Obama's Exec Order a landmine in waiting for GOP in 2016

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Not to mention the fact that the Democrats were already winning by wide margins amongst Blacks stemming from what, you guessed it, the economy and jobs. By 1930, both Parties had thrown them under the bus and so they started voting for the ones that would get them a job.

The difference between getting 30% and 10%-15% (before and after CRA) was because it took forty years for a Republican to even lift a finger to try and win black voters and Bush's 16% in OH actually helped to win the election in 2004. Nixon was trying to play both sides publically (opposing busing, whilst in action moving aggressively to desegregate Southern schools), a strategy geared to win white moderates not African American's. Reagan never really tried and his statements both in 1980 and later his approach to South Africa weren't exactly popular in the community.

Sheer necessity would force the effort to be forthcoming and if 1936 is evidence of anything it is that kitchen table issues can often have the last word (FDR didn't do a thing except kotow to the Southern Democrats), yet he was the first Democrat to win African-Americans.