The Next Realignment: How Americas Parties Crumble
The realignment of black voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Political party that began in the late 1920s proliferated during this era. This process involved a "push 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 opportunities for African Americans gave black voters reasons to switch parties.26
The 1932 presidential contest between 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 economic policies to help African Americans laid depression by the Groovy Depression. Notwithstanding, Hoover received between two-thirds and three-quarters of the blackness vote in northern urban wards.27 Most blackness voters sided with Republicans less out of loyalty than because they were loath to back up a candidate whose Autonomous Political party had zealously suppressed their political rights in the South. African Americans mistrusted FDR considering of his party amalgamation, his evasiveness well-nigh race in the entrada, and his selection of a running mate, Business firm Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.28
Equally late as the mid-1930s, African American Republican John R. Lynch, who had represented Mississippi in the Firm during and after Reconstruction, summed upward the sentiments of older blackness voters and upper centre-form professionals: "The colored voters cannot aid but feel that in voting the Democratic ticket in national elections they will be voting to requite 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 endure."29
/tiles/non-collection/b/baic_cont_3_depriest_oscar_smithsonian_-618ns0227109-01pm.xml Image courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Centre, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Born in Alabama, Representative Oscar De Priest became the first African American elected from the North and the first to exist elected in the 20th century.
Illinois's First Congressional District provides a window into the process of black political realignment in northern cities. Prior to becoming solidly Autonomous in 1934, the South Chicago district elected Republican Oscar De Priest in 1928, 1930, and 1932. Southern African Americans, who swelled the city's population during that flow giving it the 2nd-largest urban black population in the country by 1930, encountered an established Republican motorcar 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 Southward. African Americans voted in droves for motorcar politicians similar William Unhurt (Large Bill) Thompson, who regularly corralled at least 60 percent of the vote in the bulk-black 2d and Third Wards. Mayor Thompson and the auto promoted black politicians such as De Priest who, in 1915, became the urban center'south first African-American alderman, the equivalent of a metropolis councilman. Black voters remained exceedingly loyal to the Republican ticket.30
Indeed, the most common political feel African-American Members of this era shared was their interest in politics at the ward and precinct levels. The Chicago political machines run by Thompson and, later, 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 power of the growing African-American urban population long earlier the national parties realized its potential. At the commencement of this era, the relationship betwixt black politicians and party bosses was strong, and many black Members of Congress placed party loyalty above all else. Just past the late 1960s, as black politicians began to assemble their own power bases, carving out a measure of independence, they ofttimes challenged the machine when party interests conflicted with problems important to the black customs. Unlike earlier black Members who relied on the established political machines to launch their careers, these Members, most of whom had grown upward in the cities they represented, managed to forge political bases dissever 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 assistants's halting efforts to revive the Depression-era economic system also loosened African-American ties to the Republican Party. Nationally, the staggering financial collapse hit black Americans harder than most other groups. Thousands had already lost agricultural jobs in the mid-1920s due to the declining cotton market place.32 Others had lost industrial jobs in the first stages of economic contraction, then black workers nationally were already in the grips of an economic depression earlier the stock market complanate in October 1929. By the early 1930s, 38 percentage of African Americans were unemployed compared to 17 percent of whites.33 A Roosevelt assistants study found that black Americans constituted 20 percent of anybody on the welfare rolls, fifty-fifty though they accounted for just 10 percent of the full population. In Chicago, 1-quaternary of welfare recipients were blackness, although black residents made up simply half-dozen percent of the city'due south full population.34
/tiles/non-drove/b/baic_cont_3_african-americans-wwii-224-Bethune-and-E-Roosevelt-PBA-10-F-561.xml Paradigm courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration At the urging of Commencement Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (center), Mary McLeod Bethune (left), a leading African-American educator, was appointed to head the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Assistants.
Some African-American politicians in the early on 1930s switched parties to advance their own careers while simultaneously helping their black communities.35Arthur Mitchell and William Dawson epitomized a younger core of African Americans who were "aggressive and impatient with the entrenched black Republican leadership, [seeking] a chance for personal advancement in the concurrent rise of the national Democratic party."36 Paid to speak on behalf of Hoover's 1928 presidential campaign, Mitchell encountered the De Priest campaign at a Chicago date and shortly thereafter joined De Priest's Second Ward Regular Republican Organization, hoping to claiming De Priest in the primary election. But after evaluating De Priest'due south command of the automobile, Mitchell switched parties to entrada for Roosevelt in 1932. Two years after, he successfully unseated De Priest, fifty-fifty though the incumbent retained the majority of the black vote. Mitchell became the start African American elected to Congress as a Democrat—running largely on a platform that tapped into urban black back up for the economic relief provided by New Deal programs. "I was elected partly on the achievement of your assistants," Mitchell wrote President Roosevelt shortly after starting his term in part, "and partly on the promise that I would stand up [in] dorsum of your administration."37
Even more than telling was the revolt of De Priest's protégé, William Dawson, who won ballot to the Chicago city council equally a Republican with De Priest's backing in 1932. Six years later, Dawson defeated De Priest in the 1938 GOP primary, only failed to unseat Mitchell in the full general ballot. Dawson then lost his seat on the urban center council when De Priest allies blocked his re-nomination. But Dawson soon seized an opportunity extended by his one-time opponents. Working with Democratic mayoral incumbent Ed Kelly, Dawson changed parties and became Democratic committeeman in the 2nd Ward, clearing a path to succeed Mitchell upon his retirement from the House in 1942. Dawson's case epitomized the willingness of Autonomous bosses like Kelly to recruit African Americans by using their political machines.38
Additionally, blackness voters nationwide began leaving the Republican Political party because of the growing perception that local Democratic organizations better 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 back up.39 While the New Deal failed to extend as much economic relief to black Americans as to whites, the tangible assistance they provided conferred a sense that the organisation was at least addressing a few problems that were of import to African Americans. For those who had been marginalized or ignored for and so long, fifty-fifty the largely symbolic efforts of the Roosevelt assistants inspired hope and renewed interest in the political process.40
As the older generation of black voters disappeared, the Democratic machines that dominated northern city wards courted the next generation of blackness voters. Past 1936 only 28 per centum of African Americans nationally voted for Republican nominee Alf Landon—less than one-half the number who had voted for Hoover just iv years before.41 Over fourth dimension, the party affiliations of blackness Americans in Congress became equally one-sided. Including Oscar De Priest, just nine blackness Republicans were elected to Congress between 1929 and 2017—about 7 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 near 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 Due south. During Roosevelt's starting time term, the assistants focused squarely on mitigating the economic travails of the Depression. This required a close working relationship with Congresses dominated by racially bourgeois southern Democrats, including several Speakers and about of the chairmen of central committees. "Economic reconstruction took precedence over all other concerns," observed historian Harvard Sitkoff. "Congress held the power of the purse, and the South held power in Congress."43
/tiles/non-collection/b/baic_cont_3_anti-lynching_protest_1927_LC-USZ62-110578.xml Paradigm 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'due south Times Square. That same twelvemonth an anti-lynching neb passed the U.S. House, but died in the Senate.
Other institutional and structural reforms implemented by the assistants, withal, eclipsed the President's impassivity toward black civil rights activists.44 Absent Roosevelt's easily-on interest, progressive New Dealers avant-garde the cause of African Americans, transforming how many blackness voters perceived the Democratic Political party.45 Offset Lady Eleanor Roosevelt prodded her husband to be more than responsive and cultivated connections with black leaders, such as educator and women's rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Ane historian described the First Lady as an "unofficial ombudsman for the Negro."46 Harold Ickes, a fundamental Roosevelt appointee and Secretary of the Interior Section, was some other prominent advocate for African Americans. A former president of the Chicago National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a one-time Republican, Ickes banned segregation from his department; other executive agencies followed his example. Equally director of the Public Works Administration, Ickes also stipulated that the bureau's federal contractors must hire a percentage of black employees equal to or higher than their per centum of the workforce recorded in the 1930 occupational demography.47
The failure to pass anti-lynching legislation underscored the limitations of reform nether FDR. In this example—unlike in the early 1920s when there were no black 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 nib 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's bill, although they amended it considerably in the Judiciary Committee, further weakening its provisions. Meanwhile, Mitchell waged a public relations blitz on behalf of his neb, including a national radio circulate. Simply when reformers convincingly tabled Mitchell's 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 Business firm in Apr 1937 by a vote of 277 to 120 but was never enacted into law. Instead, Southerners in the Senate effectively buried information technology in early on 1938 by blocking efforts to bring it to an up-or-downwards vote on the floor.48 The rivalry between Mitchell and the NAACP, meanwhile, forecast future problems. Importantly, it revealed that African-American Members and exterior advancement groups sometimes worked at cantankerous-purposes, confounding civil rights supporters in Congress and providing opponents a wedge for blocking legislation.
Adjacent Section
The Next Realignment: How Americas Parties Crumble
Source: https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/