From Many to Few

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey D. Fields
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Historical Relationship ◽  
Black Political Behavior ◽  
Black Voters

This chapter examines the historical relationship between African Americans and the Republican Party. In contrast to their current unexpected status, it used to be common for blacks to support the party. Abolition was at the center of the party's creation, and African Americans were a critical constituency. Only in the 1930s did the majority of African Americans start supporting Democratic candidates in presidential elections. While shifts in how each party handled economic issues precipitated black voters' exodus to the Democratic Party, it was the Republican Party's response to the civil rights movement and demands for racial equality that produced its antagonistic relationship with blacks. In tracing this history, it becomes clear that black political behavior develops in concert with shifts in the broader political context.

A Discussion of Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-210
Author(s):  
Michael Leo Owens
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Black Political Behavior

Charge: As Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird note, collectively more than 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats according to surveys, and no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 13% of the Black vote since 1968. This is true despite the fact that at the individual level many African Americans are increasingly politically moderate and even conservative. Against this backdrop, what explains the enduring nature of African American support for the Democratic Party? In Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, White and Laird answer this question by developing the concept of “racialized social constraint,” a unifying behavioral norm meant to empower African Americans as a group and developed through a shared history of struggle against oppression and for freedom and equality. White and Laird consider the historical development of this norm, how it is enforced, and its efficacy both in creating party loyalty and as a path to Black political power in the United States. On the cusp of perhaps the most consequential presidential election in American history, one for which African American turnout was crucial, we asked a range of leading political scientists to assess the relative strengths, weaknesses, and ramifications of this argument.

The Changing Politics of Race in the South and Its Impact on National Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Voter Suppression ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Party Dominance

The long era of racial segregation and black voter suppression coincided with the old “Solid South” of Democratic dominance of the region. Among African Americans who could vote, they were loyal to the GOP, the party of Lincoln. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the civil rights movement more generally moved Southern blacks to the Democratic Party. The emergence of African American voters’ rights and their realigning to the Democratic Party have had the most profound impact on the politics of the region of the past half century. Today, Southern African Americans vote at about the same rate as whites and in some recent presidential elections have exceeded white participation. As whites realigned to the GOP, African Americans became a key component of the Democratic Party dominance of the South, with substantial influence on legislative priorities.

The Time of the Black Elephant

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
National Party ◽  
Washington Post ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
The Common ◽  
Negative Identity ◽  
Black Voters

This chapter discusses how for African Americans, the events of the mid-1970s only served to reinforce an already contentious relationship with the Grand Old Party (GOP)—frustrations that were born out of the party's years of equivocation over issues of black concern. The GOP's extreme electoral woes with African Americans were rooted in Goldwater's enduring legacy. More than a decade later, black voters still held an image of a national party driven by states' rights advocates, white southern conservatives, anti-civil rights politicians, and wealthy elites who disdained the “common man.” The Washington Post observed that the Republican Party appeared to be a political machine engaged in constant antagonisms and reactionary battles and had done very little to dispel its negative identity with black communities.

The Loneliness of the Black Republican

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Racial Experiences ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Black Republicans ◽  
The New Deal

Covering more than four decades of American social and political history, this book examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan's presidential ascent in 1980. Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movement—even as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatism—not to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests. As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable position—they were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the Grand Old Party (GOP). In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way. This book provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sid Bedingfield
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Radio Station ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
Black Radio ◽  
Black Voters ◽  
Key Characters

This epilogue traces the personal stories of key characters in the years after 1965. John H. McCray was offered editing positions at several black newspapers in the early 1960s, but the black press had begun to decline dramatically by that time. He left South Carolina and moved to Alabama to take a job at his alma mater, Talladega College. As editors of South Carolina two largest white newspapers, Thomas R. Waring, Jr., and William D. Workman, Jr. continued to oppose the new, bi-racial coalition that emerged in the Democratic Party. Modjeska Simkins appeared weekly on a black radio station in Columbia to help organize and register black voters in South Carolina. She and McCray remained estranged despite their history together launching the modern civil rights movement in the state.

“Defend Your Manhood and Womanhood Rights”

2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-194
Author(s):  
Modupe Labode
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Municipal Election

This article analyzes African Americans’ protest against the movie The Birth of a Nation in Denver in 1915 and the protest’s impact on the May 1916 municipal election, in which African Americans shifted their support from the Republican to the Democratic mayoral candidate. This essay contributes to the scholarship on African American activism during “the long civil rights movement” and the role of the idea of respectability in that activism. This essay first argues that protests against this film had political as well as cultural significance. African Americans’ political activism in the West furthers our knowledge of black activism in the early twentieth century. Finally, this essay contributes to understanding the local roots of African Americans’ shift from the Republican to the Democratic Party during the early twentieth century.

Racial Realignment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Racial Policy ◽  
The 1960S

Few transformations in American politics have been as important as the integration of African Americans into the Democratic Party and the Republican embrace of racial policy conservatism. The story of this partisan realignment on race is often told as one in which political elites—such as Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater—set in motion a dramatic and sudden reshuffling of party positioning on racial issues during the 1960s. This book instead argues that top party leaders were actually among the last to move, and that their choices were dictated by changes that had already occurred beneath them. The book shows that the two parties' transformation on civil rights took place gradually over decades. The book reveals that Democratic partisanship, economic liberalism, and support for civil rights had crystallized in public opinion, state parties, and Congress by the mid-1940s. This trend was propelled forward by the incorporation of African Americans and the pro-civil-rights Congress of Industrial Organizations into the Democratic coalition. Meanwhile, Republican partisanship became aligned with economic and racial conservatism. Scrambling to maintain existing power bases, national party elites refused to acknowledge these changes for as long as they could, but the civil rights movement finally forced them to choose where their respective parties would stand. Presenting original ideas about political change, the book sheds new light on twentieth and twenty-first century racial politics.

scholarly journals The influence of race, religion and class on election behavior in the United States of America (1930-2008)

Sociologija ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
Ana Vareca
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Early Stages

In this paper the author evaluates constancy of the influence of race, religion and class on election behavior in America in period 1930-2008. It appears that the findings from the early stages of this period have set the trend which has not significantly change to these days. Findings from electoral 2008 show us very small differences in political behavior throughout these period, except in 1960's when African Americans have become mostly supporters of Democratic party, thanks to efforts of Democrats to sign Civil Rights Act.

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.

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