Issue #183: Breaking down Byron Donalds' Nonsense about Jim Crow
Where do I even begin?
If you didn’t know who Florida Republicans Byron Donalds was before, you likely do now. On Wednesday, Donalds, a Black Republican representing the conservative Southwest area of Florida, generated very negative headlines for these comments during an event to promote Trump.
‘You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,’…. And then H.E.W., Lyndon Johnson — you go down that road, and now we are where we are,’
Donalds’ comments came amid a discussion about the Black family and the importance of keeping it together. The Congressman insists he was taken out of context, and in the history of fairness here is his full comments. The truth is, though, the full video does not absolve anything he said. Donalds took a position that the Black family was conservative and together under Jim Crow; and that it was Lyndon Johnson and welfare that led to the breakdown in the family and “turned Black voters liberal” - or something like that. Donalds’ implication is something pushed by the handful of Conservative Black commentators for some time; that Democratic policies have hurt Black voters. Donalds attempted to offer up more explanation in a CNN interview, which saw him taken to task for ignoring that Black poverty and unemployment is the lowest its been in decades.
The current social dynamics and debate are well covered in that video. I am a history-minded politico more than anything else, so I want to talk the history. Donalds claimed Jim Crow had a benefit; otherwise he wouldn’t have said it at all! He also claimed that Black voters were conservatives before. Well, is that true? Lets answer all this with a history lesson.
Donald’s history is filled with many twists and turns. The story of black voter support from the Civil War to present day can fill volumes of books and research papers, and it does. At no point, however, have black voters found themselves on the more “conservative” side of the broad political movement. Yes on specific issues black voters have been more conservative, but their support for major parties has almost always been framed around gaining further legal rights and recognition. I also cannot stress enough how this, despite being 3,000 words, is a broad summary of a long story.
Republican Support & Betrayal
Black voting power emerged after the end of the American Civil War and the freeing of the slaves. While there were free black men in northern states before this period, it was the end of the Civil War that saw a large number of black voters really able to shape elections. This was first seen in 1868, where black voters were a major voting block for the Republican Party. That year, 700,000 black men voted for President, almost to a man for Ulysses S. Grant. While Grant easily won the electoral college, he only won the popular vote 306,000. While the absence of black voters likely would not have cost Grant the Electoral College, he may well have lost the popular vote to Horatio Seymour, who very much favored a “state’s rights” mantra. While its hard to pin this down, especially as voter intimidation and fraud were much more common in this era, its been widely speculated Grant is the first man to become President while LOSING the white vote.
Through the Reconstruction Era, black voters would be loyal backers of Republicans. This was partly due to the legacy of Lincoln, but also due to the steps Republicans took to lift up black support. The GOP’s Radical Republican wing, like the legendary Thaddeus Stevens, would champion Black rights and equality for years to come. However, the Republicans were not a unified block on advocating black rights. Even in the 1860s, we saw plenty of craven self-serving actions by white conservative Carpetbagger Republicans who just wanted to use black voting strength to promote themselves.
As I discussed in that piece, black voters made up a majority of the voter roll for a time; thanks to not only the large former slave population but restrictions on confederates registering. A delegate election was held in 1867 for a convention that would draft a new constitution. While the results would see a majority of white delegates, the majority coalition of liberal whites and black delegates meant a progressive constitution with equal rights and strong black representation should have been possible. However, the conservative white minority conspired to use violence and intimidation, all while federal troops did nothing or aided the conservative effort, to ram through a more conservative constitution. I go into all the nasty details in the above piece. The main takeaway of the new constitution was that it created an apportionment system that limited how many seats the majority-black counties could have in the legislature. It also gave the Governor the ability to appoint local office holders; which would mean many white people appointed to run the majority-black counties.
When it was all said and done, future Governor Harrison Reed, a moderate Republican politicians, wrote to former Democratic Senator and pro-Confederate David Yulee
“Under our Constitution the Judiciary & State officers will be appointed & the apportionment will prevent a negro legislature.”
For added context, Yulee was a feverish pro-slavery Fire Eater from before the war and an avowed segregationist to follow.
Reed was one of these moderate/conservative Republicans who wanted Black votes but didn’t want to let Black voters rule. He’d win the 1868 Governor election fairly easily. However, he’d also see 9% of the vote go to Samuel Walker, a Radical Republican who won the black votes to carry Duval, Leon, and Nassau.
As I document in the newsletter, Reed would do little to aid Black residents who suffered emerging Klan violence over the next several years. Eventually, that violence would lead to a further collapse in black voting ability and culminate with Democrats taking the Governor’s office in 1876; taking the legislature around the same time.
The result was Florida falling into Jim Crow rule. A new constitution was passed as black voters were kept from the voting booth via intimidation. The new constitution, passed in 1886, would restrict black rights and allow for the passage of a Poll Tax, which destroyed black voting power and turned Florida formally into a one-party Democratic state.
This story repeated itself across the American South; which transformed into the Jim Crow era that Donalds discussed. Black voters in the south ceased to be a political force. Jim Crow would be a time of repression and violence. Over the next several decades, lynchings would be a common occurrence, as seen from this Tuskegee Institute data.
That Jim Crow violence sparked the Great Migration; which saw millions flee the south over the period of the 1910s and into the 1960s to escape Klan violence and constant economic and political repression. The event led to a major shifting in black concentration. The maps below (from the above link) really highlight this major shift.
In Donalds’ home state this saw a clear effect. I really spotted this a few years back when researching history for Liberty County, Florida - which sits just to the west of the Florida capital. Klan violence led to a major drop in the county’s black population, transforming it from 45% Black to just 14% Black.
Donalds talks about the family being together. Well they were certainty together as they ran for their lives to escape burning crosses.
Lesser of Two Evils
The rise in Black populations across the North did lead to the opportunity for a resumption of electoral power. From 1900 to 1928, no Black congressman were elected.
The last Black Congressman from the reconstitution era was was Republican George Henry White of North Carolina. After the Jim Crow forces seized control of North Carolina and passed laws to stop Black voting, White did not run for re-election. Instead, in his final speech in 1901 on the House Floor, he predicted a return of black Congresspeople. His speech is often hailed as “White’s Prophesy.”
This prophecy would be fulfilled in 1928 when Oscar De Priest, of the Illinois 1st district (located in Chicago) was elected as a Black Republican congressman. Priest would be a champion of Black people, highlighting the struggle of Jim Crow in the south and discrimination in the North. He’d stand up to segregationist colleagues as well. However, Priest was an economic conservative, which put him at odds with the Roosevelt administration when it came into office in 1933. Priest was an outspoken critic of the New Deal spending programs. While he was a champion for legislation on improving conditions for Black workers and fighting for an anti-lynching bill, his opposition to New Deal programs began to alienate him from his district. As a result, he lost his re-election in 1934 to Democrat Arthur Wergs Mitchell; the FIRST BLACK DEMOCRAT elected to Congress.
This election marked the beginning of the trend we see to this day, with nearly all black Congresspeople being Democrats. From this moment on, only a handful of Black Republicans have been elected to the House; a vast majority being Democrats.
This also comes at the same time that the Roosevelt administration began to make efforts to woo over Black voters in the northern states. The path for Roosevelt was opened by decades of largely indifference from Republican politicians. While the Democrats had largely remained a segregationist party; with Presidents like Woodrow Wilson demonstrating a disgusting level of prejudice, Republicans had done little to keep any Black loyalty. In 1924, the Democratic national convention bitterly split over a resolution to condemn the Ku Klux Klan, which failed by the narrowest of margins. However, the Republicans under President Calvin Coolidge managed to just avoid the issue by not even allowing a vote on the matter at their convention.
Meanwhile, in 1928, Democrat Al Smith, already suffering a loss of southern support due to being Catholic, courted black voters. Hebert Hoover, meanwhile, had spurned them as he worked to win over southern whites who hated Smith’s Catholicism. Much more detail can be found here. Hoover and many in the Republican Party at the time were supporters of the Lily-white movement, which aimed to entirely move the party away from any Civil Rights issues in order to gain support among Southern whites.
Many Black leaders became completely turned off to the Republican Party and saw a new breed of Democrats being more willing to work with them.
Go turn Lincoln’s picture to the wall. That debt has been paid in full (Robert Lee Vann, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier)
The NAACP made it clear that independence based on the candidates at the moment was the best course of action.
Our political salvation and our social survival lie in our absolute independence of party allegiance in politics and the casting of our vote for our friends and against our enemies whoever they may be and whatever party labels they carry. (NAACP, 1926 Convention)
Indeed, Roosevelt was not some hardened racial liberal. There are many instances where Roosevelt did little to aid Black residents; especially his unwillingness to use his power to advance an anti-lynching bill or ban on poll taxes. However, the Roosevelt administration had many more liberal officials that were sympathetic and supporters of black rights; most notably Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was especially supportive of Black rights and was a fried with famous Civil Rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. While it was not an official body, the administration also had what is known as the Black Cabinet, a committee of Black civil servants in the government that would lobby leaders on major issues and work internally to aid Black citizens as much as possible via the bureaucracy
The 1936 election saw the administration make a major push to win the Black vote in the North. The 1936 Convention broke new ground when it when included Black delegates. The convention is often seen as a major step in the party moving away from being a sectional party still tied to old Civil War grievances.
As a result of these efforts, Roosevelt won 71% of the Black vote in 1936. Black voters still regarded themselves as split between two parties that didn’t fully support them, but Roosevelt was the easy choice for them that year.
They’d never vote for a Republican Presidential nominee again, not even close.
Moving Firmly into Democratic Column
The move of Black voters to Democrats is often seen as solidifying in 1964. That is absolutely where it locked in, but it was the culmination of a trend that pre-dated that moment. Black voters would largely stick with Democrats through the Roosevelt administration, but Harry Truman took things to a new level. Once he assumed the Presidency, Truman took more steps in racial integration. Truman famously desegregated the military and the the federal civil service. This move led to a major revolt from the conservative “Dixiecrats” - who ran their own candidate in 1948. This also came as the 1948 Democratic Convention passed a Civil Rights plank in a very divided vote. The move saw liberal Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey call on the party to “get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights”
More and more, Black voters would see Democrats as the best party to align with. Sheer pragmatism also played a role, as seen in Florida. I wrote about this earlier in the year, but when a massive voter registration drive of Black voters took place in Florida between 1945 and 1950, an overwhelming share were for Democrats specifically.
The registration drive, led by Harry T. Moore and the NAACP, brought 100,000 new Black voters to the roll. This reflected Florida’s more open registration system compared with the deep south; though safety varied greatly by county. For Moore and the NAACP, aligning with the Democrats was more valuable for trying to influence what was still a one-party state. However, it also reflected the overtures seen by Truman and liberal Northern Democrats.
Democrats would win the backing of Black voters in 1952, 1956, and 1960. Black voters made their support conditional and were not uniformly locked into to the Democratic side yet. This was seen in 1956 when Adlai Stevenson lost ground with Black voters when his otherwise liberal campaign worked to moderate his racial positions to try and win over conservative whites. As a result he lost ground to Eisenhower. I touched on this in a piece I wrote about Leon County, FL politics.
When Kennedy won the 1960 election, he did so thanks to increasing his standing with Black voters, winning an estimated 68% compared with Stevenson’s 61% four years earlier. Then, yes, the big Lyndon Johnson moment, when the Civil Rights act passage pushed Democratic support among Black voters to 90%+. There is no doubt this moment solidified Black support for Democrats at the levels we still see today. Of course we also know it began to slide in Democratic support among conservative white southerners.
Below is how Black voters self-ID’d and voted for President from 1936 through 2012. The data comes from several news outlets and from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Johnson’s pushing for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act cemented Democratic dominance with Black voters. Btw, I wrote about how the Voting Rights Act effected Florida as well; finally allowing several other counties to see major registration drives.
Of course, the Republicans could have won many of these voters back. However, what followed was a string of racially conservative Republican candidates and Presidents. Barry Goldwater was famously opposed to the Civil Rights Act, albeit on more libertarian grounds. This was followed, however, by Richard Nixon and his “Southern Strategy” to cultivate white segregationist support. It was followed by Ronald Reagan and his work to dismantle government systems that aimed to aid Black voters. After 1964, the Republican Party made a concerted effort to throw Black voters under the bus to cultivate white southern support. Byron Donalds didn’t mention that, however.
Final Thoughts
In the interview at the top of this article, Abby Phillip points out to Donalds that many of the economic, and likely family, troubles for Black voters is still tied to historic issues around poverty. This poverty stems from generations of Jim Crow, of redlining, of restrictions in access to early Social Security or the GI Bill. By the 1960s, the wealth gap was already sky high between white and Black citizens. Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs only got a few years to start before the administration became weighed down by Vietnam and the 1966 “White Backlash” midterm saw a shift from voters against progressive action. It was conservative backlash then, followed by nefarious moves of conservative politicians like Nixon and Reagan, who undermined Black voters from moving out of the poverty and desperation that Jim Crow set up. And, as Abby Phillip points out, poverty leads to greater family breakdowns than anything else. You can see that in parts of inner cities and you can also see it in rural white Appalachia.
Donalds comments were not based in history, sociology, economics, or rational thought. This is a man who represents a rich, white, gated district and wants to be Donald Trump’s VP or Governor. Maybe first he should take a US History class.