The number of American citizens who have never heard of Shirley Chisholm and her contributions to New York State politics, the U.S. Congress, and presidential elections is astounding. As many scholars and educators find when they enter their classrooms, numerous candidates from marginalized communities have been in many ways effectively erased from the larger political narrative of American politics and democracy. Because of this far-too-frequent phenomenon, the work of Evelyn Simien in her innovative and accessible new book, Historic Firsts, is so important for scholars and students interested in elections, American political development, presidential politics, gender politics, and intersectionality more broadly.

Simien begins by laying out the three themes and goals of the book. First, she develops a theory of “symbolic empowerment” that intertwines descriptive and substantive representation in a descriptive-symbolic moment where the two concepts merge and further increase mobilizing effects. Second, she lays out the effect of historic “firsts” and their consequences for the American electorate. The candidacies of Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton introduced formerly politically inactive citizens into the political process by linking their campaigns to the lives of ordinarily nonparticipatory individuals. In many ways, the historic firsts were symbolically empowering for marginalized groups. The author asks whether or not the changing face of presidential politics actually changed the behaviors and attitudes of the American electorate: More specifically, did the candidacies of Chisholm, Jackson, Obama, and Clinton change levels of political engagement for racial, ethnic, and gender groups? Finally, Simien expands the theoretical capacity of intersectional research and links this type of research directly to electoral outcomes and political behaviors. In doing so, she methodologically explains not only how but also why individuals participate in the American electoral system, especially when given a choice to vote for candidates from marginalized groups.

Methodologically, Simien draws upon a rich array of scholarly sources, campaign speeches and advertising, voter turnout reports, and national telephone surveys. Her diverse methodological approach, which includes large data sets and archival research, will aid scholars in their own research, as well as present diverse ways to teach black politics and gender politics in the classroom. Equally important, Simien’s use of multiple data sets clearly shows the importance of black women as key voters for the Democratic Party. In doing so, she provides detailed accounts of black women as bridge leaders and the electoral backbone for twenty-first-century Democratic politics.

The shadow of Donald Trump and the recent 2016 election both loom over Simien’s groundbreaking analyses. In many moments throughout the book, published in 2015, I asked myself whether or not her theories hold in Trump’s America. That is, can we transpose her theory onto the wildly unconventional Trump candidacy, which included racialized dog whistles aimed at white Americans in the twenty-first century, directly following the nation’s first and only African American president? Might we see Trump, too, as engaged in an attempt to target and incorporate a group of individuals who see themselves as marginalized and looking for a symbolic candidate who can empower them and alter their political behaviors? The election of 2016 and Trump’s symbolic candidacy, founded on bringing back the “glory” days of America, also motivated previously nonparticipatory citizens and empowered them to head to the voting booths (we will temporarily suspend stories about the dissolution of the Voting Rights Act and possible international interference in the 2016 presidential election). As much as the author’s scholarship focuses on the importance of Chisholm and Clinton as well as on Jackson and Obama as the lens by which we can evaluate gender and racial politics, respectively, at the presidential level, her work also implores us to look at the ways in which unconventional white candidates are using their gender and race to serve as a catalyst for white Americans in the voting booths.

Due to the reality of a Trump presidency just one year after publication of Historic Firsts, I found Simien’s work operating on multiple levels. The book provides detailed historical analysis and demonstrates the political importance of previously marginalized symbolic candidates in Chisholm and Jackson. She also expands our understanding of intersectional politics by using Obama and Clinton as examples of the ways in which candidates negotiate complex marginal identities, that is, Clinton as a white female candidate (dominant and nondominant identity) and Obama as a black male candidate (nondominant and dominant identity). In Chapter 4, “One of Our Own: Hillary Clinton and the Voters Who Support Her,” the author meticulously lays out how voters perceived the racial and gender impacts of Clinton’s 2008 candidacy. One cannot help but wonder why the Clinton campaign did not use such data and evidence, so clearly laid out by Simien, as the canary in the coal mine of her candidacy. Had they read this book and digested Simien’s analysis, which clearly articulates the fact that white women were not overwhelming supporters of Clinton in 2008, perhaps the Clinton campaign would have adapted a somewhat different strategy to appeal to, and ultimately capture, white women at the ballot box in 2016.

Lastly, some scholars may not initially observe this fact, but one of the most important contributions of Simien’s work is her attention to the work of several female scholars and scholars of color. There are a growing number of recently published books that have been highlighting the work of forgotten or ignored scholars from marginalized communities. Simien’s inclusion of so many diverse scholars should not be ignored. As our understanding of presidential politics, intersectional politics, and institutions continues to expand, we must as a discipline recognize and highlight the work of scholars at diverse institutions who are laying the groundwork for the inclusion of even more subsets of American politics.

Historic Firsts is a timely and necessary contribution that should be mandatory reading for any scholar interested in the presidency, electoral politics, and African American presidential history and politics more broadly. Simien concludes that black electoral politics has implications for intersectional politics, American political development, and race and gender politics writ large. She argues that the lasting consequences of “unsuccessful” campaigns include long-standing effects on marginalized communities and their political participation and efficacy. She finds that racial and gender categories are not uniformly positioned and that one identity (race or gender) often gets privileged over the other. The book leaves readers to think about the futures of a growing number of blacks desiring increased electoral participation and marginalized politicians seeking executive office, as well as the history (and future) of presidential politics across the country for black voters.