with the Republicans retaining the large majority of the black vote in the major black districts, with the exception of New York (Weiss 1984: 29-30). Throughout this time, black newspapers such as the Savannah Journal, and the Philadelphia Tribune were advocating a split in the black vote, a movement away from the Republican party, encouraging blacks to divide their vote arguing that:So long as blacks were blindly loyal to the Republican Party, it was no wonder that neither Republicans nor Democrats paid them any special heed. The only hope for blacks politically was to become ‘an uncertain factor to be sought and wooed.’… neither party could any longer take them for granted, [by forcing both parties] to bid for black support their votes would begin to count and their political prestige would start to rise.” (Weiss 1984: 27)The differences between the GOP and the Democrats had become so insignificant as be “the difference between tweedledee and tweedledum” (Weiss 1984: 27), that blacks would have a better chance at gaining recognition and success by changing sides, because “nothing could be worse than Hoover” (Weiss 1984: 27). Both prominent black leaders such as James Weldon Johnson and Walter White supported and encouraged a move, and Robert Vann’s statement “I see millions of Negroes turning the pictures of Abraham Lincoln to the wall” (Weiss 1984: 28) symbolized the abandonment of the GOP, but the majority of African-Americans chose to wait. Black Republicans were going to wait to judge Roosevelt and the Democratic Party on the success of his “New Deal” economics policy. Only after seeing if it would work for them, would they change their vote.The Voting ShiftIn 1936, the black community began its defection to the Democratic Party en masse. Roosevelt’s New Deal had worked, and was working for them. Blacks were delegated to a part of the nat...
