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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“We Have Run Out of Poor People”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bell
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter examines how the changing concept of liberalism within the Democratic party ultimately contributed to the erosion of consensus; it contends that the challenge to consensus from the left was as significant as the one from the right in changing the character of American politics. Liberals increasingly chafed throughout the second half of the 1950s at the Democratic party’s limited agenda of maintaining rather than expanding the New Deal legacy, managing prosperity, and containing communism.In their view, this embodied a centrist strategy aimed simply to hold the diverse elements of the Democratic coalition together rather than address a changing America and its needs.As the 1960s dawned, these progressive Democrats reconfigured liberalism around questions of social rights and identity politics that could not be accommodated within the confines of consensus. In parallel with similar developments within the GOP, Democratic factionalism did much to undermine the ideology of the liberal consensus.

Roosevelt and Kennedy

1963 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
David K. Adams
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The Brain

Historical analogies are often misleading, but the character of John F. Kennedy's administration can be usefully illuminated by consideration of the points of resemblance which it bears to the peacetime administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Superficially of course the influx of intellectuals into the federal capital in the winter of 1960–1961 recalls the gathering of the brain-trusters in Washington in 1933. But there are two more fundamental aspects of the Kennedy presidency which remind the observer of the Roosevelt period. These are the philosophy of the New Frontier, with its conscious overtones of the New Deal and its radical challenge to the traditions of laissez faire; and the political problem inherent in the composition of the Democratic party.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN CALIFORNIA, 1950–1964

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
National Level ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Democratic Ideology ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The New Deal

In the 1950s the Democratic Party in California grew from a struggling, rump organization into the major political party in the state. This was in large part due to the activities of a network of liberal activists in the California Democratic Council, a group formed in 1953 to encourage the creation of local Democratic ‘clubs’ across California in which those interested in left-of-centre politics could debate issues of the day and campaign for Democratic candidates in elections. This article argues that the rise of the Democrats in the Golden State was predicated on the espousal by both amateur activists and party politicians of an explicitly social democratic ideology that provided a bridge between the policies of the New Deal in the 1930s and the more ambitious goals of the Great Society at the national level in the 1960s. The article examines the ideas embraced by liberal politicians in the 1950s and looks at how those ideas underpinned a massive expansion of California's welfare state in the early 1960s.

Transformations: The New Deal through the 1950s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter traces the changes in federal and state protective policies from the New Deal through the 1950s. In contrast to the setbacks of the 1920s, the New Deal revived the prospects of protective laws and of their proponents. The victory of the minimum wage for women workers in federal court in 1937 and the passage in 1938 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which extended labor standards to men, represented a peak of protectionist achievement. This achievement rested firmly on the precedent of single-sex labor laws for which social feminists—led by the NCL—had long campaigned. However, “equal rights” gained momentum in the postwar years, 1945–60. By the start of the 1960s, single-sex protective laws had resumed their role as a focus of contention in the women's movement.

The Internal Stakes of the 2005 Elections: The Struggle for Influence in Egypt's National Democratic Party

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111
Author(s):  
Virginie Collombier
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
The Future ◽  
External Actors ◽  
First Time

Beyond the relative opening of the political system that characterized 2005 in Egypt — with the President being elected directly for the first time and the increased competition allowed during legislative elections — the 2005 elections also constituted an opportunity to consider and evaluate the internal struggles for influence under way within the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). In a context largely influenced by the perspective of President Husni Mubarak's succession and by calls for reform coming from both internal and external actors, changes currently occurring at the party level may have a decisive impact on the future of the Egyptian regime.

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