Acknowledgments

For someone who does not like to ask or accept aid from others, I relied on assistance from an astounding (and humbling) number of people while producing this dissertation.

On the intellectual front, the contribution of my dissertation committee-Gary King, Jim Alt and Brad Palmquist-should be obvious to any reader who knows their research. They did more than teach me a technique here or an idea there; they provided analytical methods that (I hope) pervade every thought. I also worked closely with David Lublin while polishing this off, blurring the lines between my thinking and his. Many mentors cultivated my writing ability (sometimes with little reward other than resentment), most notably Nancy Becnel, Grady Ballenger, John Hill, and Jay Perkins. A very long list of references ending this work provides the best testament to how many scholars contributed to my thinking on contemporary race relations. I also am indebted to many people for more direct inspiration, whether by reading and commenting on my research, or by sharing their insights more generally: Horace Bartilow, Derek Bok, Henry Brady, Tami Buhr, Barry Burden, Chuck Bullock, Bob Erikson, Juliet Gainsborough, Jim Garand, Claudine Gay, Liz Gerber, Micheal Giles, Jim Glaser, Bernie Grofman, Christian Gross, Michael Gray Hagen, Mac Jewell, Mark Peffley, Paul Peterson, Joe Stewart, Carolyn Tolbert, Janelle Wong, and especially the late Doug Price, who began as the fourth member of my dissertation committee and provided lots of good advice, but whose wisdom, encouragement and deep knowledge of Southern politics sadly were not available by the project's end.

I received assistance putting together data at various times, either from colleagues collaborating on related research projects with me, from people in my employ, or from others generously making data available. Those include: Kathy Bell, Derek Bok, Melanie Buckner, Charles S. Bullock III, Elsie Cangelosi, Micheal W. Giles, Mary Harris, David Lublin, Penny Miller, David Myers, and Bradley L. Palmquist. I received books and other in-kind contributions from Derek Bok, Richard Fording, Bernard Grofman, Gary King and H. Douglas Price. Beverly Clayborne, Richard Greissman, Genecia Jones and especially Steve Baker guided me through numerous bureaucratic hurdles.

The biggest hurdle was financial, and sometimes scrounging was not enough. Generous support came, directly or indirectly, from numerous sources: Dennis G. and Charlotte Z. Voss, who bought my first computer and then periodically supplemented with gifts despite my stubborn resistance; James E. and Jean L. Elliott, who searched for excuses to slip us cash whenever we would take it; Harvard University, the Schoen and Green Memorial fund, and the Mellon Foundation, for scholarships; the University of Kentucky, for taking me on with only a masters degree and offering generous research support; Derek Bok, Gary King, and Paul E. Peterson, for paying more than my research assistance possibly could have been worth. I owe the deepest debt to two landladies, Marilyn Bertrand and Laura J. Crasco, who subsidized our Boston-area housing for six years. Ms. Bertrand not only charged us half market rate to rent their house, offering no explanation except the understatement "I'm not greedy," she held on to it for an extra year to give us time to find a job. My family is richer in many ways thanks to their inexplicable generosity.

Finally, there's no way I could list everyone who provided moral support through this process. I must mention my wife Kathy, and my two wonderful children, Gareth James (b. 1993) and Corrine Faye (b. 1995), for whom this has been a long and tortu(r)ous process-plus close friends who lived with us for years in Boston, either keeping us sane or tolerating our insanity: Normand A. and Sonja S. Modine, John-Marc Chandonia, Diane F. and W. Scot Bray. With all this help, it seems as though the research ought to be better. I take full responsibility for synthesizing all of these contributions, and adding in the gratuitous flaws.