Read on Twitter
Well, we could talk instead about how and why Black voters turned to the Democratic Party https://twitter.com/pashulman/status/1354809911876542466
The ur text on this is Nancy Weiss, FAREWELL TO THE PARTY OF LINCOLN. Some Black voters were Roosevelt-curious in 1932 and there was a detectable shift toward the Democrats that year. But other traditionally Republican constituencies shifted more.
The big move of Black voters to the Democrats came in 1936, and it came because the New Deal—even though it compromised with white segregationists—nevertheless offered real opportunities to Black Americans.
The New Deal offered jobs at decent pay for people who had none. Its work relief programs set minimum wages that represented raises for many workers—including many Black workers.
Many Black workers found in New Deal jobs the opportunity for mobility—both geographic and social.
As the National Urban League’s journal, OPPORTUNITY, would say, with the WPA “the Negro has been afforded his first real opportunity for employment in white-collar occupations."
But it wasn’t just that, as one voter said in 1936, it wasn’t "fair, to eat Roosevelt bread and meat and vote for Gov. Landon.” Black voters were already, to some extent, attracted to progressive policies and that wing of the Democratic Party.
Some had endorsed Wilson as a progressive in 1912—before he revealed his segregationist intentions and became, as Du Bois said, "one of the most grievous disappointments that a disappointed people must bear."
Some had gone for Al Smith’s pre-Depression progressive policies, on which see @DrRobertChiles REVOLUTION OF ’28)
And some went for Roosevelt in 1932, whose spokesman to Black voters pledged, that "by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt the working people will get a square deal and that the Negro will share in the benefits received by this class"
But it was the New Deal in action—the keeping of those promises—that made the real difference.
Black experts became part of the administration; I know a lot of you know about Mary McLeod Bethune, but William Hastie and Robert Weaver, especially, were vital too. See @jillmwatts ’s new book on THE BLACK CABINET
Weaver (who would later be the first Black cabinet secretary, under LBJ) established statistical underrepresentation as a legal basis for a finding of discrimination in public hiring;
writing in 1936, "prima facie discrimination has proven to be a successful means of protecting Negro labor on Federal projects."
After the 1938 elections strengthened the Southern Democrats’ position within the party, the Roosevelt administration established a Civil Liberties Section in the Department of Justice,
(later the Civil Rights Section and still later the Civil Rights Division) whose first task was to undermine the all-white primary elections that undergirded the Democratic Party in the South. https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/1332382687831572481
Where the New Deal was run from Washington, it was notably inclusive of African American opinions, voices, and people; where it was outsourced to local or private entities, it was notably not.
The best new work on this seems to me @ChloeThurstonDC , AT THE BOUNDARIES OF HOMEOWNERSHIP, on how the housing programs worked—and for whom.
But the national programs, especially those run by Harry Hopkins, were barred in policy and law from discriminating.
Where Black workers could join white workers, as in the CIO, they became an especially powerful force for labor law; on this see Eric Schickler’s RACIAL REALIGNMENT https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/16/17242748/identity-politics-racial-justice-democratic-party-lilla-traub-trump
And of course although the short answer to “when and why did Black voters become Democrats” is “the New Deal,” it is a longer story and one mainly about Republicans just refusing to have Black voters.
That started with Hoover, but continued after; see @LeahRigueur , LONELINESS OF THE BLACK REPUBLICAN
And though I’ve tried to point you to other scholars expert in these matters, I would be remiss if I didn’t say you can read more about this in WHY THE NEW DEAL MATTERS. Mash that preorder button (if you can afford to)—that matters a lot in the book biz! https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300252002/why-new-deal-matters
also if you like hearing about such things try @CPHatSMU ’s episodes on FDR, starting here: https://www.pastpromisepresidency.com/episodes/episode-15-franklin-d-roosevelt-part-i
