Tammany Hall And Coming Of Age In Mississippi Summary

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and Coming of Age in Mississippi discuss the shifting American political structure and how political power is achieved, maintained, and challenged. Each book offers its own unique interpretation concerning the changing political structures from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1960s. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall sheds light on political party structures shifting throughout the twentieth century in large scale cities, such as New York City, particularly in challenging the two-party system, through the idea of the urban political machine. Coming of Age in Mississippi gives a unique interpretation from Anne Moody, concerning the Jim Crow laws and the white dominated South of the 1900s, and how young African American’s, through individual political …show more content…
This means that loyalty and patronage are huge in the world or urban political machines. A political machine, like Tammany Hall, would give a worker a job or a place to live, if they in return would promise to vote for the candidates of the political machine on election day. Many poor workers that lived in the areas that contained political machines were immigrants, and the number of immigrants in these areas were increasing rapidly. The immigrant workers in these areas were often very poor and many were desperately looking for jobs and places to live. Political machines offered these new immigrants with employment and housing, in return for their support and votes. This caused urban political machines to gain and obtain power for a period of time. Urban political machines demonstrate that immigrants are able to gain political power through urban political machines as opposed to the former idea of white supremacy, where white males were the only ones with political power. (which the book Coming of Age in Mississippi