From winning elections to influencing policy Book

Shows how and why Afro-Americans became committed to Rooseveltian democrats. Their new deal allegiance ended a long-standing loyalty to the Republican party of Lincoln. Democrats battled for anti-lynching and anti-poll tax legislation, especially Eleanor Roosevelt. Race became a touchy subject for FDR. He could not wholeheartedly endorse anti-lynching legislation because he needed southern senators to help pass new deal legislation. Again, ERs symbolic alliance with black political leaders made for good press, but did not transform FDRs policies. It was enough, however. The Black vote swung to democrats for the first time since reconstruction. By 1937, roughly 390,000 blacks worked on the Works Progress Administration, making up 20% of the WPAs employees. Blacks also benefited from new schooling and housing opportunities. In short, blacks shifted alliances for economic reasons. Importantly, this shift has remained permanent. Ironically, as Weiss points out, “the new deal paid only the most limited attention to blacks, and yet it was in response to the New Deal that blacks moved into the Democratic fold.” (review)

In Short:

- The New Deal marked a dramatic shift in African American history. For the first time, blacks and whites were included in the same government programs for economic recovery.
- Little actual legislation was aimed at blacks. Yet, ERs publicity and FDRs black appointees helped to sway black opinon.
- Economic concerns trumped scant-symbolic African American concern.
- During the New Deal, blacks shifted away from the Republican Party Permanently.
- They recognized that they could benefit from government, not simply be victims of its actions.
- ‘30s trends of black activism: Poverty, militant protests, religious readers, liberal reform, remained standards of African American movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

For Comparison:

Sitkoff,

Shales: This libertarian-sympathetic view of the new deal…that it was wasteful, did not help the USA get out of depression, and that Americans would have been better off with Wendle Wilkes brand of privatization (ex. TVA), excludes blacks almost altogether.

Denning – Denning sees jazz, and not white folk, as the popular front music of expression. Ellington and Billie Holiday, however, may have been activists, but were hardly communist sympathizers. Also, where are the black intellectuals of this movement? Having to look at popular entertainment for examples shows the weakness of his argument.