Black voters display diminishing support for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Early voting in battleground states, including North Carolina and Florida, show a 14 percent decrease in turnout in early voting among black voters. Two million voters, including many young and older African Americans, do not vote for the Democratic Party nominee in the general election despite strong appeals by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for Clinton, with black voter turnout for the Democratic Party in 2016 dropping five percentage points from 2012.

Despite black and white independents serving as the margin of victory for President Obama, the Democratic Party rejects an alliance with independents. President Obama believes, but it has become apparent that it is not possible, to reform the Democratic Party from within.

Fulani leads “Who decided Hillary was best for the Black Community?” campaign challenging the Democratic Party’s support of Hillary Clinton over insurgency of Barack Obama, who reaches out to all Americans in his successful U.S. Presidential bid to become the first African American elected to the White House. Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney also runs as the Green Party’s presidential candidate this year.

Michael Bloomberg is elected Mayor of New York City running as a fusion candidate on the Independence Party and Republican Party lines and supports non-partisan electoral reforms. Garners 47% of the black vote in his 2005 bid. This black / independent alliance lays the groundwork for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies notes a discernible shift among African Americans away from the Democratic Party; Fulani brings Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to Harlem to build independent black support.

The Black Reformers Network is created by Dr. Fulani, along with physician Dr. Jessie Fields, Rev. Lawrence Anderson, and Juanita Norwood, among others, as part of the Reform Party, which was itself created through the networks of the briefly established Patriot Party in order to support structural electoral reforms.

Fulani runs for a second time for U.S. President as an independent. Her Committee for Fair Elections is designed to continue challenging bipartisan control of the political process. She also supports independent candidate Ross Perot, reaching out to his 20 million voters in the wake of the election to build a coalition third party.

After garnering three and a half million votes, Rev. Jesse Jackson is denied the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Following the election, upwards of 57% of black voters said they would voted for him in the general election as an independent had he decided to do so according to a poll by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Black voters in Chicago challenge the Democratic Party by creating their own party, the Harold Washington Party, named after the first African-American mayor of Chicago, in order to represent the political interests of the city’s black population.

Black nationalists and socialists from across the nation, including Ron Daniels, Manning Marable, and Queen Mother Moore, convene in New Orleans to form the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP). Within two years the party effectively dissolves, and instead urges a “Black revolt within the Democratic Party.”

African Americans in New York City help to form a multi-racial independent political party, the New Alliance Party, which serves as an alternative to the Democratic Party in poor and working-class black communities.

The National Black Political Convention meets in Gary, Indiana, brings together 8,000 black activists from across nation to discuss which political path is best for the black community. Gary’s Mayor, Richard Hatcher, strongly advocates for an independent political alternative

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. organizes the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., to demand economic justice for the poor. There are efforts to recruit him to run for U.S. President as an independent. King listens but decides he is better positioned to lead outside of party politics. “I have come to think of my role as one which operates outside the realm of partisan politics” says King. Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver is nominated to run for U.S. President on the anti-war and anti-racist Peace and Freedom Party line; meanwhile, Charlene Mitchell runs for president on the Communist Party ticket.

Malcolm X notes in his ‘Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, “I’m not trying to knock out the Democrats for the Republicans. We’ll get to them in a minute. But it’s true; you put the Democrats first, and the Democrats put you last.” Black sharecropper and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hammer gives an impassioned plea for black voting rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City representing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Under political pressure, the Civil Rights Act is passed that year, followed by the Voting Rights Act the following year, helping to legally dismantle Jim Crow.

As part of the burgeoning civil rights movement that included mass civil disobedience campaigns in the South, African Americans form the Afro-American Party in Alabama to protest the Democratic Party’s disfranchisement of black voters in the state.

A number of African Americans run on third-party tickets, including newspaper publisher Charlotta A. Bass, for U.S. Vice President on the Progressive Party ticket (with endorsements from DuBois and black labor leader, artist, and activist Paul Robeson), and NAACP organizer (and major civil rights leader) Ella Baker, running for New York City Council on the Liberal Party ticket.

Attorney and Communist Party newspaper editor Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. is elected for the first of three times to the New York City Council, representing Harlem. Meanwhile a number of other African Americans would run on the American Labor Party ticket, including Brooklyn-based community activist Ada B. Jackson, and soon W. E. B. DuBois, for U.S. Senate in New York.

Over 5,000 African Americans join the Communist Party in major northern cities, specifically New York City, as well as in parts of the South, including in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Three years earlier, a black CP Congressional candidate from Norfolk received 500 votes.

When the Progressive Party regrouped from its loss in 1912, Du Bois urges a vote for its nominee Robert La Follette, believing that opposing the two major parties was the most fundamental political point to be made by black voters.

African American historian and journalist W.E.B. Du Bois initially builds a black base in the Progressive Party in 1912 in order to place African Americans in the balance of power in northern cities in the national presidential contest that year. In subsequent elections he supports the Socialist and Progressive parties.

Black labor leader and newspaper editor George Edwin Taylor becomes the first African American to run for U.S. President, running on the National Negro Liberty Party.

Black Populists, such as Walter A. Pattillo and John B. Rayner, work with white Populists to help to challenge Democratic Party rule in the South. Form the People’s Party. Their efforts culminate in electoral victories in North Carolina and eastern Texas within a few years.

Frederick Douglass joins independent political efforts to opposes the Democratic Party’s pro-slavery stance, including the extension of slavery to new territories. Supports the formation of the Republican Party, a third party coalition at the time.

African Americans, including black abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, calling for the immediate abolition of slavery in the face of bipartisan opposition by the Democratic and Whig parties, establish the Liberty Party.