the Illinois Senatorial election is most emblematic of this new reality. Almost 40 members of Congress are African American, which endows the Congressional Black Caucus with a sizable bloc of votes to influence the legislation that is enacted. At the state and local level, thousands of African Americans have been elected to political office, providing blacks with an increasing amount of say in the functioning of local governments. At the national level, the unwavering loyalty that blacks have shown to the Democratic party has been rewarded with a significant amount of leverage in the party policy-building process and within the Democratic leadershipùsince the mid 1980s, nearly a quarter of all the delegates to the Democratic Presidential Convention have been African American. "These trends in black office holding and party activism are suggestive of the incorporation of blacks into mainstream politics" (Harris, 1143).
While black political participation has increased over the past few decades, there appears to be a gap between the levels of political participation of black men and women. Black women appear to participate less than black men. This trend was particularly clear in the 1970s and 1980s. Figure 1 shows the aggregate levels of political participation between bla
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