Why did African Americans shift their political allegiance to the Democratic party during the New Deal?

Answer 1

Well, blacks voted Republican after being freed because it was the Radical Republicans that passed legislation such as 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

By the 1900s, the Lily White Movement in the Republican party essentially abandoned civil rights causes.

It was not until the 1930s that we saw any remote support for civil rights again. FDR like Lincoln wasn't someone you'd consider a supporter but his New Deal programs did help black people during the Great Depression and his wife Eleanor was a supporter of Civil Rights. Also, FDR did use his executive powers for workplace equality.

Truman continued this practice and also desegregated the troops.

Eisenhower is considered the last Republican president to really be supportive of civil rights. He is the first president to sign a Civil Rights Act into law since the 1800s. He sent in federal troops to protect the Little Rock Nine.

Black support for Eisenhower reached 40%. If it were not for the fact that Kennedy and Johnson ended up eventually supporting civil rights, blacks very well could have ended up remaining republicans because by 1960 it really went in either direction.

After Johnson's passage of a stronger Civil Rights Act that ended Jim Crow unlike Eisenhower's, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, black people became solidly Democrat as white Southern democrats became solidly Republican.

Answer 2

Because the Republican president Herbert Hoover did nothing to help the African Americans during the GD. When democratic Roosevelt got into office he put a plan in motion to help all Americans find work.