The preacher and the politician : Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and race in America / Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"They Didn't Give Us Our Mule and Our Acre": Introduction -- The "Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost": Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Black Church -- "I Don't Want People to Pretend I'm Not Black": Barack Obama and America's Racial History -- "To Choose Our Better History"? Epilogue -- Text of Barack Obama's March 18, 2008, Speech on Race.

"Barack Obama's inauguration as the first African American president of the United States has caused many commentators to conclude that America has entered a postracial age. The Preacher and the Politician argues otherwise, reminding us that, far from inevitable, Obama's nomination was nearly derailed by his relationship with Jeremiah Wright, the outspoken former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago. The media storm surrounding Wright's sermons, the historians Clarence E. Walker and Gregory D. Smithers suggest, reveals that America's fraught racial past is very much with us, only slightly less obviously so." "With meticulous research and insightful analysis, Walker and Smithers take us back to the Democratic primary season of 2008, viewing the controversy surrounding Wright in the context of key religious, political, and racial dynamics in American history. In the process they expose how the persistence of institutional racism. and racial stereotypes, became a significant hurdle for Obama in his quest for the presidency."--BOOK JACKET.