African Americans’ participation in social movements, coalitions, and (more recently) interest groups is important to analyze if you want a full picture of their participation in politics, as they “have been excluded from the interest group, electoral, and party systems” for most of American history (Walton, Smith, & Wallace, 2017, p. 109). Here, a social movement is defined as, “a group of persons organized in a sustained, self-conscious challenge to an existing system and its values or power relationships,” while interest groups work within the system directly challenged by social movements in attempt to “influence the government to adopt policies favorable to that interest” (Walton, Smith, & Wallace, 2017, p. 110). Coalitions, meanwhile, simply “involve two or more persons or groups bringing their resources together to achieve a common objective,” and, in order to be viable, a coalition “must have sufficient resources- money, status, size- to achieve its objectives vis-a-vis opposing groups and coalitions” (Walton, Smith, & Wallace, 2017, p. 110). A rights-based coalition “seeks to achieve fundamental universal freedom in terms of basic human, constitutional, and legal rights,” whereas a material-based coalition “seeks access to economic benefits such as land, education, employment, and social security” (Walton, Smith, & Wallace, 2017, p. 111).
