What is the difference between progressives and populists

It was a rare low for Roosevelt, who was also well regarded. More characteristic of the Bull Moose leader was his delivery of a rousing speech just moments after being shot in the chest by a would-be assassin.

Roosevelt could not use his notes on this occasion, as they were covered in his blood, although they may have saved his life. The bullet passed through the metal case Roosevelt used to hold his trademark round glasses and was nearly stopped by the speech, which had been folded over many times and was nearly as thick as a small book.

Local political meetings were even more volatile, fueled by the whiskey that flowed during such events, regardless of Prohibition laws. Suffragists representing the votes of women argued that the low state of US politics demanded the moral influence of the fairer sex. In seven Western states, women did more than protest their exclusion from politics—they cast ballots and even won election to a number of local and state offices.

Despite predictions that women would be easily misled or overly sentimental, the votes of women in these states were usually spread evenly between the candidates in ways that mirrored the overall vote in their communities. Women and men in Utah supported the conservative Taft in equal numbers, while women in more liberal areas of the West were part of the majority that cast their ballots for Roosevelt. Progressive and Socialist candidates both spoke in favor of immediate federal legislation extending the vote regardless of gender.

Democrat Woodrow Wilson was evasive on the subject, at least as a candidate in The same was true of Taft. Most politicians recognized that even in areas where women could not vote, opposition to equal suffrage would be a poor long-term strategy as the national suffrage movement gained momentum. Once the goal of a constitutional amendment extending suffrage to all women was realized, hundreds of thousands of women would be casting ballots in every congressional district.

These voters would remember the men who had opposed their rights in the past. This map shows the results of the election. The Democrats benefitted from the defection of Roosevelt from the Republican to the Progressive Party. Wilson received only 42 percent of the popular vote. However, because of the unique system of American presidential elections Wilson appeared to win a landslide victory in the electoral college.

Wilson won nearly every state beyond the Great Lakes region, which rallied behind the Progressives. The Democrats also took control of the Senate and added to their numbers in the House of Representatives. After the election, most people who had supported the Progressive Party returned to the Republicans. A number of Progressives were elected at the state and local level, and Progressive ideas had a tremendous influence on President Wilson.

However, the Progressives as a political organization quickly faded away, much like the Populists following the election of Roosevelt remained a leading national figure, while Taft would later be appointed to the Supreme Court where he served as Chief Justice.

By the turn of the century, every American town with more than a few hundred residents had its own newspaper. A city of 50, might have a dozen different newspapers, many of which were owned and operated by recent immigrants and were published in German, Yiddish, Italian, or Greek.

There were also newspapers that sought to represent the views of labor unions, African Americans, and various political parties and movements. Nearly every town with at least a few thousand residents had two leading newspapers that were usually directly subsidized by the Republican and Democratic Parties.

In addition, many of the leading and nationally circulated newspapers were dominated by a handful of powerful newspaper syndicates. In both cases, articles submitted by readers and wire stories distributed by political parties and national syndicates provided much-needed copy for the tens of thousands of understaffed local newspapers. As a result, a well-written editorial might soon appear in a number of newspapers across the nation.

A century prior to the widespread use of the Internet to share ideas, ordinary Americans joined professional journalists in broadcasting their opinions through the print media. Progressives seized this medium to spread their ideas. The president offered both praise and criticism for muckrakers, emphasizing the importance of their work so long as they maintained fidelity to the truth.

Muckrakers might also conduct research that was calculated to validate a preconceived conclusion and thereby ignore or marginalize facts and perspectives that were contrary to their opinions. Despite the abuses of some muckrakers, the Progressives generally succeeded in exposing dirty secrets of political machines, corporations, and governmental administrations.

Many of the leading muckrakers even published novels intended to bring their observations to a larger audience in hopes of promoting their reform agenda. Like the animal he chose to represent the railroad trust, Norris presented railroad barons as aggressive creatures whose tentacles reached in multiple directions and strangled the independence of ordinary farmers. New York Tribune reporter Jacob Riis used a different medium to demonstrate the way corporate greed led to the impoverishment of the city.

His book, How the Other Half Lives , was first published in and demonstrated the power of photojournalism. Given the state of photography at this time, Riis had to stage his photos, and his subjects had to hold still for a few seconds. The same is true of other photojournalists.

For example, rural Southerners and Appalachians insisted on wearing their Sunday best in photos meant to depict squalor. As a result, these photos demonstrate both the poverty of the region and the quiet dignity of the laboring people that inhabited these places.

The work of Nellie Bly reflects a similar brand of determination. After faking insanity and being arrest and interned, Bly documented the inhumane conditions she and others endured within the asylum. As a result, a significant movement to reform prisons and asylums emerged. Baker is best known for his book Following the Color Line , which was one of the few efforts by white journalists to document the conditions faced by African Americans during this era.

The author had hoped his book would inspire readers to challenge the Capitalist system, which he believed exploited the consumers of adulterated beef and also the workers who produced it.

In the novel, Jurgis responds to each injustice within the workplace by resolving to work harder until he finally discovers Socialism, which promises material security and equality. Sinclair had intended the novel to promote Socialism, but the atrocities most readers recalled were those committed against consumers rather than immigrant workers like Jurgis. Most readers missed the political message of the book and remembered only the festering bacteria and vermin that went into the sausage and might also be part of the food they just served their own family.

Ida Tarbell was a Progressive journalist who exposed the monopolistic practices of Standard Oil Company. She referred to herself instead as a historian. Many Progressive reformers sought to publicize the unsanitary conditions of beef packing facilities. The small portrait is Reverend J. Day, the Chancellor of Syracuse University who presented a different perspective.

Day brought attention to the efficiency and economy of the beef industry which made it possible for urban workers to include meat in their daily diets. The Jungle was published as Progressives were waging a fight for greater regulation of the meatpacking industry.

The law also required drug makers to list ingredients. The former established guidelines regarding sanitation and required federal meat inspectors to be present at all stages of production. The Pure Food and Drug Act required labels that included all ingredients and would lead to regulations restricting the use of narcotics such as opium and cocaine in medicines. The implications of the Socialist brotherhood Sinclair hoped to promote were largely forgotten. Prohibition remained one of the leading causes promoted by middle-class Protestant reformers.

The Anti-Saloon League Began as a local temperance society in Ohio in , the Anti-Saloon League emerged as the leading prohibitionist organization in the country and successfully lobbied for a host of local and state laws banning alcohol by the early twentieth century. The League began as a local political organization that would only endorse candidates who had pledged their support for Prohibition.

The same was true in hundreds of other communities throughout the nation where Protestants utilized the goals and methods of the Progressive Movement, calling on state and local governments to ban the consumption and sale of alcohol.

In many districts throughout rural America, no candidate could win without the endorsement of local prohibition organizations. The movement was especially strong in the Protestant-dominated Bible Belt of the South and the Midwest. By , three states had outlawed alcohol. This number grew to nine states by and 26 states by Over 60 percent of Americans were Protestant in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Protestant churches led the fight for a number of reforms that sought to influence behavior beyond Prohibition. One of the reasons for the renewed emphasis on Prohibition at this time was concern about the growing number of Catholics, which reached 15 million by The rise was more the result of increased immigration from southern and central Europe, Mexico, and Latin America. Recent trends in immigration also led to dramatic increases in the numbers of Jews in the US as well as small but growing Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist communities.

Protestants responded by launching a movement to renew their faith and revive missionary zeal through dedication to public welfare. Like all successful movements in the United States, the strength of the Anti-Saloon League was in local chapters who engaged in grassroots campaigns in support of prohibition. The Social Gospel Movement led to a renaissance in charitable efforts and taught that service to the poor was the obligation of those who had been blessed with material wealth.

The Social Gospel Movement also motivated campaigns to treat workers more fairly and called into question practices of racial and religious discrimination. At times, the movement also reinforced existing attitudes of paternalism and the uncritical association of poverty with crime and vice.

Despite the sometimes paternalistic and condescending attitudes, the urban poor began to return to church in response to the creation of outreach missions in neighborhoods once ignored by the larger Protestant congregations. Young children employed inside a South Carolina textile mill in These children were often injured by the rapidly moving machinery.

Between Reconstruction and the start of World War I, the percentage of children who regularly attended public schools had more than doubled. The number of public high schools increased from fewer than to more than 6, during this same period.

Most of these schools focused on the liberal arts, classical languages, and advanced math skills. However, as more and more children attended school, a movement to provide vocational skills emerged with the support of business interests as well as many parental groups.

The vocational education movement demonstrated increasing awareness of the value of technical and trade skills in the new industrial economy. Early training programs included courses in scientific agriculture, as well as mechanical and industrial trades. Young women received a different curriculum, largely based on cultivating their skills as homemakers. Colleges also began including courses intended to prepare students for the business world and some specific trades, although the vast majority still focused on the classic model of education based on language, science, and the liberal arts.

Progressives viewed public education as the engine of social mobility. Through public schools and colleges, the children of farmers and common laborers might gain the skills and knowledge that would allow them greater upward mobility. However, the percentage of students attending college remained modest compared to the rapid growth of high schools. Other Progressives focused on reforming Native American boarding schools and developing more educational opportunities for the graduates of these institutions.

For example, Murray State School of Agriculture today Murray State College in Oklahoma operated as both an agricultural and a community college for its predominantly Native American student population. Progressive reformers also worked to reduce the appalling mortality rates at the boarding schools for young Native Americans. Through reform, more children survived away from home due to a variety of commonsense initiatives to better protect health of the students.

The decline was also the result of school officials sending sick children home to recover—not only a salubrious measure for the children who were well enough to travel but also one designed to shelter schools officials from blame if the illness proved fatal.

The most significant Progressive reforms aimed at improving the lives of the young were those that sought to restrict the employment of school-aged children.

Thanks in large part to local anti-child labor organizations, at least a dozen states passed laws limiting child labor in the early s. These laws were not always enforced, but they did help to reduce the number of children killed in industrial accidents. By , only , children under 16 held jobs beyond the home and farm. The result was a dramatic decline in illiteracy. By , less than half a million children were illiterate and states and communities were passing laws making school attendance mandatory for children under various age limits.

Progressives in Illinois passed a law limiting the workday for children aged sixteen and under. However, business interests within Illinois attacked the law as socialistic and had it repealed in By this time, the reformer Florence Kelley The first general secretary of the National Consumers League, Florence Kelley was one of the most prominent advocates of anti—child labor laws in the United States.

She was also a supporter of a host of other progressive causes such as civil rights and was one of the founding members of the NAACP.

Kelley became one of the leading advocates for stronger laws to protect children. She was later appointed by the governor to inspect conditions affecting children who worked in factories throughout Illinois.

Florence Kelley became the first general secretary of the group and traveled around the nation documenting the conditions of working women and children. She and other NCL leaders also delivered thousands of public lectures. The NCL certified products that were not made by children and urged consumers to only buy items that displayed the NCL label. This group focused on legislative efforts and lobbied Congress to outlaw child labor.

Among the most poignant images of the anti-child labor movement are those of very young children holding signs asking for a few hours per week that they might attend school or play with other children.

Efforts to pass federal legislation banning child labor failed until the midst of the Great Depression when Congress agreed that such laws were needed to protect the jobs of adult males. States that passed child-labor laws found that goods made by young children in other states entered their markets. The result was a net loss of local jobs and no discernible reduction in child labor. In , Congress passed a federal law that made it illegal to ship goods that had been made by children under the age of fourteen out of the state.

However, this law was voided two years later by the Supreme Court. The court agreed with a North Carolina mill that the law violated the Tenth Amendment, which grants states the authority over matters that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Many believed that the only way to truly outlaw child labor was to pass a Constitutional Amendment. President Taft approved the measure in and agreed to appoint a woman to the head the new agency out of respect for the efforts of these reformers.

Other Progressives, such as Harvard professor Alice Hamilton, led investigations that publicized the harmful effects of deadly fumes on the bodies of children who labored in various factories. Still other Progressive women and men documented the conditions faced by children who were employed because of their ability to crawl through narrow mine shafts.

The Ohio law was passed in , the result of years of activism by Progressives, and came on the heels of a attempt to pass a law barring children aged fifteen and younger from working more than nine hours per day. Arkansas led the South with a similar law barring child labor, which was passed a few years later. In the march of time it became necessary to withdraw the children from school, and these machines came to be operated by the deft touch of the fingers of the child. As support for stronger child labor laws grew, the Progressives recognized that one of their chief obstacles to passing these laws was the ability of legislative committees to prevent their measures from reaching the floor for public debate and a recorded vote.

As a result, the Progressives directed much of their later efforts toward promoting reforms such as initiative and referendum. Initiative allowed residents to petition their legislature directly, while referendum required that a proposed law be placed on the ballot. Once these democratic initiatives were approved, state legislatures were no longer able to thwart child labor laws and other reforms through inaction.

The result was a dramatic increase in anti-child labor laws in the late Progressive Era. Progressives who sought to create a more ordered world were influenced by business leaders such as Frederick W. Taylor studied the efficiency of steel mills throughout the s, breaking down each of the tasks workers performed into a series of motions.

Taylor then analyzed the ways that these motions could be made more efficient. Numerous factories paid Taylor and other consultants to study their production processes in hopes of maximizing efficiency. It also led to the speeding up of assembly lines. As a result, workers sometimes felt as if they themselves had become machines. This feeling was especially pervasive when workers were forbidden to leave the assembly line for any reason, including restroom breaks, because their absence would force the assembly line to stop.

The same was true of government, especially at the local level where Progressive reformers continued their attack on corruption. Progressives believed that the first key to efficient government was ending the patronage system and awarding jobs to experts.

The second step was removing the dictator-like structure of city governments in favor of systems that spread power among specialists who were selected to head specific departments. In the early s, two congressmen, scores of state legislators, and more than a hundred mayors representing the Socialist Party were elected.

Although the Socialists remained weak on the national level, their ideas were very influential in municipal government. Progressive reformers studied various examples of local governments as models. The city of Galveston, Texas, had been decimated by a hurricane in September that cost the lives of an estimated 8, people.

Relief funds and rebuilding efforts were thwarted by the inefficiency of the city government until the state legislature intervened by appointing a commission of experts to take control. As a result, this important port city quickly recovered. Experts in city planning and civil engineering constructed storm walls and even raised the low-lying parts of the city that had suffered the worst flood damage.

As a result, the city withstood a similar hurricane in with minimal damage or loss of life. A major flood in Dayton, Ohio, led to the development of another model of civic reform. Rather than adopting the city commission system of Galveston, Dayton replaced the mayor with a city manager who was an expert in the field of urban management.

The city manager was appointed by the city council, a provision which assured voter input and accountability. By , over 1, cities were utilizing either the city commission system of Galveston or the city manager system of Dayton. Hundreds of cities took reform even further, leading to public ownership of public utilities.

They also created publicly owned water, sewer, and sanitation departments. Milwaukee mayor Emil Seidel was the first of many mayors elected on the Socialist ticket in Under his administration, Milwaukee developed new departments for public works and city parks.

Reforms for municipal electric plants faced larger obstacles, although city and state governments became active in encouraging development of generating stations and distribution systems that would provide their residents with low-cost electricity. Although the idea of direct government ownership in other industries attracted few adherents, the benefits of publicly owned utility companies led many cities to engage in similar programs. The typical working woman of the late nineteenth century needed their income for survival and occupied low-status positions as domestic servants.

Others endured routine and often physically exhausting jobs in textile manufacturing. However, by , half a million women worked in offices as clerks, switchboard operators, and secretaries. As the century progressed, upwardly mobile women increasingly occupied professional careers in teaching and nursing as well as clerical jobs. In response, the image of the working woman began to change.

A new generation of college-educated women led the suffrage movement as it gained momentum in the Progressive Era. As a result, women were becoming engaged in community issues in larger numbers.

As more women acquired formal education, entered the paid workforce, and became engaged in public life, they questioned the notion that the home was the only proper place for a woman.

The early s saw a number of victories for the movement that were both a result and a cause of the increased education, upward mobility, and political activism of women during this era. This photo shows a parade of suffragists in New York City. Women in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado had secured their right to vote statewide by These women gave lectures and spread flyers throughout the state and convinced a majority of male voters to approve the measure.

The following year, a similar effort resulted in the passage of a ballot initiative in California. Many of the women who were drawn to the cause of suffrage had been active in the public sphere for a number of years before becoming suffragists.

Like most Progressives, they focused most of their energies on the problems of urban and industrial America. The condition of workers and the urban poor formed the vanguard of the movement, with numerous Progressive organizations pressing for laws that would limit the maximum number of hours women could be required to work. Both the architect and object of these protective laws, women led the rank-and-file membership of these movements.

They also led countless local initiatives and were more likely to occupy leadership roles within civic organizations than any previous era in US history.

By , several million women were already active within local suffrage movements. For most women, however, the road to becoming a suffragist began with a particular reform that placed them in the public sphere.

A few years of actively promoting a public cause tended to transform Progressive men and women from relative indifference regarding the suffrage question to supporting votes for women to more effectively pursue their own reform agenda. Although suffrage remained controversial, Progressives generally avoided social taboos. For example, few Progressives supported the efforts of Margaret Sanger A nurse who was originally from the state of New York, Sanger toured internationally promoting the legalization of contraceptive methods and was the founder of Planned Parenthood.

A handful of Socialist journals were among the first to print her articles. However, by , Sanger was publishing her own serial publication titled the Woman Rebel. At the time these laws were passed and throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, spreading information regarding contraception was considered indecent.

It was even subject to state and local penalties. Arrested for promoting ideas and methods that offended the sensibilities of many social conservatives and Progressives alike, Sanger quickly became notorious as the leading public advocate of birth control. Her infamy led to the spread of information regarding birth control by both her supporters and critics. Newspapers throughout the nation discussed the issue, although her detractors often used creative methods to avoid printing details about the subject.

Sanger was also active in poor and immigrant communities she identified as being vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies. Some immigrants perceived that the efforts of some birth control advocates in their communities were directed at reducing their numbers, a selective form of population control.

For most African American women and men of the early s, however, their most immediate concerns were economic discrimination and the spread of Jim Crow. Among a number of prominent black leaders at the turn of the century, two men came to represent two different perspectives regarding the challenges faced by black America.

He combatted racism in all of its forms and was a leading proponent of Pan-Africanism. As a Northerner, and especially as a wealthy and well-educated member of the black upper class, Du Bois advocated for equality of opportunity in education and other endeavors. He believed any accommodation to segregation or white supremacy, even to achieve tactical gains such as better schools or opportunities for black workers, was contrary to the best interests of the race if these concessions required the acceptance of segregation.

In , Du Bois published the Souls of Black Folk , which included a chapter that challenged the views of the most famous black American at this time, Booker T. Washington was the founder and president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and the leading fundraiser for black schools and colleges in the early twentieth century.

Washington was criticized as accommodating segregation as part of a tactical maneuver to gain support for basic education and job training skills for African Americans. At the same time, Washington also supported a number of black liberal arts colleges and secretly provided funds for some early civil rights initiatives. Du Bois believed that Washington had no right to speak for all black Americans. He also believed that Washington accommodated white supremacy by accepting segregation in a mistaken attempt to foster goodwill among Southern whites.

Booker T. Washington was an effective fundraiser for African American schools and colleges in a time period when public funds were directed towards white-only schools. He is pictured here with philanthropist Robert C. Washington had risen from a childhood working in the salt mines of West Virginia to becoming the most famous black educator in America. He transformed a one-room school in Tuskegee, Alabama, into a college that prepared thousands of black women and men for careers in education and industry.

Perhaps most impressive, Washington achieved this feat by securing funding from the all-white state legislature of Alabama. In , Washington was asked by the directors of the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, to deliver a speech that would demonstrate to the world that race relations in the South were stable. Washington understood that these leading white Southerners were motivated by a desire to attract investment to the region by minimizing the importance of racial discrimination, but he saw the speech as an opportunity to demand fair treatment.

Calling on whites to treat black workers with more fairness, Washington offered acceptance of segregation in exchange for humane treatment and a commitment to equal funding for black schools and better job opportunities for black workers.

At this time, schools for Southern black children received only a third to a quarter of the funds allocated for white children.

Washington at the Cotton States International Exposition in which he proposed an acceptance of separate institutions for whites and blacks so long as African Americans were given greater opportunities for education and jobs. The juxtaposition of the ideas and perspectives of Booker T. Washington and W. Du Bois provides a starting point for understanding the ideas and challenges faced by black leaders at this time.

Early civil rights activists discussed the merits of both conservative and radical ideas and tactics. These debates were printed in scores of black newspapers, providing historians a wealth of primary sources that demonstrate the intellectual vibrancy of the communities they served. Conservatives such as Washington sought gradual change and tactical goals like equal funding for separate schools. Radicals such as Du Bois opposed such tactics in favor of lawsuits challenging segregation.

Radicals and conservatives also differed on topics such as the creation of vocational training schools. Conservatives recognized that such training would prepare men and women for jobs as laborers, but radicals feared that these institutions might discourage black Americans from pursuing other forms of higher education. However, one must remember that someone who was generally radical or conservative could often support both tactical approaches.

For example, Washington secretly diverted money to finance civil rights lawsuits from funds he had secured from paternalistic whites who intended to support programs that would train black men for jobs as laborers.

At the same time, Du Bois had tremendous respect for the work done by black trade schools and recognized that Washington was very effective as a fundraiser for these kinds of schools. While Washington looked towards vocational training and practical education programs, Du Bois believed racial equality was predicated upon the leadership of black men and women who had acquired higher education and leadership skills.

Du Bois rejected the notion that black colleges should focus only on vocational skills. He worked with other professors to maintain a rigorous academic program at Atlanta University Clark Atlanta University today where he taught history and sociology. In , Du Bois called for a meeting of back leaders to create a national civil rights organization.

Many historians believe the group intended to meet in Buffalo, New York, until the hotels of that city refused accommodations to these men. Others question this assumption, pointing out that hotels in Northern cities were usually willing to accommodate wealthy African American leaders when they traveled.

The group stayed in nearby Niagara, and their organization became known as the Niagara Movement An African American civil rights organization formed along the New York—Canada border by W.

Du Bois and other black leaders in Du Bois believed that Booker T. Du Bois initiated a national civil rights organization known as the Niagara Movement in Du Bois also sought to correct the historical image of race and slavery that was created by white scholars during this era. Scouring the archives for primary sources, such as letters written by former slaves to former owners, white historians sought to validate the popular image of the contented slave.

The letters of thousands of slaves were scoured for a single sentence that might be cited to prove that they had been well treated or had kind memories of their previous life in bondage. Given the millions of individuals who had been enslaved, the peculiarities of nostalgia and memory, and the power of institutions such as family and community, these historians found many examples of positive memories.

Du Bois confronted this historical ventriloquism by collecting sources of African Americans along with other black scholars such as Carter Woodson. The ideology intended to uplift the country with an idea of political reforms. Aimie Carlson is an English language enthusiast who loves writing and has a master degree in English literature. Follow her on Twitter at AimieCarlson. Aimie Carlson.

Updated: August 3, Aimie Carlson Aimie Carlson is an English language enthusiast who loves writing and has a master degree in English literature. Previous Post. Ideologically speaking, the Democratic Party has two outlooks, referred to and signified in all sorts of ways—populist and progressive, radical and moderate, socialist and neoliberal, idealist and pragmatist.

For the populists, the enemies are the rich and powerful—those who make the decisions of society, those who reap the spoils.

For progressives, the enemies are the ignorant and the bigoted who vote for cultural affirmation rather than their checking account.

In Arthur Schlesinger Jr. It is no longer the common man against the economic royalist, or the worker against the boss so much as it is the rational against the indignant, the tolerant against the bigoted, the planner against the spoiler…the educated against the uneducated, the young against the old. For the populist, politics is still very much about the common American against the economic royalist and the worker against the boss. The populist is lower, the progressive is higher. The populist came from a family that needed a social worker; the progressive is a social worker.

The populist votes for welfare, redistribution, and active government because those things guarantee more income and steady work; the progressive votes for those things out of philanthropic motivation or to extirpate a guilty conscience. The populist wants things to change; the progressive wants everything to stay the same, just without the bad.

Since Republicans and Democrats collude to keep third parties out—even though individual Republicans or Democrats will support a third party if they think that party will steal votes from the other—all social movements are eventually corralled into one of the two parties or left out of the political process to fossilize into eccentric lifestyles. In the Republican Party had effectively been without political power for thirty-six years. Up until this time, progressives were prominent in both parties.

For its part, the GOP, like all political parties of the powerful, has only one election strategy that works. In Herbert Hoover, rather than promising to do anything to get the country out of the Great Depression, instead blamed the whole thing on Hispanic immigrants and European banks, and lost by eighteen percentage points to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who at least promised to do something even if he never said what that something would be.

Throughout the fifties, anti-Communism had purged the labor unions of its most radical members; those left behind in union leadership survived by personal timidity and patriotic zeal. The city machines were furious with the national Democratic Party for extending olive branches to rioters and protesters. The South had obviously had enough.

The re-election of FDR in was the first time the Democratic Party had won a majority of black voters. In Mississippi, for example, you can lose your right to vote just by writing a bad check, and the governor must not only win the popular vote but also the majority of congressional districts, which are of course gerrymandered.

In , the Alabama state legislature passed a voter ID law, then turned around and closed DMV offices in counties with high black populations.