The Next Realignment How America s Parties Crumble and Why It s Happening Again Isbn 9781633885097
The realignment of blackness voters from the Republican Political party to the Autonomous Party that began in the late 1920s proliferated during this era. This process involved a "button and pull": the refusal by Republicans to pursue civil rights alienated many black voters, while efforts—shallow though they were—by northern Democrats to open up opportunities for African Americans gave blackness voters reasons to switch parties.26
The 1932 presidential competition betwixt incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was something of a turning point. During his first term, Hoover had tried to ingratiate himself with southern segregationists, and his administration had failed to implement economical policies to help African Americans laid low by the Slap-up Low. Still, Hoover received between two-thirds and three-quarters of the blackness vote in northern urban wards.27 Virtually black voters sided with Republicans less out of loyalty than because they were loath to support a candidate whose Democratic Party had zealously suppressed their political rights in the Due south. African Americans mistrusted FDR because of his party affiliation, his evasiveness almost race in the campaign, and his choice of a running mate, House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.28
As late as the mid-1930s, African American Republican John R. Lynch, who had represented Mississippi in the House during and after Reconstruction, summed up the sentiments of older black voters and upper center-class professionals: "The colored voters cannot assist but feel that in voting the Democratic ticket in national elections they will exist voting to give their indorsement [sic] and their approval to every wrong of which they are victims, every right of which they are deprived, and every injustice of which they suffer."29
/tiles/not-collection/b/baic_cont_3_depriest_oscar_smithsonian_-618ns0227109-01pm.xml Prototype courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Middle, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Built-in in Alabama, Representative Oscar De Priest became the first African American elected from the Due north and the first to be elected in the 20th century.
Illinois'south Beginning Congressional District provides a window into the process of black political realignment in northern cities. Prior to becoming solidly Democratic in 1934, the South Chicago district elected Republican Oscar De Priest in 1928, 1930, and 1932. Southern African Americans, who swelled the city'southward population during that menstruation giving it the second-largest urban black population in the state by 1930, encountered an established Republican machine that courted black voters and extended patronage jobs. The party offered these migrants an outlet for political participation that was unimaginable in the Jim Crow South. African Americans voted in droves for car politicians like William Hale (Big Bill) Thompson, who regularly corralled at least threescore pct of the vote in the bulk-black Second and Third Wards. Mayor Thompson and the automobile promoted black politicians such as De Priest who, in 1915, became the city's first African-American alderman, the equivalent of a city councilman. Black voters remained exceedingly loyal to the Republican ticket.30
Indeed, the well-nigh common political experience African-American Members of this era shared was their involvement in politics at the ward and precinct levels. The Chicago political machines run past Thompson and, later on, Democrats such as Edward J. Kelly and Richard J. Daley, sent nearly one-third of the black Members of this era to Capitol Hill. Local and regional political machines recognized the voting ability of the growing African-American urban population long before the national parties realized its potential. At the first of this era, the human relationship betwixt blackness politicians and political party bosses was strong, and many black Members of Congress placed party loyalty to a higher place all else. Only past the late 1960s, equally blackness politicians began to assemble their own power bases, carving out a measure of independence, they often challenged the motorcar when party interests conflicted with issues of import to the blackness community. Unlike before black Members who relied on the established political machines to launch their careers, these Members, most of whom had grown up in the cities they represented, managed to forge political bases separate from the dominant party structure. By linking familial and customs connections with widespread civic date, they routinely clashed with the entrenched political powers.31
Discontent with the Hoover administration's halting efforts to revive the Depression-era economy as well loosened African-American ties to the Republican Party. Nationally, the staggering financial collapse hitting black Americans harder than most other groups. Thousands had already lost agronomical jobs in the mid-1920s due to the failing cotton market.32 Others had lost industrial jobs in the showtime stages of economical contraction, so black workers nationally were already in the grips of an economic depression before the stock market collapsed in October 1929. By the early on 1930s, 38 percent of African Americans were unemployed compared to 17 per centum of whites.33 A Roosevelt administration report found that black Americans constituted 20 percent of everyone on the welfare rolls, even though they accounted for simply 10 percent of the total population. In Chicago, i-fourth of welfare recipients were black, although black residents made up but vi per centum of the metropolis'south total population.34
/tiles/not-collection/b/baic_cont_3_african-americans-wwii-224-Bethune-and-Eastward-Roosevelt-PBA-x-F-561.xml Image courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration At the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (center), Mary McLeod Bethune (left), a leading African-American educator, was appointed to caput the Sectionalization of Negro Diplomacy of the National Youth Administration.
Some African-American politicians in the early 1930s switched parties to advance their own careers while simultaneously helping their blackness communities.35Arthur Mitchell and William Dawson epitomized a younger cadre of African Americans who were "aggressive and impatient with the entrenched black Republican leadership, [seeking] a run a risk for personal advocacy in the concurrent rise of the national Democratic political party."36 Paid to speak on behalf of Hoover's 1928 presidential entrada, Mitchell encountered the De Priest entrada at a Chicago engagement and shortly thereafter joined De Priest's 2d Ward Regular Republican System, hoping to challenge De Priest in the principal election. But subsequently evaluating De Priest's control of the auto, Mitchell switched parties to entrada for Roosevelt in 1932. Ii years later, he successfully unseated De Priest, fifty-fifty though the incumbent retained the majority of the black vote. Mitchell became the first African American elected to Congress every bit a Democrat—running largely on a platform that tapped into urban black support for the economic relief provided past New Bargain programs. "I was elected partly on the achievement of your administration," Mitchell wrote President Roosevelt shortly afterwards starting his term in office, "and partly on the hope that I would stand [in] dorsum of your administration."37
Even more telling was the defection of De Priest's protégé, William Dawson, who won election to the Chicago city council as a Republican with De Priest's backing in 1932. Vi years later, Dawson defeated De Priest in the 1938 GOP principal, merely failed to unseat Mitchell in the general election. Dawson then lost his seat on the city council when De Priest allies blocked his re-nomination. Simply Dawson before long seized an opportunity extended by his ane-time opponents. Working with Autonomous mayoral incumbent Ed Kelly, Dawson changed parties and became Autonomous committeeman in the 2nd Ward, clearing a path to succeed Mitchell upon his retirement from the Firm in 1942. Dawson'south case epitomized the willingness of Democratic bosses similar Kelly to recruit African Americans by using their political machines.38
Additionally, black voters nationwide began leaving the Republican Party because of the growing perception that local Democratic organizations improve represented their interests. Local patronage positions and nationally administered emergency relief programs in Depression-era Chicago and other cities, for instance, proved crucial in attracting African-American support.39 While the New Deal failed to extend as much economical relief to blackness Americans every bit to whites, the tangible assistance they provided conferred a sense that the organisation was at least addressing a few problems that were important to African Americans. For those who had been marginalized or ignored for so long, fifty-fifty the largely symbolic efforts of the Roosevelt assistants inspired hope and renewed interest in the political procedure.twoscore
As the older generation of black voters disappeared, the Democratic machines that dominated northern urban center wards courted the next generation of black voters. Past 1936 only 28 percent of African Americans nationally voted for Republican nominee Alf Landon—less than one-half the number who had voted for Hoover just 4 years before.41 Over fourth dimension, the party affiliations of black Americans in Congress became equally one-sided. Including Oscar De Priest, but nine blackness Republicans were elected to Congress between 1929 and 2017—well-nigh seven percent of the African Americans to serve in that time span.42
The Limits of New Deal Reform
Despite the growing support from black voters, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remained aloof and ambivalent about black civil rights. His economic policies depended on the support of southern congressional leaders, and FDR refused to risk that support by challenging segregation in the Southward. During Roosevelt'due south first term, the administration focused squarely on mitigating the economical travails of the Depression. This required a close working relationship with Congresses dominated by racially conservative southern Democrats, including several Speakers and most of the chairmen of key committees. "Economical reconstruction took precedence over all other concerns," observed historian Harvard Sitkoff. "Congress held the power of the handbag, and the South held power in Congress."43
/tiles/non-collection/b/baic_cont_3_anti-lynching_protest_1927_LC-USZ62-110578.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Members of the NAACP New York City Youth Council picket in 1937 on behalf of anti-lynching legislation in front of the Strand Theater in New York City's Times Foursquare. That aforementioned year an anti-lynching bill passed the U.South. House, just died in the Senate.
Other institutional and structural reforms implemented by the assistants, even so, eclipsed the President's impassivity toward black civil rights activists.44 Absent Roosevelt's hands-on involvement, progressive New Dealers advanced the cause of African Americans, transforming how many black voters perceived the Democratic Party.45 First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt prodded her married man to exist more responsive and cultivated connections with black leaders, such as educator and women'south rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. One historian described the Beginning Lady every bit an "unofficial ombudsman for the Negro."46 Harold Ickes, a key Roosevelt appointee and Secretary of the Interior Department, was another prominent abet for African Americans. A former president of the Chicago National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a quondam Republican, Ickes banned segregation from his department; other executive agencies followed his instance. As director of the Public Works Administration, Ickes also stipulated that the bureau'south federal contractors must hire a percentage of black employees equal to or higher than their percent of the workforce recorded in the 1930 occupational census.47
The failure to laissez passer anti-lynching legislation underscored the limitations of reform nether FDR. In this instance—unlike in the early 1920s when at that place were no blackness Representatives in Congress—an African-American Member of Congress, Arthur Mitchell, refused to endorse legislation supported by the NAACP. Moreover, Mitchell introduced his own anti-lynching bill in the 74th Congress (1935–1937), which critics assailed as weak for providing far more lenient sentences and containing many legal ambiguities. Given the choice, Southerners favored Mitchell'southward beak, although they amended it considerably in the Judiciary Commission, farther weakening its provisions. Meanwhile, Mitchell waged a public relations blitz on behalf of his neb, including a national radio broadcast. Only when reformers assuredly tabled Mitchell'southward proposal early in the 75th Congress (1937–1939) did he enlist in the campaign to support the NAACP measure—smarting from the realization that Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton Sumners of Texas had misled and used him. The NAACP measure out passed the House in April 1937 by a vote of 277 to 120 just was never enacted into law. Instead, Southerners in the Senate finer buried it in early 1938 by blocking efforts to bring it to an upward-or-downward vote on the flooring.48 The rivalry between Mitchell and the NAACP, meanwhile, forecast future problems. Importantly, it revealed that African-American Members and outside advocacy groups sometimes worked at cross-purposes, confounding civil rights supporters in Congress and providing opponents a wedge for blocking legislation.
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Source: https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/
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