1924, the Klan, and Shifting Political Allegiances

[Sharm]

What I learned back in high school history is essentially that Black Americans switched from Republican to Democrat with FDR and the New Deal. This always struck me as obviously simplistic... political shifts are not that sudden. I look back, and at least on a national level things looked like they were moving in 1924.

William H Lewis, former Assistant Attorney General under the William Howard Taft Administration, the highest role in government given to a Black Person up to that time, switched from the Party of Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge to the Democratic Candidate John Davis:

<i>There are colored men now living who remember the Ku Klux Klan of another day. It came into being to put the colored voter and citizen out of business. Intimidation, coercion, riots and murder were their weapon, were they not? 50 years ago, the Democratic Party was the Ku Klux party. Today, the Republican Party is the Ku Klux Party. The debate in the Democratic Convention was the most refreshing and wholesome thing that has taken place in American politics in a quarter of a century. Mr. Davis has taken his stand upon that issue, and I propose to stand with him. The Republican candidate for President has said nothing up to now as to whether he stands for the Klan or against it. Is the Republican Party afraid to take stand against the Ku Klux Klan? Is it still the party of Lincoln, of Grant, and of Roosevelt? I see no way of putting down the Ku Klux Klan except through the instrumentality of the Democratic Party. All that has been accomplished in Texas, in Louisiana, in Oklahoma, and Arkansas has been the work of the Democratic Party."</i>

Meanwhile, the NAACP was trying and failing to get President Calvin Coolidge to publically come out against the Klan. From a letter to Coolidge from the NAACP:

<i>I beg leave to call your attention once again that thousands of colored citizens are still looking for a public statement from you specifically disavowing for the Republican Party the support and endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan. To a previous request for such a statement sent to you on May 29 of this year no reply was received. To a telegram sent June 6, Mr. Slemp replied that it came during the closing days of the session of Congress when every moment of your time was occupied and that he hoped to call the message to your attention at an early date. No further reply was received. As we said in a previous letter, the issue involved transcends a mere few votes in the coming election, although <...> <...>

We now feel still greater warrant in asking for some such statement from you, in view of the fact that both the other principal candidates, John W Lewis of the Democrats and Robert M La Follette for the Third Party, have declared themselves unequivocally and unmistakenly on this issue, both of them naming the Ku Klux Klan so that there could be no flavor of evasion about their utterances.</i>

Coolidge's vice presidential candidate was charged with tacitally supporting the Klan, and the man who spear-headed the attempt to get the Democratic Platform to specifically name and criticize the Klan said this:

<i>"In apologizing for the Klan, General Dawes cited the situation in Herrin, Illinois, where Prohibition was not being enforced by the Constituted Authorities and where the Klan undertook to take the law in its own hands. In upholding the action of the Klan in Herrin, where Mr Dawes said its activities resulted in bloodshed, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate overlooked the fact that the District Attorneys, US Marshals, and Prohibition Agents charged with enforcement had been put in office or kept there by his chief, President Coolidge. <...>

The Dawes speech did more than even the most abandoned Klansman at the Democratic Convention undertook to do. They did not seek to defend the UnAmerican principles and sinister purpose of the Klan. They merely opposed mention of the Klan by name in the Democratic Platform on the grounds of political expediency."</i>

Not that you can give the Democratic Party too much credit. They split badly over this issue, as well as Prohibition -- and it took 103 ballots to get to a candidate in what was essentially a proxy fight between pro and anti Klan forces. I also point out that the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Klan stated that Klansmen of good conscience could vote for either candidate, for both parties had pro and anti Klan elements in them. But I'm thinking that this is about the time that the Republican Party abandoned even any token nod to their black voting base and, as Al Sharpton put it, paraphrasing: "We waited for our 30 Acres and a Mule. When they never came, we decided to jump on and ride the donkey for as far as they could carry us."

[JohnKleeb]

1. That election is interesting

John Davis, the party's nominee that year had been Wilson's solictor general and had opposed the klan and advocated US particpation in the League of Nations. The interesting thing is that Davis was later the lawyer that Thurgood Marshall went up against Brown V Board of Education. I think by 1924 the second klan as it was called went in to both political parties, the first klan had been in the democratic party and in the south. This second klan was in both and had a lot of power in states like Indiana and Oregon.

[On the Road]

2. Thank You for This

I didn't know much about racial party affiliation before Truman integrated the Armed Services.