Negro Voting

Report Outline
Race Issue in the 1964 Campaign
Negro Voter Registration in 1964
Post-Civil War Threat to White Rule in Dixie
Role of the Negro in Presidential Elections

Race Issue in the 1964 Campaign

Key Role of Negro Voters in the Election

A greatly enlarged negro electorate is in a position to play a critical role in the 1964 presidential election. Negroes will go to the polls in the greatest numbers ever, and almost every sampling indicates they will favor President Johnson at least nine to one over his Republican opponent, Sen. Barry M. Gold-water of Arizona. The G.O.P. nominee is no longer making any serious effort to enlist support from the nation's 6,000,-000 registered colored voters. Rather, he is basing his campaign on an expectation that white resistance to Negro demands for more rapid progress toward “first class citizenship” will more than offset the Negro vote.

Sen. Goldwater's strategy calls for putting together a winning combination of electoral votes from the southern states and the traditionally Republican states of the Middle West and Far West, while writing off most of the Atlantic Seaboard. This calculated gamble could do lasting damage to “the party of Lincoln.” But some Democratic party leaders concede that the Goldwater plan may bear fruit if racial tensions are further exacerbated before election day.

Reasons for Anti-Goldwater Stand of Negroes

Present Negro attachment to the Democratic party stems both from its economic policies and the pro-civil rights position taken by the party's national leadership. Gold-water's political philosophy is seen by most Negroes as offering them little in either of these areas. The senator's vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, combined with his outspoken opposition to the Johnson administration's “war on poverty,” have marked his candidacy in Negro eyes as a major threat to their growing aspirations.