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Two: The Spoils: Politics and Black Mobility
- The University of North Carolina Press
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Chapter Two The Spoils Politics and Black Mobility Political patronage was essential to black rights and mobility in Republican Washington. The job security of African American civil servants depended upon a Republican patronage network of black and white politicians born during Reconstruction. Patronage was more than a party scheme for black Americans; it represented the right to a decent livelihood and social mobility. Black men and women worked hard to succeed in federal offices, and they managed their political affiliations carefully and skillfully to ensure that their efforts would be rewarded. Connections to important people and politicians created a web that could keep vulnerable citizens from falling victim to the hardening bigotry in turn-of-the-century America. This chapter explores the nineteenth-century origins of those connections and their functioning into the early years of the new century. It makes apparent the political system that created black Washington’s opportunities and would become the target of white progressive reformers. Politics was a deciding factor in who could earn federal paychecks, even after the civil service reform and meritocratic fever of the 1870s and 1880s. I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office . . . but I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. —Theodore Roosevelt, The Independent, December 1902 I never lose sight of the fact that had it not been for the Republican Party, I never would have been an office-holder of any kind—from 1862 to the present. —U.S. Customs Collector Robert Smalls to Senator Knute Nelson, August 22, 1912 40 THE REPUBLICAN ERA The economic stability of black Washingtonians—and the mechanisms for its undermining by theWilsonians—cannot be understood without exploring the relationship between late-nineteenth-century Republican politics and federal employment. Competitive examinations determined eligibility for federal employment, but the right political party affiliations were necessary résumé builders. Making the wrong ones could be occupational suicide . Political fortunes decided whether or not individuals could pay off their mortgaged homes or continue to pursue a law degree at night. They determined whether or not one’s wife needed to take on extra work and how much a person could send back to his or her ailing parents in Mississippi or Minnesota. African Americans had first directed their hopes forequality to Abraham Lincoln afteremancipation, and soon a connection formed with his partyas well. During the Reconstruction period, approximately 1867 to 1877, Albion Tourgée, Charles Sumner,Thaddeus Stevens, and many other “Radical Republicans ” won the hearts of black men and women by imagining and attempting to implement a new civil rights landscape: they were ready to use the power of the federal government to insert people of African descent into an equal place in the Republic through the exercise of law and military power.1 The freedpeople tied their already existing social and political consciousness to the Republican Party, building institutions at the county and state level that served as training grounds and depots for connecting to the national party. The presence of African Americans at Republican conventions and national inaugurations and in federal offices was symbolic of black freedom and citizenship.2 Though the revolution remained “unfinished” by 1877, many Republicans continued to champion African Americans, and the party as a whole continued to support black male suffrage.3 Frederick Douglass had famously declared that “the Republican Party is the ship, and all else is the sea.” Or, as Georgia politician Judson Lyons put it in 1899, the Republican Party “was the instrument of God to free the Black man.”4 And indeed, the party had great power. Republicans won ten of the twelve presidential elections between 1860 and 1912, and with victory came control over the patronage that filled the civil service and executive appointments. By the 1880s, a political coalition had formed that provided avenues for black southerners to reach the safer social and economic ground of Washington, D.C. Powerful black politicians joined liberal Republicans to give black citizens access to government patronage at all levels. Many white Republicans, well into the Jim Crow era, felt this responsibility deeply.They mentored hard-working men [44.222.196.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:50 GMT) 41 THE SPOILS and women who used the pay and status of government work to establish themselves in the nation’s capital. Clear racial identification...