. Materson shows that as African American women migrated beyond the reach of southern white supremacists, they became active voters, canvassers, suffragi