Donalds suggests Black families were stronger during Jim Crow era

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) suggested that Black families were better off during the Jim Crow era while speaking at a campaign event for former President Trump.

Donalds, who is on the shortlist for Trump’s potential vice-presidential pick, was campaigning for the former president in Philadelphia at a “Congress, Cognac, and Cigars” event aimed at garnering Black male voters, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

During the conversation, the freshman lawmaker said he is starting to see the “reinvigoration” of Black families, adding that it is “helping to breathe the revival of a Black middle class in America.” Donalds also claimed that the nuclear family — or one with a mother, father and children living under the same roof — and its values have been eroded by Democrats and lost among Black voters after they supported the party following the Civil Rights Movement, the outlet reported.

“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more people voted conservatively,” Donalds said.

The Hill has reached out to Donalds’s office for clarification on his statement.

The Inquirer also noted that the event attendees were majority Black, but about half of those who listed addresses on the event sign-in sheet put down addresses outside of Philadelphia.

“Donald Trump spent his adult life, and then his presidency undermining the progress Black communities fought so hard for — so it actually tracks that his campaign’s ‘Black outreach’ is going to a white neighborhood and promising to take America back to Jim Crow,” Biden-Harris spokesperson Sarafina Chitika wrote in a statement.

Chitika said Trump and his campaign are showing Black voters that they will take away freedom and economic opportunities.

“From touting his mugshot to hawking fake sneakers, Trump and his campaign have shown Black Americans how little they think of us,” she said, adding, “Black voters are about to show Trump how little they think of him, his allies, and his racist agenda this November.”

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson asked Donalds in a post on social media platform X whether he would be a member of Congress under the Jim Crow era.

“@ByronDonalds Do you think you would hold your current position under Jim Crow? Asking for the rest of Black America,” Johnson said.

During a speech on the House floor, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) also criticized the Florida Republican for his “factually inaccurate statement.”

“That’s an outlandish, outrageous and out of pocket observation,” Jeffries said.

The Democratic leader argued that the Black community was not better off during a time when they could be lynched, “brutally murdered,” sexually assaulted, denied an education or the right to vote without consequences.

“How dare you make such an ignorant observation,” he said. “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

From Wikipedie: Great Migration (African American).

Educated African Americans were better able to obtain jobs after the Great Migration, eventually gaining a measure of class mobility, but the migrants encountered significant forms of discrimination. Because so many people migrated in a short period of time, the African-American migrants were often resented by the urban European-American working class (many of whom were recent immigrants themselves); fearing their ability to negotiate rates of pay or secure employment, the ethnic whites felt threatened by the influx of new labor competition. Sometimes those who were most fearful or resentful were the last immigrants of the 19th and new immigrants of the 20th century.
African Americans made substantial gains in industrial employment, particularly in the steel, automobile, shipbuilding, and meatpacking industries. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of Black workers employed in industry nearly doubled from 500,000 to 901,000. After the Great Depression, more advances took place after workers in the steel and meatpacking industries organized into labor unions in the 1930s and 1940s, under the interracial Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The unions ended the segregation of many jobs, and African Americans began to advance into more skilled jobs and supervisory positions previously informally reserved for whites.
Between 1940 and 1960, the number of Black people in managerial and administrative occupations doubled, along with the number of Black people in white-collar occupations, while the number of Black agricultural workers in 1960 fell to one-fourth of what it was in 1940. Also, between 1936 and 1959, Black income relative to white income more than doubled in various skilled trades. Despite employment discrimination, Black people had higher labor force participation rates than whites in every U.S. Census from 1890 to 1950. As a result of these advancements, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line declined from 87% in 1940 to 47% by 1960 and to 30% by 1970.
Populations increased so rapidly among both African-American migrants and new European immigrants that there were housing shortages in most major cities. With fewer resources, the newer groups were forced to compete for the oldest, most run-down housing. Ethnic groups created territories which they defended against change. Discrimination often restricted African Americans to crowded neighborhoods. The more established populations of cities tended to move to newer housing as it was developing in the outskirts. Mortgage discrimination and redlining in inner city areas limited the newer African-American migrants' ability to determine their own housing, or obtain a fair price. In the long term, the National Housing Act of 1934 contributed to limiting the availability of loans to urban areas, particularly those areas inhabited by African Americans.
Migrants going to Albany, New York found poor living conditions and employment opportunities, but also higher wages and better schools and social services. Local organizations such as the Albany Inter-Racial Council and churches, helped them, but de facto segregation and discrimination remained well into the late 20th century.
Migrants going to Pittsburgh and surrounding mill towns in western Pennsylvania between 1890 and 1930 faced racial discrimination and limited economic opportunities. The Black population in Pittsburgh jumped from 6,000 in 1880 to 27,000 in 1910. Many took highly paid, skilled jobs in the steel mills. Pittsburgh's Black population increased to 37,700 in 1920 (6.4% of the total) while the Black element in Homestead, Rankin, Braddock, and others nearly doubled. They succeeded in building effective community responses that enabled the survival of new communities...
In cities such as Newark, New York and Chicago, African Americans became increasingly integrated into society. As they lived and worked more closely with European Americans, the divide became increasingly indefinite. This period marked the transition for many African Americans from lifestyles as rural farmers to urban industrial workers.
This migration gave birth to a cultural boom in cities such as Chicago and New York. In Chicago for instance, the neighborhood of Bronzeville became known as the "Black Metropolis". From 1924 to 1929, the "Black Metropolis" was at the peak of its golden years. Many of the community's entrepreneurs were Black during this period. "The foundation of the first African American YMCA took place in Bronzeville, and worked to help incoming migrants find jobs in the city of Chicago."
The "Black Belt" geographical and racial isolation of this community, bordered to the north and east by whites, and to the south and west by industrial sites and ethnic immigrant neighborhoods, made it a site for the study of the development of an urban Black community. For urbanized people, eating proper foods in a sanitary, civilized setting such as the home or a restaurant was a social ritual that indicated one's level of respectability. The people native to Chicago had pride in the high level of integration in Chicago restaurants, which they attributed to their unassailable manners and refined tastes.

-PJ

Thanks. That was an interesting article. And I’m a fan of some of the black writers and intellectuals of that period, including Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois, and of course black Americans participated....to a limited extent...in the progress and enrichment of America in the years in question. [Hurston is a fascinating figure, a genuine old-fashioned Republican conservative, and one of the few of the greats who actually lived in the South.]

BUT we need to be careful in using statistics: Between 1940 and 1960, the number of Black people in managerial and administrative occupations doubled.” An accomplishment, but was that doubling based on a miniscule starting point? And did that progress touch blacks in the South? In my hometown of Miami, up until 1960 the opportunities for advancement were extremely limited, and black workers in the hotels of Miami Beach were compelled to leave before sundown.

As to the advancement of black Americans, the point made in the article is that most of it took place IN THE NORTHERN STATES, in other words, at a remove from the heart of Jim Crow America.

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