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Black voters, including the few who managed to register in the South, identified as Republican until the mid-20th century. Harry Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces started to pull black voters to the Democrats. JFK’s support for civil rights, albeit mostly lip service, drew some more; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 sealed the deal.

Those histories just aren't true, they are myths.

The split in the black vote in the 1936 election is not as dramatic as it might seem; FDR won 60% of the overall vote, so blacks were only slightly more likely to vote Democratic than the population at large. In the party ID chart, you can see the two effects I was talking about; black voters identifying as Republican start out at about half, drop sharply in 1948, then fall off the table in 1964.

I clearly did underestimate the effect of the New Deal in winning over black voters. From those numbers, there were clearly a large number of self-identified black Republicans voting for FDR (a lot of white Republicans did that, too). I wrote that the desegregation of the military, then the Civil Rights Act peeled blacks away from the GOP; allow me to amend that to the New Deal, then the desegregation, etc.

What’s the source for the data? I’d like to see the numbers before 1936. A regional breakdown, if one exists, might also be interesting; black voters were kept out of Democratic “white primaries” up to and including 1944 in much of the South.

The split in the black vote in the 1936 election is not as dramatic as it might seem; FDR won 60% of the overall vote, so blacks were only slightly more likely to vote Democratic than the population at large. In the party ID chart, you can see the two effects I was talking about; black voters identifying as Republican start out at about half, drop sharply in 1948, then fall off the table in 1964.

I clearly did underestimate the effect of the New Deal in winning over black voters. From those numbers, there were clearly a large number of self-identified black Republicans voting for FDR (a lot of white Republicans did that, too). I wrote that the desegregation of the military, then the Civil Rights Act peeled blacks away from the GOP; allow me to amend that to the New Deal, then the desegregation, etc.

What’s the source for the data? I’d like to see the numbers before 1936. A regional breakdown, if one exists, might also be interesting; black voters were kept out of Democratic “white primaries” up to and including 1944 in much of the South.