movements have made this a better society.
For black Americans, the traditional two-party system has posed a particular set of challenges. Before the Civil War, the vast majority of African Americans, of course, were slaves, stripped of all legal and political rights. Even those who were free generally lacked the right to vote, so political action, almost by definition, had to take place outside the confines of the major parties. After the nation’s brief experiment with interracial democracy during the era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, the Democratic and Republican parties ignored the plight of black Americans. Nonetheless, where they were able to vote, blacks generally supported the Republican party, which had freed the slaves. During the 1930s, black voting allegiance began to shift to the Democrats, a trend that culminated in recent elections, when under 10 percent of the black electorate supported the Republican candidate for president. But many black political leaders today feel that their votes are taken for granted by a party that lacks a substantive program for addressing the continuing incidence of racial inequality in American life.
It is not surprising, given this history, that some black leaders have seen political independence as offering the most viable strategy for their community. In the pages that follow, Omar Ali traces the history of black participation in third parties and in other forms of political activism. His narrative touches on subjects that have inspired an extensive historical literature, such as abolitionism and the Black Panther party, and on lesser-known parts of this history, including black participation in the Socialist, Progressive, and Communist parties. He reveals the complex dynamics that have shaped the sometimes problematic relationships between African Americans and third-party movements.
As perhaps the most systematically oppressed group in the United States, blacks might be thought to welcome movements for far-reaching social change, and, indeed, they have often responded with enthusiasm to such movements. But at the same time, very few white-dominated independent political organizations have ever achieved a real harmony between blacks and whites. To some extent, of course, radicals and reformers cannot escape the societies they hope to transform, and the problem may be seen as simply one more example of the tensions inherent in American race relations, or of the pervasiveness of racism, even within third-party movements themselves.
Politically, African American leaders have found it difficult to decide where to look for allies in the larger society, or whether to eschew white allies altogether in favor of separatism. Conceptually, they have never reached a consensus on how to define the status of black Americans, a question with profound implications for finding the right strategy for political change. Are blacks members of an ethnic group, analogous to Polish Americans, Italian Americans, and other immigrant minorities, in which case they should operate as a political pressure group that seeks to elect more of their members to office and obtain a larger slice of the political pie? Are they members of an “internal colony,” whose situation is similar to colonized peoples in the Third World, in which case self-determination or even racial separation suggests itself, rather than seeking greater power within the existing system? Or are they basically downtrodden members of the working class, who ought to form alliances with other workers based on common class interests?
If these questions have proven intractable, it is also true that many white-dominated independent political movements have not effectively addressed the unique plight of African Americans as slaves, descendants of slaves, and victims of forms of oppression not experienced by other Americans. What kind of relationship could blacks forge with political movements such as the Populists, for example, who exalted the idea of the autonomous property-owning citizen? Or with movements based on the ideal of the free individual standing against state and society? Or with unionism, socialism, and communism, which saw social class as the fundamental dividing line in American society? None of these ideologies seemed entirely relevant to the black experience. Blacks were not propertied individuals—most of them were property before the Civil War. The idea of the free individual did help to inspire the crusade against slavery, in which many blacks took part, but it proved unable to solve the social and economic plight of the freed people after emancipation. Movements based on social class, finally, have faced a dual problem in attracting black support. On the one hand, there was the simple fact of racism in many unions. Perhaps more importantly, even those class movements that made genuine efforts to enlist black support generally subordinated racial issues to ones of class exploitation, defining the status of blacks as part of the larger plight of the proletariat or small farmer. The specific historical experience of blacks as a portion of the working class operating in a severely segmented labor market, subject to lynching, segregation, and disenfranchisement, was rarely addressed systematically by such movements. Moreover, their rallying cry, solidarity of all workers, black and white, flew in the face of the everyday experience of black Americans.
As Ali demonstrates, the main current of black political thought dates back to the abolitionist movement. What the historian Vincent Harding has called the Great Tradition of black politics aimed at blacks’ full incorporation into American life. The country could never be true to its professed creed of equality, black leaders like Frederick Douglass insisted, until slavery was abolished and African Americans enjoyed the same rights and opportunities as whites. Others, however, such as Douglass’s contemporary Martin Delany, argued that slavery and racism were intrinsic to American society and that blacks could achieve genuine freedom only by creating their own national existence, preferably, for Delany, in Africa or the Caribbean. Self-determination, not integration, offered the proper political course. This analysis suggested the necessity of separate black political organizations, rather than alliances with reform-minded whites. As Ali shows, this tension, in one form or another, has existed in every era of American history down to the present day.
Whether independent political action or operating within one of the two major parties offers the best hope for improving the condition of black Americans remains, of course, a point of debate today. One of the many virtues of Omar Ali’s account lies in highlighting the variety of political structures and strategies blacks have chosen over the course of American history in pursuing the goal of racial justice. Independent politics is not the only approach, but it has a long history, which, as Ali shows, has at many points energized the black community and helped to make America a better place for all its people.
Eric Foner
Introduction
Blacks have tended to be loyal to the two major parties. However, specific circumstances have led to active African-American support of third parties. When the two major parties reject African Americans’ political goal of inclusion, African Americans seek other political allies.
Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics1
Throughout the history of the United States, African Americans have catalyzed movements for the expansion of democracy, social justice, and economic and political reform. Since the mid-nineteenth century, African Americans have done so through a range of independent political tactics, including creating or joining existing third parties, supporting insurgent or independent candidates, running fusion campaigns, and lobbying elected officials with the backing of various alliances and organizations. That is, there has been an undercurrent of political independence among African Americans since the nineteenth century, even as most black voters have aligned themselves with one of the two major parties: the Republican Party from the time of the Civil War to the New Deal; and the Democratic Party since the New Deal, and especially since the height of the modern civil rights movement.2 In our post–civil rights era of pandemics and political uncertainties, there are also new possibilities. Younger voters, less connected to the old-guard leadership of the civil rights movement, are increasingly self-identifying as independent—that is, neither as Democrats nor as Republicans—and they are doing so at record levels. A recent poll conducted by Tufts University notes that upwards of 44 percent of 18 to 24 year-olds identify as independent; meanwhile, Pew Research Center surveys show that over one in four African Americans across all age groups are consistently
