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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2021
This essay examines the debate within the community of Black intellectuals and politicians about whether or not to abandon the Republican Party in 1916, and discusses both major parties’ attempts to cultivate Black voters. The objective of this article is to analyze 1916 through the lens of the rise of Black political independence and to elucidate the strains of thought that pushed an increasing number of Black thinkers—and, later, everyday Black voters—to operate outside of the political framework of the Republican Party. Though the momentous shift in the Black vote had not yet fully materialized, 1916 saw a pivotal and significant crystallization of discontent with the GOP that pushed Black voters to search for alternatives, including the radical option of a “Negro Party.” Ultimately, this new sense of political opportunity helped create the atmosphere that allowed Black voters to shift to the Democratic Party from 1928 to 1936.
1 Bois, W.E.B. Du, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 119 Google Scholar.
2 Van Deusen, John G., “The Negro in Politics,” The Journal of Negro History 21 (July 1936): 271Google Scholar; Arthur S. Link, “The Negro as a Factor in the Campaign of 1912,” The Journal of Negro History 32 (Jan. 1947): 81–99.
3 Kathleen L. Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson and Federal Segregation,” The Journal of Negro History 44 (Apr. 1959): 158–63; Kathleen L. Wolgemuth, “Woodrow Wilson’s Appointment Policy and the Negro,” The Journal of Southern History 24 (Nov. 1958): 457–69; Nancy J. Weiss, “The Negro and the New Freedom: Fighting Wilsonian Segregation,” Political Science Quarterly 84 (Mar. 1969): 71–76.
4 Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 6, 55–85; Omar H. Ali, In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), 74–100; Helen G. Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894–1901 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951), 34–66.
5 Tatum, Elbert Lee, The Changed Political Thought of the Negro (New York: Exposition Press, 1951), 85Google Scholar.
6 Keyssar, Alexander, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 114 Google Scholar; Casdorph, Paul D., Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 1912–1916 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), 11–12 Google Scholar; Frantz, Joe B., Texas: A History (New York: Norton, 1976), 200–201 Google Scholar.
7 Monroe N. Work, ed., Negro Year Book: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro 1916–1917 (Tuskegee, AL, 1916), 37; see Boris Heersink and Jeffery A. Jenkins, “Southern Delegates and Republican National Convention Politics, 1880–1928,” Studies in American Political Development 29 (Apr. 2015): 68–88; see also Boris Heersink and Jeffery A. Jenkins, “Black-and-Tans vs. Lily-Whites: Race and Republican Party Organization in the South after Reconstruction, 1868–1952” (paper presented at Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 1–4, 2016).
8 Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 181; Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, “False Friends and Avowed Enemies: Southern African Americans and Party Allegiances in the 1920s,” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, eds. Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 223; John H. Haley, Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 186–87.
9 Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 186.
10 Todd E. Lewis, “‘Caesars Are Too Many’: Harmon Liveright Remmel and the Republican Party of Arkansas, 1913–1927,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 56 (Spring 1997): 14; Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 188.
11 Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 193–96.
12 Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 195–200. Casdorph refers to the delegate as “W.I. Saunders”; a look at a list of delegates created by the presidential campaign for Senator John Weeks of Massachusetts shows that his name was W.L. Saunders. Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 199–200; “Delegates to the Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois” (list of delegates, Chicago, IL, 1916), 2.
13 “Republican Party Platform of 1908,” The American Presidency Project (accessed June 1, 2018), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29632; “Republican Party Platform of 1912,” The American Presidency Project (accessed June 1, 2018). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29633; “Republican Party Platform of 1916,” The American Presidency Project (accessed June 1, 2018), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29634.
14 Ralph Tyler to George Myers, June 13, 1916, George Myers Collection (hereafter Myers Papers), http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/html/mss/myers.php; Tyler to Myers, June 16, 1916, Myers Papers.
15 Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 291; “Governor on the Bench: Charles Evans Hughes as Associate Justice,” Harvard Law Review 89 (Mar. 1976): 992; “The World Last Month,” The Crisis, Dec. 1916, 59. Ralph Tyler praised his ruling in the Guinn case: “His decision in the Oklahoma grandfather law case, which the Supreme Court handed down, but which he himself wrote, proves that he is a great nationalist with respect to constitutional rights.” Tyler to Myers, June 16, 1916, Myers Papers.
16 “Charles E. Hughes on the Lynch Law,” Cleveland Advocate, Oct. 28, 1916; Charles Evans Hughes, Addresses of Charles Evans Hughes, 1906–1916 (New York, 1916), 293–98; Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, 110–11; Charles Evans Hughes, The Autobiographical Notes of Charles Evans Hughes, eds. David Danielski and Joseph Tulchin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 112–13; “The Last Month,” The Crisis, 59.
17 “Mr. Hughes,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 12; J. Leonard Bates and Vanette M. Schwartz, “Golden Special Campaign Train: Republican Women Campaign for Charles Evans Hughes for President in 1916,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 38 (Summer 1987): 26–35; “Ex-Gov. Myron T. Herrick Lauds Race in an Eloquent Address at St. John’s Church,” Cleveland Advocate, July 8, 1916; Myron Herrick to George Myers, Feb. 29, 1916, Myers Papers; Myron Herrick to George Myers, Mar. 7, 1916, Myers Papers; Myron Herrick to George Myers, Aug. 1, 1916, Myers Papers. On Myers, see Felix James, “The Civic and Political Activities of George A. Myers,” The Journal of Negro History 58 (Apr. 1973): 166–78; Quincy T. Mills, Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 90–98. For a discussion of Freeman’s civil rights activism on the campaign trail, see “1916: Hughes Women’s Campaign Train,” Elizabeth Freeman Collection (accessed June 3, 2018), http://www.elizabethfreeman.org/hughes.php. Freeman’s work documenting the “Waco Horror” was instrumental in launching the NAACP’s national anti-lynching campaign. Patricia Bernstein, The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the N.A.A.C.P. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005). The NAACP would later credit this same campaign with decreasing the number of lynchings “from 60 a year to 16 in 1924.” As part of this campaign, the group held a a National Anti-Lynching Conference in 1919, at which Hughes, temporarily removed from the political arena, spoke. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “Why Have Lynchings Decreased From 60 a Year to 16 in 1924?,” Advertisement, Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro, Mar. 1925, 704.
18 Jennie Gonner to Mary Church Terrell, Oct. 30, 1916, Mary Church Terrell Papers (hereafter MCT Papers), https://www.loc.gov/collections/mary-church-terrell-papers/; “Charles E. Hughes Day,” Kansas City Sun, 4 Nov. 1916; “The Horizon,” The Crisis, Oct. 1916, 298. There is no mention of Wells-Barnett in any announcements of campaign committees;
19 “Hughes Big American,” Denver Star, Sept. 2, 1916.
20 “Hughes and Wilson.” Evidence that the speech was delivered to a Black audience comes in the form of two photographs printed in the November issue of the Crisis. “Mr. Hughes Addresses Colored Nashville,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 34.
21 “Willcox Names an Advisory Committee,” New York Age, Oct. 5, 1916; Roger Biles, “Robert R. Church, Jr. of Memphis: Black Republican Leader in the Age of Democratic Ascendancy, 1928–1940,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 42 (Winter 1983): 362–82; “C.W. Anderson Confirmed,” New York Times, Mar. 15, 1905; Eric Ledell Smith, “‘Asking for Justice and Fair Play’: African American State Legislators and Civil Rights in Early Twentieth-Century Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 63 (Spring 1996): 146, 169–203; J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, 1844–1944 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 195–96; Evan J. Albright, “Three Lives of an African American Pioneer: William Henry Lewis (1868–1949),” Massachusetts Historical Review 13 (2011): 127–63; William Wayne Giffin, African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915–1930 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005), 198; “Fred R. Moore,” The Journal of Negro History 28 (Apr. 1943): 259–60; “Lewis Sent to Ohio in Interest of Hughes,” New York Age, Oct. 26, 1916; Geoffrey P. Hinton, “Hon. W.H. Lewis Raps Wilson Acts,” Cleveland Advocate, Nov. 4, 1916; “‘Link’ Johnson Here in Hughes’ Interest,” Afro American Ledger, Oct. 28, 1916; Colored Advisory Committee of the Republican National Committee, “Address to the Colored Voters,” Advertisement, The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 4–8.
22 Johnson, James Weldon, “Hughes the Nominee” in The Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Volume I: The New York Age Editorials (1914–1923), ed. Wilson, Sondra Kathryn (New York: Oxford University Press 1995): 193;Google Scholar “Hughes and Wilson,” New York Age, Oct. 19, 1916; Illustration, New York Age, Oct. 19, 1916.
23 James Weldon Johnson, “The Unavoidable Issue,” New York Age, Oct. 27, 1916; “Vote to Defeat Woodrow Wilson,” Cleveland Advocate, Oct. 28, 1916; “Two Views on Education,” Denver Star, Nov. 4, 1916. An analysis of the Cleveland Advocate shows that it shifted its focus from pro-Republican coverage in June, July, August, and September to anti-Wilson coverage in October and November. Likewise, the Age, which had initially praised Hughes, focused almost exclusively on Wilson’s faults as the campaign drew to a close, even running a cartoon in its final pre-election issue depicting Wilson as a quarterback kicking a Black man walking on the “Path of Progress” in the neck. On Wilson’s relations with Vardaman, Tillman, and others, see Morton Sosna, “The South in the Saddle: Racial Politics during the Wilson Years,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 54 (Autumn 1970): 30–49. In 1913, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote an open letter to Wilson in The Crisis declaring, “It is no exaggeration to say … that every man who dreams of making the Negro race a group of menials and pariahs is alert and hopeful. Vardaman, Tillman, Hoke Smith, Cole Blease and [Albert] Burleson are evidently assuming that their theory of the place and destiny of the Negro race is the theory of your administration.” W.E.B. Du Bois, “My Impressions of Woodrow Wilson,” The Journal of Negro History 54 (Oct. 1973): 453–59. Particularly strong evidence of extended cooperation between Black newspapers and the CAC comes from article repetition. In the October 20 issue of the McDowell Times of West Virginia and the November 4 issue of the Indianapolis Recorder appeared identical boxes comparing positive quotes from Hughes, Taft, and others with highly negative quotes from Tillman, Hoke Smith, and others. “The Negro Under Wilson,” McDowell Times, Oct. 20, 1916; “Hughes or Wilson,” The Indianapolis Recorder, Nov. 4, 1916. Some papers alluded to cooperation. One article praises the Colored Advisory Committee’s “effective publicity methods.” The same article prints figures on Black officeholders under Taft and says that the figures “have been given out” by the CAC. “Colored Office-Holders Turned Out; Places Filled by White Democrats,” New York Age, Oct. 26, 1916. Cooperation is also suggested by the shared focus in some articles on Tillman and other Southern leaders, rather than on Wilson. It would not at all be unusual for a campaign committee to send articles to newspapers in 1916. See Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 164–65.
24 “Words of Warning to Negro Voters,” Kansas City Star, Nov. 4, 1916; “Safety First. Vote the Straight Republican Ticket,” St. Louis Argus, Oct. 27 1916; “Big Republican Rally Oct. 30th,” The Indianapolis Recorder, Nov. 4, 1916.
25 “Reasons Why Hughes Should Be Elected,” The Indianapolis Recorder, Nov. 4, 1916; “Remember Dark Days Under Democratic Tariff Law Before European War Began?,” The Indianapolis Recorder, Oct. 18, 1916; “Changes Due to European War,” The Indianapolis Recorder, Oct. 18, 1916.
26 “Politics,” The Crisis, Dec. 1916, 85; “Negroes Repudiate President’s Critic,” The New York Times, Nov. 14, 1914.
27 “Hannibal National Negro Democrats,” The Afro American, Sept. 2, 1916; S.D. Lovell, The Presidential Election of 1916 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 158; Van Deusen, “The Negro,” 271; A List of Kansas Newspapers from the Newspaper Section of the State Historical Society (Topeka, KS, 1914), 31.
28 Gould, Lewis L., The First Modern Clash Over Federal Power: Wilson Versus Hughes in the Presidential Election of 1916 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016), 113 Google Scholar; Yellin, Eric S., Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 106–8Google Scholar; “R.S. Hudspeth Dies; Democratic Leader,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 1929; Link, Arthur S., Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 98 Google Scholar; “The Horizon,” The Crisis, Mar. 1924, 231.
29 “Colored Democrats Now Criticise Wilson,” New York Age, Sept. 14, 1916. On Ross, see Bruce L. Mouser, For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 116, 129, 191; see also Bruce L. Mouser, A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics: William Thomas Scott of Illinois, 1839–1917 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 101; “Colored Democrats Get on the Payroll,” New York Age, Sept. 14, 1916; “Hughes Victory Seems Apparent,” The Afro American, Sept. 16, 1916. For an account of Patterson’s nomination and dismissal, see “The President and the Negro,” The Nation, Aug. 7, 1913, 114. Compared to Patterson, Swann is relatively unknown. He is mentioned as the Secretary of the Illinois State Commission in a peculiar article in an Illinois Black weekly. “Julius F. Taylor Does Not Entertain Any Personal Ill Feeling, Nor the Slightest Particle of Malice Against Governor Edward F. Dunne, as Has Been Stated by the Hon. Thomas Wallace Swann, Secretary of the Illinois State Commission,” The Broad Ax, May 15, 1915. Rufus Perry, Jr., deserves special attention as a highly unusual figure. One of the first Black law graduates of New York University, Perry was class orator and proficient enough in Latin to give his examination papers for the Bar in that tongue. He became a prominent attorney and lay historian, and served on the board of directors for Hubert Harrison’s Voice. Perry also married a Jewish immigrant, Lillian Buchacher, and converted to Judaism. In 1917, he was disbarred for forging his father’s signature on a deed—a punishment seen by some as retaliation for his political activities. Smith, Jr., Emancipation, 38, 440; Jeffrey B. Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883–1918 (New York, 2011), 362; Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 79.
30 Editorial (untitled), Wisconsin Weekly Blade, Oct. 26, 1916; Editorial (untitled), Tulsa Weekly Star, Sept. 30, 1916; “Hughes Dodges Issue on Eight Hour Law,” Tulsa Weekly Star, Sept. 30, 1916; “Democratic Promises to Farmers Fulfilled,” Tulsa Weekly Star, Sept. 30, 1916.
31 Elliot M. Rudwick, “East St. Louis and the ‘Colonization Conspiracy’ of 1916,” The Journal of Negro Education 33 (Winter 1964): 35–42.
32 Link, Wilson: Campaigns, 98.
33 Tyler to Myers, June 13, 1916; Seraile, William, Bruce Grit: The Black Nationalist Writings of John Edward Bruce (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 91Google Scholar; “Hughes Victory Seems Apparent.”
34 “The Presidential Campaign,” The Crisis, Oct. 1916, 268; “Mr. Hughes,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 12; “Presidential Candidates,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 16–17.
35 “Mr. Hughes,” The Crisis, November 1916, 12.
36 Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 139 Google Scholar. In 1901, the Socialists approved a resolution offering Black workers an equal footing with white workers in the Party. Yet the resolution was never reaffirmed, despite an attempt in 1904, and future statements on civil rights were the subject of considerable debate. This silence had two causes. Firstly, the Party’s leaders believed in a policy of colorblindness; in the words of Eugene Debs, “the Socialist party is the party of the working class, regardless of color.… We have nothing special to offer the negro.” R. Laurence Moore, “Flawed Fraternity—American Socialist Response to the Negro, 1901–1912,” The Historian 32 (Nov. 1969): 3. Secondly, the Socialist Party’s leadership was not immune to white supremacism. Wisconsin Representative Victor Berger was particularly vicious: “As a unionist he saw the Negro as unorganizable, as a Socialist he thought him irrelevant, and as a German he believed the Negro, and indeed all others, to be inferior.” Sally M. Miller, “The Socialist Party and the Negro, 1901–20,” The Journal of Negro History 56 (July 1971): 222. For a discussion of race and the Socialist Party, see Sally M. Miller, “For White Men Only: The Socialist Party of America and Issues of Gender, Ethnicity and Race,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2 (July 2003): 283–302. For a discussion of the risks involved in supporting the Socialists in 1916, see Mark Van Wienen, American Socialist Triptych: The Literary-Political Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, and W. E. B. Du Bois (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 142.
37 “Willie” to Mary Church Terrell, June 19, 1916, MCT papers. See also Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 75; Melanie Gustaf, Women and the Republican Party, 1854–1924 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 161.
38 See Riser, R. Volney, Defying Disenfranchisement: Black Voting Rights Activism in the Jim Crow South, 1890–1908 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
39 Alexander, Shawn Leigh, introduction to T. Thomas Fortune: the Afro-American Agitator, ed. Alexander, Shawn Leigh (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xxi–xxii; Fortune, Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South (New York, 1884), 125.
40 Fortune, Black and White, 116–17, 129–30; T. Thomas Fortune, “Negrowump” in T. Thomas Fortune: the Afro-American Agitator, 74–82; Emma Lou Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune: Militant Journalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 59.
41 Greenidge, Kerri K., Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (New York: Liveright, 2019)Google Scholar, xx, 119–143, 161.
42 Harrison, “A Negro for President” in A Hubert Harrison Reader, ed. Jeffrey B. Perry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 147–49; Perry, Hubert Harrison, 269. Du Bois, as this article makes clear, was anything but a Wilson supporter in 1916. A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen, then only at the beginning of their careers, were supporting Socialist nominee Allan Benson for president but temporarily desisting from full association with the Socialist Party. “We are not Socialists. We are not anything,” Randolph said. Andrew E. Kersten and Clarence Lang, eds., Reframing Randolph: Labor, Black Freedom, and the Legacies of A. Philip Randolph (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 53.
43 Perry, Hubert Harrison, 269; Thornbrough, T. Thomas Fortune, 346–47.
44 Roger Biles, “Robert R. Church, Jr., of Memphis: Black Republican Leader in the Age of Democratic Ascendancy, 1928–1940,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 42:4 (1983): 362; Elizabeth Gritter, River of Hope: Black Politics and the Memphis Freedom Movement, 1865–1954 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), 44, 48–49.
45 Gritter, River of Hope, 42, 44; Fortune, Black and White, 241; Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, eds., Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: An African American Anthology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 143.
46 Gilmore, “False Friends,” 223–24.
47 Gilmore, “False Friends,” 223; “Vote for Colored Ticket,” The Union Herald, Mar. 29, 1919.
48 Seraile, Bruce Grit, 91.
49 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Amenia Conference,” in Series 7, Pamphlets and Leaflets, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Eben Miller, “Amenia Conference, 1916” in Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A–J (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2004), 11–12.
50 W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, 122; Linda J. Lumsden, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 59; “The Negro Party,” The Crisis, Oct. 1916, 268–69.
51 “Politics,” The Crisis, Dec. 1916, 85; “Approval,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 9; “Amenia Conference Album, ca. 1916,” in Series 1A, General Correspondence, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Bruce A. Glasrud, “Beginning the Trek: Douglass, Bruce, Black Conventions, Independent Political Parties,” African Americans and the Presidency: The Road to the White House, eds. Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz (New York: Routledge, 2010), 24.
52 “The Horizon,” The Crisis, Nov. 1916, 35; Todd E. Lewis, “‘Caesars Are Too Many’: Harmon Liveright Remmel and the Republican Party of Arkansas, 1913–1927,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 56 (Spring 1997):14.
53 Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), 295.
54 Of course, county-by-county data is less reliable than ward-by-ward data; however, ward redistricting in several cities in the years before 1916, and relatively poor electoral record keeping at the municipal level, makes ward-by-ward comparisons impossible. Thus, looking at all significantly Black counties in the North is preferable.
55 There is no data on how whites specifically voted, and of course such information would vary widely from area to area, as it would among Blacks. Thus any statistical analyses will be crude, highly assumptive, and thus not useful for concrete conclusions. However, it is useful for illustrative effect. For the purposes of this brief analysis, I will make two assumptions that are unlikely to be accurate—first, that the distribution of a state’s vote roughly matches the distribution of the state’s non-Black vote, and second that the electorate’s demographics roughly match those of the population (so, if a county is 50 percent Black, its electorate is roughly 50 percent Black). Statewide in Maryland, Wilson did 4.21 points better than Bryan in 1908 (52.80 percent to Bryan’s 48.59 percent); in Illinois, he outdid Bryan by a similar 4.32 points (43.34 percent to Bryan’s 39.02 percent). Applying this to Charles County, Maryland (non-Black population of 47.7 percent) this would suggest that the white shift toward Wilson accounted for a shift of 2.01 points toward Wilson, less than a fourth of the overall shift. In Calvert County, Maryland (non-Black population of 51.1 percent), the white shift would mean a 2.1- point increase overall, also less than a fourth of the overall shift. In the substantially whiter Pulaski County, Illinois, the improvement in Democratic performance among whites would mean a more significant 2.69, almost three-quarters of the overall shift.
56 Du Bois, “Politics,” 85.
57 Elbert Lee Tatum, “The Changed Political Thoughts of Negroes of the United States 1915–1940,” The Journal of Negro Education 16 (Autumn 1947): 527.
58 T. Thomas Fortune: the Afro-American Agitator, 31, 41; “The Negro Party,” The Crisis, Oct. 1916, 268–69; Editorial (untitled), The Tulsa Weekly Star, Nov. 11, 1916.
59 John L. Blair, “A Time for Parting: The Negro during the Coolidge Years,” Journal of American Studies 3:2 (1969): 189–97.
60 Santis, Vincent de, “Republican Efforts to ‘Crack’ the Democratic South,” The Review of Politics 14:2 (Apr, 1952): 261–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Samuel O’Dell, “Blacks, the Democratic Party, and the Presidential Election of 1928: A Mild Rejoinder,” Phylon 48:1 (1987): 3; Blair, “A Time for Parting,” 196; George F. Garcia, “Black Disaffection from the Republican Party During the Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 1928–1932,” The Annals of Iowa 45 (1980): 463–64.
61 Perry, Hubert Harrison, 311–12.
62 Rita W. Gordon, “The Change in the Political Alignment of Chicago’s Negroes During the New Deal,” The Journal of American History 56:3 (Dec. 1969): 584; Editorial (untitled), The Tulsa Weekly Star, Sept. 30, 1916. John Hope Franklin expresses the Hoover-centric view of disaffection from the Republican Party: “The real disaffection of Negroes in the Party of Lincoln began in 1928 when Republicans attempted to resurrect a strong party in the South under white leadership.” John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Vintage, 1969), 524.