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.

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.

The African American Realignment and New Deal Liberalism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Potential Importance ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Level

This chapter looks at the mass-level changes of civil rights realignment among African Americans. The entry of African Americans created a new constituency for Democratic politicians; decades of migration from the South magnified these voters' potential importance in northern swing states. In addition to assessing the timing of African Americans' shift to the Democrats, the analysis highlights African Americans' distinctive economic liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps not surprisingly, given their socioeconomic situation, these citizens stand out for their liberal views across a range of issues. An important point, not lost on political observers in the 1930s–1950s, was that African Americans' strong economic liberalism left them significantly closer to the Democrats on issues other than civil rights, making it more difficult for Republicans to envision winning back a substantial share of African American voters.

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.

We Shall Be Heard

Blue Texas ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Krochmal
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
The Road ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter describes the growing demonstrations during the 1960s, as the sit-in movement spreads to Texas. Elder activists join the young in expressing their demands. In less than three years after the first sit-ins, the revived African American civil rights movements would succeed in desegregating public accommodations in urban areas throughout Texas and the South, counting a major coup on the road to their larger goals of equal treatment, improved economic opportunities, and real political power.

The Civil Rights Movement. Million Man March. Black Lives Matter

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Million Man March ◽  
The 1960S

The author discusses three historical civil rights movements in the United States—Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; the Million Man March; and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The author compares and contrasts each movement and event from his perspective as a participant in each and identifies similarities and differences among them. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was born out of a desire and need to end legalized segregation, better known as Jim Crowism, in the south. Strategies included direct action, passive resistance, and redress of grievances through the judicial system. The Million Man March, which occurred in 1995 in Washington D.C., brought together more than a million Black men from across the United States. Moreover, it was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. Whereas the latter was established as a response to legalized racial segregation in the south, the former was designed to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among Black men as leaders in their communities. In addition, the Million Man March attempted to bring greater awareness of the unkept promise of racial equality. The BLM Movement provided an opportunity for multiple generations from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups to coalesce around the issue of police brutality. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and continuing to the present time, the BLM platform has become the principal venue through which outrage is expressed over the deaths of innocent, unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement and White vigilantes.

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.

Southern Democrats in Congress

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Devin Caughey
Keyword(s):  
Item Response Theory ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Irt Model ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Mass Level ◽  
Proper Account

This chapter moves from the mass public to the halls of Congress. Paralleling the previous chapter, it describes the ideological evolution and continuing diversity of Southern senators and representatives, focusing again on their positions on economic issues. Using an item response theory (IRT) model similar to that used to estimate mass conservatism, this chapter shows that between the 1930s and 1940s Southern members of Congress (MCs), like the Southern white public, turned sharply but incompletely against New Deal liberalism. By the mid-1940s, Southern Democrats in Congress had come to occupy a pivotal position on economic issues midway between non-Southern Democrats and Republicans, giving them outsized influence over national policymaking in the wake of the New Deal. The chapter illustrates these developments with three of the four policy areas which Chapter 3 examines at the mass level. Moreover, taking proper account of the ideological diversity of Southern MCs requires treating them as a collection of individuals, not a reified bloc. This chapter therefore analyzes Southern Democrats (along with other MCs) as individuals with possibly distinct preferences.

Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian D. Feinstein ◽  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Partisan Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Source State ◽  
Partisan Realignment ◽  
Data Source

Few transformations have been more significant in American politics in recent decades than the Democratic Party's embrace of racial liberalism and Republicans' adoption of a more conservative stance towards civil rights-related policies. We hypothesize that pressure to embrace a liberal position on civil rights was much stronger among northern Democrats and their coalitional partners than among northern Republicans and their affiliated groups by the mid-1940s, as the Democrats became firmly identified as the party of economic liberalism and labor unions. To test this hypothesis and develop a more fine-grained understanding of the dynamics of party positioning on civil rights, we collect and analyze a new data source: state political party platforms published between 1920 and 1968. These unique data suggest that Democrats had generally become the more liberal party on civil rights by the mid-to-late 1940s across a wide range of states. Our findings – which contradict Carmines and Stimson's prevailing issue evolution model of partisan change – suggest that there were strong coalitional and ideological pressures that led the Democrats to embrace racial liberalism. This finding not only leads to a revised perspective on the civil rights revolution, but also to new insights into the dynamics of partisan realignment more generally.

Public Opinion, Organized Labor, and the Limits of New Deal Liberalism, 1936–1945

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler ◽  
Devin Caughey
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Opinion Polls

The seemingly wide opening for liberal domestic policy innovation by the U.S. federal government in the early-to-mid-1930s gave way to a much more limited agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s. The latter years saw the consolidation and gradual extension of several key programs (e.g., Social Security and Keynesian macroeconomic management), but also the frustration of liberal hopes for an expansive “cradle-to-grave” welfare state marked by strong national unions, national health insurance, and full employment policies. Drawing upon rarely used early public opinion polls, we explore the dynamics of public opinion regarding New Deal liberalism during this pivotal era. We argue that a broadly based reaction against labor unions created a difficult backdrop for liberal programmatic advances. We find that this anti-labor reaction was especially virulent in the South but divided even Northern Democrats, thus creating an effective wedge issue for Republicans and their Southern conservative allies. More generally, we find that the mass public favored most of the specific programs created by the New Deal, but was hardly clamoring for major expansions of the national government's role in the late 1930s and 1940s. These findings illuminate the role played by the South in constraining New Deal liberalism while also highlighting the tenuousness of the liberal majority in the North.

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