New Deal Liberalism and Racial Liberalism in the Mass Public, 1937–1968

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
The New Deal

Few transformations have been as important in American politics as the incorporation of African Americans into the Democratic Party over the course of the 1930s–60s and the Republican Party's growing association with more conservative positions on race-related policies. This paper traces the relationship between New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism in the mass public. A key finding is that by about 1940, economically-liberal northern white Democratic voters were substantially more pro-civil rights than were economically-conservative northern Republican voters. While partisanship and civil rights views were unrelated among southern whites, economic conservatives were more racially conservative than their economically liberal counterparts, even in the south. These findings suggest that there was a connection between attitudes towards the economic programs of the New Deal and racial liberalism early on, well before national party elites took distinct positions on civil rights. Along with grassroots pressure from African American voters who increasingly voted Democratic in the 1930s–40s, this change among white voters likely contributed to northern Democratic politicians' gradual embrace of civil rights liberalism and Republican politicians' interest in forging a coalition with conservative white southerners. In attempting to explain these linkages, I argue that the ideological meaning of New Deal liberalism sharpened in the late 1930s due to changes in the groups identified with Roosevelt's program and due to the controversies embroiling New Dealers in 1937–38.

Civil Rights and New Deal Liberalism in the Mass Public

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The South ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Mass Level

This chapter traces the mass-level story of civil rights realignment among whites. The conventional understanding is that New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism were not related among whites until the 1960s or perhaps the late 1950s. The chapter shows that among northern whites, both Democratic partisanship and economic liberalism were linked to support for the major civil rights initiatives on the agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s. Although partisanship was uncorrelated with civil rights views among southern whites, economic conservatism was related to more conservative civil rights views. This connection between economic and racial conservatism in the South provided fertile ground for the GOP's eventual “southern strategy.” Ultimately, economically liberal northern Democrats provided much stronger support for most of the leading civil rights policy initiatives on the agenda than did economically conservative Republicans.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Partisan Realignment ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The New Deal

This introductory chapter provides a background of the civil rights realignment. The conventional account treats the civil rights realignment as the disruption of one stable partisan alignment and its replacement by another alignment in which race played a defining role. The critical decisions driving this process occurred in the 1960s as national party elites grappled with the question of how to respond to pressure from civil rights activists. The choices made at the center then reverberated throughout the political system, gradually remaking both parties at the mass and middle levels. In contrast, this book argues that the partisan realignment on civil rights was rooted in changes in the New Deal coalition that emerged in the mid- to late 1930s, not the 1960s. Rather than realignment starting in Washington and diffusing out and down, state parties and locally oriented rank- and-file members of Congress provided a key mechanism for pro-civil rights forces to capture the Democratic Party from below.

scholarly journals Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Voting and the Downfall of the Democratic Party in the South

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
James L. Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The South ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
White Voters

Throughout much of its existence, the Democratic Party was heavily dependent upon the votes of the white South for its electoral success. In the last forty years, that situation has changed drastically. The erstwhile Democratic Solid South has been transformed into a Republican bastion. While many commentators still seek to explain this phenomenon in terms of race, white Southerners publicly are able to maintain political correctness by setting their change of political heart in a quite different context. This paper seeks to place the current political situation in the South in a historical context that explains how the racial issues that actually launched the downfall of the Democratic Party in that region became eclipsed by a national cultural conflict that has allowed an ever increasing number of white voters in the South to explain themselves in the transcending language of morality that comes so easily to Republicans rather than in the debasing context of race.

Look Away! Dixie’s Landed!

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Nina Silber
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The New Deal

The pro-Confederate Lost Cause memory of the Civil War continued to have considerable staying power during the 1930s, seen most notably in the popularity of the book and film versions of Gone With the Wind. At the same time, the Lost Cause was adapted to fit the sensibilities of this era. Many white Americans, for example, were drawn to the suffering of Civil War era white southerners in light of the economic trials of the 30s. Conservatives also doubled-down on the Lost Cause narrative as they pushed back against aspects of the New Deal agenda, as well as a reawakened civil rights movement and anti-lynching campaign. Finally, conservatives adapted the Lost Cause story to target Northern radicals and communists as the same kind of agitators who punished white southerners during Reconstruction. Black activists and communists tried to expose the racist and unpatriotic underpinnings of the Lost Cause but often fell short.

Running with Hares and Hunting with Hounds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Democratic Support ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter discusses how the growing frustrations and shifting votes of African Americans were not representative of a larger ideological realignment. Over the next three decades, the black electorate would be substantially divided as African Americans were in no way a “monolithic Democratic voting bloc.” Despite Franklin Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, the Democratic Party during and immediately after the New Deal offered few bold civil rights initiatives. The programs and agencies of the New Deal were rife with discrimination; in this sense, the Republican and Democratic parties of this era did not display clear-cut differences in their civil rights policies. The result, then, was a surge in Democratic support among the black electorate but not the total liquidation of Republican backing.

The Cities on the Hill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Ogorzalek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Invaluable Tool ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The New Deal

Recent electoral cycles have drawn attention to an urban–rural divide at the heart of American politics. This book traces the origins of red and blue America. The urbanicity divide began with the creation of an urban political order that united leaders from major cities and changed the Democratic Party during the New Deal era. These cities, despite being the site of serious, complex conflicts at home, are remarkably cohesive in national politics because members of city delegations represent their city as well as their district. Even though their constituents often don’t see eye-to-eye on important issues, members of these city delegations represent a united city position known as progressive liberalism. Using a wide range of congressional evidence and a unique dataset measuring the urbanicity of U.S. House districts over time, this book argues that city cohesion, an invaluable tool used by cities to address their urgent governance needs through higher levels of government, is fostered by local institutions developed to provide local political order. Crucially, these integrative institutions also helped foster the development of civil rights liberalism by linking constituencies that were not natural allies in support of group pluralism and racial equality. This in turn led to the departure from the coalition of the Southern Democrats, and to our contemporary political environment. The urban combination of diversity and liberalism—supported by institutions that make allies out of rivals—teaches us lessons for governing in a world increasingly characterized by deep social difference and political fragmentation.

Before Reagan: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Nina Silber
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Central Objective ◽  
Familial Influences ◽  
The New Deal

This introduction lays out the book’s central objective: to explore why Americans returned to the Civil War throughout the New Deal years. The Civil War offered a prism for exploring the emotional upheaval people experienced in light of the Depression; the political debates that swirled around the state-building initiatives of the New Deal; and struggles over race and civil rights. Also explored here is the evolution of this book, including personal and familial influences on the author.

How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

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