In an era when Republican presidential candidates struggle to win 10% of the African American vote, it is difficult to conceive of a time when the overwhelming majority of African Americans were Republicans—supporters of the party of Abraham Lincoln—a time when, as Frederick Douglass wrote, “the Republican Party is the deck, all else is the sea,” as quoted in Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP (p. 11).

Joshua Farrington’s captivating history of black Republicans begins at a turning point for the relationship between blacks and the Republican Party—the 1932 election of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Prior to 1932, African American voters overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates. But Roosevelt offered an array of “tangible benefits” (p. 19) to an overwhelmingly poor and working-class African American community ravaged by the Great Depression. While middle and upper-class blacks remained attached to the GOP because of its history of relative support for Civil Rights, the economic policies of the New Deal attracted poor and working-class blacks—by far the largest segment of the African American population—in historically large numbers. Farrington deftly weaves this theme into his half-century narrative of black Republicans and their role in the trajectory of the GOP in the twentieth century.

One of the key strengths of Black Republicans is the thoughtful and thorough way Farrington traces the history of African American involvement in the organizational Republican Party from the New Deal to the beginning of the Reagan era. He effectively captures the important conflicts within the party, and within the African American community, during each stage of development of the modern GOP.

The author examines the role of middle- and upper-class African Americans in the Republican Party during the New Deal era, that time when the majority of African Americans were, for the first time, voting Democrat. He examines the postwar years of the 1950s, looking at both the behavior of black voters and the efforts of black Republicans to realize significant Civil Rights gains during the Eisenhower administration.

Farrington then focuses on the complex calculus faced particularly by middle- and upper-class African Americans during the 1960 election. He provides an extensive treatment of the watershed election of 1964, focusing in Chapter 5 on the rise of the conservative right and the Goldwater candidacy and in Chapter 6 on the increasing attachment of racial conservatives—particularly southern racial conservatives—to the Republican Party in the aftermath of Goldwater’s historic loss. African American Republicans always faced a difficult political situation because of the number of racially conservative Southerners and the consistent attempts by both parties to attract this constituency. Only in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination and then the largest popular-vote presidential victory in modern American history by Lyndon Johnson does the calculus change.

The late 1960s and early 1970s bring some hope to blacks within the GOP. Black Republicans characterizes Richard Nixon as one of the stronger supporters of Civil Rights within the Republican Party (but beyond the Rockefeller wing of the party), and there were significant hopes for movement on Civil Rights and economic issues with his election. For example, patronage, set-asides for African American businesses, and federal support for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were of significance to black Republicans throughout this time period. By the onset of the Reagan administration, these hopes are dashed. Likewise, any advantage the Republican Party had in the realm of support for African American Civil Rights had also ended (and clearly ended) by the Reagan administration.

The book ends with an increasingly dispiriting characterization of the potential for either Civil Rights or economic policy advances—for poor, working-class, middle-class, or upper-class blacks—through support for the Republican Party. Farrington concludes that the blacks who remained in the organizational party were “far more conservative than their predecessors” (p. 230). And even these conservative “black Republicans . . . faced an uphill battle for full acceptance inside the party” (p. 231).

Farrington’s exhaustive coverage of black leaders’ involvement with the Republican Party during this time period is extraordinary. A singular strength of this research is its insightful coverage of the federal character of partisan attachment. Rather than focusing solely on the organizational party dynamics at the national level, the author illustrates how black leaders in the party made significant political and policy inroads at the state and, even more obviously, at the local level.

The careful examination of the multigenerational class conflict on social welfare policy within the black community is another strength of the book. But the analysis of the intersection of economic issues and Civil Rights issues within the African American community could be more effective. Why, for example, did black Republicans during the Nixon years shift their emphasis from Civil Rights to economic issues? Why did they take stances that “were more unambiguously conservative, touting individual opportunity as the key to black advancement” (p. 195)? Given this shift, is the conservatism of black Republicans during and after the Reagan administration such a surprise? What is most interesting here is that Farrington’s analysis indicates that these issues were viewed independently, and it suggests that black Republicans at this time did not see a connection between the continued expansion of Civil Rights and broader efforts to achieve social justice. In hindsight, that is somewhat difficult to understand, and a more comprehensive treatment of the interplay between these issue sets is warranted.

Likewise, the description and analysis of the “two-party” strategy could be more compelling. On its face, the two-party strategy makes political sense: willingly align with whichever party most clearly supports your policy goals. In any particular electoral context, ticket splitting—particularly in the time period of the analysis—would be an effective political tool. In Farrington’s discussion, however, the “federal” nature of the strategy is underemphasized. (In fact, neither “federalism” nor “two-party strategy” appear in the appendix.)

Also, Farrington’s analysis of the two-party strategy ignores the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on it. As African Americans mobilized to vote following the passage of the VRA, they overwhelmingly moved into the Democratic Party. This mobilization was a key factor in the shift of southern conservative whites into the Republican Party. This demographic shift ended whatever claims the Republican Party had to being the party of Civil Rights, and with it, the rationale—from a Civil Rights perspective—of the two-party strategy. That aspect of this historical narrative should figure more prominently in Farrington’s analysis.

Finally, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of key quantitative data in a book without charts, graphs, or maps. For example, it is suggested that poor and working-class African Americans greatly outnumbered middle- and upper-class blacks during this time period. A simple graph illustrating this point would have been very helpful. Likewise, illustrating the prevalence of ticket splitting among blacks during this period would have helped readers fully understand the two-party strategy. Overall, however, this is a valuable new contribution to our understanding of African American political behavior, partisan dynamics, and twentieth-century American politics more generally.