Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: The Black Vote

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things, looking at the history and possible future of 100 different people and topics. As WNYC celebrates our 100th birthday, we hope it's a fitting birthday observance. We hope you've been enjoying this series consistent with our mission of deepening knowledge and thoughtfulness these last 100 years. 100 Years of 100 Things.

Thing number 31 today relevant to the election year, 100 years of Black Americans struggle for voting rights and who they voted for for president, with the Democrats worried that more Black men than in the past might vote for Donald Trump, former President Obama, in a recent appearance, spoke directly to Black men who are considering that choice.

President Barack Obama: Now you're thinking about sitting out or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you because you think that's a sign of strength, because that's what being a man is, putting women down. That's not acceptable.

Brian Lehrer: Former President Obama, speaking in Pittsburgh last week. We'll come back to the choices facing Black voters, including Black men today. Let's look back at history. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, said the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Of course, the 15th Amendment only applied to men at the time.

Of course, beyond that, we know that the 15th Amendment didn't end racial barriers to being able to vote, in practice only on paper. As the National Archives webpage puts it, "African Americans were still denied the right to vote by state constitutions and laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, the so called grandfather clause, and outright intimidation." Took until the 24th Amendment, by the way, in 1964 for poll taxes to be banned and, of course, the Voting Rights Act of '65 for more than that.

As for who Black Americans have chosen for president, those who could vote have gone majority for the Democrats since FDR's first reelection in 1936, largely for Republicans before that, but Democrats from 36 and beyond by varying margins, which we'll get into, and with a few points either way, mattering in close elections like the last two, and presumably this year, maybe 100 years ofhistory can shed some light on what people are grappling with right now. With us now, we are so happy to have Darryl Pinckney, author of many works of fiction, nonfiction, and theater, including his book Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. Mr. Pinckney, it's so nice of you to give us some time for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Darryl Pinckney: Thank you very much, Mr. Lehrer, but do call me Darryl.

Brian Lehrer: Call me Brian. Can we start at that point more than 150 years ago now, the 15th Amendment? Any thoughts on what it did do and what it didn't do?

Darryl Pinckney: Well, I think that it sets a precedent that has been very important, which is the legal mechanism by which we make inclusiveness or expanding the reach of the rights embedded in the constitution one after the other. Democracy turns out to be an additive process, if that makes any sense. It's just join us, join us, join us. I find on the other side, the conservative opposition to expansion of democracy has never changed, not since the founding conventions. It's always been the same, which is this anxiety about democracy itself.

Brian Lehrer: 100 years ago, 1924, the technical starting point of these segments, Jim Crow was in full force. In the south, of course, the Klan was in its second heyday and more. I see you were born in the early 1950s, and you grew up in Indianapolis. If what I read is accurate, it was the civil rights movement era, but you were in the North. What was northern segregation, unofficial segregation, like in your early life? I know you wrote about this in the book. You write about that. Did it apply to voting?

Darryl Pinckney: In my early childhood, when I think back, the places where we went for recreation were segregated, but I didn't think of them in that way because they were full of friends and my parents' friends, because my parents were rank and file active in the NAACP. The civil rights movement was always known just sort of there, like having to go to church or something like that. Indiana is a very conservative state. Nevertheless, I think that people felt rather emboldened because they were connected to something larger than one state.

I think it's important to remember that the outcome of those times was far from certain. Nobody knew how any of it would turn out. Those people who did take a stand or tried to do what they could should be remembered and thanked, because it all came at some risk to themselves, and that includes politicians who sponsored unpopular legislation. Of course, the history of Brown versus Board of Education tells us that opposition to this expansion of democracy, this definition of inclusiveness, has never ceased. It goes on and on and on. What we have now is something we've never had before or haven't had in 100 years, which is a kind of white nationalism that I think is still this kind of long reaction to Obama in some way.

Brian Lehrer: The timeline I've seen of the percentage of Black Americans votes for president shows a majority for the Republican candidates until 1932 or through 1932, of course, Lincoln was a Republican, and that set a standard, and the southern Democrats were ardent segregationists, but it flipped for good in 1936, FDR's first reelection, but that was still in the Jim Crow era. Do you have a take on why Black Americans shifted then to the Democratic presidential ticket?

Darryl Pinckney: Well, I think that one, the sort of chances to vote meant that they were, yes, engaged. It took a long time for the popular resentment of the Democrats in the South to change. That really wasn't until Kennedy and Johnson, because the Dixiecrats, the Democrats, their heritage was this opposition to reconstruction, which was a Republican Party, Lincoln, social experiment. I think that didn't entirely sort of flip. Remember, Martin Luther King Sr. was Republican, and so was Condoleezza Rice's parents. I think Angela Davis's parents as well. I'm not sure.

Again, they're in the South and they have these family allegiances already. Lena Horne's family, I think, was very Republican. It was a kind of middle-class position that wasn't easily given up, came with this generation. It's not that Black Scott, as much or anything from the New Deal down South that they should have. Roosevelt was only able to pass a lot of it by promising the South that Blacks would be excluded or certain Black professions like domestic labor or agricultural workers would be excluded from relief provisions.

I think it had more to do with, again, this sense of belonging to something larger. It was still a time of migration and going back and forth. It's very striking to me that Langston Hughes got it so wrong in 1935, thinking that the country was going to the left when that wasn't the case at all. Something else was sort of taking shape in spite of that, which had to do with, I think, generational change in Black America itself. That generation that was about to enter college was also the generation of World War II. That had, I think, more to do with it than anything.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think the country wasn't going to the left in 1935? That was the New Deal era, all these policies that, I think, are widely considered social democracy, that hadn't existed before, that the right has been fighting ever since. In that respect, or did Langston Hughes mean something else by that?

Darryl Pinckney: I think he meant sort of going to the left. Of course, he ended up sort of dodging the McCarthy committee or trying to get out of trouble with it, like many. I think I meant it in that way that he thought because so much was happening in the way of social experiment and social acceptance that things were going in this, what he saw as progressive way, but it didn't end up like that for lots of different reasons.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, it's 100 years of Black American struggle for voting rights and who you have voted for in our 100 Years of 100 Things series. As we do in these segments, we'd love to hear some oral history from some of you. 212-433-WNYC, who has an old memory or maybe had a story passed down in your Black family about how your parents or grandparents or great-great grandparents voted for president, or you yourself, Black Democrats, Black Republicans, anyone who's gone back and forth.

You can also talk about your family's historical feelings about voting itself, given the barriers to that in US history or your activism or their activism. I guess Darryl Pinckney was talking a minute ago about the feeling of community, that being part of that movement engendered in the 1950s as an example that went beyond place, whether you were in Indianapolis, where he was growing up, or somewhere else. 212-433, who has a story? Go as far back as you can in our 100-year timeline, 212-433-9692, or bring it back to the present with Darryl Pinckney in the context of him as the author of Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. 212-433-9692 call or text. Did you want to correct something I said? You're jumping in there.

Darryl Pinckney: Not at all. I was just already-- I hope what I said made sense. At the moment, suddenly, I'm thinking of one of these demonstrators in Hong Kong a few years ago at the end of the pandemic or just before George Floyd saying, "We must act out our democracy." When I think of my great-great grandfather and after in reconstruction, they went to the polls in armed groups. In those days, the ballots boxes themselves were segregated.

My parents had to vote when we moved out of the city in a country club that not even Jewish people could join. That just happened to be across the street. I found this very funny. My parents weren't amused at all. When more Blacks moved to the neighborhood, the polls got moved to the fire station because that was just too many people not liking this irony. Yes--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Darryl Pinckney: No, I think-

Brian Lehrer: You made the point.

Darryl Pinckney: -voting is not a passive activity.

Brian Lehrer: Looking at the timeline of Black Americans votes for president, the percentages I'm seeing are 70% for Roosevelt in 1936, the first time he got a Black majority, and a few points more or less than that for many elections afterward in the '70s, dropping to 60% Democrat. President Eisenhower's reelection in 1956 as a low point, but then soaring to more than 90% in the very next election. That was for JFK in 1960. Just one thought about Eisenhower. Did he get 40% of the Black vote, that relatively large minority reflects his sending the National Guard to desegregate the schools in Little Rock in 1954. Do you think there was any [unintelligible 00:15:18]?

Darryl Pinckney: Yes, I think so. And the army had by this time been desegregated officially thanks to Truman, not Eisenhower, who actually wasn't very progressive in that matter. Yes, I think it had everything to do with Little Rock.

Brian Lehrer: Why such a strong affinity for JFK in 1960, more than a 30 point jump in the Black vote from the previous election? It's been in the 80% to 90% range ever since.

Darryl Pinckney: I think because they projected this sort of future for America that was rather sort of young and the new frontier, the new world, a departure from the old, regardless of what his policy was specifically and on the ground and how late it took him to say this for that. I think that people were very ready for a change and for something better. They represented the Kennedy-- yes, Kennedy and Jackie represented this kind of elevation of American ambition. This was a young new voice coming. I think people are as desperate to turn the page now.

Brian Lehrer: Gregory in Harlem has memory of his grandfather voting for Eisenhower. Gregory, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling today.

Gregory: Hi there, Brian. How are you again? Listen, yes, my grandfather, World War II vet, voted for Eisenhower the first time. During that tenure, he had changed the pledge of allegiance to add under God, I guess, under the tutelage of Billy Graham or someone like that. All of a sudden, our money got "In God we trust" on it that same year. My grandfather said, "Well, I'm never voting for a Republican again in my life." We've been Democrats ever since. That's just a memory of-- I guess, he was another one of the Black men who voted for Kennedy.

Brian Lehrer: Gregory, thank you for that story. Laurette in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lorette. Did I get your name right? Is it Lorette? Maybe Loretta?

Laurette: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello. Is this Loretta in Flatbush?

Laurette: This is Laurette in Flatbush, Brian. Long time I didn't speak to you. I'm going to take you off the speaker so you can hear me, but it'll be hard for me to hear you. Just a moment now.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. All right.

Laurette: Are you there?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, yes. And now you're very loud. We'll monitor that from here. Yes, go ahead.

Laurette: If I'm 90 years old now, you know I've been out here a long time, right? So I've seen all the presidents, all the elections, and everything. I'm a first-generation American. My grandfather was able to enjoy his first privilege to vote. He made so much of it with the family, how important it was for us to vote because we were citizens. That was with my parents and then later with us.

Of course, we are with our children. Now, don't forget, my mother was a community activist, and she worked with the board of elections. Every time I go to vote, I tell the people there, "My mother used to do this work." I was also a community activist. Of course, I'm so old now, even though I'm still active, but not as a community activist, but in my building, the people still come to me with their questions. Now, don't forget, Brian, I'm a retired teacher. Right.

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Laurette: Okay. In my building, a lot of the tenants are immigrants or children of immigrants, and they still come to me with questions about voting or registration applications to vote. All of that goes back to the fact that my parents and my grandparents were immigrants, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Laurette--

Laurette: Are you getting all of this?

Brian Lehrer: I'm getting all of that.

Laurette: Okay. Lastly, Brian, I just want to let you know that I was the first student of color in an all-white school up in Kingston, New York. During our history lessons about the constitution and the end of slavery, the way we had to memorize it was the 13th freedom, the 14th made them a citizen, and the 15th gave them the right to vote. that's what prompted me to make this call.

Brian Lehrer: Laurette, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Any quick reflection before we take a break, Darryl, on those first couple of callers?

Darryl Pinckney: Well, it's very heartening that voting is a kind of living tradition in Black families still. It hasn't lost its meaning, which is that this is a citizens' responsibility and a duty of pleasure. Not just a duty of power, but a duty of pleasure. It's like signing up for the journey.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute. With Darryl Pinckney. More of your oral history calls as well on this 100 years of 100 things segment. Thing number 31, 100 years of Black American struggle for voting rights and the history of who people in those communities have voted for for president of the United States. We're going to bring it up to the present and the current debate and the current issues surrounding many of those voters, including the gender gap that's being widely reported in the polls.

212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 for your oral histories or current situation comments. Stay with us.

[MUSIC - Soulive: Solid]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue for the rest of the hour with our 100 years of 100 things segment number 31, relevant to the election year, 100 years of Black American struggle for voting rights and who they voted for, with Darryl Pinckney, author of many works of fiction, nonfiction, and theater, including his book relevant to this conversation, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. Your oral history calls at 212-433-WNYC. Going back to the timeline, Darryl, of course, the Voting Rights Act came in 1965. It will turn 60 years old next year. Was Lyndon Johnson, who was the president then, and a southerner from Texas, do you think he was historically a big surprise to many Black Americans, the way he turned out?

Darryl Pinckney: I think if you had followed his career, yes. His election in '64 was such an enormous landslide that it was understood to be on this kind of wave of change. The Voting Rights Act, I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. He sometimes in the films and histories, doesn't get enough of for that thing. Vietnam would be in his undoing. His greatest moment was happening just as the thing that would bring him down was beginning to happen as well.

After the Voting Rights Act of '65 came the voter education project. This is important because they went through the south, this volunteer organization, making Black voters familiar with the process, how to do it, what to expect, and just discussions around what it meant to vote, and because still there was a lot of opposition to Black people exercising this right, carrying out this duty, this proof of citizenship. I think it's important to remember that voting is a militant act to me.

Very soon it was denounced as a kind of futile working within the system or belief in the system, and it turns out not to be true. I don't like to hear people say, "It doesn't matter who's in." It most certainly does. Look at the court. Look at the Supreme Court. It certainly does. I don't like the long leftist view about heightening contradictions or it's all going this way anyway. In the meantime matters a great deal, especially because the meantime is all I have left at my age.

Then, I don't make apologies for my faith in democracy as a sensible way to govern. History tells us this and here we are again. This fascist threat is so real we almost can't respond to it. Or a lot of people think they'll be fine no matter who's elected. This isn't true at all. Trump diminished all of us, not just the State Department. He unleashed this license for corruption that we've not been able to sort of get rid of.

My father used to say that social change brings opportunities, but it also brings opportunists. They're all over the place. I don't really want to hear about Black men not voting Democratic or people thinking, "Well, I vote Democratic, but it doesn't get me anything." None of this is as urgent at the moment as not-

Brian Lehrer: Obama vibes.

Darryl Pinckney: -having him in.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Obama vibes from you. We're going to come back to--

Darryl Pinckney: I'm sorry, I just keep talking. I hope that makes sense. I apologize for talking too much. I want to hear from callers.

Brian Lehrer: You're making wonderful sense.

Darryl Pinckney: Tell me to shut up.

Brian Lehrer: No, no. We're going to, we're going to come back in a minute to one more Obama clip on the theme that you were just going at and your take on what's actually going on in the electorate today. Let me get another oral history caller in. It's Nimat in Mount Vernon. Nimat, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Nimat: Good morning, Brian. I'm very happy to be back on your show. I love your show. One of the reasons why I love your show is because of my father, who is an ardent political junky. He's currently 101 years old.

Brian Lehrer: Nice.

Nimat: I just completed his mail-in ballot, which is the first election that he has not physically gone to the polls. He is a very ardent Democrat. He came to America in 1944, I believe. I've been raised on politics 24 hours a day, almost. He is very terrified of what's going to happen in the election. He feels that we're at a point that America has never seen before. I think that we don't speak enough about how people who are such ardent MAGA followers are more following it as a religion than as any kind of persuadable fact.

Not saying that that's not true of others either. He swears that Johnson is the best president. He's always voted Democratic. In fact, he was a Democratic precinct chair once he first became a citizen and was knocking doors, going door to door, knocking on people's doors and bolstering the Democratic Party in the state of New York since the time he came to this country.

Brian Lehrer: Great memories. Thank you for sharing that, Nimat. I'm sure your father, if he's listening, appreciates it, too, and the shoutout and telling that bit of his story. Of course, Darryl, it was the white vote that really changed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I think a majority of white Americans have voted Republican for president ever since, while the Black vote remained roughly what it had been, continuing through the timeline.

For example, Bill Clinton got 83% of the Black vote in 1992. Hillary Clinton 89% when she lost to Trump. Obama spiked it a little more. He got 95% when he was elected in 2008. Joe Biden, too, got 92% from the stats that I've seen. We played a clip of Obama talking to Black men last week about not being fooled into identifying with Trump out of some misplaced notion of what manhood is. We played that earlier in this segment. Here's another short clip. Obama also said this.

President Barack Obama: Part of it makes me think, and I'm speaking to men directly now. Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.

Brian Lehrer: Darryl, what's your take on this apparent gender gap in the polls? I'm not sure how big the gender gap was in the Black community in previous presidential elections, but when you're getting around 90%, that gap is small and at the margins, in any case. Do you think this year looks different for any reason? Do you understand it? We're hearing about all these polls.

Darryl Pinckney: I think that it's probably a bit more related to this resentment of the establishment sort of Black. I forget what it's called. QAnon, that sort of thing. Black QAnon is as stupid as white QAnon. I think there was this sort of resentment of liberal institutions that became a bit too easy as a fallback position. Sort of, "I'm not going to automatically give my vote or my support," or this kind of thing.

I think there's also a class of younger Black men who see themselves as belonging to the entrepreneurial generation and so they want to identify with these extremely wealthy supporters of the Republican Party. I think there's a bit of that. I don't think that the gender gap or the ambition gap or anything like that will have a meaningful effect simply because-- well, not simply, but because it's not just that the Black vote is a block vote.

It's where it's a block vote and what places it wins for the Democratic Party. I think that's the issue. Also, I think that the highest voting group in the United States are Black women. They vote more than any other group, including any white group.

Brian Lehrer: As a percentage of their population.

Darryl Pinckney: As a percentage of the-- given their percentage of the population. Yes, that's what I mean. I also think that, again, there's this desire to kind of turn the page, and so for once, maybe the young will show up in spite of what's happening in the global sense. I think that if anything, it would sort of drive people not to vote Republican. If you think of climate change and world poverty and the wars going on, I don't see how you could vote Republican. You may not be happy voting Democratic.

I'm sorry not to have seen more emphasis on a local elections. I don't know how it's been in other states, but that used to decide a lot of voters and bring them out. The loss of this local sense, I think, is rather large. Then, I don't believe in polls anymore. I think people lie to pollsters and there's a rather sophisticated sense of grievance. Everyone has that. I'm not on social media, so I don't want to sit and condemn what I'm not a part of. There is this, maybe this comes to that. The only authority that's unquestioned is that of the victim.

A lot of people are marching around with grievance because this is their-- Sort of gives them the right to speak or the power to speak. I think that's all so wrong.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play one more clip in our last minute and get a quick reaction from you of Kamala Harris yesterday in her appearance with Charlemagne, the radio and tv host. We'll hear his question and the start of her answer.

Charlemagne: I had a politician tell me once that if you're running for a national election, it's bad electoral strategy to say you are going to do things specifically for Black people, which is why a lot of politicians don't speak directly to their plans for Black people. Is that a thing?

Vice President Kamala Harris: I don't know that that's true. I think that what is true is that I am running to be president for everybody, but I am clear eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities, and I'm not going to shy away from that. It doesn't mean that my policies aren't going to benefit everybody, because they are.

Brian Lehrer: We have exactly 20 seconds for your take on Harris downplaying race and racial equality issues as much as she has. I think that was consistent with the way she's been campaigning. Yes.

Darryl Pinckney: Yes. Obama campaigned that way also. You just have to look at them to know who they are. They have to kind of appeal to as wide an audience as possible. I don't mind that because I think that really universal principles are the one thing we can stand on and trust. [unintelligible 00:35:20]

Brian Lehrer: We will see how that turns out in the end, with Black turnout and everybody else. That's 100 years of 100 things, number 31. 100 years of Black American struggle for voting rights and who they voted for for president with Darryl Pinckney in the context of his book, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. This is wonderful. Thank you so much.

 

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