First to the party: The group origins of the partisan transformation on civil rights, 1940-1960

Studies in American Political Development

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 111-141

  Baylor, Christopher A ^a  

^a Center for Interdisciplinary Studies   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84880415473     PISSN: 0898588X     EISSN: 14698692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898588X13000072     Document Type: Article

References (301)

1. Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
2. Sean Farhang and Ira Katznelson, "The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal," Studies in American Political Development 19 (2005).
3. Anthony S. Chen, RobertW. Mickey, and Robert P. Van Houweling, "Explaining the Contemporary Alignment of Race and Party: Evidence from California's 1946 Ballot Initiative on Fair Employment," Studies in American Political Development 22 (2008): 204-28;
4. Anthony Chen, The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
5. Brian Feinstein and Eric Schickler, "Platforms and Partners: The Civil Rights Realignment Reconsidered," Studies in American Political Development 22 (2008): 226.
6. Eric Schickler, Kathryn Pearson, and Brian Feinstein, "Congressional Parties and Civil Rights Politics from 1933 to 1972," Journal of Politics 72 (2010).
7. One political scientist writes that platforms act "as a window through which to view factional fights and a means to assess their relative strength." Jo Freeman, "Feminism vs. Family Values: Women at the 1992 Democratic and Republican Conventions," PS: Political Science and Politics 26 (March 1993), 26.
8. In one of his later works, Schattschneider estimated that the AFL-CIO affected only 20 percent of their members' views, because many members abstained from voting and others would have voted Democratic even without AFL-CIO influence. E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 201.
9. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);
10. Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, John Green, Richard Herrera, and Rosalyn Cooperman, "Activists and Conflict Extension in American Party Politics," American Political Science Review 104 (2010);
11. Brian Mayer, Blue-green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).
12. Also see Duane Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous: The Christian Right Confronts the Republican Party (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996);
13. Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008);
14. Daniel K. Williams, God's Own Party (New York: Oxford University Press 2010).
15. Kathleen Bawn, Martin Cohen, David Karol, Seth Masket, Hans Noel, and John Zaller, "A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics," Perspectives on Politics 10 (2012): 571-97.
16. James Weldon Johnson, "Report of the Field Secretary on Interview with Senator Warren G. Harding," August 9, 1920, Mf C 63-65, NAACP Collection (Washington, DC: Library of Congress), hereafter NAACP; Moorfield Storey to James Weldon Johnson, July 18, 1922, NAACP C75-77;
17. L. K. Williams to John Hamilton, undated, NAACP II-A-226
18. Roy Wilkins to John Hamilton March 15 1938, NAACP II-L-27
19. John Hamilton to Roy Wilkins March 14 1938, NAACP II-L-27
20. and Roy Wilkins to John Hamilton, March 15, 1938, NAACP II-L-27.
21. See also David Karol, Party Position Change in American Politics (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
22. Ralph Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973);
23. Nancy Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983);
24. and Roy Fauntroy, Republicans and the Black Vote (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner Publications, 2007)
25. The NAACP argued at the time that the defection was not a response to New Deal benefits, but a repudiation of the hypocrisy and unfulfilled promises of recent Republican leaders (Walter White to Henry Patterson, October 1 1938, NAACP II-L-27).
26. David Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000), 329.
27. George E. Mowry, Another Look at the Twentieth-Century South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1973), 70.
28. James Farley, the Democratic Party Chairman from 1933- 1940, almost never discussed African Americans or the potential of their vote in his copious, almost daily notes. James Farley Memorandum to Self, March 16, 1937 and November 4, 1937, Box 40-42, Reel 3, James Farley Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress);
29. James Farley Memorandum to Self, November 4, 1937, 40-42, Reel 3.
30. The same holds true for his aide, Leon Keyserling, who became active in efforts to liberalize the party in the late 1940s. See the Robert F. Wagner Papers and Leon Keyserling Papers (Washington, DC: Georgetown University). In the hearings for Supreme Court nominee John Parker, Senator Wagner alone had argued that Parker's opposition to labor rights and civil rights were part of a "single trait of character," a point made to him by black union leader A. Philip Randolph. Paul Moreno, Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2007), 160.
31. Kenneth Janken, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New York: New Press, 2009).
32. Simon Topping, "Supporting our Friends and Defeating Our Enemies: Militancy and Nonpartisanship in the NAACP, 1936-1948," Journal of African American History 89 (Winter, 2004): 20-22.
33. Walter White to Lester Granger, March 21, 1941, NAACP Mf Part 13 A, Reel 24.
34. Steven Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in America Since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill), 9, 15, 63-64.
35. John Brophy to Philip Connelly, November 26, 1946, mf 26, in Katherine Martin, ed., Operation Dixie: The CIO Organizing Committee Papers, 1946-1953 (Sanford, North Carolina: Microfilming Corporation of America), hereafter Operation Dixie.
36. The alliance conformed to Zald and Ash's definition of a coalition, in which two groups coordinate on political strategy and at least one of the groups adopts "new organizational identities, changes in the membership base, and changes in goals." Mayer N. Zald and Roberta Ash, "Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay and Change," Social Forces 44 (1966): 335.
37. Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: New Press, 1997);
38. Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993);
39. Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003);
40. Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals and the Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History 75 (1988);
41. David Lewis- Coleman, Race against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008);
42. Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997);
43. Nancy MacLean, "Achieving the Problem of the Civil Rights Act: Herbert Hill and the NAACP's Fight for Jobs and Justice," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (Summer 2006);
44. Robert J. Norrell, "Caste in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama," Journal of American History 73 (December 1986);
45. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 16;
46. David Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001)
47. Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619- 1973 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 215-37. The CIO signaled its support for civil rights at its inception, barring discrimination in its constitution and unanimously endorsing antilynching laws at national gatherings.
48. Schickler and Caughey's analysis of early survey data concludes that northern blacks were more liberal than northern Democrats generally on labor issues (Eric Schickler and Devin Caughey, "Public Opinion, Organized Labor, and the Limits of New Deal Liberalism, 1936-1945," Studies in American Political Development 25 [2011]). This sympathy is not apparent in historical accounts of black laborers in the 1930s (Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 216;
49. Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, 26;
50. and Janken, White, 244, 251). Even those less sensitive to the historic realities of labor unions had no idea if unions would succeed or control future hiring, in which case, currying favor with management was less risky. Some worried that blacks would be unable to obtain jobs in unionized workplaces dominated by white workers, while others worried that plantwide union seniority rules would weaken the seniority of black workers in traditionally African American departments (Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 174-82;
51. and Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress, 47-48.
52. Janken, White, 182-84.
53. Beth Tompkins Bates, "A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard.
54. Ross, J.E. Spingarn and the Rise of the NAACP, 1911-1939, 230. Abram Harris, a radical economist who later chaired the economics department at Howard University, was the author of the 1935 report.
55. Memorandum from Roy Wilkins to Walter White, March 24, 1939, NAACP mf I-80
56. When President Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights, White tried to dominate the proceedings by providing NAACP information to its members. He wrote to Thurgood Marshall that "We must move fast . . . we must not let anybody else steal the show from us" (Gary A. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 107). The NAACP also tried to marginalize A. Philip Randolph's role in the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) (Denton Watson, Lion in the Lobby: Clarence Mitchell, Jr.'s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Law (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1990), 166.
57. Walter White to Arthur Spingarn, October 5, 1939;
58. White to William Rosenwald, October 10, 1939;
59. White to Rosenwald, October 10, 1939;
60. White to Rosenwald, November 22, 1939;
61. Beth Tompkins Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
62. Also see Memorandum from Roy Wilkins to Walter White, March 24, 1939, NAACP mf I-80.
63. Steven Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991), 512.
64. William H. Hastie, Memorandum to the Committee to Study Discrimination in Labor Unions, February 19, 1940, NAACP II-A-128;
65. Handwritten minutes, Committee to Study Discrimination in Labor Unions, June 9, 1940, NAACP II-A-128;
66. Memorandum to Mr. Marshall from Mr. White, March 11, 1940;
67. Walter White to the Committee on Administration, March 15, 1940, NAACP II-A-443.
68. Walter White to Thurgood Marshall, March 11, 1940, NAACP II-A-443.
69. Memorandum to Dean Hastie, March 14, 1940, NAACP II-A-443.
70. Walter White to Matthew Dunn, May 1940, NAACP II-A-443.
71. Sophie Lee, "Hotspots in a Cold War: The NAACP's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948-1964," Law and History Review 26 (2008): 340.
72. Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, 67.
73. Walter White to James McClendon, April 11, 1941, NAACP Mf 13a r3.
74. Walter White to Harry Hopkins, April 26, 1934, NAACP I-C-257.
75. Telegram from Walter White to James McClendon, April 5, 1941, NAACP Mf 13a r3.
76. Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther; Kenneth I. Kersch, Constructing Civil Liberties: Discontinuities in the Development of American Constitutional Law (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
77. Walter White to Harry E. Davis, April 17, 1941;
78. David Morgan Lewis Coleman, "African Americans and the Politics of Race among Detroit's Auto Workers 1941-1971" (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2001), 40.
79. Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2010), 258.
80. Memorandum to Roy Wilkins from Clarence Mitchell, NAACP IX-211.
81. Risa Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 217-27.
82. Clarence Mitchell to James Longson, February 12, 1953, Box 160, Clarence Mitchell Folder CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Records (Detroit: Wayne State University), hereafter CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers.
83. Gilbert Jonas, Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 237.
84. Paul Frymer, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 59.
85. See, for example, Madison Jones to Eugene Cheeks, April 6, 1950, NAACP II-A-246.
86. Risa Goluboff, "'We Live's in a Free House Such as It Is': Class and the Creation of Modern Civil Rights," U. Penn. L. Rev. 151 (2003): 1979.
87. See Dona Cooper Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), chap. 5.
88. White needed labor support for new cloture rules necessary to advance civil rights legislation, and appears to have bargained for this help in exchange for the NAACP's opposition to Taft-Hartley. Robert L. Carter to branch presidents, August 31, 1964, mf supplement to NAACP Part 13, r11;
89. See also Assistant Special Counsel Marian Wynn Perry to Labor Secretary Clarence Mitchell, January 1947, NAACP I-X-211.
90. Marian Wynn Perry to Clarence Mitchell, January 27, 1947, NAACP IX 211.
91. George Meany to Roy Wilkins, July 10, 1958, and June 3, 1964, Mf supplement to NAACP Part 13, r11.
92. See RoyWilkins with TomMatthews, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Da Cap Press, 1994), 80.
93. NAACP Mf Part 1, r11 ( f471).
94. Against the advice of CIO Secretary Treasurer James Carey, the NAACP refrained from officially endorsing candidates, but its preferences were still voiced in an oblique manner. Roy Wilkins to James Carey, June 14, 1944, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 160.
95. Also see Walter White to Phillip Murray, July 25, 1948;
96. and James Carey to Walter White, August 13, 1946, both in CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers
97. Also see Simon Topping, "Supporting our Friends and Defeating Our Enemies: Militancy and Nonpartisanship in the NAACP, 1936-1948," Journal of African American History 89 (Winter 2004): 23.
98. Janken, White, 316-17.
99. The caucus included ADA, the CIO, the Farmer's Union, and a few liberal members of Congress. Violet Gunther to William Rafski, June 10, 1952, mf 21, in Jack Ericson, ed., Americans for Democratic Action Papers, 1932-1965 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America), hereafter ADA.
100. Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW, 191. The UAW was subsequently able to minimize the harm and pushed for federal intervention that ended the strike (172).
101. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 160, 253-55.
102. Paul Frymer, "Race's Reality: The NAACP Confronts Racism and Inequality in the Labor Movement, 1940-65," in Race and American Political Development, ed. Joseph Lowndes, Julie Novkov, and Dorian Warren (New York: Routledge), 190.
103. Frymer, "Race's Reality," 188-89.
104. Robert Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America Since 1865 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 2637.
105. John Brophy to Philip Connelly, November 26, 1946, Operation Dixie mf 26.
106. Memorandum from Herbert Hill toWalter White, April 20, 1953, NAACP II-A-347.
107. George Weaver to Robert Birchmann, June 12, 1954, NAACP II A347. The NAACP raised another 25,000 from the CIO, the Steelworkers, and other union sources in 1953 (Walter White to James Carey, April 28, 1953, NAACP II A347;
108. Walter White to George Meany, April 17, 1953, NAACP II A347). The CIO also filed an amicus brief in Brown.
109. David Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1951).
110. The NAACP agreed in 1914 that the NUL would focus on employment and the NAACP on legal rights (Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, 282-96).
111. See Lester Granger's testimony to the President's Committee on Civil Rights, April 17, 1947, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 42.
112. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955, 215-16 and 314-17.
113. For example, see Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, and Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism.
114. See Draper, Conflict of Interests; Kevin Boyle, The UAWand the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995);
115. Their platforms nearly converged. Daniel Cornfield and Holly McCammon, "Approaching Merger: The Converging Public Policy Agendas of the AFL and CIO, 1938-1955," in Strategic Alliances: Coalition Building and Social Movements, ed. Nella Van Dyke and Holly McCammon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
116. Paula Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990)
117. Also see Mason's comments in Minutes of Regional Conference of CIO and International Union Directors, 10/12/1942, Operation Dixie
118. Black replacement workers could provoke race riots, which could lead to state repression of a strike (Noel Beddow to Philip Murray, July 12, 1943, Box 42, Folder 15, Philip Murray Papers (Washington, DC: Catholic University), hereafter Philip Murray Papers).
119. Herbert Hill, "The Problem of Race in American Labor History," Reviews in American History 24 (June 1996): 201-2;
120. and Orley Ashenfelter, "Racial Discrimination and Trade Unionism," Journal of Political Economy 80 (May/June 1972): 440-41.
121. L. Frank Weyher, "Rival Unions, the Politics of Race, and Interracial Equality: The CIO vs. The AFL, 1935-1950" (PhD diss., 2003). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses AAT 3133100.
122. Also see Maurice Zeitlin and L. Frnak Weyher, "'Black and White, Unite and Fight': Interracial Working-Class Solidarity and Racial Employment Equality," American Journal of Sociology 107 (September 2001);
123. Donald Critchlow, "Communist Unions and Racism," Labor History 17 (Spring 1976);
124. Mark McColloch, "The Shop-Floor Dimension of Union Rivalry: The Case ofWestinghouse in the 1950s," in The CIO's Left-Led Unions, ed. Steven Rosswurm (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992);
125. Toni Gilpin, "Left by Themselves: A History of the United Farm Equipment and Metal Workers Union, 1938-1955" (PhD diss., 1992);
126. and Michael Goldfield, "Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism During the 1930s and 1940s," International Labor and Working Class History 44 (Fall 1993): 22.
127. see Ernest Wooten to Philip Murray, June 2, 1950, Philip Murray Papers Box 36, File 18;
128. Herbert Northrup, Organized Labor and the Negro (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1976), 14-15, 233-37;
129. and Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
130. L. Frank Weyher, Rival Unions, the Politics of Race, and Interracial Equality: The CIO vs. The AFL, 1935-1950 (PhD diss., 2003). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses AAT 3133100.
131. see also William Smith to Walter White, April 6, 1949, NAACP II-A-347).
132. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 103, 136. 100.
133. For a competing point of view, see Rick Halpern, "Black Workers and the 20th Century South: The Emerging Revision," Social History 19 (1994): 380.
134. Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 114.
135. Frymer, Black and Blue, 54-55.
136. Cf. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom, 114.
137. Kathleen Bawn, "Constructing 'Us': Ideology, Coalition Politics and False Consciousness," American Journal of Political Science 43 (1999): 303-34.
138. McMahon, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race. As late as 1947, the Presidents Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR) said that "typical 'civil rights' cases involve such varied matters" including "racial, labor, pacifist, and alien rights" ("Federal Criminal Jurisdiction Over Violations of Civil Rights," January 15, 1947, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 41, PCCR).
139. Walter White to Sidney Hillman, April 1, 1940, NAACP Mf 13a r4;
140. Lucy Mason to Molly Dawson, September 6, 1937, Operation Dixie mf
141. Zieger, The CIO, 158.
142. CARD Minutes, September 17, 1947, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 192.
143. Meeting of October 29, 1943, mf 6 in Robert Zieger, ed., Minutes of the Executive Board of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1935-1955 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America), hereafter Minutes of the Executive Board.
144. While Hillman was still active in the American Labor Party and the Labor Non-Partisan League, he largely arranged for them to take direction from Roosevelt, consolidating various left-wing splinter factions behind New Deal Democrats and even endorsing a conservative Democrat for governor of New York. By 1946, many in the CIO once again considered a third party more thoroughly tied to labor. Nelson Lichtenstein argues there was not a consensus against a third party until Henry Wallace's thirdparty challenge in "The Eclipse of Social Democracy," in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 138-39.
145. On appointments, see George Weaver to Philip Murray, April 19, 1951, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 154, Philip Murray Folder, and Frank McNaughton to Bob Hagy, November 12, 1948, McNaughton Reports File, (Independence, Missouri: Harry S. Truman Library), hereafter Truman Library. For examples of legislative strategy
146. see Report of the Director, September 7, 1949, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 79, CARD 1949;
147. and CARD Minutes, January 14, 1950, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 193, Civil Rights Meeting Folder.
148. James Caldwell Foster, The Union Politic: The CIO Political Action Committee (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1975), 28;
149. Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 514;
150. Jack Kroll, Report on 1948, Box 4, Jack Kroll Papers (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress), hereafter Jack Kroll Papers; and Lucy Mason to Jack Jenkins, July 14 1949, Operation Dixie mf
151. Also see Draper, Conflict of Interests, 86-93.
152. Gerard Friedman, "The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880-1953," Journal of Economic History 60 (2000): 2.
153. Lucy Randolph Mason, The CIO and the South, undated 1941, Operation Dixie mf 65.
154. Maxwell Cobbey to Walter White August 14 1939, Operation Dixie mf 62
155. Victor Rotnum to Lucy Randolph Mason, May 17, 1944, Operation Dixie mf 62.
156. CIO Department of Education and Research, "When the People Vote-They Win!" Economic Outlook 7 (June 1946);
157. Statement on Political Policy, 1948, Box 12, Folder 6, John Brophy Papers (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University).
158. In Mississippi, twenty-six counties had an African American majority, and many of the most antilabor legislators came from those counties. Lucy Mason, "Reasons white workers should welcome Negroes into Unions," May 23, 1945, Operation Dixie mf 63.
159. Also see Lucy Mason, "The CIO and the South," March 1944, Operation Dixie mf 64.
160. Lucy Mason to P Murray, October 30, 1944, Operation Dixie mf 63;
161. George Crockett, "Labor Looks Ahead," Michigan Chronicle, January 26, 1946.
162. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln; and Karol, Party Position Change in American Politics, 109-33.
163. Scott James, "A Theory of Presidential Commitment and Opportunism: Swing States, Pivotal Groups and Civil Rights under Truman and Clinton," presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (1997), 15.
164. Jack Kroll, "Memorandum to President Philip Murray Regarding Long Range PAC Objectives," 1949, Philip Murray Papers Box 133 Folder 12;
165. Foster, The Union Politic, 135.
166. Kroll's predecessor, Sidney Hillman, created the National Citizens PAC (NCPAC) in 1944 to push the CIO program among middle-class people unlikely to donate to labor unions. NCPAC "provided an entrée for the CIO into diverse segments of the population not reachable directly through the trade union movement" (Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 515).
167. Walter White to Jack Kroll, June 30, 1950, NAACP II A246 1950.
168. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 328;
169. Henry Lee Moon, "Suffrage 52-53," NAACP II A452.
170. John Kirk, Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 31.
171. Steven Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944-1969 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 125-26
172. Also see Meier and Rudwick, "Communist Unions and the Black Community: The Case of the Transport Workers Union, 1934-1944," Labor History 23 (1982): 196-97;
173. Watson, Lion in the Lobby, 166.
174. John Brophy to Philip Connelly, November 26, 1946, Operation Dixie mf 26.
175. Berkeley Watterson to Roy Wilkins, November 25, 1946, NAACP II-A-347.
176. Lucy Mason Randolph, "Reasons white workers should welcome Negroes into unions," May 23, 1943, Operation Dixie mf 63.
177. See Louis Kesselman, The Social Politics of FEPC: A Study in Reform Pressure Movements (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948).
178. and Zieger, The CIO, 153.
179. Robert Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 58.
180. Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 478.
181. Report of the Panel on Publicity and Education Techniques, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 79, Committee to Abolish Racial Discrimination, 1947-48 Folder.
182. CARD Minutes, March 13, 1945, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 192.
183. One southern employer requested copies of this and used it to defeat a CIO election, saying the CIO was trying to abolish Jim Crow. CARD Minutes, February 11, 1947, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 192.
184. Arthur Goldberg to all regional CIO Directors, April 24, 1950, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 193.
185. Michael Goldfield, "Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s," International Labor and Working Class History 44 (1993): 1-32;
186. Zieger, The CIO, 77.
187. See Bruce Nelson, "'CIO Meant One Thing for the Whites and Another Thing for Us': Steelworkers and Civil Rights, 1936- 1974," in Southern Labor in Transition, 1940-1995, ed. Robert Zieger (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 117-18. Smelter workers in Butte, Montana, told CIO President Phil Murray to "go to Hell" when he told them to hire black workers during World War II.
188. See Boris Shishkin's remarks in the President's Civil Rights Committee Meeting, September 12, 1947, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 42, p. 857. Secretary Treasurer James Carey responded that no blacks were employed in Butte four years ago but blacks are employed now.
189. Zieger, The CIO, 157.
190. Frymer, "Race's Reality," 185;
191. Lucy Mason to Eleanor Roosevelt, August 19, 1950, Operation Dixie mf 64;
192. George Weaver to Cy W. Record, December 16, 1949, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 188, General Correspondence Folder.
193. Also see Memorandum from George Weaver to James Carey 1953, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 71
194. Noel Beddow to Philip Murray, April 27, 1943, Philip Murray Papers, Box 42, Folder 14;
195. Notes on Meeting Held Saturday Morningm [sic] July 10 1943, in office of Noel R. Beddow, Philip Murray Papers Box 42, Folder 15
196. and Noel Beddow to Philip Murray, September 27, 1943, Box 42 Folder 15. UAW President Walter Reuther realized that civil rights was a recruiting tool for his more left-wing rivals, and expanded the UAW's Fair Practices Committee to preempt future opposition
197. See David M. Lewis-Colman, Race against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 47.
198. Willard Townsend to Robert Oliver (Assistant to the CIO President), February 12, 1956, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 190, Willard Townsend Folder.
199. Mr. J. Dameron to E.L. Sandfeur, December 3, 1947, Operation Dixie mf 66.
200. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom, 161.
201. See, for example, Remarks of Thurgood Marshall Before CIO Convention, Atlantic City, NJ, December 3, 1952, NAACP II-A347.
202. Zieger, The CIO, 374.
203. Roy Wilkins to C.A. Franklin, November 5, 1946, Wilkins Papers, Box 47.
204. Jack Kroll Speech to Convention of United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers at Milwaukee, July 22, 1948, Jack Kroll Papers, Box 4, January-July, page 3.
205. Also see Lucy Mason to P. Murray October 30 1944, Operation Dixie mf 63
206. Committee to Abolish Discrimination Meeting Transcript, April 4, 1949, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 191, CIO Committee on Civil Rights Folder.
207. Walter Reuther to Walter White, March 30, 1949, NAACP VIII 83.
208. ClarenceWunderlin, ed., The Papers of Robert A. Taft 1949- 1953 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), 46-47. This did not mean pursuing a southern strategy, as future Republicans would. As difficult as it was to win African American Republican votes, it was even more difficult to win southern votes. Taft wrote in a letter that "we have a much better chance of getting the negro vote in the North." Furthermore, he saw no political or moral basis for abandoning civil rights (Wunderlin, The Papers of Robert A. Taft, 46-47, 135, 231, 235). Still, Taft did not support an FEPC that was empowered to attack job discrimination against blacks, arguing that it violated the party's commitment to a limited federal government. The furthest Taft would go was to support an FEPC that would investigate and publicize cases of discrimination.
209. Only Congress could pass a national FEPC, but the NAACP had some success opposing the poll tax at the state level, and lynching was becoming less common (Watson, Lion in the Lobby, 165-66).
210. White opposed a public announcement of this priority in 1948 (Walter White to Richard Allan, February 27, 1948, NAACP mf 13 r 13). On the change in priorities
211. see CARD Minutes, January 14, 1950, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 193, Civil Rights Meeting Folder. The NAACP and other civil rights groups convinced Truman's advisers to focus on the FEPC and drop other matters in 1950. On the NAACP's opposition to national action on the poll tax
212. see Conference of Negro Organization Minutes, September 4, 1953, NAACP II-A-452, page 2.
213. Anthony Chen, The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 46.
214. Watson, Lion in the Lobby, 137.
215. McMahon, Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race, 101.
216. Robert Ferrell, Choosing Truman: The Democratic Convention of 1944 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press), 39-47. While it is possible that Roosevelt hoped to avoid unpleasant conversation by passing the responsibility to Hillman, contemporaneous written sources offer no support for this theory (although some of the participants explained the outcome this way afterward). The CIO was not present at the meeting where Truman was chosen, but Roosevelt did request that the suggestion be "cleared" with Hillman. Hillman had been working privately for months to find a Democratic vice-presidential candidate acceptable to all party factions, given that Wallace would not satisfy the South, and segregationist Byrnes would not satisfy the North (Foster, The Union Politic, 46- 49;
217. Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 530-31).
218. Christopher Manning, William L. Dawson and the Limits of Black Electoral Leadership (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), 97. However, Dawson did oppose the nomination of James Byrnes as a vice president, and supported the controversial Henry Wallace.
219. Donaldson, Dewey Defeats Truman, 121, 161.
220. Interview of Phileo Nash by Jerry Hess, October 18, 1966, Truman Library.
221. William Leuchtenberg, The White House Looks South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 2005), 182, 185, 190.
222. A number of governors and MCs feared they would lose if Truman were renominated (Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 136). Nash stated "Now, some of the President's advisers, I'm sure, thought it was time to ease off. I don't think that they were wrong, in general, they were just wrong, when reference to a convention where some people undoubtedly had concluded that Mr. Truman was going down to defeat anyhow and, therefore, they might as well take care of themselves" (Interview of Phileo Nash by Jerry Hess, October 18, 1966, Truman Library).
223. James Loeb to Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., April 27, 1948, ADA mf 31.
224. Meeting of October 29, 1943, Minutes of the Executive Board mf 11.
225. Cf. Korstad and Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Lost and Found," 806.
226. James Loeb to Frank McCulloch, April 24, 1948;
227. Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller, The Party Decides, 121.
228. Timothy N. Thurber, The Politics of Equality: Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 57.
229. Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
230. Speech by Jack Kroll to Convention of United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers at Milwaukee, July 22, 1948, Jack Kroll Papers, Box 4, January-July. President Truman later thanked the CIO for its maneuvering (CARD Minutes, November 19, 1948, CIO Office of the Secretary Treasurer Papers 193, Civil Rights Committee Folder).
231. Leuchtenberg, The White House Looks South, 194. After the bolt occurred in spite of Truman's efforts, there is some evidence that Truman was thankful for ADA. He told Eleanor Roosevelt that the southern tail will no longer be "wagging the dog" (Harry Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt, December 13, 1948, Truman PPF 242, Truman Library; Harry Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt, February 11, 1950, Truman PPF 242, Truman Library).
232. Interview with Clark Clifford by Jerry Hess, July 26, 1971, Truman Library; and interview with John Barriere by Jerry Hess, December 20, 1966, Truman Library. Clifford said he had underestimated the response of the South and changed his view of the platform in light of its response. Among those lobbying for the milder plank were past DNC Chair James Farley, then-current DNC Chair Howard McGrath, future Senate Leader Scott Lucas, future Senate Whip Francis Myers, MC Bill Dawson, and Clifford.
233. Zachary Karabell, The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election (New York: Random House, 2001), 157.
234. Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: Norton and Company, 1984), 17.
235. Scott James, "A Theory of Presidential Commitment and Opportunism: Swing States, Pivotal Groups and Civil Rights under Truman and Clinton," presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (1997).
236. Jerry Hess, December 20, 1966, Truman Library).
237. James Loeb to David Engvall, undated 1948, ADA mf 31;
238. James Loeb to Babbette Deutsch, July 28, 1948, ADA mf 17.
239. Paul Christopher to Jack Kroll, January 20, 1948, Operation Dixie mf 67. The CIO-PAC hired full-time PAC organizers-often black-to recruit black voters. One such organizer, Henry White, reported that many blacks were paying their poll taxes for the first time (Executive Committee of the Tennessee State CIO PAC, Minutes of the Meeting, March 20, 1948, Operation Dixie mf 67). A CIO strategy note declared that if you recruit blacks popular with their peers to a citizen's committee, you would have twelve black volunteers within a half hour on the telephone. If these volunteers canvassed the black wards in traditionally Republican cities, they could change some election outcomes (Philip Murray Box 132 Folder 5, Folder 4).
240. Interview with James Loeb by Jerry Hess, June 26, 1970, Truman Library; James Loeb to Alfred Baker Lewis, July 28 1948, ADA mf 17.
241. Steven Gillon, Politics and Vision: ADA and American Liberalism, 1947-1985: (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 45.
242. James Loeb to Alfred Baker Lewis, July 28, 1948, ADA mf 17.
243. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 328.
244. Robert Mann, The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 122-27.
245. Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate (New York: Knopf, 2002), 822.
246. See Katherine Rye Jewell As Dead as Dixie: The Southern States Industrial Council and the End of the New South, 1933-1954" (PhD diss., Boston University, 2010 332 357. There are also only four pieces of correspondence between John F. Kennedy and the Council at the John F. Kennedy Library (Boston, MA), hereafter JFK Library.
247. Jason MorganWard, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 96, 155-56.
248. Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 182-83.
249. James Byrnes to South Carolina State Democratic Convention, Stevenson Papers Box 16;
250. "Comparison of Two Platforms on Civil Rights," August 21, 1952, NAACP IX:71.
251. Walter White, July 24 1952, NAACP II A452;
252. James Byrnes to South Carolina State Democratic Convention, Stevenson Papers Box 16.
253. Abraham Holtzman, "Party Responsibility and Loyalty," Journal of Politics 22 (1960): 487.
254. Interview with Oscar Chapman by Jerry Hess, May 19, 1972, Truman Library.
255. Reginald Zalles to Helen Rotch, August 12, 1952, ADA mf 21. Georgia Senator Richard Russell was under consideration, and was conservative on more issues than Sparkman (Francis Biddle to Herbert Leman, July 4, 1952, ADA mf 21).
256. Thurber, The Politics of Equality, 84.
257. Stevenson received a memo on an alleged strategy by Harriman to line up endorsements by prominent African Americans and have Tammany boss Carmine DeSapio introduce him as a champion of civil rights on the first ballot. From there, he planned to gather momentum among liberals (Harry Harris to Edward Greenfield and Co., March 6, 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 268).
258. Stephen Mitchell to Adlai Stevenson, March 20, 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 58.
259. Edgar Brown to Adlai Stevenson, February 11, 1956, and June 6, 1956, both in Stevenson Papers, Box 14.
260. Harry Ashmore, Civil Rights and Wrongs: A Memoir of Race and Politics 1944-1994 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 118-20.
261. Lloyd Garrison to Arthur Schlesinger, August 12, 1955, Stevenson Papers, Box 73;
262. Memorandum for Archibald Alexander from LK Garrison, May 2, 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 354.
263. LK Garrison to William McCormick Blair, Jr., April 30, 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 36. Edgar Brown to Adlai Stevenson, June 6, 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 14.
264. Hugh White to Adlai Stevenson, August 8, 1956, Stevens on Papers, Box 89;
265. Edgar Brown to Adlai Stevenson, October 5 1956, Stevenson Papers, Box 14.
266. See Clifton Brock, Americans for Democratic Action (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 185.
267. Leuchtenberg, The White House Looks South, 259-65.
268. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon Johnson: the Exercise of Power
269. John Goldsmith, Colleagues: Richard Russell and His Apprentice Lyndon B. Johnson (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998), 65.
270. Mann, The Walls of Jericho, 264. Russell campaigned for Johnson in the fall in Texas after Lady Bird Johnson was assaulted in a Dallas rally. The ticket won in Texas by a small margin (288).
271. Caro, Master of the Senate, 808, 817-18.
272. Leuchtenberg, The White House Looks South, 279.
273. Interview with John M. Bailey by Charles T. Morrissey, April 10, 1964, Oral History Program, JFK Library.
274. Interview with Orval Faubus by Larry Hackman, June 29, 1967, JFK Library Oral History Program.
275. The quote is from 1958. See Nick Bryant, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 97.
276. David Burner and Thomas West, The Torch Is Passed: The Kennedy Brothers and American Liberalism (New York: Atheneum, 1984), 94.
277. See Sean Savage, JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party (New York: SUNY Press, 2004)
278. See John K. de Loach to John Hynes, September 14, 1959, Pre-Presidential Files, JFK Library.
279. Frank Barber to John Hynes, September 24, 1959, Pre- Presidential Files, Mississippi: Political A-C, JFK Library.
280. Interview with Ruth M. Batson by Sheldon Stern, January 24, 1979, JFK Library Oral History Program.
281. Roy Wilkins to John F. Kennedy, May 29, 1960, Sorensen Subject Files Box 9, JFK Library.
282. See Mark Stern, "John F. Kennedy and Civil Rights: From Congress to the Presidency," Presidential Studies Quarterly 19 (1989).
283. Bryant, The Bystander, 111.
284. Interview with Orval Faubus by Larry Hackman, June 29, 1967, Oral History Program, JFK Library.
285. According to Wofford, the original platform drafted was meant to be ambitious in anticipation of the compromises likely to be made. No one thought that the draft would be accepted in full. Robert F. Kennedy did not know about this strategy, nor did he read the draft carefully. He instructed the campaign to push for the Bowles platform in its entirety. Southerners did not press for a roll-call vote, although they wrote a minority platform (Mann, The Walls of Jericho, 273). Wilkins speculated that Johnson's vice-presidential candidacy "helped the Democrats adopt a strong civil rights plank because his followers could not afford to oppose the plank and still hope to recruit votes for Johnson outside the South" (Stern, "John F. Kennedy and Civil Rights," 810). Sorensen remembers that Robert F. Kennedy thought the platform promised "too many unwarranted hopes" and "specifics that could not be fulfilled" (Carl Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 36).
286. Taylor E. Dark, Unions and the Democratics: An Enduring Alliance (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2001), 78-80.
287. Bryant, The Bystander, 181.
288. Carl Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 46.
289. Mann, The Walls of Jericho, 284.
290. HarrisWofford Memorandum to President-Elect Kennedy on Civil Rights, December 10, 1960, Box 62, Robert F. Kennedy Papers, JFK Library.
291. See George Roberts, Paul M. Butler: Hoosier Politician and National Political Leader (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), 54, 94, 97, 160.
292. "A Political Program for Liberals," November 1, 1948, ADA mf 106.
293. Brock, Americans for Democratic Action, 164-65.
294. Brock, Americans for Democratic Action, 50, 73.
295. Foster, The Union Politic, 131.
296. Gillon, Politics and Vision, 41.
297. See "A Political Program for Liberals," November 1, 1948, ADA mf 106;
298. Brock, Americans for Democratic Action, 50, 73, 164- 65;
299. Hubert Humphrey to Phillip Murray, March 30, 1949, Phillip Murray Papers, Box 143, Folder 14;
300. Robert L. Carter to branch presidents, August 31, 1964, Mf supplement to Part 13, r11.
301. August Meier and John Bracey, "The NAACP as a Reform Movement, 1909-1965: 'To Reach the Conscience of America,'" Journal of Southern History 59(1993): 3-30.