African American voters overwhelmingly supported Franklin Roosevelt’s four presidential campaigns in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, but for other contests, as many Blacks identified as Republican as Democrat. Then, in 1948, disgusted with Democrat Harry Truman’s order to desegregate the U.S. Army and the Democratic Party’s support for anti–Jim Crow laws, thirty-five delegates from the Deep South walked out of the Democratic National Convention and formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats). Black voters flocked to the Democratic Party. To be clear, Black people didn’t switch parties.
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