African American Multi Party Movement

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African Americans were not allowed suffrage across the United States until the passage of the 15th US Constitutional amendment in 1870. Even then only men were granted the right to vote. By 1870 the US already had a two part system in place and until the 1860s neither major party supported any policy that addressed the concerns of African Americans (Walton and Smith: 137-139). Since the Civil War almost consistently African Americans have been subject to a one party system. A multi-party is vital to any democratic system. Multi-party systems allow voter to choose between candidates that have different plans to address issues that matter to the voters. For long periods of times neither major party even addressed the issues that African Americans …show more content…
This was because they were the party that gave African Americans their freedom and black males’ suffrage they also created the Freemans Bureau. The Democratic Party during this time was the racist white supremacist southern party. In 1936 there was a major shift in the African American electorate from mostly exclusively Republican to voting for the Democrat F. D. Roosevelt. This had nothing to do with civil rights or party alignment but it was about the economic benefit the New Deal offered to everyone no matter of race or social standing (Walton and Smith: 140-142). This was the election were many black voters switched to Democrats leaving a large minority of black voters as Republicans. In the 1950s Democrats began to address the African American communities call for civil rights legislation southern white Democrats began to join the Republican Party and fight the civil rights movement. By the election of 1976 Democrats could count on around 90 percent of the black electorate’s votes. The civil rights movement was the event that convinced the black voters to switch parties for good. After the 1970s the Democratic Party began to pay less and less attention to the issues that mattered most too black voters knowing that the black voters wouldn’t vote for the Republicans. This began the abuse of Democratic Party on their strong hold on the black …show more content…
In order to fix this the party created the McGovern-Fraser Commission. This doubled the black representation in the field of delegates. After this commission the thought in the Democratic Party was that it would be more strategic to distance itself from the African American civil rights agenda. In order to regain control the party the leaders created super-delegates and created Super-Tuesday. The idea behind super-delegates was that they would lean more towards the center and towards a candidate that was more likely to win the general election. Super Tuesday was created so the more conservative voters in the South would give a more moderate candidate momentum (Frymer: 104-111). It wasn’t until Jessy Jackson ran for President of the United States as a Democrat in 1984 that either of the two major parties had an African American candidate for President. Super Tuesday back fired on the party in 1984 because it let Jackson become the front runner. Jackson knew he couldn’t contest for the president but instead he used campaign to move the party more left and to increase black voter registration and turnout (Walton and Smith: 145). When Obama was elected in 2008 it was a big deal for the Democratic Party because he was an African American candidate that was able to mobilize a large grassroots movement. The black vote was a
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