In 1854, the Republican Party was founded mainly to end slavery, and for two decades it honorably promoted African-American equality. Its first presidential nominee, pioneer James C. Frémont, took a staunch anti-slavery stand in 1856 and ran well, paving the way for Abraham Lincoln's election four years later. Lincoln was no radical. He believed white men superior to blacks and opposed the outright abolition of slavery. But he wanted to stop slavery's westward expansion in the hope that it would die out—a position that won him endorsements from leading African-Americans such as Frederick Douglass and 40 percent of the overall vote, enough for victory in a four-way race.
After the Civil War, the "Radical Republicans," who oversaw the Reconstruction of the South, brought blacks into electoral politics. Blacks naturally joined the GOP rather than the white supremacist Southern Democrats. In these golden years, black Republicans got the vote and even won elective office (Mississippi elected the nation's first African-American senator in 1870). Led by the GOP, the nation ratified the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which ended slavery and gave black men full citizenship and the franchise.
The GOP's abandonment of African-Americans commenced with the presidential election of 1876. The party had already been subordinating its agenda of black equality to that of cultivating Northern industrialists when Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, to resolve a contested election, agreed to the notorious Compromise of 1876. In exchange for their support, Hayes promised Southern Democrats to withdraw federal troops from the South and to let them treat blacks as they pleased. Almost immediately, white supremacist, or "redeemer" Democrats regained power, heralding the reign of Jim Crow. Ironically, the compromise also crippled black Republicanism, as state Republican parties, to compete for white votes, engaged in racial me-tooism, purging blacks from the party or shunting them into "Black and Tan" delegations whose legitimacy was.
By the Progressive Era, both the Republicans and the Democrats were generally uninterested in helping African-Americans. One issue that couldn't be ignored—though the parties tried—was the horror of lynching, which had become rampant in the post-Reconstruction South. Anti-lynching laws marked the last major civil rights issue on which Republicans were out in front.
In 1920 Leonidas Dyer, a Missouri Republican from a largely black St. Louis district, introduced an anti-lynching bill, which the new Republican president, Warren Harding, endorsed. The House passed it in January 1922 (231-199, with only 17 Republicans opposing and eight Northern or border-state Democrats in support). Yet even though they controlled the Senate too, the GOP couldn't, or wouldn't, pull out the stops to pass the law. While Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts supported the bill, the powerful Idaho Republican William Borah opposed it as meddling in states' rights and helped Southern Democrats kill it. The Borah-Lodge rift foretold a schism in the GOP between Northeastern liberals and a Midwestern and Western Old Guard that would later scramble the party's racial politics.
The election of Roosevelt in 1932 marked the beginning of a change. The realignment crystallized under President Franklin Roosevelt. In 1932, FDR won just 23 percent of the black vote. Yet he swiftly bolstered his black support.Gestures such as consulting a "black cabinet" of unofficial African-American advisers surely helped, but more important were his economic relief programs. The Depression hit black Americans disproportionately hard, and FDR's relief programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works Administration, gave them much-needed aid and jobs. A popular song among Depression-era blacks made it plain:
Roosevelt! You're my man!
When the time come I ain't got a cent
You buy my groceries
And pay my rent.
Mr. Roosevelt, you're my man!
In Congress, meanwhile, Northern and Western Democrats took the lead on progressive racial legislation; it was two Democratic senators who in 1934 introduced the next major anti-lynching bill. Between 1932 and 1936, writes historian Nancy J. Weiss in Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR, "Roosevelt and the New Deal changed the voting habits of black Americans in ways that have lasted to our own time."
Roosevelt got 71 percent of the black vote for president in 1936 and did nearly that well in the next two elections, according to historical figures kept by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. But even then, the number of blacks identifying themselves as Republicans was about the same as the number who thought of themselves as Democrats.
It wasn't until Harry Truman garnered 77 percent of the black vote in 1948 that a majority of blacks reported that they thought of themselves as Democrats. Earlier that year Truman had issued an order desegregating the armed services and an executive order setting up regulations against racial bias in federal employment.
Even after that, Republican nominees continued to get a large slice of the black vote for several elections. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 39 percent in 1956, and Richard Nixon got 32 percent in his narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960. Entering the 1960 election the Democrats, behind such leaders as Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Herbert Lehman of New York, had become the unquestioned party of civil rights. Richard Nixon, who always overestimated his own popularity with blacks, still hoped to fare well—Jackie Robinson, for one, endorsed him—and he probably had a stronger civil rights record than John F. Kennedy. But JFK courted the black vote, famously phoning Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife, Coretta, when the civil rights leader was jailed. Kennedy would have commanded the black vote anyway, but the closeness of the election led analysts to mythologize the phone call as critical.
The battle over Civil Rights marked the last hurrah for racial liberalism within the GOP. But then President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (outlawing segregation in public places) and his eventual Republican opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, opposed it. Johnson got 94 percent of the black vote that year, still a record for any presidential election until 2008.
The following year Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. No Republican presidential candidate has gotten more than 15 percent of the black vote since.
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that was a mash up I put together of two articles: Blacks and the Democratic Party and The Party of Lincoln... on the history of the Black vote and loyalty to the Republicans and Democrats at various times in US history.
The bold parts are highlights where blacks concerns were addressed and the support they gave for it.
Since 1968 on up to today it seems that the democratic party has taken the black vote for granted and the republican party has disregarded it for the last 40 years.
But looking at history its clear to see that blacks (like everyone else) have a propensity to support candidates and a parties which they believe demonstrate a willingness to address core social, economic and political issues facing the African American community. Whether that response is substantive or symbolic. Unfortunately more often than not particularly of late the response has been more symbolic than anything.
But looking at the broad strokes of how the Black vote has been swayed over time its easy to see when and how each party won support.
Usually the person at the top of the ticket on the party is rewarded with support when a concession is made to the black community sometimes even if the ground work was started or created by others in the opposing party. For example LBJ signed the Civil Rights legislation and was rewarded with black support even tho alot of the frame work for it was republican crafted.
PRESIDENTS WHO GOT LARGE MAJORITY BLACK SUPPORT IN US HISTORY:
Abraham Lincoln (R)
Warren Harding (R)
Franklin Roosevelt (D)
Harry Truman (D)
John F. Kennedy (D)
Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
At regional and local levels Black have recognized and supported politicians who made direct efforts to respond to the needs of the community. George Romney, (Mitt's daddy) who was the Republican governor of Michigan during the 1960s, won 30% of the African American vote during his race in 1966. George Romney was a staunch supporter of civil rights and desegregation, and even marched in solidarity alongside black protesters in Detroit who were outraged about the violence in Selma, Alabama. That's not an endorse for his son but an illustration that Black support comes to those who show and prove regardless of party affiliation.
The truth is at various times in history members from both parties have advocated for minorities and particularly blacks. Sometimes it was for genuine humane reasons, they saw something that was fucked up and moved to do something about it. Other times (most times) it was political calculation. Lyndon Johnson was particularly cynical in his move toward Civil Rights legislation:
These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again." --Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957
Since the 60s African Americans have voted consistently democratic even as most of the response from the Democratic Party is mostly lip service. Meanwhile the Republican Party has made the political calculation to disregard the Black vote almost entirely and in this election cycle completely.
DO YOU THINK ITS POSSIBLE THAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CAN RECAPTURE THE BLACK VOTE AND HOW WOULD IT HAPPEN?
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