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1328 An American Dilemma
One student reports that, while Negroes vote much less than whites in Detroit,
they register for voting almost to the same extent. This is because some Negro men
hope to get jobs in the Ford factories by registering and forming Republican clubs.
(My interviews.) See also: T. R. Solomon, ‘‘Participation of Negroes in Detroit Elec-
tions,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Michigan (1939), pp. 101-102. Quoted
in Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” Vol. 6, p. 1308.
Tingsten, of. cit.y Chapter 3, has a complete summary of all these studies. Although
Gosnell, Arneson, and others have made such studies for two or three such communities
in America, it is difficult to do this, since voting statistics are not broken down by race,
and it is difficult to find suitable economic indices. (See: Harold F. Gosnell, Getting
Out the Vote (1927); Harold F. Gosnell and Norman N. Gill, “An Analysis of the
1932 Presidential Vote in Chicago,” The American Political Science Review (Decem-
ber, 1935), pp. 967-984; Ben A. Arneson, “Non-Voting in a Typical Ohio Com-
munity,” The American Political Science Review (November, 1925), pp. 816-822;
W. Donaldson, “Compulsory Voting,” National Municifal Review (July, 1915),
pp. 460-465. There is, however, a simple substitute for voting statistics in America and
that is the already collected public opinion polls made by Gallup, Fortune magazine and
others. Many of these polls give information as to whether the informant voted or not
in the previous election, and they have a rough estimate of the informant’s economic
status. A retabulation of several such polls ought to provide a reasonable estimate of the
extent of nonvoting in different income groups.
Tammany sought the Negro vote in New York City as early as 1886 when they
got John A. Nail, a saloon-keeper and leading Negro citizen, to set up a Negro Demo-
cratic club. After 1900 Ferdinand Q. Morton took over leadership of Negro Demo-
crats. He was skillfully supported after 1920 by Mrs. Bessye Bearden. The Garvey
movement helped the Democratic party in New York to a large extent. (Bunche, “The
Political Status of the Negro,” Vol. 6, pp. 1335-1356.) For a detailed description of
Negroes in recent New York politics, see Claude McKay, Harlem (1940), pp. 124-131.
Henderson, of. cit.y p. 19.
Litchfield, of. cit., pp. 271, 273.
Gosnell, Negro Politicians^ p. 36.
In St. Louis, for example, Negroes were given only three upper-bracket political
jobs by the Republicans. The incoming Democrats, despite a general curtailment due
to the depression, opened up eleven more jobs to Negroes and built one hospital and
three community centers for them. (Democratic Campaign Booklet, prepared by Negro
Division of the Democratic Campaign Headquarters of St. Louis. Quoted by Bunche,
“The Political Status of the Negro,” Vol. 6, pp. 1315-1316, 1320.)
New York was something of an exception, since the nominal Republican, La
Guardia, was the mayor during the depression after beating Tammany candidates.
La Guardia supported Roosevelt nationally, however. Chicago, too, was something of an
exception since the pre-depression Republican mayor, Thompson, was very pro-Negro.
After Thompson’s defeat in 1931, however, he was rapidly forgotten, and the Negro
vote shifted to the Democratic party after a few years.
The figures for 1932 and 1936 are from Henderson, of. eit.y pp. 19-21.^ The
figure for 1940 is from H. F. Gosnell, “The Negro Vote in Northern Cities,” National
Municifal Review (May, 1941), p. 267. Since Gosnell used a slightly different basis
for calculation than Henderson, the 1936 and 1940 figures may not be exactly com-
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