Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63

by Taylor Branch

A dejected President Eisenhower, stunned by what he regarded as a “repudiation” of his eight years, first blamed Henry Cabot Lodge for promising a Negro cabinet member. By “sticking his nose into the makeup of the cabinet,” Eisenhower fumed privately, Lodge “cost us thousands of votes in the South, maybe South Carolina and Texas.” Soon, however, the President reversed himself to say that the Nixon campaign had been too little concerned with Negro votes, not too much. He then blamed the loss on “a couple of phone calls” by John and Robert Kennedy in the King case. What happened between Eisenhower’s instinctive reaction and his considered one was a nationwide detective search for the secret of the 1960 election. Everyone seemed to have a private theory about what had been the decisive factor—whether stolen votes in Chicago or Nixon’s makeup man for the first debate. As legions of analysts sifted the results, it did not take them long to discover that the most startling component of Kennedy’s victory was his 40 percent margin among Negro voters. In 1956, Negroes had voted Republican by roughly 60-40; in 1960, they voted Democratic by roughly 70—30. This 30 percent shift accounted for more votes than Kennedy’s victory margins in a number of key states, including Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and the Carolinas. On the day after the election, Republican National Chairman Thruston B. Morton declared that his party had taken the Negro vote too much for granted.