Talk Elections

Given that Eisenhower was relatively inoffensive and that he won a lot of areas with heavy black populations, is it possible that blacks briefly swung back to the GOP for Ike?

well its interesting to look at areas with a black majority as example

Illinois's 1st District which was mostly black gave Stevenson 75% in 1952 and 64% in 1956. There's a few other black majority districts in the U.S. but I don't have the data with me right now.

Actually, blacks were still strongly Democratic, if Wikipedia is correct:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal_Coalition#New_Deal_Coalition:_voting_.25_1948-1964

According to this Blacks vote 79% Stevenson in 1952 and 61% in 1956.

So yeah, not really much effect amongst black people.

Here's 1956.  (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/1956prescountymap.PNG)

Black areas in the south (like northeastern NC, western AL and the MS/AR delta regions) are still pretty Democratic.

Blacks weren't voting in the South.

The Democrats have won them every election going back to 1936. Obviously Eisenhower did much better than McCain with them, but he still lost them.

Good point.

It depends where in the South you're talking about. Here in Memphis, the local machine, encouraged them to vote (for the machine, of course). I had an old black history teacher, and she said at election time they would come around and pass out watermelons. Gotta love the old days :P

So, if it wasn't Eisenhower, who is the last Republican presidential candidate who won a majority of the black vote (at least those blacks that could vote)?  

Herbert Hoover in 1932.

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Basically

Blacks voted Republican until 1936.
From 1936-1960, they vote Democratic by decent margins.
From 1964 onwards, they vote Democratic by extreme landslides.

Was it actually zero, or just really low?

The amount of black voters in the south was not exactly zero, however most black people who could vote in the south did so because they were either literate and had enough money to pay
the poll taxes, or were reliable votes for the local party machines candidates like in the example memphis pointed out above.

Where do those figures on black voters come from? We obviously can't know for sure, so I'm guessing exit polling which might not be entirely reliable.

I remember reading that black voters were swinging heavily towards Republicans during the 50s but the Democrats managed to halt it. Then Nixon and Goldwater went Southern Strategy and the black vote went Democratic.

They were solidly Republican until FDR though, as has been pointed out.

Really?

After the Southern Strategy in 1928?
I wouldn't be surprised if Al Smith won the black vote.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Southern_strategy

Hoover won 2/3rds of the black vote in 1932.  Blacks weren't especially put off by anti-Catholicism (in fact, they probably had a lower view of Catholics than WASPs).  It's also not like the Democrats had blacks in their Southern party organizations either.

It's not the anti-Catholicism I'm going off of (Catholics and African Americans were often on opposite political sides due to a deeply held animosity between the groups that dated back to the Civil War era), but the fact that Hoover encouraged stripping black Republicans of patronage in favor of the businessmen who made up the elite of the Republican Party.
Pretty much, Hoover gave them the finger in the hopes of appeasing Southern White Protestants.

Which is why I'm surprised he won the vote in 1932.

Any change as profound as African Americans going from the party of Lincoln to the same party as white segregationists is bound to happen gradually. Even if many blacks were frustrated with (and we don't really now that IMO) Hoovers sucking up to white Southerners, it would take a while for that feeling to translate into an actual shift of party giving the strong historical animosity to the Democrats. It is more surprising that such a high number of blacks actually voted for FDR in 1936. It is a tribute to just how hard the depression hit the black community, that so many of them made the change to the party of their oppressors so rapidly.

You call that "not much of an effect"?

Anyways, I thought there was a bounceback as early as '52. And in historical texts, you may come across predictions of it for '44 and '48.

But what's been said about 32 is true. The New Deal is what won Blacks over to the Democrats, not the Depression itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Stanton_De_Priest

Oh, and no discussion of Eisenhower and the Black vote is complete without a shameless blues plug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIKdYWRu4hQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLkAPxGggZI

True. But that kind of goes without saying. If FDR hadn't offered a solution to the problems caused by the depression, there would have been no point in switching to the Dems.

If other people hadn't switched earlier, though, there wouldn't have been no FDR.

But of course, have a look over the election maps, 24-28-32-36-40. The alignment that would last until 48 (and sort of until 68 really) wasn't there yet in 32, and not really in 36 either.

I obviously meant no point of switching for blacks, who were firmly rooted in the Republican coalition and had good reasons not to trust Democrats.

Kind of like Hitler having a small number of people of known Jewish ancestry in some top positions like Erhard Milch.

Most probably were not aware of Hoover's actions and just voted with the party of Lincoln like they had been for 70 years. Most people didn't follow politics that closely and even today most people don't keep track of appointments unless a big story is made out of them. At that point, people had far more pressing concerns to worry about.

Blacks became more aligned with the Democratic party when the Great Depression happened in 1932 because FDR began to focus on Public Works like SS and Blacks liked the idea.  But when Eisenhower became prez, he was General who served in WWII and liked the fact that Eisenhower which they despised the Nazis even more than the GOP became prez.  Not only that he picked a great Solicitor General on the SCrt Brennan and Chief Justice Warren who sided with the liberals like O Douglas to strike down Plessy v Feugessen with Brown and segregation laws.

The way it happened makes sense, but that doesn't mean the alternative would be unthinkable either. :)

According to Gallup, Stevenson won 79% of the Black vote in '52 and 61% in '56. Kennedy won 68% in '60 and Johnson won 94% in '64. Clearly southern Blacks in '56 and '60 voted against southern white leadership (northern Blacks voted Dem both years, such as in Detroit).