How Did Political Realignment Change As A Result Of The Great Depression And New Deal?

The realignment of blackness voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party that began in the late 1920s proliferated during this era. This procedure involved a "push and pull": the refusal by Republicans to pursue civil rights alienated many blackness voters, while efforts—shallow though they were—by northern Democrats to open up 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 economical policies to help African Americans laid depression by the Great Depression. Still, Hoover received between two-thirds and iii-quarters of the black vote in northern urban wards.²⁷ Virtually blackness voters sided with Republicans less out of loyalty than because they were loath to support a candidate whose Democratic Party had zealously suppressed their political rights in the South. African Americans mistrusted FDR because of his political party amalgamation, his evasiveness about race in the campaign, and his choice of a running mate, Firm Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.²⁸

As late as the mid-1930s, African American Republican John R. Lynch, who had represented Mississippi in the House during and later on Reconstruction, summed up the sentiments of older black voters and upper middle-class professionals: "The colored voters cannot assist but experience that in voting the Democratic ticket in national elections they will be voting to give 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 suffer."²⁹

/tiles/non-collection/b/baic_cont_3_depriest_oscar_smithsonian_-618ns0227109-01pm.xml Image courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Middle, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Establishment Born in Alabama, Representative Oscar De Priest became the kickoff African American elected from the Due north and the first to be elected in the 20th century.

Illinois'due south Kickoff Congressional District provides a window into the process of black political realignment in northern cities. Prior to becoming solidly Democratic 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 menses giving it the second-largest urban black population in the country by 1930, encountered an established Republican machine 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 machine politicians like William Hale (Big Pecker) Thompson, who regularly corralled at least threescore percent of the vote in the majority-black 2nd and Tertiary Wards. Mayor Thompson and the machine promoted black politicians such as De Priest who, in 1915, became the city'south first African-American alderman, the equivalent of a urban center councilman. Blackness voters remained exceedingly loyal to the Republican ticket.³⁰

Indeed, the most common political experience 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 Loma. Local and regional political machines recognized the voting power of the growing African-American urban population long before the national parties realized its potential. At the beginning of this era, the human relationship betwixt black politicians and party bosses was potent, and many blackness Members of Congress placed party loyalty to a higher place all else. Just by the tardily 1960s, equally black politicians began to assemble their ain power bases, carving out a measure out of independence, they often challenged the machine when party interests conflicted with issues important to the black community. Dissimilar earlier black Members who relied on the established political machines to launch their careers, these Members, most of whom had grown up in the cities they represented, managed to forge political bases divide from the dominant party structure. By linking familial and community connections with widespread civic engagement, they routinely clashed with the entrenched political powers.³¹

Discontent with the Hoover administration's halting efforts to revive the Depression-era economy also loosened African-American ties to the Republican Party. Nationally, the staggering financial collapse striking black Americans harder than nigh other groups. Thousands had already lost agricultural jobs in the mid-1920s due to the declining cotton market.³² Others had lost industrial jobs in the kickoff stages of economic contraction, and then black workers nationally were already in the grips of an economic depression earlier the stock marketplace collapsed in October 1929. Past the early 1930s, 38 percent of African Americans were unemployed compared to 17 percent of whites.³³ A Roosevelt administration written report institute that black Americans constituted twenty percentage of anybody on the welfare rolls, even though they deemed for just ten percent of the total population. In Chicago, one-fourth of welfare recipients were blackness, although black residents made up just 6 percent of the city'south total population.³⁴

/tiles/non-collection/b/baic_cont_3_african-americans-wwii-224-Bethune-and-East-Roosevelt-PBA-10-F-561.xml Prototype courtesy of the National Archives and Records Assistants At the urging of Commencement Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (center), Mary McLeod Bethune (left), a leading African-American educator, was appointed to head the Partition of Negro Diplomacy of the National Youth Administration.

Some African-American politicians in the early 1930s switched parties to advance their own careers while simultaneously helping their black communities.³⁵Arthur Mitchell and William Dawson epitomized a younger cadre of African Americans who were "ambitious and impatient with the entrenched blackness Republican leadership, [seeking] a chance for personal advocacy in the concurrent rising of the national Autonomous party."³⁶ Paid to speak on behalf of Hoover's 1928 presidential campaign, Mitchell encountered the De Priest campaign at a Chicago appointment and shortly thereafter joined De Priest'due south Second Ward Regular Republican System, hoping to challenge De Priest in the primary election. Just later on evaluating De Priest's control of the machine, Mitchell switched parties to campaign for Roosevelt in 1932. Ii years later, he successfully unseated De Priest, even though the incumbent retained the majority of the blackness vote. Mitchell became the first African American elected to Congress every bit a Democrat—running largely on a platform that tapped into urban black support for the economical relief provided by New Bargain programs. "I was elected partly on the achievement of your assistants," Mitchell wrote President Roosevelt presently afterward starting his term in office, "and partly on the promise that I would stand [in] back of your administration."³⁷

Even more telling was the defection of De Priest'southward protégé, William Dawson, who won election to the Chicago urban center quango as a Republican with De Priest's backing in 1932. Half dozen years later, Dawson defeated De Priest in the 1938 GOP main, but failed to unseat Mitchell in the general election. Dawson and then lost his seat on the metropolis quango when De Priest allies blocked his re-nomination. But Dawson soon seized an opportunity extended past his old opponents. Working with Democratic mayoral incumbent Ed Kelly, Dawson changed parties and became Autonomous committeeman in the Second Ward, clearing a path to succeed Mitchell upon his retirement from the Business firm in 1942. Dawson's case epitomized the willingness of Democratic bosses like Kelly to recruit African Americans by using their political machines.³⁸

Additionally, black voters nationwide began leaving the Republican 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 every bit much economic relief to black Americans equally to whites, the tangible assistance they provided conferred a sense that the arrangement was at least addressing a few issues that were important to African Americans. For those who had been marginalized or ignored for and so long, even the largely symbolic efforts of the Roosevelt assistants inspired hope and renewed involvement in the political process.⁴⁰

As the older generation of black voters disappeared, the Democratic machines that dominated northern city wards courted the adjacent generation of black voters. By 1936 only 28 per centum of African Americans nationally voted for Republican nominee Alf Landon—less than half the number who had voted for Hoover just four years before.⁴¹ Over time, the party affiliations of black Americans in Congress became as one-sided. Including Oscar De Priest, just nine black Republicans were elected to Congress betwixt 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 about 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 South. During Roosevelt'due south first term, the administration focused squarely on mitigating the economic travails of the Depression. This required a close working relationship with Congresses dominated by racially conservative southern Democrats, including several Speakers and well-nigh of the chairmen of key 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/not-collection/b/baic_cont_3_anti-lynching_protest_1927_LC-USZ62-110578.xml Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Members of the NAACP New York Metropolis Youth Council scout in 1937 on behalf of anti-lynching legislation in front of the Strand Theater in New York City's Times Square. That same yr an anti-lynching pecker passed the U.Southward. Business firm, but died in the Senate.

Other institutional and structural reforms implemented past the administration, still, eclipsed the President'south impassivity toward blackness civil rights activists.⁴⁴ Absent-minded Roosevelt'due south hands-on interest, progressive New Dealers advanced the cause of African Americans, transforming how many black voters perceived the Democratic Political party.⁴⁵ First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt prodded her hubby to be more than responsive and cultivated connections with black leaders, such equally educator and women'due south rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. One historian described the Showtime Lady as an "unofficial ombudsman for the Negro."⁴⁶ Harold Ickes, a key Roosevelt appointee and Secretary of the Interior Department, was another 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 instance. As manager of the Public Works Assistants, Ickes also stipulated that the agency'due south federal contractors must hire a percent of blackness 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 under FDR. In this case—unlike in the early 1920s when in that location were no black Representatives in Congress—an African-American Member of Congress, Arthur Mitchell, refused to endorse legislation supported past the NAACP. Moreover, Mitchell introduced his own anti-lynching bill in the 74th Congress (1935–1937), which critics assailed as weak for providing far more than lenient sentences and containing many legal ambiguities. Given the pick, Southerners favored Mitchell'south nib, although they amended information technology considerably in the Judiciary Committee, further weakening its provisions. Meanwhile, Mitchell waged a public relations blitz on behalf of his bill, including a national radio broadcast. Only when reformers convincingly tabled Mitchell's proposal early in the 75th Congress (1937–1939) did he enlist in the campaign to back up the NAACP measure—smarting from the realization that Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton Sumners of Texas had misled and used him. The NAACP measure passed the House in Apr 1937 by a vote of 277 to 120 merely was never enacted into law. Instead, Southerners in the Senate effectively buried it in early 1938 by blocking efforts to bring it to an upward-or-down 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 cross-purposes, misreckoning ceremonious rights supporters in Congress and providing opponents a wedge for blocking legislation.

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Source: https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/

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