African American politics concerns aspirations and efforts that have informed struggles for freedom, justice, and equality from slavery to the present. Black ideologies, programs, and strategies mirror not only contexts of white racism but also intrablack differences.

Enslaved and free blacks were political actors. They resisted and affirmed themselves, using African religious, familial, and kin traditions; Christianity; and manumissions. During the Revolutionary War, many bondmen earned liberty by serving in the American and British militaries. Slave rebels and fugitives and black and white abolitionists helped catalyze southern secession, the Civil War, and emancipation. Postwar, the Constitution abolished slavery and granted ex-slaves citizenship and suffrage. Blacks both coalesced with white allies and struggled autonomously, the latter desired by nationalists. Thus postwar generations paved the way for civil rights, desegregation, Black Power, multiethnic politics, and empowerment.

Struggles in the Reconstruction South, home to more than 90 percent of blacks, grounded blacks’ civic future. Assisted by the Freedmen's Bureau, Republican Party, missionary societies, Union League, and soldiers, they embraced free labor, mostly as sharecroppers; reunited families; enrolled children in school; and established churches and protective associations. In 1867 more than 700,000 black men voted despite Ku Klux Klan terror. More than 2,000 blacks held elective and appointive offices – local, state, and federal; 1 served briefly as a governor, 14 in the US House, and 2 in the Senate. Most black officeholding ended after Democrats regained state power and the final Union troops left (1877). The nadir (1877–1901) witnessed Republicans and Populists’ isolation; black lynching, disfranchisement, and segregation; and the federal retreat from civil rights. Blacks persevered, even as they pursued freedom movements of varying persuasions: democratic, socialist, nationalist, and interracial.

The right to vote formed the cutting edge of racial battles. In the NAACP's case Guinn v. Oklahoma (1915), the US Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause, which inspired efforts for black and women's suffrage. Black socialists pressed workers’ rights; nationalists called for black self-help and unity. A black Republican won election to Congress from Chicago in 1928. During the Depression, many blacks joined the Communist Party and industrial unions. A majority of black voters also spurned Republicans to support liberal Democrats and New Deal reforms.