ABSTRACT
Between the Civil War and the election of 1928, an overwhelming majority of African American voters were Republicans. During Reconstruction, newly enfranchised black voters in the South helped the Republican Party achieve national political hegemony that lasted until at least 1880. The South remained overwhelmingly Democratic after Reconstruction, and the party solidified its dominance by disfranchising African Americans and passing Jim Crow laws. When they could, blacks voted against Southern racism and the Democratic Party by voting Republican, which they did in every major local, state, and national election for more than 60 years. By the late 1920s, the national Republican Party hit upon a new strategy: to use its conservative principles to woo white Southern voters. African Americans especially responded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 'Black Cabinet' an unofficial group of prominent blacks who advised the president on race relations, and to the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who publicly associated with blacks and was an outspoken proponent of racial equality.
