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In 2000, Austin published her first book, Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis. The book studied the features, successes, and limitations of African-American electoral politics in Memphis from the 1870s to the 1990s, in the context of unremitting white supremacy and powerful White electoral coalitions.[7] The book was a continuation of the research that comprised her PhD dissertation at the University of Tennessee, Aftermath of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Racial Voting Patterns in Memphis Mayoral Elections, 1967-1991.[2]
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Austin's second book, The Transformation of Plantation Politics in the Mississippi Delta: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta, was published in 2006. This book "persuasively demonstrates" that there "has been no transformation of politics in the Mississippi Delta" since the 1960s, and that by the 2000s "the area's wealthy white elite continues to dominate politics there".[8] This finding is counterintuitive, because on the surface the rate of electoral success of African-Americans there appeared to skyrocket: there were 57 African-American elected officials in Mississippi in 1970, and 897 in 2000.[8] The book arrived at this finding through a combination of historical and sociological methods, personal interviews, and statistical analysis on extensive data.[9] 041b061a72