“Among American citizens there should be no forgotten men and no forgotten races” (Franklin
D. Roosevelt, 1936, quoted in Kinder & Sanders, 1996, 211).
In the 1936 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke for the first time to an
entirely African American audience, calling for the equal treatment and equal rights of African
Americans across the country. Speaking at a newly constructed building on the campus of the
all-black Howard University, Roosevelt envisioned liberties for African Americans that would
take nearly three decades to transpire. It was not until 1964 that the Civil Rights Act was signed
into law, and it took one additional year to break down the barriers keeping African Americans
from realizing their full rights as American citizens with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Although the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act solidified the
importance of African Americans in electoral politics, in many ways race has been a factor in
elections since slavery (Mendelberg 2001). Once African-Americans were guaranteed their full
voting rights, however, a new chapter in the book of race and politics seemingly began,
particularly in the south. After passage of the voting rights act, black registration in the south
increased tremendously. At the same time, 1964 marked an important shift in how the parties
dealt with race (Carmines and Stimpson, 1989; Kinder and Sanders, 1996). These changes have
important implications for the ways in which both Democratic and Republican candidates relate
to African-Americans, influencing election strategies with respect to both black and white voters.
Specifically, as the literature suggests, race may play a factor in what candidates choose to speak
about (Kinder and Sanders, 1996; Mendelberg 2001) as well as who candidates choose to speak
to.
The literature on race and campaigns has focused mainly on voting behavior or racial
appeals in campaigns in general. Here, we expand upon the race and campaign literature to look
Convention