KENESHIA N. GRANT

Associate Professor of Political Science

Short Bio

Meet Keneshia N. Grant, Ph.D.

Professor | Author | Media Contributor

Keneshia N. Grant, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. where her research and teaching focus on state and local government and Black voters.

Keneshia is the author of The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century (2020, Temple University Press).

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party examines how the mass movement of Black Americans out of the South before 1965 helped change the Democratic Party.

American political parties underwent a dramatic realignment in twentieth century. Few scholars have examined the role of the Great Migration in that tectonic shift. This book helps fill that void by reconceptualizing the transition of Black voters from the Republican to Democratic Party as both conversion and mobilization, with migration changing how parties managed voters.

I investigate claims that Black voters often held the balance of power—or could sway elections—at the local level through a focus on white Democratic politicians' perceptions of Black voters and the resulting changes to their behavior toward the growing Black electorate.

Through its conclusion, Great Migration and the Democratic Party sketches some early understandings of the political impact of current Black migration patterns on American politics.

The Great Migration and the Democratic Party