| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard M. Valelly. The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement. (American Politics and Political Economy.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. xvii, 330. Cloth $58.00, paper $22.50.

Political scientist Richard M. Valelly points out that the United States is the only democracy that has brought an entire social group into its political system, excluded it en masse, and reenfranchised it. In this book, Valelly undertakes to explain why the first Reconstruction (1867–1870) did not permanently enfranchise blacks in the South and the second, culminating in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its later extensions, did. In offering an answer to this important question, Valelly examines political coalitions assembled for the purpose of enfranchisement. In the first instance, the Republican Party reached out to African Americans in the states of the late Confederacy, but the coalition never achieved stability. It crumbled in the face of determined white opposition. In the second reconstruction, the Democratic Party hitched itself to a powerful civil rights movement. That time, permanency was achieved, at least for the time being.

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