Roosevelt Coalition

Roosevelt Coalition This term refers to three constituencies whose votes enabled the Democratic Party to dominate national politics from the New Deal until the 1970s: the Solid South, organized labor, and blacks. The New Deal specifically tailored programs for southern economic development, securing labor’s right to organize, and promoting equal employment opportunities for blacks. Southern whites and labor had long been Democratic supporters, but blacks only became a Democratic voting bloc in the 1930s. The coalition began crumbling in the 1960s with the Solid South’s defection, and was defunct by 1994 because southern whites and blacks could not coexist politically.