Why do Black people vote for Democrats? - (A miniseries) -- Part One: We started as Republicans, then FDR happened
Answering a question you weren't thinking of asking
Welcome to my newsletter by me, King Williams. A documentary filmmaker, journalist, podcast host, and author based in Atlanta, Georgia.
This is a newsletter covering the hidden connections of Atlanta to everything else.
Written by King Williams
Edited by Alicia Bruce
At the end of every electoral cycle, one of the biggest questions that emerge afterward is the question of ‘why do so many African Americans vote for Democrats’?
Black Americans are the most consistent voting block in modern history. Black people are not a monolith but their vote seems to be this way. This piece is meant to explain how and why Black people vote the way that they do. And more importantly, dispelling the myth that because they vote the same, they do so for the same reasons.
Part One: We started as Democrats, then FDR happened
I. The US political party system
This may surprise you but most Black men (who could vote) prior to the 1930s were typically registered Republicans.
This is due primarily to the election of Abraham Lincoln and the freedoms established in the emancipation proclamation, as well as the brunt of southern slaveowners and segregationists being Democrats. Both political parties have shifted in ideologies and demographic makeup over time, with the Democrats having the most pronounced changes. But to understand why Black voters reject the GOP currently, we need to understand the foundation of the two parties.
The Democrats
The Democratic Party is one of the longest continually operating political parties in the world.
The Democratic-Republican Party was founded in 1792 by the eventual third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson, and the eventual fourth president of the United States James Madison. The party developed in what was known as the first party system of the US between 1792-1824.
The First Party System
The party became a powerhouse in the late 1700s and early 1800s, often competing against the now dissolved Federalist Party anchored by its founder Alexander Hamilton. The Democratic-Republican party was known for its support of the US as a republic, in what is known as Republicanism. The party’s overall ethos was a limited centralized government with the strong support of states’ rights, ‘natural rights’, and (white male) individual liberties. The party focused on establishing a system of governance via a loose fabric of federal support via the US Constitution (especially Article Four).
The Democratic-Republican party was primarily a southern-centered party but had some limited success in the western US. The Democratic-Republican Party was more dependent on slavery for its need to sustain its most agrarian economy compared to the rapidly urbanizing northern-centered Federalist Party. This was in addition to being a very nationalistic party, one which saw the expansion of US territory while forcibly removing Native Americans from their lands, while also often restricting and deciding matters on African American life without the consent of African Americans. The party also supported slavery (obviously) as Thomas Jefferson owned over 600+ enslaved people while James Madison owned over 100+ enslaved people as well.
The Second Party System
After the fizzling out of the Federalist Party by the presidential election of 1812, the US would enter its only period of one-party rule from 1816-1828. The Democratic-Republican party would begin to split in two as a result of the presidential election of 1824, then fully by 1828. That split lead in combination with the dissolving of the Federalists saw two new parties arise, the (Jacksonian) Democrats and the Whigs, who opposed President Andrew Jackson. The Jacksonian Democrats saw an expansion of rights to non-land owning white men, as well as a more direct expansion of slavery. This would lead to a clash of politics in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which led to the repealing of the Missouri Compromise, which made admitted Maine into the union as a free state while Missouri entered as a slave state. It also would lead to an actual clash of violence in what is known as the Bleeding Kansas uprising between proslavery and antislavery activists in 1854. This action would lead several members of the Whigs to break off and form their own political organization in 1854 now known as The Republican Party.
The Third Party System
This era of 1856-1892 would be the most chaotic in US political history as the parties would change as a result of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. The Whig Party would collapse by 1856 but not before several members of the party merged with the Republican Party. This period also saw a consolidation of several other smaller political parties and smaller voting blocs merge as well. Northern protestants, northern businessmen, factory workers, some farmers, and newly freed Black men courtesy of the 15th amendment. The party was notably anti-slavery prior to the civil war, pro-federalized banking system, pro-rail road spending, pro-national education, pro-spending on social services, and pro-unionized labor. All ideas typically associated with contemporary liberalism and the contemporary Democratic party today.
After the Republican success in electing President Abraham Lincoln 1860, then defeating the south during the Civil War in 1865, the Republican party would signal the birth of a re-unified America. And due to the various political factions that merged to create the Republican Party started to be known as the Grand Old Party. In this Grand Old Party sat at the table African American men, who for the first time started to go seek political office primarily in the south.
*A-2. Please stop saying the Democrats created the KKK, it is wrong
The Democratic Party did not create the KKK but many of its founding members were southern democrats. Nor did the Democratic Party start the civil war, the Confederacy was an attempt to build a new country altogether. The Democrat Party also didn’t start slavery since the institution of slavery predates both the establishment of political parties and the founding of the United States by 157 years.
Attempts to tie the Democratic Party with these atrocities is disingenuous, misleading, and an ongoing fallacious attack point amongst current day republicans. Neither political party has really been a full ally to the Black community historically.
Please stop.
II. Before we were Democrats, we were Republicans
A. The “Radical Republicans”
The Reconstruction Era saw one of the most dramatic swings in US political history.
These mostly Northern, Republicans were anti-Slavery and sought to gain more political power with a new electorate of African American men (women still could not vote). These new members were mostly in the Deep South and living in places where the Republicans were in need of representation after the civil war. This is also to say that many Republicans weren’t all enthused about having African-American members either. Despite the coalition of ideas and groups in the mid-1800s, not all members were happy with the inclusion of Black men within the party.
But in the south, this interracial coalition of Republicans began to win office on a state and national level. This period of Reconstruction from 1865-1877 saw ‘radicalized’ republicans who sought to have the complete abolishment of slavery, sought to establish national civil rights laws, helped pass the Reconstruction Acts and the 14th amendment, which made any person born on US soil a naturalized citizen of the US. This wasn’t limited to just that as these radical republicans were notably anti-southern/anti-confederate which including advocating for former confederates to never take office, limit participation for those who exited the union, and also supported the land acquisition of southern states for use on behalf of the now re-unified US.
B. African Americans are now lawmakers, this won’t last long
Millions of newly freed African Americans after the civil war sought out a variety of political opportunities just as their White counterparts, this won’t last long.
Whenever Black political, social, or economic gains arise there is an often greater countering white backlash that ensues.
These political opportunities only happened because of the presence of militarized troops in the Deep South to enforce the new laws associated with Reconstruction. Due to the retaining of US troops in the Deep South, African Americans began running for office in record numbers. During Reconstruction, Black male southerners are beginning to take up elected positions in varying local, state, and national offices. This rise in political power leads to a counter-attack by southern whites. Southern whites would legislatively and literally attack African Americans on the right to vote, accompanied by the growth of local militias including the first rise of the Klu Klux Klan.
This was also aided in propaganda machines created by white women in the form of memorial societies (the predecessor to the Daughters of the Confederacy), false victimization narratives of white southerners (the lost cause myth, the benevolent slave owner, the happy slave; etc), reappropriating holidays for like Memorial Day for celebrating white supremacy, and blatant misinformation (why the south seceded from the union). Accompanied by the use of symbolic gestures such as the use of the confederate flag and building of confederate monuments. All arising during Reconstruction and used especially for intimidating would-be African American voters as well as those considering becoming more politically active.
C. The Republicans turned their back on Blacks when they needed them the most
Reconstruction ended as a result of the compromise of 1877, a decision that settled the controversial presidential election of 1876. In that election Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes (OH), lost the popular vote to Democrat, Samuel Tilden (NY), while producing an electoral college victory of 185-184. To settle the election, a compromise was reached. The Democrats would not contend the presidency, allowing it to be awarded to Hayes provided the withdrawal of all federal troops from the South. This withdrawal not only ended Reconstruction but also ended Black political access for over a century.
Once the troops began to pull out of the South, within 4 years, nearly every single political gain was lost. The South becomes the embodiment of the repressive totalitarian state so many present-day Trump supporters fear. For African Americans, the next century becomes a one-party, white nationalist state, as the southern Democratic Party becomes the ruling state in all aspects of lawmaking and life. The Jim Crow-era south was so draconian that Hitler researched the American south to help implement his own apartheid state in Nazi-era Germany.
By the late 1800s, African-Americans were once again outside of the political process. As a result of the compromise of 1877, in addition to several African-American lawmakers losing their seats, the Republican Party as a whole lost interest in black voters. This wouldn’t be the first time this would happen, nor would it be the last.
D. The south is a one-party system, Georgia is the longest continually operating one
At the end of reconstruction in the south is a one-party totalitarian state. Politics was by and for white people, specifically white men. The southern democratic party was the party of the south. For White southerners, the Democratic Party was their party, a party overwhelmingly in support of Jim Crow, segregation, ‘states rights’, state-sponsored terrorism, and protecting the social/political status of whites.
Several changes were made to ensure a white-dominated political power structure despite the obvious rising tide of threats. This includes the more well-known poll taxes, a statewide approved literacy test in 1908, and grandfather clauses that often saddle African Americans throughout, not just Georgia the south from voting. This can also be seen in the congressional redistricting statewide, which for decades have left heavily Black voters in places such as metro Atlanta congregated into one or two large congressional districts. Or in places such as Macon, Columbus, and Savannah, being thrown into larger white congressional districts, effectively limiting or drastically reducing the power of the Black vote.
The County Unit System
But in Georgia, it also included a new system of political power, the county unit system, which served as a statewide-electoral college.
Within the county unit system, a total of 410 unit votes were distributed among three types of locales: rural counties, town-sized counties, or urbanized counties. This system disproportionally gave rural counties 242 votes in primary elections, town-sized counties 120 votes, and urbanized counties 48 votes. Under this system, rural counties had a disproportionate amount of increased political representation (59 percent) in state government compared to the larger populated counties such as DeKalb (Decatur), Fulton County (Atlanta), Chatham (Savannah), Augusta (Richmond), and Bibb (Macon) which had only 12 percent of the available votes. These counties also “coincidentally” also had a larger portion of African Americans.
In this system, since Georgia had 161 counties, it effectively limited not only more urbanized/larger counties, it also preserved a far more extreme conservative and segregationist voting bloc. And the whites-only primary system served as the de facto electoral system for almost a century until it was declared by the US Supreme Court in 1962. This would be replaced by a newer, more purposely vague but quite racist runoff system. A system which was designed in order to reduce the likelihood that a general election would produce a winning Black candidate who could win a general election on the sheer plurality of the vote. This system was good until 20 days ago.
E. And while the party affiliations had changed, one thing had not, white conservatism still rules supreme in the state of Georgia.
In Georgia, white political leadership has ruled the upper-level of state politics since the inception of Georgia as a state in the Union.
The Democratic Party of Georgia (not its current incarnation) has held the longest continual run of any political party in US history in one elected position. Since the end of Reconstruction, every governor of Georgia from 1872 until 2002 was been a Democrat. As well as every Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State have all be white male conservatives. And since 2003 every governor has been a white male conservative Republican. This is because unlike other places in the United States, the movement of the majority of White voters in Georgia didn’t immediately flock over to the Republican Party after the tumultuous 1960s. Which allowed for the preservation of the then staunchly white supremacist political ethos of the nearly 100 years of Jim Crow into a more socially acceptable form of conservative leadership to remain relatively unaffected. So much so that most liberal leadership often only remains one term on the state level. When examing governors, for instance, there are no Democratic governors outside of or Ellis Arnall (1943-1947), Jimmy Carter (1971-75), or Roy Barnes (1999-2003), would even be considered liberal by today’s standards.
But Georgia is not much different from its southern counterparts who also enacted schemes to not only reduce Black voters but also to provide over-representation of white southerners. The south may have lost the war but they never lost their power.
F. Jim Crow and the Great Migration
The period of Jim Crow in the United States refers to the time period after reconstruction in the late 1870s until about the 1950s.
For these reasons, the Jim Crow-era is known as the nadir period for African Americans. During this nadir period, the south becomes an apartheid state for African Americans, where domestic terrorism and totalitarianism reign supreme. From the 1700s until the 1930s the overwhelming majority of African Americans (80+ percent) lived in the south. For Black southerners, the political process was the Democratic primary system, and the Democratic Party was indeed the enemy. While the few African Americans who could vote, often were voters in the northeast and midwest.
This Americanized apartheid system used forced segregation, judicial laws, law enforcement, and political means to suppress African-Americans. This system of Jim Crow segregation left African Americans dependent on white society for nearly everything. Jim Crow did everything but make slaves, instead, it attempted to make African Americans dependent on whites for sustenance and subjected them to lifetimes of victimization.
African-Americans were often lynched, brutalized, and terrorized, within their own homes. Alongside their communities (Rosewood in 1923, Wilmington in 1898) and business districts (Atlanta in 1906, Tulsa in 1921) completely burned to the ground for no justifiable reason. During Jim Crow, it’s not the Ku Klux Klan that is the biggest threat to African American life as much as the everyday white resident. White southerners of all economic and social classes were always armed with a disproportionate amount of power over African Americans’ actual daily lives. This resonated in the form of having the power over education, lack of representation in both legal professions and law enforcement proceedings, often culminating in mob violence. These violent tactics in the name of ‘law and order’ or ‘the natural order’ resulted in thousands of public executions of African Americans, in addition to the destruction of property, seizure of land, and theft of individual items. All of which made life so unbearable that millions would up and leave the south altogether by the start of World War I in 1914.
And with a lack of political will on both a state and national level to seriously re-engage African Americans, Republicans focused on westward expansion as well as reaffirming relationships with big business. Because of this, many African Americans not only left the Republican party, they left the South.
III. FDR and the New Deal were part of the initial switch
A. FDR delivered a base he wasn’t looking for
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in many ways the biggest reason why Black voters eventually became members of the Democratic Party.
FDR didn’t even campaign to Black voters in the 1932 election, but by the 1936 election, those Black voters were moving to the Democrats. FDR’s initial Black support was very small during his first election but by his second nearly all Black people who were able to vote voted for a Democratic president. This was due to the abandonment of Black voters after the compromise of 1877, which effectively killed any new national and local Black lawmakers for decades. When there were politically active Blacks, they often were reduced to local leaders, pastors, college presidents, athletes, newsmen/women and limited mostly only appeal to white lawmakers for support for changes.
B. Black voters supported FDR but this wasn’t a love affair
It wasn’t an outright love affair as FDR purposely was slow-walking passing federal lynching laws (something that still hasn’t happened), upheld federally mandated residential housing policy (read The Color of Law), upheld most segregationist laws, and excluded most of the New Deal benefits from Blacks.
FDR also notably allowed for southern democrats to ensure that most of the New Deal laws excluded protections or benefits for African Americans, notably in being covered by the Social Security Administration.
As America rebounded and grew, Black America stalled and regressed. Combined with millions of people leaving the south, the limited opportunities afforded to African Americans through the New Deal were enough to get FDR elected four consecutive times. More importantly, it did the unthinkable, it brought Black voters to a white political party—at least on a presidential level. Even then the Democrats didn’t really do much to fully build out Black support, but it wasn’t needed, the Republicans began to abandon the Black vote.
C. The beginning of government ‘handouts’ arguments starts during FDR
The beginning of ‘handouts’ arguments starts as conservative democrats, republicans, industrialists, and wealthy citizens who were against the programs of FDR and his very popular New Deal. Blacks start after the Civil War but grow as a result of the unfair exclusion of Blacks from the New Deal programs. Racial resentment, segregation, and Jim Crow-styled laws weren’t just limited to the South.
As the terrorism and lack of economic opportunities forced millions of Black southerners to northeast and midwestern cities, so did the animosity towards them. Blacks in the North and Midwest faced an equal level of de jure residential segregation, as well as increased competition for jobs, often with Blacks being used as a tool for undermining mostly white, mostly pro-unionized labor. As a result, most of the New Deal-era programs, policies, and services were explicitly given to whites, including European immigrants.
D. The New Deal worked really well, for White Americans
The New Deal is one of the most transformative series of programs and initiatives in US history. Not only did the New Deal build the domestic infrastructure needed to build the world’s pre-eminent superpower, but it also built the modern American middle-class.
For decades white Americans benefited almost exclusively from this newer economic system. Through a series of government-backed New Deal programs such as the PWA, the G.I. Bill, and the newly formed Social Security program, White America received the securities needed to build a fortified middle-class life. This was aided by the backing of residential home loans through the HOLC alongside the backing of construction for suburban development built the modern structures for generational wealth with the security of the federal government.
These inequities would manifest in the lack of inclusion of African Americans in adjacent industries that expanded during and after the New Deal programs—real estate, banking, and construction.
IV. The white conservative backlash to the New Deal and Black gains
Former Vice President Harry F. Truman followed in FDR’s footsteps after he died in 1945, and one of the biggest gains would be the desegregation of the armed services.
Anti-Blackness is at the core of American conservatism, with its roots branching out eventually into both subsequent American neoconservative and neoliberal political movements/ideologies.
The push back to the government-led New Deals (there were two) saw slow but steady growth in anti-new deal rhetoric from both political parties. By the 1940s and 1950s, a marriage developed in linking anti-New Deal rhetoric with anti-blackness as it related to the growing civil rights movement. In addition, the desegregation of the armed services under Truman led to a clash in two Americas, second-class Black America, and the growing, first-class White America.
Chasing white voters isn’t new, The Republicans abandoned the Black vote
Not surprising, and not new. In 1936 by GOP is not really pressed to maintain Black voters. Instead of building upon a new base that voted for FDR, the party’s voter outreach consisted of meet-n-greets with celebrities such as Olympian Jesse Owens. These events would bring these Black celebrities going into Black neighborhoods on behalf of the party.
Throughout the 1940s and 50s, the Republican party made it clear that they wanted to grow the base by reaching out to more white voters. Voters who were 1) more conservative, and 2) in the south; resulting in a decade’s long strategy that would ultimately culminate with the 1964 presidential election. The GOP believed that as a result of FDR‘s four consecutive elections alongside the growth of the Black voters, then subsequent support of Truman that the black vote had effectively become unattainable. But this actually was not true, Eisenhower and his first election received about forty of the Black vote as punishment for the Democrats being lax on civil rights legislation. While Nixon and his 1960 election received 32 percent of the Black vote. But it became clear since the 1930s and honestly, since the end of reconstruction, the Republican Party abandoned Black voters, not Black voters abandoning the Republican Party.
Despite this, the Democratic establishment didn’t truly embrace the Black vote as well.
V. Despite the Republican Party’s ambivalence, Black people didn’t abandon it…initially
As a result of the popularity of FDR, and the decline in support of the party, the Republicans in 1939 reached out to Dr. Ralph Bunche.
Dr. Bunche was an African American political scientist, a graduate of Harvard University, and director of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. Dr. Bunche was one of the more astute scholars, political scientists, and thought leaders of the time. The GOP asks him to write a report on Black voters and their needs. Bunche talks to Black people from all over the country about both parties and comes back with his answers to the GOP. This also coincides with republican outreach efforts of the 1930s being mostly limited to having Black voters meet with celebrities such as Jesse Owens. While notably not making any real resolutions or gestures to actually address Black needs.
The GOP reviews his work as being ‘too radical’, asking Bunche to tone it on the asks of the party as well as the ‘rhetoric’, Bunche obliges. As a result, the findings are never published and the GOP passes a resolution in support of his work, a work that no one will ever see. Bunche then begins to leak out portions of his work to the Black press, who then uses these findings to help build better support for the political needs of African Americans asks of both parties.
Bunche also during this time agrees to work alongside Swedish economist and sociologist Dr. Gunner Myrdal with economic aid from the Carnegie Foundation set out to produce what would eventually be known as An American Dilemma, a seminal 1944 work outlining race relations in the United States. The study would eventually be cited a decade later in the groundbreaking decision of Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case. Additionally, the text would become a foundational piece of pre-civil rights era scholarship in developing how to address issues of segregation, integration, what civil rights legislation could look like, and even the beginnings of what would become affirmative action.
Even in the 1940s, the black community was concerned about itself being too concentrated with one party
The largest percentile change of one particular demographic group switching over parties happened between 1932 to 1936.
Black voters as a result of receiving only a fraction of the programs of the new deal programs switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party. During this time between the 1920s in the 1950s, several black newspapers are also worried about the lack of political leverage if everyone supports one particular party. Black writers, activists, community leaders, and thought leaders were worried that the Democratic Party was starting to take their votes for granted. With not much to show for it especially after the FDR years.
This also includes FDR, as well as every Republican and Democrat president, congress, or senate, not passing (or enforcing) any meaningful legislation requested by the Black community. No civil rights legislation until 1957. Still no anti-Lynching laws. No expansion of Black agriculture and domestic workers in New Deal financial programs, or any meaningful attempts to try to undo Jim Crow laws.
PART TWO: When the Democrats and Republicans switched - January 27th
-KJW
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