Mobilizing Public Opinion

Black Insurgency and Racial Attitudes in the Civil Rights Era

Taeku Lee author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Chicago Press

Published:17th Apr '02

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Mobilizing Public Opinion cover

What motivates us to change our opinions during times of political protest and social unrest? To investigate this question, Taeku Lee's smartly argued book looks to the critical struggle over the moral principles, group interests, and racial animosities that defined public support for racial policies during the civil rights movement, from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. Challenging the conventional view that public opinion is shaped by elites, Lee crafts an alternate account of the geographic, institutional, historical, and issue-specific contexts that form our political views. He finds that grassroots organizations and local protests of ordinary people pushed demands for social change into the consciousness of the general public. From there, Lee argues, these demands entered the policy agendas of political elites. Evidence from multiple sources including survey data, media coverage, historical accounts, and presidential archives animates his argument. Ultimately, Mobilizing Public Opinion is a timely, cautionary tale about how we view public opinion and a compelling testament to the potential power of ordinary citizens.

"Mobilizing Public Opinion is original and makes its argument ably. Lee critiques 'elite-driven, top-down' accounts of mass opinion with the specific case study of mass support for the civil rights advances in the postwar period. He presents his analysis in a carefully nuanced way and makes a fundamentally important point that is sure to be debated and extended to other cases." - David Sears, University of California, Los Angeles

ISBN: 9780226470245

Dimensions: 24mm x 16mm x 2mm

Weight: 567g

301 pages