:Lincoln's Lost Legacy: The Republican Party and the African American Vote, 1928–1952

Abstract

Simon Topping has written an interesting and scholarly book on a topic that has been largely neglected by historians. His subject is Republican Party strategy—or lack of strategy—toward the African American electorate between the years of 1928 and 1952. It is not, therefore, a detailed analysis of how African Americans voted, but rather a broad-ranging account of party history. Furthermore, in his words, it deals “unapologetically” with just the national level of politics (p. 6). Although there is much in Topping's analysis with which to agree, there is also one important respect in which his “national” approach leads him to ignore the equivalent of a large (but Democratic) elephant sitting in the middle of the room he is trying to describe. Contrary to the author's underlying assumption, it can be argued that in the two decades after 1934 the Republicans had little to gain from trying to attract African American voters from the Democratic Party by changing their national policy agenda.