The Change in the Political Alignment of Chicago's Negroes During the New Deal

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THE period from 1932 to 1940 saw a breakdown in the northern Negro's one-party alignment. Deserting the Republicans, the party of their liberators, Negroes entered for the first time the columns of their traditional enemies, the Democrats. Prior to the New Deal, Democratic administrations had neither sought nor won a majority of Negro votes; but by the end of the New Deal, northern Negroes were voting Democratic. This transfer of Negro voters represents as dramatic and sudden a change in political behavior as has ever occurred in American politics and poses a question about the role that the New Deal played in causing the shift. Historians continue to debate the question of whether the changes inaugurated by the New Deal represented a continuation of, or a break from, the reform movement of the Progressive era. The continuity-discontinuity frame of reference may be utilized to analyze the northern Negro's sudden move to the Democrats. Did Negroes break their traditional Republican ties because the New Deal offered a radical change from past policies toward the Negro-a discontinuity? Or might the Negro have switched his political affiliation even if the New Deal never occurred? On the eve of the New Deal, Negroes were firmly moored to the Republican party. The shift did not occur until the New Deal programs had been initiated, and the New Deal did institute changes which, in the short as well as the long run, profoundly affected the American Negro. But the New Dealers did not design their programs specifically to improve the Negro's status, and it would be incorrect to suggest that the New Deal altered the essentially subordinate role of the Negro in American life. Indeed, New Dealers did not even enact anti-lynching legislation. The failure of New Dealers, supposedly aware of the problems of the forgotten man, to take affirmative action in favor of the Negro indicates that the New Deal