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1932
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Reconstruction
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New Deal
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1896
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1930
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1936
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1936
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1940
1960
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1940
1960
1964
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List of Used Abbreviations and Acronyms in Alphabetical Order:
Abbr.
Full Name
AAA
Agricultural Adjustment Act
AFL
American Federation of Labor
CCC
Civilian Conservation Corps
CIO
Congress of Industrial Organizations
CIO-PAC
Congress of Industrial Organizations-Political Action Committee
DAR
Daughters of the American Revolution
ER Eleanor
Roosevelt
F.D. R
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
FERA
Federal Employment Relief Agency
FHA
Federal Housing Administration
FLSA
Fair Labor Standards Act
GNL
Good Neighbor League
GOP
Grand Old Party
KKK
Ku Klux Klan
NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
NACW
National Association for Colored Women
NCNW
National Council for Negro Women
NIRA National
Industrial Recovery Act
NLRA
National Labor Relations Act
NLRB
National Labor Relations Board
NRA
National Recovery Administration
NUL
National Urban League
NYA
National Youth Administration
PWA Public
Works
Administration
RFC Reconstruction
Finance
Corporation
STFU
Southern Tenant Farmers Union
TVA
Tennessee Valley Authority
UMW
United Mine Workers
UNIA
United Negro Association
WPA Works
Progress
Administration
WPA
Work Projects Administration
Blacks in the New Deal
The Shift from an Electoral Tradition and its Legacy
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 1
Chapter I: The Situation of Blacks before 1932 ... 10
1- The Rise of Political Consciousness ... 11
2- Black Political Organizations and the 1928 Election ... 31
3- The 1932 Election ... 45
Chapter II: The Legacy of the First Deal ... 59
1- A Raw Deal for Blacks ... 61
2- Blacks and Labor Unions ... 8
3
3- Blacks as an Interest Group ...
90
Chapter III: T
he New Trend and Its Legacy... ................................................................ 105
1- The 1936 Election and its Aftermath ... 10
5
2- Why Blacks Turned to Democrats ... 1
21
3- The Effect of Black Shift on the National Scene ... 13
4
Conclusion ... 1
51
Bibliography ... 15
9
Appendix ... 18
4
1
Introduction
No group of American minority voters shifted allegiance more dramatically in the
1930s than Black Americans did. Up until the New Deal era, Blacks had shown their
traditional loyalty to the party of Lincoln by voting overwhelmingly the Republican ticket. By
the end of F.D. Roosevelt's first administration, however, they tremendously voted the
Democratic ticket. The decades long, wholesale attachment of Blacks to the party of Lincoln,
with its laudable efforts to support Blacks (Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction)
was understandable and inevitable enough. The anomaly was the massive shift by Blacks to
the Democratic Party, traditionally identified with its long list of constant anti-Black and
premeditated opposition to Black liberation: opposition to emancipation and Reconstruction,
and with an ongoing record of all forms of racial discrimination, segregation,
disfranchisement, exclusion, white primaries, and white supremacy.
Having aligned themselves earlier with Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation
rather than with Democrats of Southern Jim Crow and White Supremacy, what made African
Americans switch to the Democratic Party during the Depression era? The transformation of
the Black vote from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic did not happen instantaneously,
but rather it developed over decades of maturing as a result of the amalgamated efforts of
Presidents and Black leaders. The move of Black voters toward the Democratic Party was part
of a nationwide trend that had occurred with the creation of the Roosevelt Coalition of 1936 -
a coalition that was kept by the increasing interests of the different counterparts during the
Depression. This national shift would make the Democrats the majority party for the next
several decades including a very decisive margin of Black voters in the balance of power.
This happened despite the paradoxical fact of its occurrence in the New Deal
administration of the Democratic Party that had traditionally denied Blacks their basic civil
rights. The party's earlier position and strategy against Blacks and their basic civil rights had
2
not been ancient history. In addition, its Southern strategy along with Roosevelt's inclination
to racist practices and segregation during his incumbency, for fear of jeopardizing his New
Deal measures, undermined liberal efforts to advance the issue of Black civil rights.
Nevertheless, when Roosevelt's promises of a New Deal for all Americans- the promise of
providing jobs and better life were not very appealing, the incessant wooing of Democratic
political machines and the effort of many liberal Democrats created the adequate atmosphere
that prompted Blacks to join the party.
The question of why African Americans shifted their historical allegiance to the
Republican Party in the Depression era evokes some interesting questions. Firstly, was a vote
for Roosevelt only the result of economic welfarism in the African- American community?
Secondly, did Roosevelt and his administration support basic civil rights? Thirdly, was there
any motivating emotional factor to boost this vote? Or simply, was that shift due mainly to a
rise in political consciousness among Black people and more precisely among Black voters
that matured by the time of the New Deal? And finally, what eventually was the subsequent
effect and legacy of that shift?
To answer these and other questions, the present study is an attempt to look into the
inner dynamics and motives that led Blacks to vote for their oppressors rather than for
Republicans. A deep analysis of the Blacks' shift and its legacies contributes largely to the
historiography of the Civil Rights Movement and the future of the Democratic Party in other
ways as well. Thus, the current work treats the shift within a "Black protest" framework, by
focusing on Black activism and individual experiences within a communal context.
As a matter of fact the allegiance of Black voters seemed to begin earlier before the
coming of the New Deal. Thus, the primary condition of the current research work is to set a
historical comprehension of Black politics in the realm of the New Deal and its outcome.
Historical reconstruction and analysis are important tools used in this study to situate the
3
overwhelming tendency of Blacks towards both the Democratic and Republican parties and
the reasons behind their changing sides. Historical examination of Black activism and white
politics prior to and during the New Deal uncovers the main discrepancies in dealing with the
Blacks' issues and hence catches the specifics of the period, recognizes the factors influencing
the shift of voting patterns and what outcome it might have in the following decades.
Based on the collection of adequate statistics, figures, and charts which, in their turn,
after being analyzed and interpreted, would eventually lead to the specific reasons behind the
Blacks' electoral shift toward the Democratic Party despite wholesale exclusion from the New
Deal arena. To excavate the broader meanings and experiences of this national shift, primary
sources and a variety of voices from the period, as well as witness participants from both sides
in the shifting process are paired and examined to discover how the New Deal benefited
African-Americans, and why Black voters switched their allegiance during the period.
Within this methodological framework, a number of cases are brought in to support
and enrich the study: Black workers' struggle for jobs and relief is a case in point, the Black
intellectuals' efforts as insiders of the Roosevelt administration were crucial to the shifting
process, and finally, the Depression and the New Deal uncovered the Blacks' grievances and
provided the adequate atmosphere for corporate work between white liberals and Black
reformers. The case-study approach is used to bring these cases carefully into analysis and to
detect their advantages as well as their inconveniences to Blacks. The cases are stretched
chronologically through the period. Although the selection of these cases is conscious and
purposeful there is an artificial coherence in narratives that keeps apart a single issue in
examining its origins, development and final outcome since they occur simultaneously and
along the same period of time. Moreover, these cases are interrelated and balancing to one
another since they deal with the same central issue of Black electoral shift within the same
context of the New Deal.
4
Historians generally regard the New Deal as the center-stage for this realignment, but
they remain uncertain as to why Blacks turned Democratic in the 1930s and what for. While a
large literature exists on the Black shift in general, previous scholarship has largely failed to
cover the subject from balancing points of view. Explanations have been troubled by
controversy and had drawn too much debate ever since. Two main divergent viewpoints had
emerged earlier to interpret the New Deal and its impact on African Americans.
The first view had little to say about the racial impact of New Deal policies, and
focuses mainly on Roosevelt's personality and New Deal achievements while seeing Blacks
as passive recipients only. Historians such as James McGregor Burns pointed to the inclusion
of Blacks in an off-handed way. They approved of some inequities but never capitalized on
their effects. They argued that Blacks liked FDR's personality but were reticent of his
policies.
The second view had taken for granted Black exclusion by providing strong evidence
of racist discrimination or elimination throughout the different agencies, which was no news
then. Historians such as Barton Bernstein noted that the New Deal did not achieve equality
and generally pervade racial discrimination. Other historians, such as Paul Conkin, had the
postulation that Blacks had been politically inveigled by New Deal reformers, bureaucrats or
Mrs. Roosevelt and mainly purchased by relief. Consequently, they excluded any effort by
Black civil rights activists and their organizations in these years.
However, another wave of scholars such as Raymond Wolters, john Kirby and Nancy
Weiss dealt specifically with the New Deal racial policy and its impact on Blacks. Along with
this wave of mildly critical scholars, another wave including Patricia Sullivan and Harvard
Sitkoff found the New Deal more appealing. Despite their condemnation of the shortcomings
of New Deal liberalism that served only the most powerful interest groups and white cartels,
they pointed out the mutual relationship between New Deal liberalism and new left
5
radicalism. According to Patricia Sullivan in Days of Hope, the national crisis of Southern
poverty created opportunities for Southern liberals to attempt to change the deep-rooted
economic, political, and racial traditions of the South. The policy to remedy the economic
problems of the South created a unique chance for those involved in reversing the status quo
for African Americans.
Nevertheless, conceding that the New Deal had been so miraculously appealing to
incorporate a large majority of the population in a long-term coalition, including an unusual
majority of Blacks, it is reasonable to conclude that most Black Americans had found
something tangible in the New Deal to sway their allegiance.
This work is an attempt to establish an intermediary link between these diverging
viewpoints and to bring them close together by delving into the circumstances and analyzing
the factors behind such a trend in the American politics. By exploring the political, social, and
economic conditions that marked the Blacks' determination, in connection with the fruitful
activism of some prominent civil rights advocates, it is likely to presumably determine why
Blacks voted primarily for Roosevelt, and then later for the Democrats up until the present
day.
This study is divided into three chronological chapters dealing with the main time
lapses related to this era and determinant episodes in the life of Blacks. In the first chapter,
understanding the circumstances that led to the 1930s Black political resurgence is very
necessary to understanding the different changes that occurred before the 1932 election. One
important reason behind the developments of the 1930s was the dramatically altered
demographics of the beginning of the 20
th
century and its effect on the political scene. In
consequence of the concentration of Blacks in big Northern industrial cities as a result of the
great migration, there developed a political resurgence that gave Blacks more advantage in
political life. The increasing role of Blacks in Northern Black urban areas from the WWI to
6
the mass political protest movements in the 1920s was stirred by the cultural renaissance in
Harlem and political activism of Black organizations. This drove the upsurge of political
consciousness before the coming of the New Deal.
The depression was another significant point of time in which Blacks had come to
recognize the intensity and dullness of their plight, which needed a fundamental change. This
initial context is very important to the understanding of the change that began by 1928 and
was behind the political shift of the 1930s and the central role of African Americans,
especially workers, and rising intellectuals played in the politics of the 1930s. African
Americans as local activists who claimed policy changes, engaged in independent Black
Republican activities in the period 19151930, and helped prepare the way for the drift of
Black voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in 1936. Analyses explaining
this Black voter realignment mainly focus on the 1930s events and Blacks perception of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies.
The second chapter deals mainly with how the depression had adversely hit African
Americans and Black workers more particularly, and how they responded to the New Deal's
social and economic legacy. More significantly, how they strongly reacted to that long
endured situation with the help of the New Deal liberal progressive spirit and its color-blind
policy despite Southern conservatism and incessant Jim Crowism. Blacks did not possess
enough political power to end segregation but they were able, however arduously, to press for
equal treatment. The pressure from black workers and Black militancy achieved a certain
political recognition and more advantage within the ranks of the Democratic Party. The
struggle of Black workers for employment and permanent recognition from labor
organizations was not an immediate success, but - as many Black leaders saw it - would
benefit Blacks on the long run. The integration of African Americans into the industrial
system through a uniform federal labor policy would be of extreme importance to the Black
7
issue. By and large, they achieved a great deal in the Roosevelt's second term by becoming an
integral part of his 1936 political coalition.
This chapter also sheds light on how Democrats and Republicans of the time
responded to the call for Blacks' economic and social rights. The Southern conservative wing
in the Democratic Party often acted as a bulwark to the advancement of Black rights and to
the efforts of liberal New Dealers to include Blacks in their reforms. The Republicans,
instead, denounced New Deal policies as being harmful and inadequate to Black
advancement. In the midst of such ambivalence, the enduring racism in public life continued
impudently and the rigidity of influential Southern congressional representatives prohibited
any chance for substantive civil rights legislation. Nevertheless, Northern Democrats came to
notice the growing Black vote in the North and started wooing it.
As soon as Blacks arrived to Northern cities, the Democrats' political machines and
bosses astutely absorbed them into their system by providing services and patronage to
immigrants in exchange for their votes. In contrast, Republicans missed another opportunity
to maintain their once strong hold on Black support. Their machines reacted coolly to Black
voters' demands and to Black politicians' ambitions leading many to leave the party, and join
the rival camp despite growing opposition and continuing racial mores from conservative
Southern Democrats.
The pressure and activism of Blacks in the demand for fair treatment from New Deal
measures turned to be a demand for civil rights legislation to end the poll tax, segregation and
lynching in the South and to have equal chances in the Northern labor markets. Nevertheless,
Roosevelt's administration did little to alleviate the plight of Blacks. In fact, Roosevelt's
problem was that in order to retain his position of leadership, he had to keep the Southern
Democrats who time and again denied African Americans the vote in their states within
the party and within his coalition. Although Roosevelt's economic programs strengthened this
8
so-called "Roosevelt Coalition," as they simultaneously aided Southern whites and Northern
Blacks, the issue of civil rights, which appealed strongly to Northern Democrats but infuriated
Southern Democrats, remained a subject of controversy. However, it never mired the Blacks'
decision to vote the Democratic ticket.
The third chapter deals mainly with Roosevelt's efforts to maintain an enduring
coalition of different factions of the American nation for the 1936 election and his wife's
efforts to include African Americans within this coalition and the legacy of such a shift in
electoral tradition for the Blacks. Indeed, despite setbacks, efforts by the Roosevelts and their
entourage set up a foundation during the Depression for subsequent civil rights reforms
through the alliance of Blacks with white liberals. Some Black activists and progressives
acknowledged the trend and became partisans of the Democratic Party. They extremely
helped in the effort to bring Blacks closer to the Roosevelts' view.
In addition, and partly through the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt, a group of Black
leaders informally organized as a Black Cabinet by the educator Mary McLeod Bethune,
influenced New Deal policies. Although Roosevelt made no daring move toward reversing the
legal segregation of the time despite the pressure and lobbying exerted by different Black
movements and political organizations such as the NAACP , he did invite several Black
leaders and intellectuals to serve as advisers to the administration . Roosevelt assured that
Blacks had access to relief and some jobs during the worst days of the depression by means of
his federal agencies. Yet, his New Deal measures had more-or-less mixed record on Blacks,
even though Blacks benefited more than ever before from its agencies.
Although the promises of a "fair deal" and a better life for all people were far from
being achieved, Roosevelt's willingness to consider African Americans as Americans won
him their votes and became the trend in favor of Democrats for the decades to come. This was
primarily due to the amalgamation of a certain number of political, social, economic, and
9
emotional factors that crystallized the realignment under President F.D. Roosevelt and his
party, and paved the way for future activism in the field of civil rights. The legacy of the New
Deal had tremendous effects on the national scene since then. It had changed the political,
economic, and social landscape of Black America. It also put presidential politics at stake vis-
à-vis the issue of civil rights, and became a determinant factor in the overall process of
decision making.
The specific actions that followed from this fundamental shift in policy and voting
behavior of Blacks were to far outweigh the limited substantive benefits that flowed from it.
Indeed, this shift gave Blacks the propensity of understanding the prospects for change in this
country's racial status quo. The racial problems that were not directly addressed during the
New Deal became the focus of the ensuing acts in the drama of American race relations - the
civil rights movement of the 1950s and the Black revolution of the 1960s - and they made
more likely the subsequent development of affirmative action. Both parties became strident
contenders for Black vote. The developments that occurred by the late twentieth century were
a subsequent result of it. The situation of Blacks and their political as well as their social
status are fundamentally related to those developments accumulating by time since the New
Deal liberal policy had been established.
10
Chapter I:
The Situation of Blacks before 1932
The political realignment of Black voters with the Democratic Party gradually
accelerated in the early 20th century pushed by demographic shifts and Black discontent with
the increasingly conservative racial policies of the Republican Party in the South. The Black
voting upheavals of disfranchisement following Reconstruction combined with the great
migration of Southern rural Blacks to cities South and North, in addition to the activism of
many leaders in the field of civil rights had a profound effect on the Blacks' shift to
Democrats. By the end of this era, the major parties' policies and a re-emergent activism
among younger African Americans positioned Blacks for a mass movement in the early and
mid-1930s to the Northern Democratic Party.
The 1932 election was not the starting line of Black drifting toward the Democrats. As
early as 1924 prominent Black leaders started effectively deserting the Republican Party and
the trend continued until the 1928 election. The alienation of Black Republicans did not occur
abruptly during the 1930s. The political experience of Blacks in Northern states between
World War I and the New Deal showed to which extent the dissatisfaction of Blacks with the
Republican patronage and their policies occurred especially when the depression intensified
their sufferings (Giffin, African Americans 226). Meanwhile Republican governments could
not meet the Blacks' needs; Democratic political machines welcomed Black leaders who were
looking for alternatives.
When in the South Blacks were living in permanent circumstances of
disfranchisement, intimidation and violence, the Southern States, on the one hand, relegated
the African American to his proper initial political and social sphere by adopting Jim Crow
laws. On the other hand, and as a matter of fact, African Americans could not vote for
11
Republicans even if any campaigned in the solidly Democratic white South. Protest was met
with the draconian state of repression or terror - lynching was the most frequent of techniques.
However, WWI ended America's sense of innocence and with it the idealism of Black
conservatives (Suggs 88) who had been disappointed by little if not any interest from
Republicans, and enhanced the militant philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois. In addition, Black and
Tans started to fade by the end of WWI, and came to an end by the election of Herbert
Hoover in 1928
1
. Consequently African Americans adopted another kind of political
expression in response to the disfranchisement in the South and the Black Republican purge
by changing party allegiance. In short, the Lily-White strategy employed by Hoover
precipitated a significant enough shift in partisan African American identity to make the
national Democratic Party competitive with the GOP by the coming of the New Deal.
1
The Rise of Political Consciousness
From the 1870's to the 1930's, the dominant social and political experience of Blacks
in the United States was under the patronage of Northern Republicans. The Republican Party
was once the concerted choice for Black Americans. The Republican Party was formed on the
basis of opposing the policy of slavery dealings and limiting its expansion in the United
States. Under slavery, the social and economic control of Black people was total and was fully
reinforced by all levels of legislation, from the federal government to the smallest districts in
the South. Republicans, consequently, backed the Emancipation Proclamation presented by
Abraham Lincoln and passed legislation in Congress that resulted in the adoption and
ratification of the 13
th
, 14th and 15
th
Amendments to the Constitution, giving Blacks voting
and citizenship rights (Greenberg "The Party of Lincoln"). The greatest impact was felt in the
1
Many states developed what were in effect two Republican parties, the "Black and Tans" and the "Lily
Whites," which competed for qualifications and for nominations at GOP conventions. By 1928, when Herbert
Hoover solidly sustained the Lily White delegations, the Black and Tans were virtually powerless. Of course, by
then the issue was practically contentious: Starting in 1890 many Southern States stripped African-Americans of
the vote altogether (Greenberg "The Party of Lincoln").
12
South, where over 90 percent of the Black population resided (Orey 196). Fearing a potential
threat to their political and economic hegemony, however, white Southerners bitterly resented
the Republican-Black regimes that were formed accordingly.
By the time of Lincoln's election as President of the United States under the
Republican Party, the party toned down its protest concerning the slave issue. However, the
American Civil War and Reconstruction were the years of emancipation. It was the period in
which Blacks were "molded into a definite nationality, a people sharing social, cultural,
economic, and political experiences" (Allen "The Rural Experience" 81). After Lincoln's
assassination, the Radical Republicans helped establish the Freedman's Bureau, passed the
Civil Rights Act of 1866, and drafted the Fourteenth Amendment, preventing states from
denying rights to U.S. citizens. In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant was elected President with the help
of Southern African Americans, who were voting for the first time in a presidential election
(Moore 26). It was during his incumbency that the Fifteenth amendment was ratified stating
that a citizen's "right to vote shall not be denied or abridged" under any circumstances of
"race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (The Constitution of the United States). They
also encouraged Black participation in Republican politics during Reconstruction
2
.
Blacks enthusiastically played prominent roles in Reconstruction governments in the
South in different positions: as lieutenant governors, members of state legislatures, speakers
of state houses of representatives, and secretaries of state. Consequently, this period
established the Republican Party as the liberator of slaves and enhanced the allegiance of the
overwhelming majority of Blacks to it. Therefore, Blacks became loyal members of the Party
ever since. Since the end of the Civil War in 1865, Blacks had voted primarily with the
2
Between 1869 and 1901, 20 Black Republicans from the South were elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, and 2 were elected to the U.S. Senate (Fay "The Real Deal on Blacks").
13
Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator (Greenberg "The Party of
Lincoln"). Unfortunately, this acquisition did not last long as Blacks were going to suffer
more than ever before their emancipation at the hands of Southern Democrats who wanted to
uphold their supremacy.
Once Northerners secured their economic and political dominance of the South,
Republicans began to retreat from policies favorable to Blacks. In fact, the party moved
toward a "Lily-White" strategy at the expense of African American supporters in the South.
They left white Southerners alone to deal with Blacks
3
. In the Compromise of 1877, which
settled the basis for a period of reconciliation between the North and the South, Blacks were
abandoned to their fate and the Republican Party abandoned its Black constituency in the
South after the Reconstruction period (Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks 3-4; Orey 203, 207).
Republicans agreed to withdraw federal involvement in the government of Southern States in
exchange for Southern electoral votes to retain the presidency.
Congress ceased appropriations for federal marshals to protect Black voters, and
eventually retreated behind closed doors, where Southern Democrats conceded the presidency
to Hayes in exchange for the end of Union occupation of the defeated Confederacy. This
compromise cleared the path for Southern states to institute Jim Crow which meant that
Blacks became vulnerable to the white oppression (Lacewell 6). Indeed, the compromise
resulted in the "acquiescence on the part of Northern liberals and government officials to the
desires of the white South to institutionalize its discriminatory and racist beliefs" (Tafari "Jim
Crow"). The Blacks were no more needed by the Republicans after 1876 as the Northern
industrialists were looking for Southern peaceful markets and trade by approving a "hands
off" policy on the question of Blacks.
3
For more details about the fate of Blacks after Reconstruction see Litwack: Been in the Storm so Long. The
Aftermath of Slavery.
14
Hence, Democrats regained power and worked tooth and nail to disenfranchise Black
voters and enforce segregation in order to retrieve their self-esteem. The Democratic Party
identified itself as the `Whiteman's Party' and demonized the Republican Party as being
`Negro-Dominated', even though whites were in control. Determined to recapture the South,
Southern Democrats "redeemed" the South state after state. Soon, a profusion of Jim Crow
laws for disfranchisement was developed. The poll tax, property qualifications, literacy and
civic tests, good character and residency requirements, disqualifications for petty crimes, and
grandfather clauses effectively blocked the possibility of Blacks engaging in electoral politics
(Allen, "The Rural Experience" 89). These severe measures were conservative devices to
minimize the Black vote and to keep the Black man in the place to which he was assigned.
They were also indicative of the bitter resentment white Southerners had for Black
Republicans.
Despite their blind loyalty to the party for over half a century, Blacks found little hope
for amelioration in politics. There had been a great disenchantment of Blacks with
Republicans well before 1932. During the early part of the twentieth century, there was a
comprehensible synchronicity between Congress and the incumbent presidents to limit and
eradicate federal appointments to Blacks and to ensure that federal officials in the South were
sympathetic to the cause of white supremacy (Tafari "The Congress"). President William
McKinley (1900) initiated an overwhelming policy of disfranchisement in the South, he was
committed to sectional reconciliation, and he ignored the disfranchisement, segregation,
lynching, and poverty suffered by Blacks (Orey 203). In 1901, the Progressive Theodor
Roosevelt became President, bringing together the progressive cause and the Republican
Party.
Despite his initial record of interest to Blacks, the most lasting legacy was the
alienation of a number of young Black leaders, including Mary Church Terrell and Archibald
15
Grimke. Although he relied on Black conservative educator Booker T. Washington for advice
on racial issues- the event provoked heated criticism by white Southern and Democratic
politicians and newspapers ("Theodore Roosevelt's Record") - his appointment however was
"not to improve the situation of Blacks, but because they agreed that Blacks should not strive
for political and social equality" (Tafari "The President") since Washington's policy of
accommodationism was the most influential among whites. Theodore Roosevelt publicly
opposed lynching, too. However, he was not different from the other white presidents of the
progressive era. He indeed disappointed Blacks during his second term by summarily
discharging three companies of Black soldiers; the soldiers had been accused of refusing to
inform on fellow soldiers who were charged with terrorizing the town of Brownsville, Texas
(Sherman 256). Southern white GOP officials after 1900 wanted to preserve their grasp on
local patronage jobs by embracing Jim Crow. They also passed more anti-Black legislation
than it has never been done before
4
The popularity of eugenics and the philosophy of social Darwinism reached its peak
during the early part of century, and racism was integrated into presidential party platforms
(Tafari "The President"). Roosevelt's successor in 1908, President William Taft, was less
committed to the progressive cause. Courting the support of Southern whites, Taft did not
appoint any Blacks to federal offices in the South where there was local white opposition.
Taft proclaimed that the restrictions Southern States had placed on voting were constitutional
and suggested that the Fifteenth Amendment had been a mistake (Felzenberg "Calvin
Coolidge and Race").
He publicly endorsed the idea that Blacks should not participate in
4
By 1900, the ideals of egalitarian citizenship and freedom as a universal entitlement had been repudiated. In
1898, the Supreme Court gave the green light to the disenfranchisement movement by ruling, in Williams v.
Mississippi, that the suffrage provisions of the state's 1890 Constitution did not violate the Fifteenth Amendment
Along with disenfranchisement, the 1890s saw the widespread imposition of racial segregation in the South. De
facto racial separation had existed in Reconstruction schools and many other institutions. But it was not until the
1890s that the United States Supreme Court, in the landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, gave its approval to
state laws requiring separate facilities for Blacks and whites. The Plessy decision was quickly followed by laws
mandating segregation in every aspect of life, from schools to hospitals, waiting rooms to toilets, drinking
fountains to cemeteries (Foner "Expert Report").
16
politics, and perpetuated the racist party line of his predecessor (Tafari "The President"). This
rendered unsuccessful his attempts to appeal to Blacks by appointing them to diplomatic and
consular offices (Fay "The Real Deal on Blacks"). Neither president was able to crack down
the solid South.
Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft followed the lead of Hayes by also
adhering to a hands-off policy.
Disfranchised and demoralized, few Blacks voted these years leading to a greater
indifference of both parties to the Black vote, as they would not be held accountable anymore.
The Republicans did not need Black votes to control Congress, and Democrats did not care
about a Black constituency (Tafari "The Congress"). There was a total conspiracy over the
Blacks' rights between moderate Republicans and extremist Democrats to the uttermost.
When there was any legislation to be introduced to protect Blacks, Democrats convinced
Republicans to join them in their disregard and neglect of civil and voting rights for Blacks.
Southern Democrats regularly acted as a barricade for liberal Congressmen's attempts to pass
any legislation that is meant for the welfare and protection of Blacks.
Southern Democrats had such common values, and principles that made the South a
one-party region until the civil rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats,
most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards Blacks, offered no challenge to the
discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats (Wormser "Democratic Party"), while
Republicans continually gave in to the demands of Southern Democrats since the end of
Reconstruction. No president dared interfere or succeeded in doing so until the late 1930s.
Because Southern Democrats were automatically re-elected at every election occasion, and
due to seniority in the Congress, they were able to control most of the committees in both
houses of Congress, and oppose and kill any civil rights legislation. Southern Democrats
through their influence in party councils and the Congressional seniority system, served as a
brake on the pro-Black movement (Silbey "Democratic Party"). That is why no president did
17
daringly challenge the well-soldered Southern block by endorsing any proposals for social
and political progress for Blacks.
Within this turmoil and to counter Southern Whites' hegemony emerged a greater
stratification of protest. This included the activism of a new, more assertive working and
intellectual class that was critical of the accommodationism of the "Old Negro" like Booker
T. Washington (Jordan 10). With the NAACP, the Urban League, emerging as early as 1909,
occurred the tremendous flowering of the organized struggle of Black people that played a
decisive role in the politics of the 1930s. The fact, however, is that these Black leaders were at
the same time outstanding leaders in the Black community and played a prominent role in its
councils and political life. Many of them had participated in progressive causes before
(Haywood 190). Consequently, they were able to secure certain influence and made
significant contribution to Black welfare.
Since Blacks were in effect barred from Southern politics - the white primaries formed
the major obstacle to Black voting
5
, Black Republicans, nevertheless, maintained their loyalty
to the party by keeping "Black and Tan" local clubs to rebuff deliberate political exclusion
and to maintain their relationship with the party. Blacks labored mightily to register voters
and enjoyed some relative success. Meanwhile, Black leaders continued to debate a long
range of strategies to voice their protests as lynching reinforced the legal barriers of white
domination. From the old means of accommodationism and self-help by Booker T.
Washington, to the civil rights protests proclaimed by Ida B. Wells and William Du Bois
through the nationalist and emigration movements led by Henry McNeal Turner. This meant
one thing: nurtured by the traditions of protest, activism, and resistance, some work was under
achievement that would develop into a social and political resurgence in the next decades.
5
In 1923, in Texas as in other states, the state legislature revised the election laws to prohibit the Blacks'
participation in Democratic primaries. When the US Supreme Court ruled the statute a violation of the 14
th
Amendment's equal protection, it was rewritten with deletion of any reference to Blacks (Biles 107).
18
The spread of industrial capitalism in the North and terror in the South changed
fundamentally Blacks' economic, political, and social life at the local as well as at the national
level. The deteriorating economic situation in the South, and the great migration were among
the essential factors that negatively affected the life of Blacks. In addition, the First World
War established a new community among Blacks that was able to share in the affairs of the
nation at a larger scale (Franklin 342). Most importantly, the Great Depression of the 1930s
established a new Black society with new experiences and strategies in all aspects of life.
Many Black writers, poets, and university graduates exploited these circumstances to voice
their protests against racial segregation beginning by the Harlem Renaissance and on to the
Black working class movement of the 1930s and 1940s. The hardships encountered at the
hands of white supremacists, almost infinitely, hindered the most capable of them to reach
dignity and self-esteem, and were enough to awaken in Blacks a kind of self-consciousness
and awareness of their critical status. They continued the struggle during the 1920s and 1930s
that culminated with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. However, the circumstances
were so hard to achieve such goals at once.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, Blacks were almost extinct from political life as
government and politics had become inaccessible and more complicated to most Black
Americans. In the South they were completely barred from politics while in the North they
were a small minority that blindly voted for the republican machine (Schlesinger, The Politics
of Upheaval 426). The profusion and persistence of Jim Crow laws effectively blocked the
possibility of Blacks engaging in electoral politics. While the tide of lynching and other forms
of anti-Black violence and terrorism reinstated the whites' hegemony, Blacks began looking
for ways to overturn the status quo. When all the rudiments for peaceful and restful life
expired, Blacks began their eruptive protest against "de facto" segregation in locally
organized boycotts and even violent demonstrations broke out at several occasions (Sullivan
19
"Civil Rights Movement"). The social repression of Black people aggravated enormously
with the violent genocidal practices of lynching.
Table 1 below provides figures about the number of lynching that occurred between
1882 and 1946. These data, of course, give only a glimmering idea about the intensity and
Table 1: Lynching of Whites and Blacks, 1882-1946.
Period Whites
Blacks
Total
1937-1946
1927-1936
1917-1926
1907-1916
1897-1906
1887-1896
1882-1886*
Totals
2
14
44
62
146
548
475
1,291
42
136
419
608
884
1,035
301
3,425
44
150
463
670
1,030
1,583
776
4,716
*: it is a five-year period while the other intervals are of a ten-year period.
Source: qtd in Allen "The Rural Experience" 90.
atrocity of the lynching since these incidents were often unnoticed and hardly recorded. In the
100 years following the end of the Civil War, more than five thousand African Americans
were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Once again, presidential
silence characterized Black America's relationship to the country (Lacewell 7). Blacks'
appeals to the Republican Party remained unanswered almost indefinitely. In consequence,
Blacks adopted another kind of political expression in response to the disfranchisement in the
South. Such response was a long-term migration from the South to the urban North
(Orey206). This migration enhanced Blacks' political and economic status.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Black population had known a tremendous
change and movement from the old restraints of rural life to a new multi-dimensional life in
20
urban centers. Before 1910 Blacks were overwhelmingly located in the rural South-over 90
percent before 1900 (Goldfield 209). They were almost invisible to the world and to the
country. However, the situation began to change between 1910 and 1940, and boosted by the
WWII, thus affecting the whole structure of the Black population within the country and its
politics providing an appealing opportunity for urban and Northern politicians.
The migration changed the nature of Black population in two ways: first, it resulted in a
massive movement out of the South and into the North making a shift of population from the
Black Belt
6
where slaves had been concentrated for agricultural work, to the industrial states
of the Northeast and Midwest. The urban population, consequently, increased by nearly
671.292 or 105 percent, while that of Southern cities increased by 886.173 or 65 percent.
From the figures in Table 2 (see p 21), it is clear that the main growth of population was in the
largest industrial states of the Northeast and Midwest. Second, Blacks in both the North and
the South became increasingly urbanized throughout the 20
th
century. Blacks changed from
rural farmers to urban workers, consequently, exposed to new experiences in different
situations. The large movement of Blacks from the Southern States to the Northern and
Western ones began during WWI and continued through the 1930s. It was mainly aimed to
making a better living including better jobs, better schools, more freedom, and a less racist
environment.
Once Black communities established in Northern cities, the flow of Southern migrants
continued for decades (Lemann 91). A number of forces were driving Blacks out of the South
and into Northern and Western cities. Socioeconomic and political conditions in the South
made Blacks likely candidates for migration (Crew 34). Actually, Blacks had no other choice
6
The Black Belt is the name of a broad region in the American South characterized by a high population
percentage of African Americans, acute poverty, rural decline, substandard living conditions. Over time the term
"Black Belt" came politically to refer to the larger area of the South with historic ties to slave plantation and the
socially repressive Jim Crow laws. By the late twentieth century, the Alabama Black Belt became a region of
insurgent African American aspirations (Allen Tullos "The Black Belt").
21
than to leave the South. In the late nineteenth century, depression and lack of opportunity in
the South sent some of the most adventurous or the more desperate on their way. Never mind
that they would suffer at the hands of the Northerners.
Table 2: U.S. Population by Race and Region (in thousands)
NORTHEAST:
Year
Population Total
Black
Urban Total
Black
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
21,047
25,869
29,662
34,427
35,977
39,478
385
484
679
1,147
1,370
2,018
13,911
18,563
22,404
26,707
27,568
31,373
312
410
607
1,055
1,265
1,946
NORTH CENTRAL:
Year
Population Total
Black
Urban Total
Black
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
26,333
29,889
34,020
38,594
40,143
44,461
496
543
793
1,262
1,420
2,228
10,165
13,487
17,776
22,351
23,437
28,491
324
403
674
1,203
1,278
2,137
WEST:
Year
Total Black Population
Urban population in South
1900 30
Year
Total Black Population
22
Source: Goldfield p. 210.
Conditions in the North were telling of a more advantageous and prosperous life.
Blacks in the North did not face legal barriers to voting and thus some actively took part in
the political process. Eventually millions of Blacks were introduced to a world in which
formal segregation did not exist and basic facilities, like transportation, restaurants, and public
bathrooms, had almost equal access. It was only natural, therefore, that white Northern
politicians with large Black constituencies began to oppose segregation and to support civil
rights for the sole purpose of amassing Black support (Finkelman 7-9). The job opportunities
in the industrial North gave millions of Blacks the chance to climb out of poverty and
discrimination.
As Black communities in Northern cities grew larger, Black workers became a
significant part of an expanding Black professional and business class, gaining in political and
economic leverage. While "Jim Crow" laws persisted and political oppression continued to
discourage Blacks from voting in the South, African Americans in Northern cities became an
important political force (Horton 85).The movement to the cities concentrated Blacks in
specific neighborhoods, making them "more identifiable as a group in parts of the country
where they actually could vote. The Negro's movement Northward and Westward and city
ward was a movement toward a larger role in national politics" (Boorstin 301). Blacks moved
out from the realm of political impotency into the land of political potentiality.
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
51
79
120
171
571
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1,369
1,862
2,261
3,310
3,631
4,922
23
By existence in the urban Northern centers, Blacks developed a resurgence that placed
them well into American politics and gave them a leverage they had never experienced since
Reconstruction (Franklin & Moss 342). Blacks in the city expressed a great will to participate
in electoral politics at the grass roots level, soon a large number of associations and
organizations including the National Urban League (NUL) and the National Association For
The Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP), emerged and expanded (Berry 169). This
fact gave them enough voting power to elect local and national public officials
7
. However,
they still identified themselves with the Party of Lincoln, and they revealed their electoral
tendencies by the election of their own Republican Party members. The trend continued
despite segregation and began however to move rapidly toward the Democratic Party
especially in urban areas. These migrations accelerated significantly during World War I,
when the cessation of mass immigration from Europe opened urban job opportunities to
African Americans.
The period of WWI brought with it new economic and social opportunities for Blacks,
hence, a new hope for a greater exercise of political power (Crew 34). This hope stemmed
from exercise in certain practical situations, in which Blacks lived during the war, much more
than it did from any national policies or promises of wartime leaders (Franklin & Moss 342).
If the war afforded Blacks an opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism, it also answered the
basic question about Black allegiance: "Today," asserted Kelly Miller in 1919, "the Negro is
no longer a Negro, nor Afro-American, nor colored American, nor American of African
descent, but he is American ... and nothing more"(qtd in Suggs 88). Ideologically, the war's
impact on Blacks was more powerful than for any other ethnic group. An
African American
7
Prior to becoming solidly Democratic in 1934, the South Chicago district elected Republican Oscar De Priest in
1928, 1930, and 1932. Chicago's Republican machine was firmly established and headed by William Hale (Big
Bill) Thompson, who served as mayor from 1915 through 1923 and again from 1927 through 1931. Mayor
Thompson and the machine promoted Black politicians such as De Priest who, in 1915, became the city's first
African-American alderman (Gordon 586-588).
24
consciousness characterized by confidence, assertiveness, and militancy seemed to emerge
after World War I (Jordan 134). It impelled a kind of consciousness for the acquisition of
more political equal rights.
The American Black political consciousness started to crystallize immediately after
WWI when African American soldiers returned home expecting a warm welcome from the
nation and a new life that they long waited for as a compensation for their effort. If the Black
"did not expect that the war would improve his lot, he certainly did not think it would be to
his disadvantage" (Quarles 179). However, they were disillusioned and quickly realized that
the pursuit of freedom and democracy was miles away to reach before the last gun was fired.
Blacks continued to fight in the view that Blacks' wartime sacrifices entitled them to first-
class citizenship.
At the end of the war, Blacks were determined to demand respect from the nation for
which they had fought, but they were severely scolded by white lynch mobs. The humiliation
continued into the 1920s and made them more determined to, militantly, defend their rights.
However, there was not enough unity and collaboration among Blacks to establish a well
based, and identifiable community at that time. Strong Black leaders and intellectual activists
were still few in number, but they generally provided articulate political and cultural
leadership. These militant Blacks demanded respect and full equality from America and
refused to take "No" as an answer. They exemplified a militant "New Negro"
8
who longs for
first-class citizenship.
8
As a concept, the "New Negro" accurately sums up what was happening to Black people. "New" described the
migration out of the South, urbanization of Blacks in the Northern ghettoes, and the proletarianization of rural
Southern Black farmers. It described a renewed race spirit with a wide range of new subjective and ideological
developments. It became the credo of the Black writers, artists, musicians, actors, intellectuals, and their patrons
who emerged during this period. See Allen pp.167-186. The term was first used on June 28, 1895 by the
Cleveland Gazette. The concepts "New Negro", "New South", and "New People", although emerged at the end
of the "Civil War" in April 1865, it was Booker T. Washington's A New Negro for a New Century (1900) and
Alain Locke's The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925) that popularized the term (Suggs 89).
25
World War I spurred the Black community in their effort to make America truly
Democratic by ensuring full citizenship for its entire population by including Blacks.
Unfortunately,
racial relations in the U.S. reached a nadir during what became known as the
"bloody summer" of 1919. A wave of violence raged from Washington, D.C., to Chicago and
points South and West against Black people, fueled by the potent post-war mixture of
unemployment, job shortages, above all, fear of Black political power and social
advancement.
In response to the war aftermath, African American leaders increasingly called
for federal action to assist Blacks.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, a change had occurred in the life of Blacks
because the political, social, and economic conditions changed. The 1920s were prosperous
times. After a brief period of decline in the aftermath of WWI, the economy soared because of
the benefits and immense profits earned from the war. Blacks, as recent arrivals in the
industrial centers of the North, enjoyed this prosperity as well, although the living conditions
revealed that the city was not that welcoming.
As opportunities for Black labor opened up by
the early 1900s and throughout the 1920s, anti-labor Republicans in Congress and the White
House worked to strengthen ties with Southern whites.
Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge appointed few Blacks to federal
posts. As former Senator, Harding was natural as a politician. He remained on good terms
with the Senate's inner sanctum which had facilitated his nomination. Coolidge spent much
time on appointments fearing racial overtones which were evident in the ones he made. C.
Bascom Slemp had been a Republican Congressman from Virginia when Coolidge tapped
him to be his secretary. Slemp had opposed the Dyer
9
bill and had been involved in attempts
9
In 1920, when the horror of lynching was at its peak, Congressman Leonidas Dyer, a Missouri Republican from
a largely Black St. Louis District, introduced an anti-lynching bill, which was endorsed by the new President
Warren Harding. However, it did not see the light. Even though they controlled the senate as well, the GOP
could not pull out the tops to pass the bill into law. While majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts
supported the bill, the powerful Idaho Republican William Borah opposed it. Borah believed the measure
26
to reduce the number of Black delegates at GOP conventions (Felzenberg "Calvin Coolidge
and Race"). His appointment drew protests from many of the President's supporters.
Both Presidents also failed to reverse the policy of segregation in the civil service that
had been initiated by President Wilson despite their efforts in response to increases in racial
violence
10
. Some Blacks supported Wilson by the beginning of 1912, on the appeal of some
leaders such as Du Bois, who proclaimed: "I was plunged into the `Bull Moose' campaign. I
thought I saw a splendid chance for a third party movement on a broad platform of votes for
Negroes and industrial democracy" (Autobiography 261), and William Trotter, the most
radical Black leader, and co-founder of the Niagara Movement, who believed in and preached
for his promises
along with a maverick of black leaders
and refused to shrink from demanding
all the rights they believed African Americans deserved (Jordan 10). The President's
enthusiastic and sympathetic attitude to Blacks changed immediately after his election
because of the "extremely delicate" situation in the Senate as he told Oswald Garrison Villard
from the NAACP (Clements 45). As a result of the president's attitude racism was licensed in
the White House.
When the Democratic Party won and the next Congress met, there was the greatest
flood of discriminatory bills both in Congress and among the States that had probably ever
been introduced since the Civil War (Du Bois, Autobiography 263). Federal departments such
as the Treasury and the Post Office instituted segregation everywhere although practices were
not uniform. Throughout his incumbency, and despite his firm stand against the cruder
demands of white supremacists, Wilson and probably all of his cabinet naturally accepted
amounted to interference with the states autonomy and helped Southern Democrats kill it. This was the last
major civil rights issue on which Republicans were out in front (Barton "The History of Black Voting Rights";
Greenberg "The Party of Lincoln").
10
Presidents Harding and Coolidge proposed a commission to bridge the divide between the races. Harding told
Congress in 1921 that such a body could formulate "if not a policy, at least a national attitude" that could bring
the races closer together. Coolidge in 1923--and again in 1925 echoed this theme. He urged the creation of a
"Negro Industrial Commission" to promote a better policy of "mutual understanding" (Felzenberg "Calvin
Coolidge and Race").
27
segregation, social and official. But regrettably, although there had been informal and
unofficial segregation in the government departments before, now the federal government had
approved on the Southern caste system. Although Wilson reiterated that segregation was
instituted in the interest of Blacks, it was a catastrophic affair that tarnished his administration
record (Link 65-66). Although the experience with Wilson proved the unattractiveness of the
democratic choice, the 1920 election made things even worse.
Despite increasing racial violence in the South, neither Harding nor Coolidge sturdily
supported federal anti-lynching legislation (Fay "The Real Deal on Blacks"). The efforts of
the NAACP to get to terms with Harding concerning racial violence, patronage appointments
and disfranchisement did not have beneficial results (Berry 168). By now, the Black electorate
grew disillusioned with the policies of both parties. But by 1928, Blacks began to learn to
vote for candidates who were not Republicans. As a result, the shift of strategy in casting
ballots for the right candidates was inevitable (Quarles 204-205). Black organizations such as
the NAACP and NUL were very prominent in leading Black public opinion.
Black fraternal orders, political organizations, social clubs, and newspapers channeled
the potentialities and asserted an urban consciousness that became the foundation for the
militancy and Black cultural innovations of the 1920s, and opened new horizons for Blacks
where they were urged to up- rise and eliminate the burden of white supremacy. Eventually,
new movements emerged forming a new leadership on the basis of activism in the field of
civil rights. They were more lenient to having power based in the Black communities rather
than depending on connections to influential whites (Horton 85). "As Negroes moved to the
North and to the cities, they became part of the new urban constituency," explained historian
Richard Sherman. "Just as America had ceased to be predominantly Anglo-Saxon, so had
Black-white relations ceased to be primarily a problem for the South...In short, Republicans
failed to develop a program which could attract major elements of the new, urban America,"
28
(258) a constituency that formed the core of the Roosevelt New Deal coalition that propelled
Democrats into power in the 1930s.
This idea was substantially boosted by the coming of the New Dealers and the role
that Democrats played in fighting the depression by allowing a number of Black politicians
within the ranks of the party. This new leadership was dominated in large parts by the church,
but it also included fraternal organizations, the Black press, and sororities. Churches often
focused the mobilization of community resources to provide educational and social welfare
services, leadership training, and organizational networks. They supplied collective identity
and empowerment to assess critically America's racial domination (Sullivan, Days of Hope
14). The war accelerated this movement to urban areas where Blacks started to learn from
whites the business of making a living and to be involved in many sections of civic life.
The postwar restlessness of Blacks found expression in the Black Renaissance a
creative movement in art and literature that exploded in the 1920s as swarms of talented
Blacks from across the country were attracted to New York to participate in the Harlem
Renaissance. As culture is the expression of the sum of values and behavioral preferences that
make-up a people's life style and approach to daily activities, cultural production changed as
the period of the 1920s changed economically and politically (Allen 168,176-180). On the one
hand, the Renaissance articulated the discontent of the Black with his status, and on the other
hand, explained Alain Locke, midwife to the movement as well as its chronicler, was an
evidence of "a renewed race spirit that consciously and proudly sets itself apart" (ix).
Although Harlem was the most widely known center of Black culture, the tide of cultural
Renaissance reached out to other cities with substantial Black population such as Chicago,
Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. and made an echo that was felt and considered by Black
as well as white intellectual circles.
29
This movement played a formative role in the emergence of intellectual leaders and
advocacy groups to plead the cause of black civil rights. Although artistic and intellectual
achievements did not win for Blacks political participation and economic parity with whites,
the influence that was exerted by the Harlem Renaissance on Blacks yielded more effective
results than expected at the level of political consciousness. Blacks eventually changed their
perception of voting according to one single line: voting for Republican candidates, a fact of
long time affiliation. Nevertheless, by the coming of WWI and the shift of population that
occurred from rural to urban life, there developed a new perception of the role they should
play in the new political life.
The shift of interest from patronage was tuned to an interest in overall programs for
the improvement of the conditions of the Black population.
Gradually Blacks came to
conclude that the Republican support of states' rights for "the resolution of such issues as
voting, lynching, segregation, and the white primary were fundamentally inconsistent with
core Black interests" ( Orey 208). Racial attitudes, they found, no longer followed party lines.
Democrats were as willing as Republicans to provide their grants, recognition and assistance
(Lichtman 150). Consequently, Blacks learnt from Northern politicians that Republican
politicians were no more caring for Blacks' rights.
As the Black communities in the North grew larger, so did opportunities for the talented
and enthusiastic people of this period more of whom became politicians , newspaper
publishers, real estate brokers, insurance agents, lawyers, and teachers serving their own
people (Horton 4-6). These acquisitions helped them achieve a certain respectability that they
seized to present for political positions and hold office jobs once reserved for whites.
They
could run for office and were actually encouraged to vote (Sternstrom 56). The efforts of the
Black elite to uplift Black working people were very prolific.
30
As they exercised in these leading positions "Black professionals acquired additional
prestige, status, and sometimes income as well, when the leadership involved paying jobs in
private institutions and in government service" (Giffin, African Americans 222). This,
consequently, gave the Black people an opportunity to support and elect officials from their
own neighborhoods and communities who would serve them, and defend their interests. In
addition, because Blacks became more-or-less aware of their own qualifications and power in
effecting local and federal politics, they did not miss the chance of opposing and hindering the
election of white candidates who were reluctant about Black issues (Finkelman 8). In Ohio,
Kansas, and California, for example, Blacks helped elect and defeat whites who supported or
opposed civil rights advances
11
. The power of urban Black voters changed the political
landscape and accelerated the pace of civil rights.
Combined with the ambitious and restless nature of the new arrivals, this led to a
greater political power that was manifest in the election of Black politicians to many state and
local offices in the North. In Chicago, for example, where most Blacks were located, political
leaders began to realize the potential and importance of Black vote in their areas when Oscar
De Priest was elected alderman, a precedent in the history of Black America (Nordhaus-Bike,
"Oscar DePriest"). In big cities and urban centers such as New York, Blacks gained much
more strength that by 1917 they were able to send Edward A. Johnson, the historian and
teacher to the state assembly (Franklin 342). With time Blacks learnt to seize opportunities
and take advantage from their status and political potentialities.
11
In the 1920s, several Black candidates won seats on the Chicago City Council and, even though Blacks were
less than 7 percent of the population, an African American was elected to a municipal judgeship in a citywide
contest. By 1928 five African Americans from Chicago were sitting in the lower house of the Illinois state
legislature, one was in the state senate, and one was in the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition Blacks
held important appointive positions six assistant corporation counsels, five assistant city prosecutors, and an
assistant state attorney (Sternstrom 56). However many white Republicans were defeated or opposed for their
attitudes toward race and for being unfair to Black politicians in distributing patronage (Giffin 25-45).
31
In elections, Blacks became more conscious to weigh candidates by their interest in
race issues, and cast their ballots for those who showed will and readiness to help their
communities. Although in the past many Blacks had been satisfied with President Taft's
appointment of W. H. Lewis of Boston as Assistant Attorney General of the United States,
and President Wilson's appointment of R.H. Terrell of Washington as judge of the municipal
court of the District of Columbia, now they realized that such appointments were no more
than symbol gestures. Indeed in 1924, when the Democratic candidate for President J.W.
Davis promised that if elected he would make no distinction on the basis of race or creed, and
when the Progressive candidate Robert La Follette, who ran as an independent Progressive
candidate for President, made a similar statement, Blacks began to desert the Republican
Party (Franklin 342-343). On the basis of such new rhetoric and activism, Blacks began to
change their party alignment.
2
Black Political Organizations and the 1928 election:
By the beginning of the 1928 election Black leaders felt a more growing need to vote for
an alternative to the Republican candidate than in 1924. GOP Presidents in the 1920s did little
about key Black issues. The attitude of the party's relative lack of enthusiasm for doing
something about the daily humiliation of Blacks, or seriously acting for an anti-lynching
legislation convinced many African Americans that the GOP's political priorities were no
longer compatible with those of the Black community. Even though Black leaders had little
control over the Black population, this change of political behavior was the result of
campaigns by Black newspapers publishing reports on the political activities of Black leaders
and their statements, the comments of white politicians, and the experiences of prominent
Blacks in campaign organizations for both parties (Lichtman 149-150). By the election of
1928 no prominent charismatic Black leader had a strongly large and devoted following
among Blacks. However, some organizations such as the NAACP, the NUL and the Black
32
churches played important roles in enticing Black voters. However, leaders of the Black
community did not form a unified entity in 1928 and provided different perceptions.
The most influential group in promoting Black rights was the NAACP. Founded in
1910, it was led by Northern white liberals and Black leaders such as W.B. Du Bois. Many
Black people including William Trotter and Ida Wells Barnett were strongly critical of the
dominant role that whites played in the formation of the NAACP (Du Bois, Autobiography
254). The imperative goal of the new organization was to wipe out segregation in American
public life, or, in its own words, "to make 12.000.000 Americans physically free from
peonage, mentally free from ignorance, politically free from disfranchisement, and socially
free from insult" (Cannady)
12
.
The primary goal for this faction was to seriously educate
people, as an adequate solution to social problems. Its main strategy, however, was legal
action aimed at reviving the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
A series of early court battles helped establish the NAACP as an imperative legal
advocate for helpless Blacks (Tuttle "NAACP"). A completely successful role aimed at
reviving the 14
th
and 15
th
Amendments was played by the organization. One example of such
battles included a victory against a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by
means of grandfather clause (Guinn vs. US, 1910)
13
. At its 1926 national convention, the
NAACP was determined in asserting that, "Our political salvation and our social survival lie
in our absolute independence of party allegiance in politics and the casting of our vote for our
friends and against our enemies whoever they may be and whatever party labels they carry."
14
12
An excerpt from the speech Beatrice Morrow Cannady delivered at the 19th Annual Conference of the
NAACP in Los Angeles on June 28, 1928. Beatrice Morrow Cannady helped found the Portland chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1914 and served as its first secretary.
She quickly became a leading spokesperson and eventually assumed the role of Northwest Organizer.
13
Guinn v. United States struck down the "grandfather clause" in Oklahoma's Voter Registration Act of 1910
because the clause discriminated against Blacks and, therefore, violated the Fifteenth Amendment. In the case of
Guinn v. United States (1915), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. Justice Edward White went on
to strike down the grandfather clause. See Mr. Chief Justice White delivered the opinion of the court: Guinn and
Beal v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (Supreme Court, June 21, 1915).
14
Annual Report of the NAACP (1926): 32; cited in Sherman p. 224.
33
During the 1930s, the NAACP's legal campaign gathered momentum. One prominent
example that arose to the public was the celebrated Scottsboro Case of 1931
15
, which
symbolized the ugliness of race relations in the depression era.
As the great depression was
proportionately disastrous to Blacks, the NAACP began to focus on economic justice but not
as much as the National Urban League (NUL).
Unlike the NAACP, which had been judged for how successfully it has fought for the
Blacks' civil and political rights, the NUL had had less measurable goals. It reflected the
increased migration of Black people to the cities of the South and North. The organization
provided direct services and assistance to migrants and their problems of adjustment to
Northern urban life (Haywood 189). But when social conditions changed, it undertook
scientifically based sociological research that disputed commonly held misconceptions about
Blacks' inferiority
16
.
It began to lobby the government, business, and labor unions especially
the AFL:
Our intention today is to urge this point: that fifty-five years of A. F.
of L. history have proven that good intentions on the part of its official
leadership are not sufficient... We strongly urge that the American
Federation of Labor accept the challenge of Negro labor by doing
something definite to eradicate a cancerous situation which has been
winked at for a half century. (Johnson 247)
Although it was in favor of direct protest during the civil rights movement, the NUL
carefully avoided the real political issues facing Black people- lynching and the struggle
against disfranchisement. Rather it developed as a social service organization because of its
15
Nine Black youths were convicted of raping two young white women while riding a freight train in Alabama
and sentenced to the electric chair. The supreme court over turned their conviction in Norris vs. Alabama, 1935.
16
For a detailed study of the image of Blacks in white society and white thinking, see George M Fredrickson,
The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny (1817-1914). See
also Stephan Sternstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, especially Ch. 1and 2, about the
social traits and attitudes of Blacks in their neighborhood during the 1920s to the New Deal.
34
ruling-class connections
17
. Nevertheless, it was always one of the organizations called upon
during time of crisis (Allen "Civil Rights" 272). During the depression the organization
broadened its activities to end discrimination in allocating government benefits and NUL
leaders sought to shape public opinion around issues of social problems through its
Opportunity Journal and criticized the NAACP's journal the Crisis as being more biased (Fay
"National Urban League"). The NAACP on the contrary began to concentrate more on
economic justice.
Nevertheless, by publicizing the commitments the NAACP had achieved, the
association sought to educate Black voters to hold candidates accountable when they went to
the polls. They also urged the importance of voter registration and encouraged Blacks to
qualify to exercise their franchise, even in the Deep South. As in the NAACP's membership
secretary words: "We began to try to build the image of the Negro as a voting personality, as a
person who would influence his government by his vote" (qtd in Weiss 64). This strategy
worked well especially when more and more Blacks started using their votes to register their
protest. They examined the voting records of members of Congress and watched the
utterances and policies of the would-be presidents in order to ferret out those whom they
considered their enemies or allies.
The campaigning by the NAACP, as well as a greater awareness among Blacks of
their potential political power led to the defeat of certain Congressmen in the 1930 and
1932
18
. Although the NAACP and NUL differed in policy and practices they met on the views
and goals, and met the aspirations of Blacks toward making them more politically minded,
17
Eugene Kinckle Jones, the Executive Secretary of the National Urban League on leave with the federal
government, goes to the record to appraise the work of the League in his article: "A Dream, A Quarter Century,
A Reality! How the Urban League Has Served". p. 328
18
Blacks turned their guns on those senators who supported the confirmation of John J. Parker to the US
Supreme Court. Indeed, they helped to defeat Henry J. Allen of Kansas and Roscoe McCulloch of Ohio, and in
1932, turned against Samuel Shortridge of California whom they helped elect for the senate in 1926.(Franklin
344; Giffin 40-42)
35
organized, and more identifiable group and a self reliant community that could be accountable
in the decision of any national policy. The NAACP and Urban League, which had actively
promoted the Renaissance in the 1920s, shifted their interests to economic and social issues in
the 1930s. This struggle was considered by some as the ideal opportunity to divert the Black
into a new political direction insisting on his social and economic conditions.
One of the largest groups that opposed the NAACP during the 1920s was the United
Negro Association (UNIA) led by the West Indian Marcus Garvey. His largest base of support
came from urban Black American lower classes. Garvey attacked racial inequality, Black
exclusion from unions, restrictions on Black businesses, unemployment of Blacks and
discrimination in general (Goldfield 190-191). The organization used different ways and
tactics to gain the support of many people. Garvey emphasized the idea of Black Nationalism,
which taught pride in race. He told Blacks to rejoice in being Blacker than the colored
aristocrats like Du Bois; retorting "sometimes we hear he is a Frenchman and another time he
is Dutch, and when it is convenient, he is a Negro. Now I have no Dutch, I have no French, I
have no Anglo-Saxon to imitate: but I have the ancient glories of Ethiopia to imitate" (qtd. in
Carroll 328). He insisted on Black cultural expression and most extremely Black
exclusiveness.
Racial bias, as he thought, was so embedded in whites' psyche that it was useless to
appeal to their sense of justice (Tindall, America 667). The organization grew rapidly as his
dogma and philosophy found outlet especially under the strains of the WWI post-war years.
Thus, claiming about six million members by 1923. Nevertheless, at the peak of his activism,
as he constituted a potential driving force for the Black masses, he was convicted of mail
fraud and imprisoned in 1925, and then he was deported to his native country Jamaica in 1927
by President Coolidge after receiving presidential pardon. Although Garvey died in obscurity
in 1940 in London, his memory was kept alive with an undercurrent of Black Nationalism that
36
would re-emerge later under the slogan of "Black Power" (Vaughn "Black People and their
Place"). While the UNIA faded with the disappearance of its leader and the coming of the
depression, other organizations gained credit within the Black communities insisting on other
more tangible claims such as social and economic justice.
Despite the fact that the Communist Party constituted a strong attractive pole between
1928 and 1932 a small minority of Blacks was drawn to the Party which made special efforts
to attract them and ran a Black candidate, James Ford, for Vice-President in 1932, 1936, and
1940 (Walton 232, Franklin 345). The party's Black support remained small however and
many Black members became disillusioned by time and left. The communists made few
Black converts by the 1928 elections. Neither the circumstances nor the Blacks' immediate
needs fitted for such an orientation. The communists' tactic of mingling with other Black
organizations in a united front against racism did not bring much result. That is, explained
Benjamin Quarles in his book The Negro in the Making of America, the "Negro's sense of
gratitude toward the communists did not prompt him to join the party, however" (206). The
Blackman was "individualistic, not likely to submerge his personality in conformity to a party
line from which there could be no deviation" By the same token, the "basic conservatism of
the Black in accepting new theories of government did not extend to political party affiliation,
for in the decade following WWI he made a major shift in party loyalty" (207). With the new
perception of party politics since the turn of the twentieth century, Blacks initiated a new era
of political party affiliation that would be fulfilled by the mid 1930s.
Although in the presidential election of 1924, the Black newspapers and voters again
supported the Republican Party as usual, a change has been setting in , engineered partly by
enterprising Democratic political bosses and machines in Northern cities where Blacks
flocked by thousands looking for more life opportunities and more freedom. W.B. Du Bois
noted that with the Black migration northward and into urban areas, the Black vote's
37
importance in presidential elections had grown appreciably. The number of Black voters in
the states of New York, Illinois, and Ohio for instance, 150.000, 175.000, and 125.000,
respectively, revealed that they could decide the outcome of close presidential contests
(Booker "African Americans and the Presidency"). Democratic politicians began to awaken to
the existence of this new voting group.
While some Republicans,
like William Hale Thompson of Chicago, tried hard to keep
the presumably unalterable Black vote within the ranks of the GOP, The urban politicians had
taken careful note of this large migration. The first Democratic boss to woo and win the Black
electorate was Tom Pendergast of Kansas City (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval 426).
As Black voter registration increased during the 1930s, so politicians increasingly provided at
least lip service to their needs (Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks 88). Knowing that these new
comers were Republican-minded, they offered everything they could afford in seeking them
out to register to vote. Indeed, they offered Blacks "small political jobs, such as watchers at
the polls, and provided small favors, such as baskets of food or tickets to an entertainment"
(Quarles 207). The result was that Blacks began to realize that their vote was connected with
their economic conditions.
By 1928, meanwhile the party of Lincoln seemed unresponsive to the changing
electorate and lacked a strategy for adjusting to new political realities, most Black leaders had
become disillusioned with the Party. The 1928 presidential campaign marked a significant
step toward the eventual Black exodus from Republican ranks. Although a majority of Blacks
cast their vote for Hoover, Black drift from the GOP was greater than in any prior election.
Manufacturers of public opinion within the Black community, including publishers, editors of
Black newspapers, educators, businessmen, ministers and bishops, fraternal officers, minor
government officials and leaders of well established organizations such as the NAACP and
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