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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 4. The Negro in Northern Politics
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492 An American Dilemma
Republican party long after it became apparent that a more flexible Negro
vote would bring more advantages.* In the last decade, however, the
Negro vote has shifted radically under the pull of the New Deal and the
push of the lily-white movement. Another trait of the Negro vote was
that it was, on the whole, passionately aware of the relation of a candidate
or issue to the Negro problem. Unlike other native Americans, Negroes,
when they thought politically, thought first in terms of their ethnic group
and only secondly in terms of the nation as a whole. Foreign-born citizens
have this trait also, but it tends to disappear in the second and third
generations. With Negroes it is tending to increase as Negroes become
more organized and politically conscious. No Negro leader can expect
to remain popular if he supports a white man who is reputed to be anti-
Negro. A “friend of the Negro people” need not always have the backing
of the local Negro leaders to get the Negro vote.
Although individual Negroes are not restricted from voting in the
North, there may be one condition which limits the influence of the
Negro’s vote once it Is cast. We refer to the practice of gerrymandering
—
that is, of so setting the boundaries of election districts that the vote of a
minority group is cut up and overwhelmed by the vote of the majority
group.®® Although a comprehensive study of the gerrymandering of the
Negro vote in Northern cities is yet to be made, there is evidence that it
exists in at least some cities.®^
Besides gerrymandering, there Is another way in which the Negro vote
is kept from having its proper weight in the election of candidates. This
is by neglecting to redistrict as population grows or declines at ditferent
rates in different districts. The practice is especially important with respect
to voting for national congressmen and state legislators, and it has some
significance for the election of city aldermen. Negroes will flow into a
district and still have only the same representation as a declining rural
area with perhaps one-tenth the population. This is, of course, a problem
far more general than a Negro one: it is the problem of cities to get their
fair share of representation in relation to rural areas, and the problem of
densely populated city districts to get their fair share in relation to rotten
boroughs. While there is probably no special anti-Negro prejudice in the
practice, Negroes are hurt far more by it than most other groups since they
• Negroes have not been more attached to the Republican party, however, than the Irish,
for example, have been to the Democratic party. The Northern Negro vote was not com-
pletely inflexible. In New York, it frequently went Democratic. In Chicago, the friendliness
of the Democratic candidate for mayor in 1885—Carter Harrison I—secured him about 50
per cent of the Negro vote, and his son, who ran for mayor in 1899, received about 65 per
cent of the Negro vote. (See Claudius O. Johnson, Carter Henry Harrison I [1928], p. 196,
cited in Elmer W. Henderson, “A Study of the Basic Factors Involved in the Change in
Party Alignment of Negroes in Chicago, 1932-1938,” unpublished M.A. thesis, University
of Chicag^o [1939I) PP*
^“7-)
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