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nominated one of the best-known activists in the country, T. R. M. Howard to run against Dawson. Howard had previously headed Mound Bayou, Mississippi’s NAACP, and founded one of the most important organizations in the state’s civil rights movement, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. He joined Charles Evers in attempting to register black voters in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and made national headlines with his vocal criticisms of the state following the lynching of Emmett Till. In the field of civil rights, there was no comparison between the aggressive, bombastic Howard and the ever cautious Dawson, who remained characteristically quiet after Till’s murder. In 1956, Dawson was greeted with boos and forced to leave the stage, speech unfinished, at a meeting of six-hundred ministers in Chicago after he discouraged them from sending church contributions to help southern black protest movements, arguing that change in the South was best handled by politicians. Howard tackled Dawson’s civil rights reticence head on with slogans like “‘Uncle Tom’ leadership has got to go.” However, like Dawson’s opponents before him, Howard received less than 30 percent of the vote, even with a campaign appearance by President Eisenhower on his behalf. Of three hundred and fifty precincts, Howard won only five, which were located in the district’s wealthiest areas.³⁶

      Black Republican congressional candidates like Carey, Brown, and Howard epitomized the Republican Party’s central problem in connecting with the black working class. While they had stronger civil rights records than their Democratic opponent, they lacked the organizational resources of political machines and labor unions. Most importantly, the economic record of Democrats proved far more vital to securing mass black support. While middle-class African Americans could potentially be swung by an emphasis on civil rights, the failure of black Republicans to systematically address issues of economics and poverty lay at the center of their congressional defeats. A particularly revealing 1957 survey of African Americans nationwide found that a majority of those polled selected the Republican Party when asked which party was best for them on the issue of civil rights. When asked “the best party for jobs,” however, the same respondents chose Democrats by a margin of almost four to one. There certainly was sympathy towards eradicating southern Jim Crow, but the harsh economic realities that plagued black communities in northern cities provided little incentive for most workers to leave a party they perceived as on the side of unions, workers, and the poor. In the words of a black Democrat from Philadelphia, “It does not matter very much to colored people here what is going on in the South. The colored man votes according to what will affect his pocket-book, and he knows that the Democrats are the party of the poor man.” On the other hand, to many black Republicans, the civil rights of black southerners took precedence over the bread-and-butter economic issues of northern workers.³⁷

      Nevertheless, black Republicans did find electoral success at the state level. In Chicago, each legislative district elected three representatives to the Illinois General Assembly. In the voting booth, one could select three different candidates or cast all three votes for the same candidate. A number of Republicans found success in this ballot-sharing method. In 1957, for example, three Republicans were among the ten African Americans in the Illinois legislature. The most prominent of these legislators was William H. Robinson, who served from 1954 to 1964. A social worker and militant advocate for racial equality, Robinson was a vocal critic of William Dawson’s stranglehold over the district. To him, Dawson was the “king of Uncle Toms in this country,” whose cautious approach to civil rights and kowtowing to the Democratic machine were a “disgrace.” As a Republican, Robinson argued that he truly represented the interests of Chicago’s black citizens because he was free to speak out against Democrats without repercussions. His outspoken rhetoric earned him the support of the city’s most radical black activists, including communist labor organizer Frank Lumpkin. In the Illinois House, Robinson became one of the leading supporters of open housing legislation and laws that required equal rent for white and black tenants.³⁸

      Black Republicans also had electoral success in state races elsewhere. In 1950, Charles Stokes became Seattle’s first African American state legislator, and represented the city’s black voters in Olympia until 1958. Like many black Republican politicians, he had a long record of both GOP and civil rights activism. He had previously served as vice chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, and, as president of the Seattle NAACP, he was the chief lobbyist for Washington’s Fair Employment Practice Act of 1949. Likewise, Harry A. Cole became Maryland’s first black state senator in 1954. Prior to his victory, Cole had served as an assistant attorney general, where he focused his attention on increasing and protecting the state’s black voters. He furthered his civil rights agenda in Annapolis, sponsoring numerous bills to eliminate the state’s remaining racial barriers.³⁹

      As demonstrated by their political candidates, black Republicans in the 1950s were strong advocates and intraparty lobbyists for civil rights. Throughout the decade, Archibald Carey remained active in the Congress of Racial Equality, National Urban League, and Chicago NAACP. During the Montgomery bus boycott, he organized a prayer meeting at the Chicago Coliseum attended by 7,000 people, which raised thousands of dollars for the Montgomery Improvement Association. He was subsequently invited by his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., to speak at an association rally in Montgomery. At King’s request, Carey also chaired a committee that pressured the Chicago-based National City Lines, Inc. to desegregate their buses in Montgomery. In 1957, he joined Adam Clayton Powell in Detroit to protest discrimination in labor unions, and to promote local black candidates for city council.⁴⁰

      Similarly, prominent New York Republican Francis E. Rivers was elected to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund board of directors in the 1950s, and by the 1960s had become its president. In addition to Art Fletcher’s Republican activism in Kansas, he also joined the Topeka NAACP in raising money for the local case that evolved into Brown, a case argued by several black Republican lawyers before the Supreme Court. John H. Calhoun, a GOP organizer from Atlanta, also headed the city NAACP in the 1950s, and initiated lawsuits to desegregate the city parks and golf courses. In 1960, Calhoun, John Wesley Dobbs, and other black Republican leaders joined Martin Luther King, Jr., in direct action protests against segregated downtown businesses. His successor as head of the city NAACP was another Republican, C. Clayton Powell. Similarly, Clayton Yates, a member of the Georgia Republican Party Executive Committee, also served on the advisory committee of the National Urban League. These were far from marginal figures in their communities.⁴¹

      Despite their partisan differences, Roy Wilkins, who became NAACP executive director in 1955, told Archibald Carey, “When all angles are considered we really are not too far apart,” and expressed his hope that the GOP would “be wise enough” to follow Carey’s advice. Indeed, black Republicans during the 1950s were essential agents of the civil rights movement, serving as leaders in local NAACP branches, as financiers of civil rights campaigns, and as legislators that sponsored state-level civil rights measures. Moreover, they also served as an inner-party voice that continually demanded that the GOP live up to its campaign promises to support racial equality. As one political scientist noted in the early 1950s, “The Negroes who remained with the Republicans demanded more of the party than ever before: more liberal reforms, more jobs for more people, more consideration in the party council, while organizing more resistance to the undemocratic practices of the South.” To most black Republicans, the GOP represented a legitimate, practical, means to achieve the same objectives as the NAACP, Martin Luther King, and other activists in eliminating state-sanctioned discrimination.⁴²

      Early in 1956, the Christian Science Monitor speculated on “The Negro Defection,” asking, “are the Negroes going to desert the Democrats in this year’s elections?” Acting on a potential increase in black support, Attorney General Brownell convinced a skeptical Eisenhower to support a new civil rights law. Brownell worked closely with the NAACP’s Clarence Mitchell in writing a moderate bill that strengthened the federal government’s ability to protect southern black voters. By the end of May, the Civil Rights Act of 1956 had sailed through the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 279-126 (of that figure, the Republican vote was 168-24). In the Senate, however, the legislation never even made it to the floor, as it was stalled in the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Mississippi’s third-term Democratic senator James Eastland. It remained in the committee, and under the threat of a southern Democratic filibuster, until it died when

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