The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford by Beth Tompkins Bates

Author:Beth Tompkins Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2012-05-25T04:00:00+00:00

The Emergence of Black Democrats

The formation of a black Democratic Club in April 1932 marked the turning of political tides. Black female Democrats reached out to the larger community by forming the “Democratic Whip,” an explicitly “women’s organization.” Mary Belle Rhodes, vice chairmen of the parent black Democrats, headed up the women’s “auxiliary” to the officially titled Michigan Democratic League, Inc. Rhodes and the precinct captains in the Democratic Whip hoped to be ready to “open their campaign in full by the first of August.”24 By that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Democratic campaign for president had drawn the interest and participation of large numbers of black Detroiters. Black supporters of Frank Murphy had developed a positive image of the Democratic Party at the local level for several years. Although the positions Murphy held in local politics were ostensibly nonpartisan—judge on the Recorder’s Court and mayor—he entered politics as a Democratic activist and remained so throughout his career. Indeed, it is likely that the black Democratic club was built on the foundation laid through earlier political mobilizing for Frank Murphy. Beulah Young, the dynamic member of Murphy’s administration who had organized districts within the black community for Murphy’s campaigns, apparently drew on the talents of one of her precinct “captains” to foster development of the Democratic club.25 Blacks’ participation in Murphy’s political campaigns since 1923 placed them in the position of being not just observers of a broadening of the Democratic Party’s base, but also members of the new coalition of voters expanding that base.

Until 1931, Mayor Murphy largely kept his partisan politics out of the public arena. All pretense of municipal nonpartisanship was dropped when Mayor Murphy publically declared his admiration for Roosevelt and played an active part in the Democratic Party at the state and national levels. Hall Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt’s brother-in-law and chair of Mayor Murphy’s Unemployment Committee, introduced Murphy and his politics to Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting that his success reflected voter dissatisfaction with the politics of an “old crowd.” Murphy, a delegate to the National Democratic Convention, delivered a passionate speech to more than 100,000 people who turned out when Roosevelt campaigned in Detroit on 2 October 1932.26

Murphy’s command of the black vote trumped efforts by others, including Henry Ford, to dilute his influence. As the black Democratic club established its footing in 1932, Henry Ford made no secret of just how he wanted his workers to vote in the national election. Plastered throughout Ford plants were political notices that read: “To prevent times from getting worse and to help them get better, President Hoover must be reelected.” Ford was personally upset when voters swept Hoover into the history books and Roosevelt into the White House.27

Mayor Murphy did more than appear in public with candidate Roosevelt. In his speeches for the Democratic presidential contender, Murphy focused on unemployment, and attacked the Hoover record as one of “brutal, cold, un-American indifference to the welfare of our government and our people.”28 In addition, Murphy formed a Non-Coercion League to

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