Why did blacks vote Democrat before the Civil Rights Act?

[ButterflyBlood]

According to what I saw, the "Solid South" clearly included blacks as well. South Carolina, at one point the most heavily Democratic state in the country, usually vote upwards of 95% for president. Obviously the blacks were voting Dem too. Since southern Dems were usually segregationists, why did the blacks vote for them? It seems odd that the segregationists and civil rights activists were voting for the same candidates. When did blacks quit voting Republican and why?

[hadrons]

1. FDR, I believe ....

proir to him African-Americans voted solidly Republican (party of Lincoln), it was FDR who was able to create this strange allience of Southern White Dems and African-Americans Northerners

[Dob Bole]

3. By the early 1900s

the Radical Republican congressmen who pressed for Black Rights died and the Republicans discontinued their support for these policies.

Since parties were more important than ideology at that time, FDR was able to forge a "New Deal" coalition that consisted of ALL southerners, white or black, because they shared a common lifestyle and a perceived common enemy. This coalition lasted in some form until 1980.

[Brian Sweat]

2. They didn't really

Following reconstruction, most African Americans supported Republicans. The south was solid for Democrats because almost all white people voted for Democrats and African Americans were largely prevented from voting. Notice today, that African Americans vote in large numbers, but the south is still solid (Republican.)

Starting with FDR and the New Deal, African Americans started to migrate to the Democratic Party. This migration was completed in the sixties as a result of the civil rights movement.

[JackSwift]

4. FDR and Truman and JFK

were considered heroes by African Americans. Particularly when compared to the chicken-sh** Eisenhower treatment they got. Eisenhower could have and should have championed civil rights causes to get that vote for the Reps. Instead, he opposed it because he was a political coward. African Americans remembered who stood by them and against them. LBJ then took the football and ran the length of the field for the game winning touchdown of the 64 civil rights act, which Republicans still oppose. And LBJ was just merciless to the opponents of the act. He showed them what political cunning and strength was all about. He used every tool at his disposal, including JFK's assassination, to get it passed. This did not go unnoticed.

[Pompitous_Of_Love]

5. Actually, there's a specific historical incident

I cannot remember the name of the book or the author, but the subject was the great Mississippi river flood in the very late 1920s, early 1930s. Southern blacks had been reliable Republican voters (when allowed to exercise the franchise) since the Civil War. The flood, though, wiped out the rural economy in predominately black counties along the Mississippi. Whites in many areas literally rounded blacks up at gunpoint and forced them to work building levees to protect white property. When the Hoover Administration refused to intervene to protect blacks from this shanghaiing, most switched to the Democratic Party in the 1932 elections. I'll try to round up the name of the book and the author.

[starroute]

8. The PBS show on this was rerun just the other day

I hadn't know about it before, and was extremely impressed by both the size of the disaster and its major long-term effects. The authorities deliberately broke through the levee below New Orleans so that the city itself would be spared, then didn't come through with the help they'd promised for the poor folk whose lands were totally inundated.

RISING TIDE: THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927 AND HOW IT CHANGED AMERICA by John Barry

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684840022/102-3556445-9253747?vi=glance


On edit: My husband pointed out as we were watching that all the classic blues songs about levees breaking and flood sweeping things away are based on this same disaster.

[Pompitous_Of_Love]

13. That's it!

Thank you, Starroute! That's the book I had in mind. It's a great read, by the way.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Thanks for the information.

Wonder why we never heard about this before, just like so many other atrocities?

So Lynne Cheney believes modern school systems are engaged in historical revisionism. Looks as if we were taught a very skewed version, long ago.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Very interesting.

Never heard of that loathesome, ignorant event before reading your post. If you find the book, please note it here.

It's not inconsistant with things I've heard happened in the South in the decades after the Civil war, before FDR, unfortunately.

It seems as bad, in its own way, as the spontaneous (presumably) devastation of the financially successful black business section and its residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the early part of the 1900's.

[maha]

6. Historic Moment

This is an essential part of American history, and it always saddens me that people don't know it. But here goes.

African Americans were not allowed to vote before the Civil War. After the Civil War (the Reconstruction Era) black men were given the vote, pretty much, and the 15th Amendment guaranteeing their right to vote was ratified in 1870.

African Americans voted Republican (party of Lincoln). Southern whites (ex-Confederates) voted Democrat.

During the Reconstruction period, voting rights for blacks in the South were enforced by the federal troops in occupation (which included several USCT -- United States Colored Troops). During that time many black men were elected state and federal legislators, mayors, etc. There was no "solid south" then.

Reconstruction ended in 1877, exactly when Ulysses S. Grant left the White House and Rutherford Hayes moved in (look up election of 1876; it's nearly as juicy as Florida 2000). Beginning on that very day, throughout the South, black men literally were run out of the statehouses and other government offices to which they had been elected. Just physically tossed out the door. Then all-white southern legislatures created voting laws, such as laws that required payment of a "poll tax" or the taking of a test. Test givers made sure whites passed and blacks didn't. And racist groups like the Klan terrorized blacks who had the nerve to try to vote.

Before long nearly all African Americans in the South were, in effect, disenfranchised. And the South voted solidly Democrat, as only whites voted. This remained true until the 1960s when the Voting Rights Act overturned the barriers to voting for blacks. Voting rights was one of the things Martin Luther King and the freedom marchers were fighting for.

Also, in the 20th century, the parties changed places on civil rights. FDR, as others have said, helped bring the Democrats out of the darkness. Harry Truman and other progressive Democrats of the time -- Hubert Humphrey comes to mind -- also supported civil rights. John Kennedy made a point of showing support for Martin Luther King.

At the same time, the Republicans were encouraged by Nixon and others to make a deal with the devil -- get into bed with southern white racists to defeat Democrats in the South.

So now, fast forward, I read recently that in the 2000 election, 91 percent of the African American vote went to Gore.

[ikojo]

7. During Reconstruction the Dems were

the party of the Klan and the party of slavery. Not something to be proud of but important to know.

[JohnKleeb]

9. new deal bb

[Merlin]

10. Another significant act was Truman's integration of the military.

That act alone, in 1947, began the institutionalization of a color-blind policy in the federal government. It had enormous significance both practically and symbolically. Still today, the US military is one of the least racist institutions in the country.

[CMT]

11. Hoover won the "negro" vote in 1932

but it swung to FDR in 1936 because of FDR's New Deal. While African Americans still did poorly as compared to white America during the New Deal they still saw their lot improve and Eleanor was very outspoken in support of African-Americans--much more than Franklin who had to contend with Southern Committee Heads in Congress.

[TheBigGuy]

19. A Phillip Randolph had a famous quote on this...

Randolph was the head of the Pullman Porters union, and there is a famous quote from him about "turning the picture of Abraham Lincoln to the wall, that debt has been paid in full". about changing loyalty to the Democrats from the GOP.

I was looking for it online but couldnt find it. Its a good symbolic representation of the shift in party loyalty from the GOP to the Democrats that occured.

[aquart]

15. They voted Democratic.

Because they had the sense not to adopt Republican vocabulary.

[Eloriel]

17. Yes, DemocratIC -- got it ButterflyBlood?

Don't know why you've adopted their bastardization of the proper term, but it's not likely to "win friends and influence people."

Eloriel

[ButterflyBlood]

20. oops, slip

I think I probably was just lazy then so I used the shorter version. I actually say just Dem most of the time.

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

16. Thanks for the thread and everyone's responses...

I had heard that our Democratic Party ancestors were actually the ones who started the KKK :-( I've always been extremely curious how and when the parties switched sides on civil rights, I knew it had to be a fascinating series of events!

I learn so much from the discussions here :-)

[JohnKleeb]

18. well lets say this those were southern dems who mostly are now repukes

and my family was toiling in the old country and even so the ones here were Northern Democrats and one served in the civil war. I would had been third party until 1928 I think. Like I would vote for Debs and TR.