Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. Joshua D. Farrington

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СКАЧАТЬ Willkie, represented the party’s burgeoning Eastern Establishment that would rise to power throughout the decade. Centered in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and bolstered by moderate Republicans in other states with large African American populations, the Eastern Establishment sought to restore the GOP’s progressive legacy and wrest control of the party from midwestern and western conservatives. Willing to support moderate government activism in economic policies, its leaders, including Willkie, also sought to win back African American voters through endorsing civil rights. Since the 1920s, Willkie had publicly fought against the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in his home state of Indiana, served as a trustee of the Hampton Institute, a historically black university, and supported the National Urban League. In a campaign speech at the NAACP’s annual convention, an appearance that was itself groundbreaking, he employed the rhetoric of the country’s most militant activists, declaring, “When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes of our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.” After his death four years later, the NAACP named its renovated headquarters the Wendell Willkie Memorial Building.⁴⁰

      Prior to the election, the Republican Program Committee commissioned Howard University political scientist Ralph Bunche to write a report detailing how the GOP could regain black voters. Bunche argued that while the New Deal “has fallen far short of meeting adequately the minimal needs of the Negro,” Republicans must formulate their own “constructive program for the economic and political betterment” of African Americans. Largely ignoring Bunche’s suggestion on economic policy, black Republicans continued to argue that African Americans wanted, first and foremost, the eradication of legalized discrimination. Appearing before the Committee on Resolutions at the 1940 Republican National Convention, Robert Church was quiet on economic issues, but demanded that the party make efforts to eliminate black disfranchisement in the South and enact legislation banning segregation. Written by Francis Rivers, the “Negro plank” of the party platform was one of the strongest ever approved, pledging Republican support to end “discrimination in the civil service, the army, navy, and all other branches of the Government.” On the subject of economics, however, the plank was less specific, simply claiming that African Americans “shall be given a square deal in the economic and political life of this nation.”⁴¹

      As they had in 1936, black Republicans played an active role in the campaign. Rivers oversaw the production of literature that promised an end to segregation in the armed forces and other branches of the federal government. Boxing legend Joe Louis toured the country on the party’s behalf, and Robert Vann returned to GOP ranks, citing Willkie’s forthright stance and Roosevelt’s cowardice on civil rights. He joined Claude Barnett, director of the Associated Negro Press, and Chester Franklin, editor of The Call (Kansas City), as key members of the Non-Partisan Negro Citizens Committee for Willkie. Popular among the black publishing elite, Willkie earned the endorsement of some of the country’s leading black newspapers by the end of the campaign, including Vann’s Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, New York Age, Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Gazette.⁴²

      Despite these efforts, the election results were disappointing. Though Willkie increased the Republican majority among members of the black middle class, he made little headway among those who relied on New Deal programs. He did significantly better than Landon, winning, by some estimates, 40 to 50 percent of the total black vote, but the persistence of “Roosevelt Republicans” remained in the election outcomes. According to surveys conducted after the election, though Roosevelt won the majority of black votes, only 42 percent of African Americans who voted for him were registered Democrats. Indeed, depending on the geographic region, 50 to 80 percent of black professionals remained registered Republicans. Ralph Bunche remarked on this phenomenon in 1941, writing that while “the underprivileged Negro gives enthusiastic support to the Democratic party,” among the middle class “it is still fashionable to be a Republican.”⁴³

      In 1944, Robert Church founded the Republican American Committee (RAC) to lobby for fair employment and other civil rights measures. Five years earlier, the Democratic machine of Memphis seized his mansion, allegedly for failure to pay taxes, and burned it to the ground as part of a fire department “exercise.” Undeterred by intimidation, Church moved to Chicago and Washington, D.C., where he intensified his advocacy for civil rights. The RAC’s first meeting in February 1944 drew two hundred black Republicans from across the country to Chicago. They named Church president, and elected Grace Evans, Edward Jourdain, Charles W. Anderson, and Lawrence O. Payne as vice presidents. All were representative of the party’s more militant black leaders who identified with the Eastern Establishment. The organization issued a “Declaration by Negro Republican Workers” that condemned “the unholy and vicious alliance” between conservative Republicans and southern Democrats, “whose avowed objectives are to defeat progressive legislation and maintain ‘so-called white supremacy.’” They urged their party to abolish discrimination in the armed forces, pass fair employment legislation, and end discrimination in federal housing aid.⁴⁴

      The Platform Committee of the 1944 Republican National Convention was sensitive to Church’s demands. Representing the RAC, he appeared before the committee to emphasize the growing independence and importance of African Americans as one of the nation’s largest swing votes, and stressed that the party had never won a presidential election without their support. The party’s final platform offered an explicit pledge to support legislation for a national Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to enforce a federal ban on racial discrimination in employment. It also called for an end to segregation in the armed forces, and promised to pursue an amendment that would outlaw the poll tax. The RAC endorsed the platform, and NAACP head Walter White praised its FEPC plank as “unequivocal and excellent.” The Democrats’ civil rights plank, dismissed by White as a “splinter,” was silent on fair employment and other major issues. The platform initially seemed to confirm the RAC’s argument that civil rights could best be secured by working within the Republican Party.⁴⁵

      New York governor Thomas Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee, continued in this positive direction during the campaign. Criticizing the New Deal as corrupt and inefficient, Dewey offered a Republican alternative for the poor, supporting a moderate economic agenda that included unemployment insurance, disability pay, and increased funding of education. On issues of civil rights, he supported fair employment legislation and the eradication of discrimination within the federal government. He also had a proven track record with black voters, winning Harlem in 1942. By the fall of 1944, he had secured a number of major black endorsements, including one from the National Negro Council, whose director, Edgar G. Brown, declared that “the Governor’s forceful and fearless public career has impressed the Negro deeply and has restored his long and earlier confidence in the Republican party.”⁴⁶

      Throughout the fall of 1944, predictions of renewed African American support for the GOP filled national newspapers and magazines. The New Republic warned, “The Democratic Party is threatened with the loss of large segments of the important Negro vote,” and Harper’s claimed, “the Negro vote … is shifting back into the Republican column.” The NAACP emphasized the independence of African Americans, declaring that their vote “no longer belongs to any one political party.” Like Willkie, Dewey earned endorsements from major black newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore Afro-American, and New York Amsterdam News. Despite the governor’s appeal, however, the GOP received its fourth straight loss to President Roosevelt on election day. Though Dewey connected with the black middle class’s aspirations for civil rights reform, and won roughly 40 percent of the entire black vote, the draw of the New Deal, and the incumbent, again plagued his party among the working class.⁴⁷

      The Republican American Committee continued to lobby party leaders following Dewey’s loss. In January 1945, Church demanded a greater role for African Americans in the RNC, and chairman Herbert Brownell (a member of Dewey’s inner circle) responded by replacing the aged Colored Voters Division with a new Minorities Division. Inspired by Dewey’s successful black outreach in New York, the division was headed by Valores (“Val”) Washington, the СКАЧАТЬ