Drawing on the case of Ohio black ministers and their voter-mobilization efforts leading up to President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, this book addresses when, how, and why black ministers engage in broad-based mobilization in the twenty-first-century United States. We learn they can indeed mobilize, and they can do so effectively and efficiently. Black religious leaders across Ohio mobilized the black vote in 2012. Their efforts, it seems, paid off. For the first time, we saw a greater proportion of the black electorate vote than the white electorate. The question begs: If black religious ... More

Drawing on the case of Ohio black ministers and their voter-mobilization efforts leading up to President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, this book addresses when, how, and why black ministers engage in broad-based mobilization in the twenty-first-century United States. We learn they can indeed mobilize, and they can do so effectively and efficiently. Black religious leaders across Ohio mobilized the black vote in 2012. Their efforts, it seems, paid off. For the first time, we saw a greater proportion of the black electorate vote than the white electorate. The question begs: If black religious leaders could collectively mobilize on a broad scale for the black vote, why have they not done so for black lives? We propose four factors affecting contemporary black ministers’ engagement in mobilization: post-civil-rights-era racism, changes in the field of organizing, nostalgic reverence for the civil rights movement, and the structure of the black minister network. In many ways, the very thing that sustains the black religious leader community also constrains black ministers’ capacity to mobilize in today’s world.