Black Vote Pre-1932?

[RINO Tom]

It's often accepted (logically) that Blacks voted pretty heavily Republican until 1936, when FDR and his New Deal programs largely won the demographic over.  I've also read that Blacks actually stayed loyal to Herbert Hoover in 1932.  However, I can't seem to find any estimates for elections before 1932.  Just how loyal were Blacks to the GOP during the early 20th Century?  Anyone have any numbers?  These are the exit poll numbers I HAVE been able to find:

1932: +54% for Hoover
1936: +43% for Roosevelt
1940: +35% for Roosevelt
1944: +36% for Roosevelt
1948: +54% for Truman
1952: +52% for Stevenson
1956: +22% for Stevenson

The only other numbers I've seen (no links, just memory) are that by the late Nineteenth Century, Northern Blacks were only voting about 60%-40% in favor of the GOP and that Woodrow Wilson actually won the endorsement of several Black newspapers (despite being a segregationist).

Any help would be very much appreciated!!

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

I imagine that pre-1932 data would might not the most accurate, especially with the corrupt Southern Democratic parties and the methods used to exclude blacks from voting.

I've heard that Coolidge won the black vote as he was very much in favor of their civil rights.

[Sumner 1868]

It's often accepted (logically) that Blacks voted pretty heavily Republican until 1936, when FDR and his New Deal programs largely won the demographic over.  I've also read that Blacks actually stayed loyal to Herbert Hoover in 1932.  However, I can't seem to find any estimates for elections before 1932.  Just how loyal were Blacks to the GOP during the early 20th Century?  Anyone have any numbers?  These are the exit poll numbers I HAVE been able to find:

1932: +54% for Hoover
1936: +43% for Roosevelt
1940: +35% for Roosevelt
1944: +36% for Roosevelt
1948: +54% for Truman
1952: +52% for Stevenson
1956: +22% for Stevenson

The only other numbers I've seen (no links, just memory) are that by the late Nineteenth Century, Northern Blacks were only voting about 60%-40% in favor of the GOP and that Woodrow Wilson actually won the endorsement of several Black newspapers (despite being a segregationist).

Any help would be very much appreciated!!

In 1912, black frustration wth the GOP hit a height as Taft had refused to endorse anti-lynching legislation, and bitter memories of TR's civil rights negligence persisted. Wilson realized this and omitted his segregationist views to make inroads, and he was largely successful. But in 1916 they returned solidly for Hughes when he showed his true colors.

Numbers before 1932 are pretty much impossible, but I'd imagine over 90% voted Republican during Reconstruction.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Also, I think that Southern Blacks were loyal to the Republicans much longer than Northern Blacks.

[Ebsy]

In St. Louis, black voters switched en masse to the Democratic Party in 1932, but Republicans remained strong for over a decade after. The first black alderman was a Republican in North City, elected in 1943.

[The Last Northerner]

In some areas (like Los Angeles and probably other Western areas), progressive Democrats tried to lure reluctant working-class blacks at the local/state level with mixed success in the 1920s, even if it meant uneasy alliances with transplanted Dixiecrats. It wasn't until the Great Depression and the utter annihilation of black small businesses/ middle-class that they swung fully towards FDR.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's related and very illustrating of the complex dynamics of the black vote from the 1880s - 193-s.

Here is a very useful link from the House of Representatives' Historian: http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/

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Here is a link to Google books regarding the experience of blacks in Indiana, when both Democrats and Republicans were in bed with the KKK: https://books.google.com/books?id=q1q23K5hyZUC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=black+Republicans+chicago+1920s&source=bl&ots=36npemygYH&sig=ZV0TFrYv59UCnSmWRGkiB2V-CXo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CGoQ6AEwEGoVChMIs_fJzprRyAIVSvuACh0D7AjJ#v=onepage&q=black%20Republicans%20chicago%201920s&f=false

If you'd like to read about how the city of Gary, Indiana was one of the (forgotten) battlegrounds of the Civil Rights Movement from the school de-segregation crisis of the late-1940s to the white working class reactionary politics of 1967 - 1968 (which saw the nation's first black mayor of a city >100,000 people in 1967, to the MLK assasination race riots in early-1968 to the strong performance of segregationist George Wallace in 1968 that led to massive white flight that makes Northwest Indiana the most segregated place in America to this day with strong voting divides), here is another link: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/10704/15119

Here's a lovely bar graph for party ID among blacks from 1936 - 2004.


Obviously a very frustrating time for them.


Again, not exactly what you are asking for, but like others have stated, data before the 1930s is probably non-existant, so you'll have to rely on historical accounts and anecdotes.

Hope this was helpful!


EDIT - how to make words into links? I still can't figure that out

[RINO Tom]

Wow, thanks for that info!  I have a book called "Republicans and Race: The GOP's Frayed Relationship With African-Americans 1945-1974(?)," and it talks about how Blacks really didn't feel that much loyalty to the GOP by the Twentieth Century but still supported them as a lesser of two evils and how it really was always an awkward marriage, because it was pretty clear that the Democrats - if they could ever move away from Dixie roots - more accurately represented their fiscal interests (at least poorer Blacks).

It also talks about how Republicans felt INCREDIBLY betrayed and bitter about Blacks jumping toward FDR - a President tepid on civil rights who vetoed anti-lynching legislation, put a Klansman on the SCOTUS and had a Southern runningmate - just because of an economic downturn.  I don't have the book in front of me, but the thinking that Democrats had "bought and paid for" Black votes did not start with Goldwater or Nixon or Reagan; Republicans were saying that in the 1930s and 1940s.  I know Eisenhower was especially offended that his actions on civil rights STILL lost him the Black vote twice vs. Stevenson.  I remember a quote of his somewhere in the book along the lines of "I'll never betray our principles as the Party of Lincoln, but we might as well court the moderate South, because we do everything for the Negro and they support a party full of segregationists in return."

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Blk women werent allowed to vote, so blk males with the exception of Wilson, who pushed through women's vote, voted R, and Teddy Roosevelt was their admired man.

[Adam Griffin]

Southern blacks actually began to abandon the GOP en masse before the 1932 elections - and not for the most obvious reasons one would think. I'm actually surprised not to see it mentioned here. I saw a great little Weather Channel exposé on it once, remembered it, and tried to get Google to pull up something about it. The New Yorker has a really good piece on the broader subject of blacks fleeing the GOP, but the first few paragraphs cover the particular incident that caused it - The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/race-and-the-storm

There's a lot more detail on there, but here's the gist:

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TL;DR: Hoover led up the investigation in the Commerce Department on the mishandling of the Great Flood (how the levee system was designed to fail in all of the black neighborhoods, how black sharecroppers were corralled into concentration camps in the aftermath to prevent them from fleeing, etc) and basically cleared the locals of any wrong-doing after the report came out (he was President by then). The mass damage done by the event itself and in the aftermath of the report/Hoover's inaction spread like wildfire among black communities throughout the South and damaged the GOP brand in the eyes of blacks all across the region (maybe the nation), paving the way for the inevitable when combined with the Great Depression.

Side-note: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – all Republicans – did very little for blacks during their administrations, with blacks becoming increasingly disenfranchised during their administrations throughout the South. It's really no wonder at all that it happened; it was a long time coming, in my opinion.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Southern blacks actually began to abandon the GOP en masse before the 1932 elections - and not for the most obvious reasons one would think. I'm actually surprised not to see it mentioned here. I saw a great little Weather Channel exposé on it once, remembered it, and tried to get Google to pull up something about it. The New Yorker has a really good piece on the broader subject of blacks fleeing the GOP, but the first few paragraphs cover the particular incident that caused it - The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/race-and-the-storm

There's a lot more detail on there, but here's the gist:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

TL;DR: Hoover led up the investigation in the Commerce Department on the mishandling of the Great Flood (how the levee system was designed to fail in all of the black neighborhoods, how black sharecroppers were corralled into concentration camps in the aftermath to prevent them from fleeing, etc) and basically cleared the locals of any wrong-doing after the report came out (he was President by then). The mass damage done by the event itself and in the aftermath of the report/Hoover's inaction spread like wildfire among black communities throughout the South and damaged the GOP brand in the eyes of blacks all across the region (maybe the nation), paving the way for the inevitable when combined with the Great Depression.

Side-note: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – all Republicans – did very little for blacks during their administrations, with blacks becoming increasingly disenfranchised during their administrations throughout the South. It's really no wonder at all that it happened; it was a long time coming, in my opinion.

I agree it was a long time coming, but it still doesn't explain the extreme loyalty Dems were getting by the '40s.  I mean Harding and Coolidge weren't parroting their Radical ancestors, but both openly supported civil rights (especially anti-lynching legislation), and way moreso than their opponents (Smith being about equal).  Anyway, that flood story was interesting.

OC: That's literally not true.  I've read before that the Black community was incredibly frustrated with Teddy, and he was actually probably the most uninterested Republican in civil rights until Hoover.

[Gog]

In the eighteen hundreds yes it was mostly GOP. From 1900-1932 it was a lot of lesser evil ism even though the republicans didn't do much, it was better than the party that openly endorsed the tactics of their oppressors. With FDR's leadership, the party was moving away from the Dixies and many blacks felt more comfortable with the Dems. In 1964/8 the transition was complete.

[Gog]

From 1866-1896, GOP by Obama margins.  Then from McKinley onward, the started getting more and more of a whatever attitude from the GOP, culminating with Hoover and the Depression.  I would imagine Northern black voters remained loyal at 60-70% levels up to FDR.  The few Southern black voters left either picked the least threatening Democrat or continued to vote Republican if completely exclude from the Democratic Party.  I didn't realize Hoover was that bad on civil rights.  Perhaps one could argue the seeds of the Southern Strategy were planted in 1928?

The seeds of the southern strategy were planted in 1876

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Southern blacks actually began to abandon the GOP en masse before the 1932 elections - and not for the most obvious reasons one would think. I'm actually surprised not to see it mentioned here. I saw a great little Weather Channel exposé on it once, remembered it, and tried to get Google to pull up something about it. The New Yorker has a really good piece on the broader subject of blacks fleeing the GOP, but the first few paragraphs cover the particular incident that caused it - The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/race-and-the-storm

There's a lot more detail on there, but here's the gist:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

TL;DR: Hoover led up the investigation in the Commerce Department on the mishandling of the Great Flood (how the levee system was designed to fail in all of the black neighborhoods, how black sharecroppers were corralled into concentration camps in the aftermath to prevent them from fleeing, etc) and basically cleared the locals of any wrong-doing after the report came out (he was President by then). The mass damage done by the event itself and in the aftermath of the report/Hoover's inaction spread like wildfire among black communities throughout the South and damaged the GOP brand in the eyes of blacks all across the region (maybe the nation), paving the way for the inevitable when combined with the Great Depression.

Side-note: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – all Republicans – did very little for blacks during their administrations, with blacks becoming increasingly disenfranchised during their administrations throughout the South. It's really no wonder at all that it happened; it was a long time coming, in my opinion.

I agree it was a long time coming, but it still doesn't explain the extreme loyalty Dems were getting by the '40s.  I mean Harding and Coolidge weren't parroting their Radical ancestors, but both openly supported civil rights (especially anti-lynching legislation), and way moreso than their opponents (Smith being about equal).  Anyway, that flood story was interesting.

OC: That's literally not true.  I've read before that the Black community was incredibly frustrated with Teddy, and he was actually probably the most uninterested Republican in civil rights until Hoover.

Booker T Washington was the first black civil rights leader to visit Teddy Roosevelt.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Southern blacks actually began to abandon the GOP en masse before the 1932 elections - and not for the most obvious reasons one would think. I'm actually surprised not to see it mentioned here. I saw a great little Weather Channel exposé on it once, remembered it, and tried to get Google to pull up something about it. The New Yorker has a really good piece on the broader subject of blacks fleeing the GOP, but the first few paragraphs cover the particular incident that caused it - The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/race-and-the-storm

There's a lot more detail on there, but here's the gist:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

TL;DR: Hoover led up the investigation in the Commerce Department on the mishandling of the Great Flood (how the levee system was designed to fail in all of the black neighborhoods, how black sharecroppers were corralled into concentration camps in the aftermath to prevent them from fleeing, etc) and basically cleared the locals of any wrong-doing after the report came out (he was President by then). The mass damage done by the event itself and in the aftermath of the report/Hoover's inaction spread like wildfire among black communities throughout the South and damaged the GOP brand in the eyes of blacks all across the region (maybe the nation), paving the way for the inevitable when combined with the Great Depression.

Side-note: Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover – all Republicans – did very little for blacks during their administrations, with blacks becoming increasingly disenfranchised during their administrations throughout the South. It's really no wonder at all that it happened; it was a long time coming, in my opinion.

I agree it was a long time coming, but it still doesn't explain the extreme loyalty Dems were getting by the '40s.  I mean Harding and Coolidge weren't parroting their Radical ancestors, but both openly supported civil rights (especially anti-lynching legislation), and way moreso than their opponents (Smith being about equal).  Anyway, that flood story was interesting.

OC: That's literally not true.  I've read before that the Black community was incredibly frustrated with Teddy, and he was actually probably the most uninterested Republican in civil rights until Hoover.

Booker T Washington was the first black civil rights leader to visit Teddy Roosevelt.

You've never heard any of the stories about how that was a very tongue-in-cheek move by Roosevelt and how Washington came away angry?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Fascinating thread.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

From 1866-1896, GOP by Obama margins.  Then from McKinley onward, the started getting more and more of a whatever attitude from the GOP, culminating with Hoover and the Depression.  I would imagine Northern black voters remained loyal at 60-70% levels up to FDR.  The few Southern black voters left either picked the least threatening Democrat or continued to vote Republican if completely exclude from the Democratic Party.  I didn't realize Hoover was that bad on civil rights.  Perhaps one could argue the seeds of the Southern Strategy were planted in 1928?

The seeds of the southern strategy were planted in 1876

Its a point that I have made for several years actually, that approach to politics was beginning in 1928 and before to the turn of the century and yes as you say, as far back as 1876.

[Orser67]

I agree it was a long time coming, but it still doesn't explain the extreme loyalty Dems were getting by the '40s. 

Imo the New Deal and its programs, Roosevelt and Truman's moderate stances on civil rights, and the Democratic city bosses' effective integration of blacks into the New Deal coalition effectively explains why blacks flipped so strongly. I recently read James Reichley's The Life of the Parties which had several pages focusing on this.

[David Hume]

Also, I think that Southern Blacks were loyal to the Republicans much longer than Northern Blacks.

Do you know statistics about this? I also doubt whether southern black remained down ballot loyal to R even after 1964.

[David Hume]

Can you share the source of this? I only find data after 1936

[junior chįmp]

It's often accepted (logically) that Blacks voted pretty heavily Republican until 1936, when FDR and his New Deal programs largely won the demographic over.  I've also read that Blacks actually stayed loyal to Herbert Hoover in 1932.  However, I can't seem to find any estimates for elections before 1932.  Just how loyal were Blacks to the GOP during the early 20th Century?  Anyone have any numbers?  These are the exit poll numbers I HAVE been able to find:

1932: +54% for Hoover
1936: +43% for Roosevelt
1940: +35% for Roosevelt
1944: +36% for Roosevelt
1948: +54% for Truman
1952: +52% for Stevenson
1956: +22% for Stevenson

The only other numbers I've seen (no links, just memory) are that by the late Nineteenth Century, Northern Blacks were only voting about 60%-40% in favor of the GOP and that Woodrow Wilson actually won the endorsement of several Black newspapers (despite being a segregationist).

Any help would be very much appreciated!!

There is evidence that this is true. More majority black precintcs voted for Smith in 1928 than FDR in 1932:



Taken from: Blacks, the Democratic Party, and the Presidential Election of 1928: A Mild Rejoinder
Samuel O'Dell
Vol. 48, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1987)

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Also, I think that Southern Blacks were loyal to the Republicans much longer than Northern Blacks.

Do you know statistics about this? I also doubt whether southern black remained down ballot loyal to R even after 1964.

Sadly, since that post was over 5 years ago I have forgotten.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Can't remember where exactly but I've seen citations that Smith won 40% of the black vote in 28 which was the most any Democrat had received at the time, probably as part of the shift of urban voters to the Dems in general in that election.

[RINO Tom]

Found the Wikipedia article that said Black voters were already starting to drift away from the GOP by the late Nineteenth Century in the North:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocultural_politics_in_the_United_States

The claim that Northern Blacks were only about a 60%/40% split in favor of the Party of Lincoln during this time is apparently from the book The Third Electoral System 1853-1892 by Paul Kleppner on pg. 182.