Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP. Joshua D. Farrington
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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 former general manager of the Chicago Defender, who caught Brownell’s eye after publishing a 1944 booklet touting the civil rights records of liberal Republican governors. During an August meeting in New York, the RAC issued another “Declaration to the Republican Party,” demanding that the GOP’s congressmen fulfill the FEPC pledge they made in their 1944 platform. Over the next two years, RAC members continued to promote the declaration to the national committee and Republican politicians as part of an intense lobbying campaign for federal and state FEPC legislation.48
By the mid-1940s, the passage of a federal fair employment law had become one of the primary objectives of black Republicans and the broader civil rights leadership. In addition to leading the RAC, Church partnered with A. Philip Randolph to form the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee. Despite their differences on economic policy, Randolph recognized that Church “was a persona grata in the offices of Republican leaders of place and power … there was no other person of color in the country who could reach as many outstanding Republican spokesmen of power as he could.” Working closely with NAACP lobbyist Clarence Mitchell, Jr., Church canvassed the halls of Congress, sometimes waiting up to five hours in politicians’ offices. He touted fair employment as a potential Republican alternative to the New Deal, one that would open jobs to African Americans in places where they were previously barred and help them get off government relief and instead earn for themselves. In private letters to Republican leaders, Church argued, “FEPC is bread and butter, rent and fuel and clothing for millions of colored voters.” Though Church’s argument swayed some congressional Republicans to support an FEPC law, it failed to convince Ohio Senator Robert Taft to place fair employment above the “rights” of businesses. And as the leader of midwestern and conservative Republicans, Taft’s opposition ensured the failure of any FEPC legislation in Congress through the decade.49
Though unsuccessful in Washington, D.C., black Republicans saw a groundswell of fair employment legislation on the state level. Nearly all of the eleven states that passed FEPC laws between 1945 and 1951 were controlled by Republican governors or Republican legislatures. Eight of the eleven victories were pushed through by both a Republican governor and legislature in states from New England to the Pacific Northwest. Republicans also sponsored municipal fair employment ordinances, such as Cleveland’s extensive 1950 law that covered both public and private-sector jobs. Most of the FEPC measures passed during this period were modeled after New York’s Ives-Quinn bill. Signed into law by Governor Dewey on March 12, 1945, the bill was promoted by powerful