Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. Joshua D. Farrington
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Even after the Right had assumed control of the Republican infrastructure by 1964, moderates and liberals remained an important voice in party affairs for more than a decade afterward. Although conservatives undeniably played a significant role in the Republican Party of the 1960s and 1970s, there existed an unresolved intraparty “political and ideological tug-of-war,” where powerful liberals and moderates like Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Scott, and John Sherman Cooper maintained a sizeable base—in which African Americans were a key constituency—and refused to concede to the conservative groundswell.14 And though conservatives undeniably emerged as the dominant force within the party, their triumph was far from inevitable.15 It was in this ideological contest for the future of the GOP that black Republicans in the civil rights era operated and maneuvered in their quest to form a feasible alternative to the Democratic Party.
Though important figures within the civil rights movement, most black Republicans possessed a distinctly middle- and upper-class brand of politics. In contrast to the New Deal-inflected activism of other African Americans, black Republicans were not drawn to the labor and welfare oriented policies that were bread and butter to the Democratic base. Though a number of black Republican leaders did not oppose collective bargaining, there was never a strong tie between them and the labor movement, which was one of the strongest forces in the Democratic coalition. While this lack of ties to organized labor provided black Republicans more leeway to address union discrimination, the organizational and grassroots edge that unions, in their ability to reach millions of black voters, gave to Democrats was a perpetual obstacle for Republicans by the 1930s.
Secure in their own economic status, black Republicans also did not seek government welfare relief, nor view it as essential to the uplift of their communities. Rather, their conception of civil rights was dominated by a desire to promote economic advancement through black businesses and equal employment opportunities, and to achieve sociopolitical equality by ending de jure segregation. Thus, while they often diverged from black Democrats on economic policy, black Republicans converged with the black mainstream on pivotal civil rights issues, including fair employment, fair housing, equality in the voting booth, and the complete dismantling of Jim Crow. Their vision for black advancement was not just distinct from that of many black Democrats, whose political impulses also lent support for Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, but was also a vision much closer to the actual achievements of the civil rights movement. Prior to the passage of the major federal civil rights legislation of the 1960s, the differences between black Republicans and Democrats were masked by their shared desire to rid the nation of the scourge of legalized discrimination. By 1968, however, as the civil rights movement shifted to issues of economic inequality, the stark class-based ideological differences between black Republicans and Democrats were manifest in their conflicting views of economic progress.
William T. Coleman, Jr., typifies midcentury black Republican activism and ideology. An integral member of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (where he would later serve as president), Coleman helped dismantle Jim Crow through his work on Brown v. Board of Education and other major civil rights cases. His objective was the eradication of “state-sanctioned racial discrimination,” and the creation of “a fully integrated society.” Once the legal impediments against African Americans were torn down, they could then “apply their God-given talents to reach their potential.” While this goal was shared by many black leaders, Coleman departed from his contemporaries in criticizing “well-intended but ill-conceived” government welfare programs. He condemned Democrats for creating “a huge government-dependent constituency,” believing that the Democrats’ New Deal and War on Poverty amplified “dependence on the federal largess, deterring minorities from competing in the economic mainstream.” Instead, Coleman advocated policies such as affirmative action and skills training that would lead to independence and self-sufficiency. It was not until the legal barriers of Jim Crow were torn down in the 1960s, however, that Coleman’s economic ideas came to the fore.16 Though his positions on welfare differed from those of many African Americans, Coleman was a major actor in the legal dismantling of Jim Crow in the 1940s through 1960s, and one of the GOP’s loudest proponents of affirmative action from the 1970s onward. Like other black Republicans, Coleman was not a marginal figure, or an anomaly, in the African American freedom struggle.
Written chronologically, this book explores how black Republicans navigated the shifting currents of GOP politics from the 1930s through the 1970s. It begins with the historic relationship between African Americans and the Republican Party, and explores the continued presence of African Americans inside the party during the New Deal era. Drawn largely from the ranks of the black middle and upper classes, black Republicans were not attracted to the government relief provided by the Roosevelt administration, but instead intensified their protests for civil rights. Far from being an aberration in black communities during the 1930s and 1940s, black Republicans remained deeply entrenched in the political landscape. They led southern Black-and-Tan Republican organizations, ran competitive campaigns in municipal and state elections in the North, and agitated for fair employment, military desegregation, and civil rights legislation.
With the return of the party to the presidency under Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, black Republicans were the beneficiaries of high-ranking federal appointments and influential positions within the party, which remained a viable political alternative for many African Americans. From these relative positions of power, black Republicans continued to advocate their civil rights agenda. Despite their vocal criticisms of the administration, many black Republicans in the late 1950s remained loyal to the party they believed could surpass the Democrats in advancing the cause of racial equality. The political victories of Nelson Rockefeller and other liberals sustained this hope.
The 1960 election proved to be a decisive turning point in the GOP’s relationship with black voters. As Richard Nixon’s campaign unfolded, he reached out to both African Americans and racially conservative southerners. Black Republicans, like most African Americans, criticized this paradoxical strategy, and warned against an alliance with the burgeoning conservative movement. Following Nixon’s defeat, Barry Goldwater and fellow conservatives launched a revolution inside the GOP and assumed control of much of the party’s infrastructure. Though many black Republicans deserted the party during this period, those who remained persisted in an increasingly uphill battle to encourage the party to embrace civil rights and make sincere efforts to court black voters. As participants in the civil rights movement, black Republicans also continued to fight for black equality as community leaders and politicians. Like other Republican liberals, they found success in state and local elections in places like Pennsylvania, New York, and Kentucky, but found themselves on the outside of the national party’s leadership. As the GOP moved toward the right, black Republicans shifted their focus from recruiting African Americans to preventing their party from being taken over by conservatives who were antagonistic to their vision of civil rights.
After Goldwater’s crushing defeat, conservatives, liberals, and moderates contested the future direction of their disoriented party. Like other factions, black Republicans sought to exploit this state of instability, and launched an organized and aggressive effort to defeat the party’s expanding conservatism. Additionally, as liberal and moderate Republicans remained active inside their party, politicians like Winthrop Rockefeller and George Romney continued to offer African Americans hope for the party’s future.
As the civil rights movement achieved its major legislative victories by the late 1960s, it turned to economic and structural issues left unchanged by the dismantling of Jim Crow. It was in these areas where black Republicans diverged from other civil rights leaders, but found allies among young black nationalists drawn to their ideas of self-help and self-determination. As President Nixon sought to court these black nationalists in place of traditional civil rights leaders, a new generation of black Republicans were drawn to the GOP. Floyd McKissick of CORE and others found an ally in the president, who offered black nationalists a “piece of the action” through his black capitalism initiatives. The Nixon era was both an exciting and trying time for black Republicans. Black businessmen enjoyed massive federal support, but many longstanding black Republicans who had previously allied with the Eastern Establishment found themselves outside Nixon’s circle, unable to stop the administration from approaching civil rights with “benign neglect.” Just