Black Democrats Gain Convention Influence but not Numbers

By Geoge Curry, NNPA Editor-in-chief
July 29, 2004

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Twenty years ago, Mississippi, a state where law enforcement officials routinely did nothing as African-Americans seeking access to the ballot were murdered in public, sent an all-White delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, N.J.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a former Mississippi sharecropper, challenged the seating of the lily-white delegation in 1964, saying that her Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was more representative of Mississippi voters. National Democratic Party officials hastily arranged a compromise that gave voting rights to two MFDP delegates and arranged for the others to sit as honored guests.

Now, two decades later, more than three-fifths of the Mississippi delegation is made up of African-Americans. With 61 percent of its delegates to the Democratic National Convention being African-Americans, Mississippi is second only to the Alabama delegation, with 62.9 percent of its delegates African-Americans. South Carolina is third, with 45.5 percent.

Those figures are part of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies roster of delegates and alternates that it publishes before each presidential year political convention. According to the Joint Center tally, African-Americans comprise 20.1 percent of the delegates in Boston, the same as four years ago and slightly less than the 21 percent in 1996.

“Although the number of African American delegates is unchanged from 2000, this report clearly indicates that they are increasingly holding important decision-making positions at the convention,” Eddie N. Williams, president of the center, says in a statement accompanying the report.

African-Americans serving in key convention slots include Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, co-hair of the party and chair of the Platform Committee; Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, chair of the Credentials Committee; and New York Congressman Gregory Meeks, chair of the Rules Committee. There are also six Black vice chairs of those committees. At the 2000 convention, only one African-American, Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton, chaired a convention committee.

According to the Joint Center, the number of high-ranking African-Americans in state parties has reached 51, an increase of 54 percent. Six are state party chairs.

Pennsylvania showed the largest increase in Black delegates (27.6 percent), followed by Georgia with 18.4 percent and New York, 10.1 percent. The greatest declines were in Virginia (58.1 percent), Louisiana (18.9 percent) and Ohio (14.6 percent).

The report makes clear that John Kerry cannot defeat George W. Bush without strong support from African-Americans.

“The significance of the black vote for the Democratic Party cannot be overestimated,” the report states. “In 2000, according to the exit polls, black voters contributed 18.9 percent of Gore’s total, up from 17.1 percent of Clinton’s total in 1996. This means that one in 5.5 Gore voters in 2000 was an African-American.”

African-Americans are also major players in the battleground states that can tilt either Democratic or Republican.

“Black voters represent a key bloc in many of the same states Gore either won or came close to winning in 2000,” the Joint Center report says. “These states include most of the key battleground states for 2004: Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

“More than half (59 percent) of Gore’s voters in Louisiana in 2000 were black, as were 28 percent of his voters in Florida, 21 percent in Missouri, and 20 percent in Michigan. In Ohio, a key battleground state this year, 17 percent of Gore’s voters were black, as were 40 percent of Gore’s voters in North Carolina, a potential battleground state given that native son John Edwards is on the Democratic ticket.”

Republicans are seeking to increase their following among African-Americans, hoping to raise Bush support to 25 percent. The GOP has announced that it will use Bush’s Black cabinet members on the campaign trail to rally Black voters. However, the Joint Center report concludes, “The prospects of the black Republican vote increasing in 2004 are remote. While black public opinion is neither as liberal nor as uniform as observers in the press, politics, and academia have thought, the Bush administration’s decision on affirmative action and the war in Iraq, together with rising black unemployment, suggests that any increase in support for Bush is unlikely.

“The popularity of the Clinton administration with African Americans, juxtaposed with the unpopularity of the Bush White House, have, if anything, strengthened ties to the Democratic Party.”

Until the New Deal era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a majority of African-Americans were Republicans. Until the early 30s, almost a third of Blacks were Republicans. But as the party grew increasingly conservative, more African-Americans shifted to the Democratic Party. That was solidified in 1964 when President Lyndon B. Johnson, a pro-civil rights Democrat, won in a landslide over Republic Barry Goldwater, who openly courted Southern segregationists. Subsequent GOP presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and now George W. Bush were considered hostile to civil rights and the interests of African-Americans. Consequently, after receiving only 69 percent of the Black vote in the 1960 presidential election, Democrats have received more than 80 percent of the Black vote in every election over the past 30 years. Clinton received 82 percent of the Black vote in 1992 and 84 percent of that vote in 1996. Running against Bush in 2000, Gore captured 90 of the Black vote.

In the Democratic primaries this year, Black voter turnout increased substantially in several states. Black turnout in South Carolina’s Democratic primary more than doubled from 1992. In Tennessee, the Black turnout was almost twice that of 1992. It was up a third in Ohio and almost doubled in Georgia over that same period.

“The key to a Democratic victory in 2004 will be a strong Black turnout,” says David A. Bositis, author of the report for the Joint Center. “Judging by Black participation in several of the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, the Democrats’ prospects look good.”