Thread by @blackrepublican

Lily-White Progressivism: A History of Indifference and White Supremacy

Roosevelt’s dedication to a “square deal” under the Progressive Party banner left a key demographic from being at the table: African Americans.

ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

#lilywhiteliberals

As historian Eric J. Yellin observed, Roosevelt staked his political future on alienating the African American voters in the south, who he thought he had already lost to Taft.

Due to this misnomer, Roosevelt sought to create a “shadow Republican Party in the south made up of lily-white organizations.” This resulted in the rejection of southern African American delegates from the Progressive Party convention.

A scathing editorial of Roosevelt’s “southern strategy” by the Indianapolis Recorder. Courtesy of Hoosier State Chronicles.

"To run a plausible national campaign, Roosevelt believed he needed to contest the Solid South. Progressive Party organizations sprang up quickly in several Southern states after the Republican convention, encouraging Roosevelt in this belief."

Source: ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

Attracting votes in the South, however, meant aligning the Progressive Party with then-dominant Southern racial mores – in other words, aligning it with racism and segregation.

Southern Progressives demanded Roosevelt deny the legitimacy of black political participation and ignore black aspirations for social justice. This would mean abandoning black votes, when many northern blacks (who could and did vote)...

.. and black opinion leaders were at least tentatively interested in a party that claimed to stand for comprehensive economic, political, and social reform.

Several prominent Northern white Progressives also considered the race issue a litmus test of the sincerity of the new party’s commitment to social justice. And the issue could not be dodged: several Southern states sent two delegations to the Progressive convention, one ...

...."lily-white," one integrated. Which delegations would be seated?

Roosevelt was, by any reasonable modern standard, racist.
He was a white supremacist of the variety common among American intellectuals early in the twentieth century, in that he believed white domination of American society (and European domination of world politics) .

Another column on August 24 noted that, “the position of Mr. Roosevelt, disfranchising the Negroes of the South in his party is a virtual indorsement [sic] of the unconstitutional disfranchising laws of the South, ...

... and we believe that he has forfeited all right of respect or support from Afro-Americans.”

Source: newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indian…

A minister of the AME Church and long-time Roosevelt supporter, Dr. Reverdy C. Ransom, even left the Progressive Party and publicly criticized Roosevelt’s “Negro policy and…urge[d] the Republican party to improve the situation which the Colonel has created.”

Roosevelt argued that in the North, African-Americans had earned the right to political equality, but in the South they should place their trust in "the best white men of the South" – in other words, a "lily-white" party in the South.

Roosevelt explained his views--views he said were Progressive--in August in a widely circulated article titled "The Progressives and the Colored Man." This "solution" was less than satisfying intellectually, but it did allow Roosevelt to criticize the race policies of both

... major parties: he labeled the Democrats race-baiters and the Republicans hypocrites, since they only supported black politicians in the South, where they were largely irrelevant.

Progressives and the Colored Man
By
Theodore Roosevelt
August 24, 1912

ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

"Our hope is that under the lead of practical, competent, high-minded white men, we shall in the end everywhere see-and nowhere save under such lead will we ever see-the right of free political expression secured to the negro who shows that he possesses the intelligence,integrity

and self-respect which justify such right of political expression in his white neighbor. That this is a reasonable hope is shown by Mr. Harris in his letter answering mine."

Source: ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

“It was announced to-day that Mr. Roosevelt had decided not to appoint Samuel H. Vick. colored, as Postmaster at Wilson. It was on this office that Senator Pritchard, leader in the "Lily White" movement, made his test fight.”

These pages reveal the Progressive Party and the nation's race problems.

"Under the disfranchising laws of the several Southern States, Negro suffrage has become so restricted and worthless as a political factor that the Republican party has tacitly decided that Negro suffrage

… as a failure, and not the slightest effort was put forth to prevent the nullification of those amendments to the Constitution, which gave the Negro freedom, citizenship and suffrage."

The Crisis , " Why the Negro Should Be a Progressive"

Continued: ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

Other Indiana newspapers joined the Recorder in its criticism of Roosevelt’s “southern strategy.” The Greenfield Republican wrote:

"The Progressive Party decided against the colored delegates of the South, but are in favor of the colored people of the North. Theodore Roosevelt,

... as we understand, is in favor of a “Lily White” Government in the South, but in favor of the colored man’s recognition in the North. The trouble with his idea is that it is in the South that the colored people are complaining about the denial of political rights."

Continue Reading: (Part 1) Lily-White Progressivism: A History of Indifference and White Supremacy

blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/theodore-roose…

ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/19…

The above information has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.

(Part 2) - The Wilson Years: White Supremacy, Lily White Progressives vs African-Americans

"Between the 1880s and 1910s, thousands of African Americans passed civil service exams and became employed in the executive offices of the federal government.

However, by 1920, promotions to well-paying federal jobs had nearly vanished for black workers. Eric S. Yellin argues that the Wilson administration's successful 1913 drive to segregate the federal government was a pivotal episode in the age of progressive politics.

Yellin investigates how the enactment of this policy, based on Progressives' demands for whiteness in government, imposed a color line on American opportunity and implicated Washington in the economic limitation of African Americans for decades to come.

scribd.com/book/322776145…

Using vivid accounts of the struggles and protests of African American government employees, Yellin reveals the racism at the heart of the era's reform politics.

scribd.com/book/322776145…

He illuminates the nineteenth-century world of black professional labor and social mobility in Washington, D.C., and uncovers the Wilson administration's progressive justifications for unraveling that world.

From the hopeful days following emancipation to the white-supremacist "normalcy" of the 1920s, Yellin traces the competing political ideas, politicians, and ordinary government workers who created "federal segregation."

Racism in the Nation's Service: scribd.com/book/322776145…

Dr. Eric S. Yellin - Federal Discrimination & the Decline of National Black Politics in the Early 20th Century

@ChrisALadd — Understanding Democratic Racism

"It is no accident that the most visible and egregious examples of police brutality in recent years have emerged from Democratic strongholds like Baltimore, New York, Chicago and even Ferguson, Missouri."

blackconservative360.blogspot.com/2017/11/chris-…

"It is no accident that school districts in Democratic-dominated areas are burdened with needless expenses and poor teachers who cannot be fired. Black Lives Matter, but in the Democratic Party the union always wins."

-- Chris Ladd

The Tragedy of Urban Renewal: The destruction and survival of a New York City neighborhood

In 1949, President Harry Truman signed the Housing Act, which gave federal, state, and local governments unprecedented power to shape residential life.

One of the Housing Act's main initiatives - "urban renewal" - destroyed about 2,000 communities in the 1950s and '60s and forced more than 300,000 families from their homes.

Overall, about half of urban renewal's victims were black, a reality that led to James Baldwin's famous quip that "urban renewal means Negro removal."

A couple years after Payton moved his first tenants into West 99th and 98th Streets, Roscoe Conkling Simmon (nephew of Booker T. Washington) marveled that African Americans for the first time were living in "the most beautiful and cultured neighborhood in New York City..

... because back of them stands organized and sympathetic capital."

Fifty years later, the federal bulldozer tore that neighborhood apart.

The Connection w/Lily White Conservatives & Lily White Progressives -- White Supremacy

White Republican leaders became concerned about the exodus of white voters in other parts of the country, some out of concerns for the strength of the party and some for purely racist reasons,

"History is what happened, not what we wish had happened or what a theory says should have happened." ~ Thomas Sowell

Continuing....

"Conservative whites attempted to eliminate this influence and recover white voters who had defected to the Democratic Party. The effort was largely successful in eliminating African-American influence in the Republican Party ..

The majority (Texas GOP was 80% black) black southern Republican party was now slowly becoming a Lily White Party. The Lily Whites used racist laws/maneuvers to steal Black Republican party institutions - whilst removing them from leadership positions.

Case Study: The Texas Republican Party

The Republican Party developed dramatically in Texas during Reconstruction after constitutional amendments freeing the slaves and giving suffrage to black males, as blacks joined the party that had ensured the end of slavery.

According to Larry Elder, "On July 4, 1867, in Houston, Texas, 150 blacks and 20 whites formed the party. No, not the Black Texas Republican Party, they founded the Texas Republican Party. Blacks across Southern states also founded the Republican parties in their states."

NOTE: I suspect the claim is true. But, Larry offered no primary sources.
So, take it with a grain of salt. I, mean, it is Larry Elder after all.

Continuing...

"Black eaders, frequently men of mixed race who had been free and educated before the war, provided leadership in extending education and work opportunities to blacks after the war. They supported establishment of a public school system for the first time."

"Men such as William Madison McDonald in Fort Worth, Norris Wright Cuney in Galveston, and Henry Clay Ferguson worked for the black community and the state."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norris_Wr…

After the Reconstruction era, the Republican Party of Texas gradually lost power, and after the turn of the century, the "Lily Whites" pushed blacks out of power

The Democrats passed disfranchising laws near the turn of the century requiring poll taxes be paid prior to voter registration; together w/the party establishing white primaries, black voting dropped dramatically, from more than 100,000 statewide in the 1890s, to 5,000 in 1906.

In other words, both parties in the South (Democrat and Republican, progressive and conservative) were working together to break black people.

BOTH parties/movements empolyed white-supremacy to hurt black advancement.

White Supremacy IS a monster, and it must be engaged as such! Or, it will destroy America.