Party Alliance

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Most Blacks clung to the hope of political participation as a solution to racial discrimination and a route to equal social and economic opportunity. They continued to support the Republican party, the party of Lincoln, until the New Deal. While the Republican Party was wishy-washy at best to the issues of the Black community, there was essentially no other party to vote for. While the Populist Party in 1892 tried to solicit the Black vote, but their efforts failed.

Some Republicans continued to believe that the party had something to gain from the large Black population, especially in the South. But, the party did little concrete to insure the vote. In every presidential election of the late nineteenth century, the GOP platform supported righting the wrongs of the Black community in the South and supported ending the oppression of Blacks. But, just

as Fremont a quarter of a century before, the platform was more rhetoric than substance There were some Negro jobs available for appointments, but that was the limit.

In 1890, the House of Representatives passed its last serious effort to protect voting rights until the mid-1960s. The Lodge Federal Election Bill was rejected in the Senate by Republicans in a compromise with the Democratic Party.

It seems the Black community that eagerly rushed to vote during Reconstruction afterwards developed a habit of complacency toward voting that lasted for decades (we'll discuss that a little in the next section). One of the outspoken leaders of the time, Booker T. Washington believed that political rights for Blacks could be put on the back burner until such time as the community had amassed wealth and gained the respect of the White community, It should be noted though that while he espoused a posture that encouraged Blacks to wait for political power, he wielded a lot of it.

It is almost ironic Washington took that posture and his political in�uence was signi�cant. Considered THE spokesman for the Black community, Washington was invited to dine at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. He was point man for the community. If you wanted a federal appointment, you �rst had to get his stamp of approval. Working with Roosevelt s successor, William Howard Taft, he was instrumental in the appointment of William H. Lewis in 1911 as Assistant Attorney General, the highest of�ce held by a Black man to that date.

Now is fairness, Washington had a complex personality. While publicly espousing a philosophy of economics �rst, politics second, there were backroom efforts to prevent the disenfranchisement of Black men. As the controller of the purse strings for the community, he �nancially backed court cases that challenged provisions in Louisiana designed to strip the vote from Blacks, as well as cases in Maryland and Alabama. His position was that it was best to keep these types of activities secret in order to maintain the con�dence of White philanthropist, while behind- the-scenes, other Black leadership was aware.

Some resented Washington s duplicity. They pushed openly for the right to vote, believing that political power was necessary for economic and social advancement. This group saw Washington as a sale-out, who had exchanged their political rights for his own power and advancement. They saw political rights as a means to end Jim Crow and lynching. T. Thomas Fortune wrote in the Colored American Magazine in 1905 that "in a democracy, a citizen without a vote would have every other civil and political right denied him."

The Niagara Movement and subsequently the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ultimately led to the decline of Washington s stature. The NAACP was determined to gain Black civil and political rights through the courts and Congress.

Blacks had threatened on numerous occasions, to become independent voters and abandoning the two party system altogether, especially the Republican party. Fortune argued that Black voters were taken for granted. African- Americans got nothing but crumbs from party success. He stressed that the appointment Blacks received were of the lowest grade and for the most part of�ces, Whites did not want. He concluded his statement by stating Blacks had

the strength of a giant and use it as a child. W.E.B. DuBois added his support and stated No intelligent man should vote one way from habit. In 1912 he supported the Democratic candidate, and Southerner, Woodrow Wilson.

Berry, M. F. (1983). Long Memory: The Black Experience In America. New York: Oxford University Press.