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| Elections in Alabama |
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The 1940 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 5, 1940, as part of the 1940 United States presidential election. Alabama voters chose 11 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other states.
Since the 1890s, Alabama had been effectively a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of Poor Whites via poll taxes, literacy tests[1] and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside Unionist Winston County and a few nearby northern hill counties that had been Populist strongholds.[2] The only competitive statewide elections became Democratic Party primaries that were limited by law to white voters. Unlike most other Confederate states, however, soon after black disenfranchisement Alabama's remaining white Republicans made rapid efforts to expel blacks from the state Republican Party.[3] Indeed, under Oscar D. Street, who ironically was appointed state party boss as part of the pro-Taft "black and tan" faction in 1912,[4] the state GOP would permanently turn "lily-white", with the last black delegates from the state at any Republican National Convention serving in 1920.[3]
The 1920 election, aided by isolationism in Appalachia[5] and the whitening of the state GOP,[6] saw the Republicans even exceed forty percent in the House of Representatives races for the 4th, 7th and 10th congressional districts.[5] However, funding issues meant the Republicans would not emulate this achievement for several decades subsequently.[7] Nevertheless, a bitter "civil war" over how best to maintain white supremacy after the Democrats nominated urban, anti-Prohibition Catholic Al Smith saw so many Democrats defect to dry, Protestant Republican Herbert Hoover that he came within seven thousand votes of winning the state.[8]
However, the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression meant that this trend towards the GOP would be short-lived.[9] The Depression had extremely severe effects in the South, which had the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and many Southerners blamed this on the North and on Wall Street.[10] Consequently, the South gave Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt hefty support in 1932 – he became the only presidential candidate to sweep all of Alabama's counties[11] — and in 1936.
For 1940, opposition amongst Alabama's ruling elite to the New Deal meant that planter and business interests led by former Congressman George Huddleston attempted to organize the "independent elector" movements that would increase after Harry S. Truman's civil rights proposals.[12] Other "Big Mules" already supported Republican nominees, corporate lawyer Wendell Willkie and Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary.[13] However, the hatred of the Republican label, in spite of five election cycles as a party exclusive of blacks,[14] meant that the state Democratic Party was far too strong to allow such a revolt.[15]
- ^ Perman, Michael (2001). Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. Introduction. ISBN 9780807849095.
- ^ Webb, Samuel L. "From Independents to Populists to Progressive Republicans: The Case of Chilton County, Alabama, 1880–1920". The Journal of Southern History. 59 (4): 707–736. doi:10.2307/2210539. JSTOR 2210539.
- ^ a b Heersink, Boris; Jenkins, Jeffery A. (2020). Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968. Cambridge University Press. pp. 251–253. ISBN 9781107158436.
- ^ Casdorph, Paul D. (1981). Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 1912–1916. The University of Alabama Press. pp. 70, 94–95. ISBN 0817300481.
- ^ a b Phillips, Kevin P. (1969). The Emerging Republican Majority. Arlington House. p. 255. ISBN 0870000586.
- ^ Heersink and Jenkins, Republican Party Politics and the American South, p. 19
- ^ See "G.O.P. Funds Are Reported Short: Forces "Counted On" Disappoint Republican Political Managers". The Birmingham News. Birmingham, Alabama. August 19, 1922. p. 5.
- ^ Feldman, Glenn (September 13, 2004). "Epilogue. Ugly Roots: Race, Emotion and the Rise of the Modern Republican Party in Alabama and the South". In Feldman, Glenn (ed.). Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South. University of Alabama Press. pp. 270–273. ISBN 9780817351342.
- ^ Lewinson, Paul (1965). Race, class and party; a history of Negro suffrage and white politics in the South. pp. 167–168.
- ^ Ritchie, Donald A. (2007). Electing FDR: the New Deal campaign of 1932. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. p. 143. ISBN 978-0700616879.
- ^ Thomas, G. Scott (1987). The pursuit of the White House: a handbook of presidential election statistics and history. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 390, 418. ISBN 0313257957.
- ^ Feldman, Glenn (2013). The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865–1944. University of Alabama Press. p. 150. ISBN 9780817317935.
- ^ Feldman, Glenn (2015). The Great Melding: War, the Dixiecrat Rebellion, and the Southern Model for America's New Conservatism. University of Alabama Press. p. 60. ISBN 9780817318666.
- ^ Heersink; Jenkins. Republican Party Politics and the American South, pp. 48–50
- ^ Feldman. The Irony of the Solid South, pp. 151–152