In honor of Black History Month, this Politics & Gender virtual special issue highlights scholarship on Black Women in American Politics. This collection brings together articles published throughout the history of the journal to highlight the important contributions this scholarship has had on the field of gender and politics and political science at large. These articles push us to reconsider and deepen our understandings of core concepts in the field from representation to political participation to identity.

A central contribution of the Black women in American politics literature has been to challenge how we have understood political participation as a history and as an act. Evelyn Simien and Danielle McGuire locate the often invisibilized role of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement, arguing for recognition of these women’s daily work in the movement and their role as leaders. In their piece on electoral participation, Christine Slaughter, Chaya Crowder and Christina Greer highlight the diversity of motivations for voting, finding that Black women, unlike white female and Black male voters, are motivated to participate by a sense of civic duty. These pieces ask us to revaluate what political participation looks like beyond dominant histories and models.

Scholars of Black women in American politics have also contributed to the expansion of our understanding of representation. As part of a Critical Perspectives on descriptive representation, Nadia E. Brown, Christopher J. Clark, Anna Mitchell Mahoney, and Michael Strawbridge highlight the actions taken by Black congresswomen to substantively represent their constituents through advocating for intersectional policy in the caucus system. Discourse and rhetoric also play an important role understand representation, both descriptive and substantive. Andrene Wright’s piece on Black women mayors highlights their use of “experiential rhetoric” that invokes their gender and racial identities when advocating for policy. Scholars have also shown how Black women who have ascended to the highest offices have become representatives for their race and gender. Nikol Alexander-Floyd’s piece on the political career of Condoleeza Rice illustrates how the discourses surrounding the former Secretary of State points to the liminality of Black women in positions of power rather than a success of representation.  Featured in a special symposium on Michelle Obama, Gloria Y.A. Ayee, Jessica D. Johnson Carew, Taneisha N. Means, Alicia M. Reyes-Barrientez and Nura A. Sedique ask how the politics of Black motherhood shaped the policies that the First Lady advocated for and how those policy choices reflected the communities she represented.

Finally, Politics & Gender has been a venue for scholars to challenge political science as a discipline. Mellissa Harris-Lacewell outlines the early contributions of Black women political scientists and their work to create meaningful conceptions of justice. One of these contributions is, of course, the concept of intersectionality, the definition and goals of which are discussed in Julia Jordan-Zachery’s piece. In her foundational piece on intersectionality in the study of elections, Wendy Smooth demonstrates how a focus on racial and gender dynamics leads to a more comprehensive understanding of electoral politics. Through her case study of Black lesbian bloggers, Julia Jordan-Zachery urges scholars too move beyond a “unidimensional use of intersectionality” to recognize a multiplicity of experiences within the gendered and racialized category of Black women.

- Majka Hahn, Rutgers University, Politics & Gender graduate editorial assistant

Please enjoy free access to all articles below until the end of April 2024. For the latest articles from Politics & Gender, follow us on X and Bluesky.

---

---