Black candidates: political parties and political campaigns in São Paulo after the end of the Estado Novo

Abstract

The political opening after the end of the Estado Novo dictatorship stimulated the organization and mobilization of groups with different types of demands. In the case of Black activists, one of the courses of action aiming black population’s problems was the participation in government decisions, via political parties. In São Paulo, strategies for political integration developed by the “Black community” leaders were based on the argument of representation legitimacy, at the same time in which different political groups began to assert an anti-racist discourse, focused on combating “color prejudice”.