The Hanes Walton, Jr. Career Award is presented by the American Political Science Association (APSA) in recognition of a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to our understanding of racial and ethnic politics and illuminates the conditions under which diversity and intergroup tolerance thrive in democratic societies.
Citation from the Award Committee:
Professor Tate is the country’s leading scholar on African Americans in the U.S. Congress and Black Public Opinion and Political Behavior. Her career and publications have expanded the discipline’s understanding of race and racial politics, especially in the United States. Professor Tate’s pioneering book, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections (Harvard University Press, 1993) is a classic examination of Black voter behavior after the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Professor Tate was a co-principal investigator on the landmark 1988 and 1996 National Black Election Survey, one of the nation’s most comprehensive public opinion polls of Black Voters in the United States. She also co-authored the fourth edition of African Americans and the American Political System with Lucius Barker and Mack Jones.
Dr. Tate’s work represents pathbreaking books that examine the evolution and maturation of Black politics in the US congress. From Protest to Politics and Black Faces in the Mirror, African Americans and Their Representatives in the U.S. Congress have long been considered part of the canon in political science and especially in race and ethnicity politics. These two works in particular have been cited widely: From Protest to Politics has nearly 1400 citations and Black Face in the Mirror has nearly 1000.
Dr. Tate’s contribution to the field is further represented by her 2023 Barbara Sinclair Legacy Award bestowed by APSA Legislative Studies Section. The Sinclair Award honors the work of a scholar or set of scholars who have contributed to a lifetime of significant scholarship to the study of legislative politics. Professor Tate is quite deserving of this award and has followed in the legacy of Hanes Walton, Jr. We award Dr. Tate this honor with great enthusiasm.
Katherine Tate is Professor of Political Science at Brown University. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan and her B.A. is from the University of Chicago. She is the author of seven books including the award-winning Black Faces in the Mirror and From Protest to Politics. Tate’s most recent book is Gendered Pluralism (University of Michigan Press, coauthored). She has an eighth (coauthored) book, Black Voices in the Halls of Power, in press. Her research and teaching are in the areas of public opinion, government, Black/minority and women’s politics.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Danielle Clealand (Chair) of the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Michael Minta of University of Minnesota, Dr. Camille Burge of Villanova University, and Dr. Ray Block of Pennsylvania State University