In the Balance of Power. Omar H. Ali
constraints have consistently stymied the growth of third-party and individual independent campaigns since the early part of the nineteenth century, ultimately providing few options for voters. African Americans in the antebellum North who were somehow able to meet the property and residency requirements to be eligible to vote (as in New York, starting in 1821), or had not been excluded from the vote by statute (as in Michigan, starting in 1837, or Pennsylvania, starting in 1838), often had no choices in the electoral arena.27 From the 1830s to the 1850s, the vast majority of candidates from the two major parties—at that time, the Democratic and Whig parties—were proslavery, or silent on the issue.28 If one was against slavery, the electoral arena was a limited venue for expressing one’s views—that is, until black and white abolitionists forced the issue of slavery and its abolition onto public stages through mass campaigns by calling on candidates and elected officials to take a position. These abolitionists formed the antislavery Liberty Party, running candidates of their own. In the century thereafter, African Americans confronted a new bipartisan establishment, when the Democratic- and Republican-controlled government was largely unwilling to enforce the constitutional rights of black men and women in the Jim Crow South.
Today, despite the legal gains of the modern civil rights movement, which successfully pressed elected representatives to pass federal legislation reaffirming the civil and political rights of African Americans (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965), elements of a new Jim Crow have become embedded in the political process. Independents in the twenty-first century, regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, or political ideology, face a kind of second-class citizenship in the electoral arena. They are legally and institutionally marginalized, not only in terms of ballot access but by their exclusion from televised debates through gerrymandering and the actions of bipartisan (as opposed to nonpartisan) election regulatory bodies—from the Federal Election Commission to the Commission on Presidential Debates—favoring the two major parties and their candidates.29 Bipartisan restrictions to the ballot not only limit the choices available to voters but, as a consequence, determine the policies and practices that flow from having candidates elected from such a limited set of options. Such restrictions also discourage voter participation.
Over the last twenty years, while overall voter turnout has hovered around 55 percent for national elections (and just below 35 percent for midterm elections)—with African American voter turnout generally reflecting the overall trend—the percentage of voters, black and white, liberal and conservative, who either describe themselves as independent or register to vote as unaffiliated or with a non-major party has steadily grown.30 The percentage of voters who registered as neither Democrat nor Republican between 1984 and 2004 more than doubled, from 10.2 percent to 21.9 percent.31 Meanwhile, recent Gallup polls indicate that upwards of 38 percent of Americans self-identify as independent, up from approximately 25 percent a quarter of a century ago. So while the percentage of Americans participating in elections is largely holding at slightly over half of the electorate, even as the total number of voters increases—122 million people voted in the 2004 presidential election, as opposed to 111 million in 2000—an ever larger percentage are positively identifying themselves as independents or registering as such.32
Regarding African Americans—who, as a whole, have proven to be the most loyal constituency to the Democratic Party, with the majority identifying themselves as Democrats since the mid-1960s—there appears to be a political transformation underway. David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies notes, “The votes cast by African Americans in 2004 showed them to be less Democratic in their partisanship than they had been in 2000.”33 While 14.8 percent of African Americans identified themselves as politically independent in 1997, by 2005 that number had increased to at least 25.9 percent. If we add the 5 percent of those who responded either “other” or “no preference” to the 25.9 percent of those who said that they were “independent,” the percentage of African Americans who did not identify with either major party was 30.9 percent.34
Perceptible signs of dealignment among African Americans relative to the Democratic Party have prompted the examination in this book of the history of independent black politics and third-party movements. Not since Hanes Walton Jr.’s Black Political Parties: An Historical and Political Analysis, published over thirty-five years ago, has a book-length work been devoted to the subject of African Americans and third parties.35 While a number of key studies on black politics in U.S. history have appeared since that time, including awardwinning books by Michael Dawson and, more recently, Steven Hahn, none focus on third parties and independent politics per se.36
The present study details how African Americans have used independent political tactics—creating or joining existing third parties, supporting insurgent or independent candidates, running fusion campaigns, and lobbying elected officials with the backing of various alliances, labor organizations, or other networks of support—to advance black political and economic interests.37 Since the middle of the nineteenth century, third parties have provided a way for African Americans (among other disaffected and marginalized groups) to apply pressure on the ruling parties. Under ongoing, although not necessarily consistent, outside pressure, the major parties have, in turn, adopted policies initially raised and fought for by independents into their own party planks, and sponsored legislation accordingly. In the nineteenth century, members of the Liberty Party sought the immediate abolition of slavery; radical Republicans pushed for the extension of black voting rights; and Black Populists—through the Colored Farmers’ Alliance and then the People’s Party—demanded that the government provide economic relief and political reform. In the twentieth century, Socialists, Progressives, and Communists, each in their own way, helped (albeit under the authority of the Democratic Party) to usher in the modern welfare state with measures such as social security and a minimum wage enacted into law. Meanwhile the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, among other black-led organizations and parties, demanded that the government protect African Americans’ civil and political rights. Today, black independents, like many of their counterparts from the past, are calling for a level electoral playing field in order to address domestic and foreign policy issues of concern.
In this study, to the extent possible, the focus is on black independents and their associations. This is in contrast to the way American political history is usually studied, described, and analyzed, which is by focusing on the major parties and their political leaders. To be sure, building third parties and independent political movements have not been the only ways in which African Americans have effected legislative changes, including ending slavery, extending citizenship, gaining the vote, desegregating public facilities, gaining economic relief, and protecting black civil and political rights. Many African Americans have chosen to work solely within the major parties—and indeed, those parties have always had dissenting voices within their ranks—but it remains the case that without ongoing independent political pressure, progressive legislative changes would likely not have been made. The work of black independents (among other independents) in the electoral arena has therefore been an essential part of the development of American democracy.
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Declarations of Independence |
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties.1
Thomas Jefferson, 1784
It is an image that goes to the heart of why African Americans have had to declare their own independence: Philadelphia, June 12, 1776. A rebellion has erupted in the British Empire’s Atlantic Seaboard colonies of North America. Thomas Jefferson, a representative in Virginia’s House of Burgesses (founded in the