10.4The coalition's contradictions

The New Deal coalition held together an unstable mix. Northern Black voters and white Southern segregationists belonged to the same party, an alliance that required Roosevelt to soft-pedal civil rights to keep powerful Southern Democrats in Congress on his side. Many New Deal programs were administered in ways that excluded or shortchanged Black Americans.

This contradiction—a party of both racial liberals and staunch segregationists—was papered over as long as economic issues dominated. But it could not last forever. When civil rights forced its way onto the national agenda in the decades after the war, the strains within the Democratic coalition would eventually tear its regional foundations apart.