ey still accomplished little, because Roosevelt in order to push through his own agenda, he needed the support of the South, and they would not support him, if he openly supported blacks. In his four terms as president, Roosevelt signed less than 1/3 of the 150 pieces of Civil Rights legislation that crossed his desk.The shift to the Democratic Party was never meant to be permanent, which is why many blacks referred to themselves as “Roosevelt Republicans;” it was a change born of economic necessity. Although his presidency had in many ways allowed blacks to grow politically, they were still oppressed, and so with both parties still wavering on the race issue, neither taking a stand, the black vote wavered too. From 1948 until 1964 the black vote was split between the Republican and the Democratic parties, although it leaned Democratic. After 1964 and the advent of Civil Rights, the black vote became decidedly Democratic.In 1964, the roles were reversed between the two main parties. The Democrats came to be seen as being pro-black, and the Republicans anti-black, and this had to do with several factors. One important factor was the Great Northern Migration which began with the Depression, and ended after World War II. During this period many Blacks moved northward, and so became concentrated in the big cities such as Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, which meant that “for a Democratic presidential nominee to win Illinois…he had to win big in Chicago, which meant he had to do very well among black voters in the city” (Carmines and Stinson, 1989: 33). The second, more determinative factor lies in the fact that whereas before, race had been a non-partisan issue, Senator Barry Goldwater (one of six senators who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act) turned it into a highly partisan issue, “with Democrats squarely occupying the pro-civil rights side, and Republicans in the anti-civil rights cam...
