Feb 21, 2004

Blacks and the GOP: Lost Opportunities

by Liberty and Power

In his blog, Jon Bean discusses the fascinating topic of the history of blacks and the GOP. Another L and P blogger, Keith Halderman, has also touched on this topic with his article on GOP black leader, Blanche Armwood. Bean has succinctly summarized the historical literature but (to answer his question) I have one additional book to suggest:(William J. Grimshaw, Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931-1991 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Grimshaw discusses the shift in the black vote from the GOP to the Democratis from the 1930s to the 1950s. Interestingly, he finds that blacks in the city were more likely than whites to vote for GOP presidential candidates as late as 1944.

Grimshaw also touches on a greatly understudied topic: the GOP's campaign in the 1950s to win back the lost black vote. In 1956, Ike may have won as high as 40 percent of the black vote and key black leaders including King and Adam Clayton Powell gave him their vote. This success was not a tribute to Ike, however, as much as it was a repudiation of Stevenson who was even worse on civil rights. Only in 1960 did the black vote begin to swing back as Nixon ran an inept campaign which tried to please both blacks and Southern whites and lost them both.

Could the GOP have continued the gains of the 1950s without compromising free market principles? I think that it could if it had more aggressively pressed for application of the 15th Amendment to the South. Had it done this, it could have not ony have garnered more black votes (especially in the South) but possibly taken the steam out of later efforts to enact more intrusive federal legislation on other issues. Unfortunately, both Nixon and Ike dropped the ball.