where there are very large and discrete black and minority populations. Conversely, we need to know how black members of Congress deal with the matter of representing white populations in their districts. Given the historical and contemporary context of racial politics and race relations in this country, along with the thorny conceptual issues surrounding political representation more generally, answering this question could prove difficult for any representative, regardless of race or ethnicity. But we suggest that precisely those representatives who are able to overcome such difficulties will do much to improve both race relations and the overall quality of life in this country.[9]
Finally, as democratic citizens, we hope that our work will help America understand Southern history and think seriously about its own challenges of the future. We believe that narrow focus on the noble vision keeps us from addressing persistent aspects of regional and national race problems. The civil rights movement was indeed a noble venture, but time-warped fixation has hindered our understanding of subsequent history and has made us so supersensitive as to impede constructive discussion about race and American democracy.
Recent presidential campaign politics, for example, demonstrates our reverent but dysfunctional temperament about the civil rights movement. The 2008 election suggests that America yearns for transformational dialogue, yet we still experience festering tension and clumsy sensitivities when dealing with the civil rights era within politics.[10] Democrat Barack Obama—the first African American presidential nominee of a major political party—struggled to explain to white voters how black liberation theology conformed to Dr. King’s articulation of a vision deeply rooted in the American dream. There also were testy moments, as when Republican John McCain—who once opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday—glowingly invoked Dr. King’s memory in his pursuit of African American votes. But no incident created a firestorm as volatile as Hillary Clinton’s implication that it took a white politician, Lyndon Johnson, to achieve King’s civil rights agenda. To be precise, candidate Clinton—liberally credentialed spouse of the so-called “first black president”—told a reporter that “it took a president to get it done.”[11] Whatever her intent, the impolitic remark inflamed deep and conflicted emotions about the heroic drama.
Obviously, many white and black Americans are happy to celebrate the civil rights movement in a comfortable context and with fuzzy images from a half-century ago. However, they seem reluctant to scrutinize the conventional story for important realities of those times and lessons for contemporary democracy. Absent such information and insights, strained emotions will continue to disrupt meaningful discourse and racial progress. It is time to accord the heroic drama its proper place in history, time to accurately assess subsequent, realistic, biracial developments, and perhaps then we can advance toward implementation of Dr. King’s dream.
Therefore, in this book, we hope to take a critical step forward in historical interpretation, documentation, and sophisticated awareness of biracial aspects of America’s evolving Great Experiment.
The Stealth Project and Its Thesis
This book is part of a political science project conceived as a biracial approach to our own nagging questions about what really happened racially and practically inside politics in the South after the civil rights movement. In brief, our thesis is one of “Stealth Reconstruction.” While the conventional version of the twentieth century civil rights movement is a compelling heroic drama, we believe that the Southern political system was subsequently reconstructed through the quiet leadership and biracial politics of practical politicians and activists during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Obviously, both white and black elected public officials practiced biracial leadership—i.e., a leader of one race effectively representing constituents of another race—during those decades. Also, it is clear that some African American activists in our stealth relationships were powerful elected officials themselves; many were seasoned veterans of the movement. However, because of the exploratory nature of our thesis (and our own experiences and data resources), this book looks mainly at white elected officials and their special relationships with black activists and the black community in majority white areas. We will incorporate black veterans of the stealth era into a roundtable discussion of our thesis toward the end of the book.
Methodology
As has already been noted, the stealth thesis relies considerably on the authors’ experience, and this book represents an unusual mixture of personal observation, original research, and existing literature.
Our methodology involves creatively thinking about, identifying, and assessing the phenomenon of quiet, practical, biracial politics. The central ideas—“stealth” and “reconstruction”—are used here in a somewhat new and specialized manner. Thus, we will define the terms and explain our planned implementation in a preliminary discussion of regional history and racial representation. Other challenges of our project—especially dealing with sensitive orientations and behaviors of the past—will be addressed as encountered throughout the book. We also must admit, frankly, that some stubborn quandaries of conceptualization and operationalization await resolution in future theory and research.
Our procedural methodology, on the other hand, is simple and direct. We set out to tap otherwise unavailable sources—people and documents—in pursuit of the relatively unexplored phenomenon of stealth leadership and representational politics. We elaborated a thesis and conceptual model based on our own experience, then we constructed a historical overview to place this idea within relevant research and literature. We began to demonstrate the thesis with a case study of Browder’s campaigns and service for evidence about the nature, activities, and impact of his “stealth politics.” We then explored the broader stealth proposition through an unscientific survey among other Southern political leaders of that time. Next we convened an eclectic group of individuals—both black and white—from that era for a virtual roundtable discussion about stealth leadership, politics, and reconstruction. Finally, we related our conclusions to the past, present, and future of Southern politics.
Clearly, some aspects of our thesis, methodology, and results merit refinement; future scholarship should expand the focus of biracial leadership and politics. For example, we have concentrated on white Southern elected officials during this particularly interesting period; much more needs to be addressed in the broader area of biracial politics and American democracy. However, to the best of our knowledge, the stealth project is a groundbreaking endeavor in understanding Southern history.
In the rest of this manuscript, we will (a) elaborate our stealth thesis, (b) present a case study, congressional survey, and roundtable discussion of stealthy leadership, politics, and reconstruction, and (c) consider the ramifications of our findings for the history and future of the South and America.
1
A New Perspective on Southern Politics and History
As will be elaborated in a review of research and literature, conventional coverage of Southern politics and history has been dominated by the heroic drama and subsequent related developments during the latter half of the past century. There has been scant attention to white Southern politicians and their biracial activities among many sweeping generalizations about change in the South.
Of course, our subjects are not the only whites who attempted biracial politics in this region; other scholars have documented such service throughout Southern history. But most of the earlier research has depicted isolated, individualized struggle among heroes and villains; there has been little theorizing or documentation of widespread routine endeavor
