Secondary Source

Why Did Black Voters Flee the Republican Party in the 1960s?

Code Switch via NPR

“If you’d walked into a gathering of older black folks 100 years ago, you’d have found that most of them would have been Republican.

Wait… what?

Yep. Republican. Party of Lincoln. Party of the Emancipation. Party that pushed not only black votes but black politicians during that post-bellum period known as Reconstruction.

Today, it’s almost the exact opposite. That migration of black voters away from the GOP reached its last phase 50 years ago this week.”

Visit the source link to read or listen to the full episode.

Featured in

  • A cropped section of a broadside flyer that reads

    Lesson Plan

    The Political Flip: Voter Changes in Georgia and Beyond

    This lesson takes students on a journey to understand why many Black Americans flipped from loyal Republican voters during Reconstruction to hopeful Democrat voters during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s.

Related resources