Blacks, 2012 Presidential Election | featured news

Vice President Joe Biden drew cheers from the nation's biggest civil rights group on Thursday with a fiery defense of President Barack Obama's record, and he warned that the election of Republican Mitt Romney could reverse years of economic and civil rights gains for blacks.

As governor of Michigan, George Romney pressed an aggressive agenda on the issue, putting himself at odds with Republican Party leaders. His son presents a different figure. In 1963, an explosive year in the quest for civil rights, George Romney appeared unannounced in the mostly white suburb of Grosse Pointe and marched to the front of an anti-segregation demonstration to stand beside black leaders.

At the height of his career in Congress, Newt Gingrich used to tell audiences that renewing American civilization was "the central challenge of the rest of our lives." But before Gingrich could deliver his grand new theory of American civilization to the public in a 1993 speech, his deeply divisive racial stereotypes would need to be removed.

In a fiery summons to an important voting block, President Barack Obama told blacks on Saturday to quit crying and complaining and "put on your marching shoes" to follow him into battle for jobs and opportunity....