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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 22. Political Practices Today - 1. The Southern Political Scene
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478 An American Dilemma
the Border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West
Virginia, and also in Tennessee and Oklahoma. The Deep South, too, has
its few Republicans: cities always harbor nonconformists, and even a rural
area—such as Winston County, Alabama—may be overwhelmingly Repub-
lican. In recent years, the small proportion of migrants from the North has
occasionally brought its Republican affiliation along and a few native
businessmen have considered that their sentiments were with the national
Republican party. But these are all exceptions: In most places and at most
times in the South, white persons consider It a disgrace to vote Republican.
White Republicans have traditionally been labeled ^^scalawags” and ^^nlgger
lovers”—epithets which express the most extreme form of disfavor and
which reveal the heart of the political situation in the South.
When the federal government withdrew the army of occupation in the
1870^8, and the Klan was left free to terrorize Negro and white Republi-
cans at the polls, the Republican party in the South was broken. With a few
Negro and poor white votes—and sometimes in coalition with the Popu-
lists—the Republican party retained some representation throughout the
South until the new state constitutions of 1 890-1910 disfranchised Negroes
even more completely. By 1920, in recognition of its lack of significance in
the South, the Republican party practically abandoned primaries and often
did not even put up candidates in the general election. In 1940, the last
remaining strength of Southern Republicans was removed: at future
national conventions congressional districts with fewer than 1,000 Republi-
can votes in the previous election will be denied delegates. It is estimated
that this will affect 75 congressional districts in the South.®
At the same time that the Republican party was declining in the South,
the whites within it were splitting off from the Negroes to form what has
been commonly called “the lily-white movement.” The term seems to date
back to 1888 when the Negro Republican leader, N. W. Cuney, applied
It to white Republicans who tried to drive Negroes out of the state con-
vention of Texas by fomenting riots.^® The movement was given impetus
by Presidents Taft and Hoover.^ The aim of the lily-white leaders and of
these Republican Presidents was to build up a Republican party in the
South by dissociating the party from Negroes, and from the epithets
“nigger lover” and “scalawag.” They sought to do this by purging the
party of Negro Influence and a Negro share in the spoils of victory and by
attracting the new South’s businessmen.
In one sense, the movement has been successful in all but a few Bordet
states: There is now but one “regular” Negro national Republican com-
mitteeman—Sperry Howard of Mississippi, who resides in Washington, D.C.
In recent elections it is probable that a majority of the few Negroes who
voted in Southern states voted Democratic, although there is no proof of
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