Edited sentence: Even more surprising to some was that his race was rarely mentioned in the campaign.In a 1976 book on Southern politics, authors Jack Bass and Walter DeVries wrote "Perhaps no political campaign better reflected changing attitudes on race than the 1973 mayor's race in Raleigh, in which black City Councilman Clarence Lightner won support from a coalition of white suburbanites concerned about urban and suburban sprawl.Lightner came of age in an era when most blacks in the South were still disfranchised, was elected to the City Council two years after passage of the Voting Rights Act, and was elected mayor six years later.Lightner was a man of "dignity and perseverance", who brought people together when he entered public political life, as he had for years in his community work