The Democratic Party and the Negro

Lawrence Grossman. The Democratic Party and the Negro: Northern and National Politics, 1868-1892. University of Illinois Press, 1976.

The years between the end of the Johnson Administration and the second election of Grover Cleveland was a time of experimentation and attempted realignment by African-Americans within the two party electoral system. The Republican Party began the era with the solid support of the Black electorate, while the Democratic Party was largely defined by the unabashed white supremacy of the southern wing. However, important shifts in policy and regional party affiliations. For awhile, some Black political leaders were able to advocate a more independent stance by African-American voters as a significant minority--largely in north--were willing to consider switching parties to the Democratic column.

This was possible in the wake of the "new departure", a Democratic policy of explicit acceptance of the new constitutional order imposed by Reconstruction, backed by the implicit understanding that a staunch commitment to state's rights meant that enforcement of formal legal protections could be quietly dropped. Yet, as cynical as this policy was (and ultimately successful), for much of the period covered by this book it allowed for both African-American voters to rethink political alliances, and for Northern Democrats to opt to reject, and sometimes even overtly challenge, racist political rhetoric and policies.

While never more than a minority movement in the North, and proportionately even less important in the South, black political leaders found that they had real leverage within the northern Democracy, possibly peaking during the first Cleveland administration.

However, the corollary of the "new departure"--that northern Democrats would prioritize state's rights over civil rights--eventually triumphed. The political strength that African-Americans had seemingly discovered proved largely ephemeral; the end result of splitting the black vote allowed racists within the Democratic Party to reassert their hegemony over northern Democrats as fading Republican commitment to civil rights acceded to the developing social Darwinist ideology of racial hierarchy, as well as as a bipartisan agreement to leave Southern race relations in the hands of state authorities.