Shayla C. Nunnally
Page 8
of Reconstruction, the Republican Party had relinquished its relationship with black
voters, as it attempted to stray away from becoming associated with “Negro issues” and
orchestrated the demise of Reconstruction policies (Logan 1965).
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Republican Party also no longer had
strength even among whites in the South: the emergence of the Democratic Party as the
“party of Southern whites” focused on the exclusion of black voters (Woodward 1951;
Key 1949). Moreover, through the manipulation of state laws, Southern Democrats were
able to disfranchise most black voters, contributing to the eventual obliteration of their
impact on deciding elections among factioned whites (Woodward 1951).
For those blacks who could vote, later in the 1930s, New Deal social welfare
policies were attractive to many poor blacks, leading to their increasing support of the
Democratic Party. However, the black electorate remained divided between Democrats
and Republicans (Weiss 1989; McClain and Stewart 2002). It was not until the 1964
election that blacks developed overwhelming support for the Democratic Party, that is,
after the racialization of the presidential campaign in that same year. Subsequently, the
parties and the electorate underwent a partisan realignment based on issue transformation
between the two major parties (Carmines and Stimson 1989).
With the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African Americans’ right and
access to the franchise was restored. Several social welfare policies passed during the
1960s benefited blacks in such a way that party platforms, again, became associated with
racial politics (Carmines and Stimson 1989). As a result of the emergence of race as a
“dividing line” between the Republican and Democratic parties, this era also became
important for changing partisan support among whites and blacks: Blacks perceived the
Democratic Party as more favorable to blacks’ political interests, and whites perceived
both the Democratic and Republican parties as neutral (Tate 1994). However, ultimately
for blacks, the Democratic Party represented the “party for black people,” whereas the
Republican Party represented racism and black animus.
Since the 1960s, party politics has been racialized, with both parties organizing
their political agendas and electorate along racial divisions (Mendelberg 2002; Carmines
and Stimson 1989). Nevertheless, the Democratic Party has maintained a large amount
of electoral support among African Americans (McClain and Stewart 2002; Dawson
1994; Tate 1994). Dawson (1994) notes that, in addition to an overwhelming number of
African Americans in the 1984 and 1988 National Black Election Study reporting
Convention