Before Black voters got criticized for being on the “Democratic Plantation, they used to vote almost exclusively for the Republican Party. Republicans were the Party of Lincoln; they were responsible for abolishing enslavement (though they varied about what to do with the freedmen). Republicans pushed through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which abolished enslavement, made Black people citizens and gave Black men the right to vote (most women got the right to vote in 1920). The Democratic Party was home to the KKK; Democrats, especially in the South, promoted voter suppression (including lynchings), segregation, and all forms of discrimination. It seemed like Black voters would always vote Republican until they didn’t.
It started with the “New Deal,” when Black people actually received the benefits the rest of the public received. Black people couldn’t get FHA loans or VA loans, and Jim Crow was the law of the land. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt did something for Black people; Eleanor Roosevelt stood up for Marian Anderson when the Daughters of the American Revolution prevented her from performing at DAR Constitution Hall , and Black voters began to notice.
When Democratic President Harry Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948, Black voters noticed, and so did segregationist white Democrats who began what was initially a slow shift to the Republican Party that picked up speed during the Civil Rights Movement. By the time of the Republican National Convention of 1964, race was truly on the ballot after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed less than two weeks before the convention. The whitelash was strong, and the Republican Party was flush with recent converts who found the Democratic Party was not sufficiently racist with hopes of shaping the Republican Party into their own image.
The top Republican candidates for the nomination were New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Rockefeller was a more traditional, liberal Republican. Goldwater openly appealed to the racist wing of the Party., he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making him a hero of the new Republicans.
Jackie Robinson was a special delegate on behalf of Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 convention. It was a time where Black people were highly visible among Republicans though having power would be a stretch. When delegates arrived at the convention hall in San Francisco, they were met by protesters from the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) wearing funeral attire and holding a sign, “Republican Party — Born 1860, Died 1964.” All but one of the Black delegates, including Robinson, were among those protesters against Goldwater.
This was the scene when Jackie Robinson attended the 1964 Republican National Convention. He described his experiences in his autobiography, “I Never Had It Made.”
“I wasn’t altogether caught off guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition. I was a special delegate to the convention through an arrangement made by the Rockefeller office. That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude toward black people.
A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.
The same high-handed methods had been there.
The same belief in the superiority of one religious or racial group over another was here. Liberals who fought so hard and so vainly were afraid not only of what would happen to the GOP but of what would happen to America. The Goldwaterites were afraid — afraid not to hew strictly to the line they had been spoon-fed, afraid to listen to logic and reason if it was not in their script.
I will never forget the fantastic scene of Governor Rockefeller’s ordeal as he endured what must have been three minutes of hysterical abuse and booing which interrupted his fighting statement which the convention managers had managed to delay until the wee hours of the morning. Since the telecast was coming from the West Coast, that meant that many people in other sections of the country, because of the time differential, would be in their beds. I don’t think he has ever stood taller than that night when he refused to be silenced until he had had his say.
It was a terrible hour for the relatively few black delegates who were present. Distinguished in their communities, identified with the cause of Republicanism, an extremely unpopular cause among blacks, they had been served notice that the party they had fought for considered them just another bunch of “niggers”. They had no real standing in the convention, no clout. They were unimportant and ignored. One bigot from one of the Deep South states actually threw acid on a black delegate’s suit jacket and burned it. Another one, from the Alabama delegation where I was standing at the time of the Rockefeller speech, turned on me menacingly while I was shouting “C’mon Rocky” as the governor stood his ground. He started up in his seat as if to come after me. His wife grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Turn him loose, lady, turn him loose,” I shouted.
I was ready for him. I wanted him badly, but luckily for him he obeyed his wife…” — Jackie Robinson
Rockefeller himself added some words in a convention speech about inserting words in favor of inserting pro-civil rights wording into the Party platform. Goldwater delegates booed throughout.
“The Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed and highly disciplined minority.” At that time I pointed out that the purpose of this minority were “wholly alien to the sound and honest conservatism that has firmly based the Republican party in the best of a century’s traditions, wholly alien to the sound and honest Republican liberalism that has kept the party abreast of human needs in a changing world, wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principles — Nelson Rockefeller
In 1964, the Democratic Candidate for President won the election after receiving 94% of the Black vote. Republicans got 6% after receiving 32% of the vote in 1960 and 40% in 1956. Read Nelson Rockefeller's words about the danger facing the Republican Party and decide for yourself whether the current Party heeded his words or embraced what he called “wholly alien to honest conservatism?” Let me know what you think?
Thank you for this! I’ve wondered many times about why my parents were (or so it seemed) the only Goldwater republicans in Texas, and yet my mom took me out of 2nd grade to see the President’s motorcade in San Antonio, 2 days before Dallas. I chalked it up to different times, but there may have been more to the story than I could comprehend.
Thank you for helping me better understand the shift between the parties ... when the Goofy Old Party lost its mind and its heart.