<p>Blacks were historically Republicans well after Reconstruction. The big shift happened around 1932, if memory serves. (My memory of things I’ve read, that is; I have no actual memories of 1932.)</p>
<p>Blacks were loyal to the Republican Party for many decades; it was, after all, the Party of Lincoln, the “Great Liberator”, and the Democratic Party of the 19th century was largely responsible for rollback of civil rights known as Reconstruction. </p>
<p>By 1932, the black unemployment rate had hit 50%. The Roosevelt administration enacted a great many programs designed to provide relief to unemployed workers, black as well as white. Many of these programs specifically prohibited racial discrimination in their eligibility requirements.</p>
<p>Truman brought more black voters into the Democratic fold by desegregating the military. Kennedy’s endorsement of civil rights legislation, and Lyndon Johnson’s enactment of really significant civil rights legislation, further cemented the reputation of the Democratic Party as the natural electoral home of black voters and politicians.</p>
<p>White southerners had also been part of the traditional New Deal coalition, partly for older historical reasons (the “Party of Lincoln” was not exactly an endorsement in some circles), and partly because New Deal programs poor whites in the South (e.g. rural electrification programs like the one that established the Tennesee Valley Authority).
But Lyndon Johnson correctly predicted that the Democratic Party would lose the white voters in the South for a generation as a cost of the civil rights legislation. </p>
<p>Some southern politicians (like Strom Thurmond, who had run on an openly racist platform when he headed the openly Dixicrat ticket in 1948, but had returned to the Democratic Party) switched to the Republican Party largely as a result of Lyndon Johnson’s embracement of civil rights. Thurmond switched in 1964, but for many former “yellow dog Democrats,” George Wallace’s American Independent Party in 1968 served as a kind of halfway house that allowed them to vote for a Democrat without voting for the Democratic Party. White voters in the South voted solidly Republican in 1972, and have largely done so since then, even though the Democratic Party has nominated a significant number of white southerners to its national ticket since that time (Carter in 1976 and 1980, Clinton and/or Gore in 1992, 1996 and 2000, and John Edwards in 2004). </p>
<p>Reagan acted to a large degree as though he couldn’t be bothered to try to include black voters in his coalition. (Announcing that he was running for president in Philadelphia, Mississippi, notorious as the site of the murders of four “Freedom Riders,” may be the most conspicuous example.) George H.W. Bush continued that impression with the “Willy Horton” campaign advertisements. (I saw that as opportunism more than anything else; his earlier support of the United Negro College Fund, and even his appointment of Clarence Thomas, lead me to believe that he was more personally interested in reaching out to black voters, though the treatment of Anita Hill didn’t end up winning him any credit in the black community, particularly among black women.) </p>
<p>In recent elections, the black electorate has voted for Democrats on the national ticket by a margin of about nine to one. (Considering that even Strom Thurmond managed to get 22% of the black vote the last time he ran for reelection, that’s a shockingly low number.)</p>
<p>George W., Karl Rove, and others in the Republican Party of late, seem to have sensed an opportunity to move some of those black voters into the Republican column. W.'s appointments of Colin Powell and Condi Rice to positions of real prominence and power have attracted some attention. </p>
<p>My own sense is that there is a real opportunity here for the Republican Party to continue to distance itself from its recent tactic of using coded racist messages like the Philadelphia Mississippi announcement and the Willy Horton campaign, and attract a larger number of black voters to the Republican ranks. I suspect that the percentage of Republican voters among blacks in the military is significantly higher than 10%, though the mishandling of the war in Iraq is likely to erode Republican progress there. Many middle class black voters have relatively conservative views on issues like abortion and gay marriage that aren’t a natural fit with today’s Democratic Party. I know some high income black people who resent paying high taxes, and have become Republicans (my father-in-law and brother-in-law, for example, who enjoy razzing me for my liberal views almost as much as Driver and Fundingfather do).</p>
<p>I view the Republican move to nominate more black candidates for public office as a positive sign, and agree that some of the rhetoric directed at some of these candidates from some members of my party has been appalling.</p>