The Initial Formation of African American Political Partisanship: The Rise of African American Republicanism

Abstract

When The American Voter appeared in 1960 with its psychological definition of partisanship, academics, scholars, journalists and laypersons had a survey and poll-based research tool and methodology to capture the dimensions and characteristics of this individual-level concept. This approach revolutionized the discipline and subfield but it provides little assistance for research in the earlier years of the nation’s political history. However, prior to the appearance of The American Voter, Professors Harold Gosnell, V.O. Key, Jr., and Samuel Eldersveld, and especially, Key, through five editions of his political parties textbook revealed how empirical insights about party partisanship could be analyzed at the group rather than the individual level by looking at two factors: (1) major historical events, like the civil war and the economic depression of 1929, and (2) analyzing aggregate election return data and cartography. But over the years this group level data approach was dropped and/or displaced with the newer survey and polling techniques. Such an approach has limited the investigation of African American Republicanism in its formative years, 1856–1920.