Fracture

by Joy-Ann Reid

  Still, whatever the doubts and discomfort among some Democrats, it seemed that nothing could stop the Hillary Clinton machine now that it was rolling toward 2016. There would be challengers, but none like Barack Obama with a claim on a large and passionate constituency, who could whisk the rug out from under the Clinton juggernaut. (Indeed, one of Hillary’s challengers was Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor and onetime mayor of Baltimore, whose pursuit of “zero tolerance” policing was blamed by many of the city’s black residents for the deteriorating relations with the police.)

  The Clintons had been smarter this time and cleared the political decks of all potential strong rivals, including Senator Warren. They began to lock down key black staffers and influencers early, and they hugged potential progressive allies like de Blasio close, even if de Blasio sometimes seemed to lean away from their embrace by declining to endorse Hillary on her announcement day or in the days immediately afterward, saying he first needed to hear what she planned to do as president. (Hillary’s new campaign headquarters were just blocks from the de Blasios’ home, and in the weeks before her announcement, she appeared side by side with New York City’s First Lady, Chirlane McCray, to promote early childhood education.)

  And while a chorus of Democrats worried about the lack of a truly contested primary, about whether a second Hillary Clinton campaign would be more disciplined and less contentious than the first, including whether Bill Clinton could be reined in and kept on message this time; whether issues of gender would prove to be as divisive as questions about race both during and after the campaign; and about how Hillary Clinton would choreograph her very public political dance with the first black president of the United States on her quest to make her own mark on history, the country was preparing for another battle of demography and destiny. And it promised to be a battle royal.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WHAT A DAUNTING THING IT TURNS OUT TO BE, TO WRITE A BOOK. This one, which was more than a year in the making, would not have been possible without substantial help and support, starting with my family: Jason (who is beyond the best and most patient and supportive husband on earth), Winsome, Jmar, and Miles Reid, who put up with my long absences and travel, and my disconnection from everything around me as I buried myself in transcripts, interviews, and a monster manuscript that was followed by successive edits. You are invaluable and much loved.

  In particular, I could not have gotten through this project without Winsome Reid. Winsome—who served as my personal assistant, research aide, and interview booker, taking a year off from college in the process—was my invaluable right-hand girl, travel buddy, and sidekick, and she is as responsible as anyone for the existence of this book. Thank you for making all of those phone calls, sending all of those e-mails, posting all of those calendar reminders, and being my “plus one” at every stop.

  Which brings me to Henry Ferris, on whom I dumped the mother of all elongated manuscripts and who helped turn that heap of words into a book. I have been blessed throughout my writing career with terrific editors: Michael Bellas at Beverage Marketing Corporation, Joe Oglesby and Myriam “The Machete” Marquez at the Miami Herald, and Steve Kornacki and Joan Walsh at Salon.com. But Henry brought a particular patience, wit, expertise, and ruthlessness with the cut, without which there would have been no book at all. What a blessing to work with such a terrific editor, and such a wonderful person. Thank you to Henry and the entire team at HarperCollins.

  These acknowledgments would not be complete without also including sincere and warm thanks to my team at WME: book agent extraordinaire Suzanne Gluck (the “not-tall” Suzanne); Suzanne Lyon (the “tall” Suzanne), a fabulous agent and an even more fabulous person; Henry Reisch (Henry 1.0), who is both my principal agent and my friend, and who makes my day with every phone conversation; and Eve Attermann, who helps keep me in great writing form. These agents, their assistants, and the entire WME team are simply the best.

  Not to be forgotten: Melissa Harris Perry, for insisting that I write a book and holding me to it; Michael Eric Dyson, friendship, aid, and inspiration; Marcia Dyson, for wisdom; April Ryan, for epic advice on all things Washington; Chris Matthews, Joan Walsh, David Corn, Touré, and Jonathan Alter, for being my “how-to-be-an-author” Obi-Wan Kenobis; Desirée Tate, for helping me find all the best places to eat in Chicago and for endless patience even when it wasn’t her day off; Clo Ewing, my friend from campaign days, for great meals in Chi-Town; Professor Charles Ogletree, for giving me an excuse to come back to Harvard and for being a great conversationalist; Lynn Sweet, for insights; Vernon Jordan, Julian Bond, and Bob Moses, for perspective on the civil rights era; Bob Shrum, for sharing his vast experience; Yvette Miley, for time off to write that was always right on time; Jonathan Capehart, Karen Finney, and Krystal Ball, for filling in when I took that time and for being great friends; my MSNBC team—Meaghan O’Connor, Bridget Flan-agan, Larry Epstein, Alexis Garrett-Stodghill, Stefanie Cargill, Michael Biette, Ayan Chatterjee, Michelle Brown, Meg Corzine, Amanda Ingersoll, John Flowers, and Omnika Thompson—for patience and forbearance during my absences, physical and sometimes mental; Frank Watkins, Howard Dean, Keith Boykin, Jamal Simmons, Marc Morial, and Wade Henderson, for civic wisdom; Representative Marcia Fudge and the Congressional Black Caucus; Angela Rye and Nina Turner, for sisterly advice; David Bositis and the staff of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; Harold Lee Rush; Afoyemi Kirby; the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library; the Woodlawn Organization of Chicago; Rev. Al Sharpton and the amazing staff at the National Action Network; Rachel Noerdlinger and Tamika Mallory, for being inspirational; Johnny Wilkerson and Larry Nesmith of the Georgia NAACP; and all of the people, named and unnamed, who talked to me, e-mailed with me, shared stories, insights, and memories with me, and helped shape my understanding of a political party and its presidents.

  NOTES

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.

  Chapter 1: 1964

  3 “I want to appoint these judges” President Lyndon Johnson conversation with Whitney Young, January 6, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson White House Recordings, Miller Center, University of Virginia.

  “[The] strategy is as simple” Theodore H. White, “The Negro Voter: Can He Elect a President?” Collier’s, August 17, 1956.

  4 By 1964 just 4 in 10 “Voter Participation in the National Election, November 1964,” U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, October 25, 1965.

  “They say I’m an arm twister” President Lyndon Johnson conversation with Roy Wilkins, January 6, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson White House Recordings, Miller Center, University of Virginia.

  He urged them to work Groups like the Congress on Racial Equality had already begun massing protests outside Dirksen’s state offices, prompting him to complain loudly from the Senate floor, while civil rights and labor groups were mounting a national pressure campaign of letters and telegrams intended to win Republican support and keep northern Democrats on board.

  5 “The races segregate themselves” Mike Wallace interview with Senator James Eastland, July 28, 1957, video and transcript from the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  7 “The Democratic Party has encouraged lawlessness” Senator Strom Thurmond, “Address to the People of South Carolina,” September 16, 1964.

  8 “I’m not inextricably bound” The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Symbol of the Movement, edited by Peter Holloran, Ralph Luker, and Penny A. Russell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

  9 When Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term “Trends in Party Identification,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, 2012, with data from the Pew Research Center, 2012.

  “By 1948, when Truman squeezed out” White, “The Negro Voter.”

  Democrats held their overw
helming share Ibid.

  But when Eisenhower faced Stevenson again “Trends in Black Party Affiliation and the Black Vote, 1936–2012,” Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

  10 And though Stevenson was now running “Adlai ‘Spanks’ Manifesto Softly,” NNPA news story as reprinted in Washington Afro-American, March 3, 1956.

  11 National Review publisher William Rusher Martin S. Levine, “Magazine Publisher Says Goldwater Will Announce His Candidacy Soon: Rusher Sees ‘Remarkable’ Support,” Harvard Crimson, December 10, 1963.

  12 Clinton would later write in her memoir Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).

  13 But in 1964, Hillary was Ibid.

  With weeks to go before the election Cabell Phillips, “U.S. Negro Voters Put at 5.5 Million,” New York Times, October 13, 1964.

  On election day, they were proven right U.S. Census Bureau figures.

  “I have seen certain changes in the United States” Interview by Bob McKenzie with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., BBC World News America, December 1964.

  14 By March, Johnson’s approval ratings Roper Center Public Opinion Archives, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut.

  After the telecast Margaret A. Blanchard, ed., History of the Mass Media in the United States: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2013).

  15 “It was sending their sons” Ibid.

  16 By 1966, Americans’ disapproval Per Gallup: “In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966—the last Gallup measure of King using this scalometer procedure—it was 32% positive and 63% negative.” By the December Gallup list of the “Most Admired Americans,” King had been off the list for two years, and George Wallace entered the list, at number eight.

  17 But the revered athletes Joe Louis Shelia Curran Bernard, Steve Fayer, and Samuel D. Pollard, “Aint Gonna Shuffle No More (1964–72),” Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Radical Crossroads (1965–1985), season 2, episode 5, directed by Shelia Curran Bernard and Samuel D. Pollard, aired February 15, 1990 (PBS Video, 2006), PBS series.

  18 But Robinson was also a military veteran John Vernon, “Jim Crow, Meet Lieutenant Robinson: A 1944 Court-Martial,” Prologue 40, no. 1 (Spring 2008).

  Robinson was a fervent patriot Jackie Robinson letters, from First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson, edited by Michael G. Long (New York: Times Books, 2007).

  In May 1967 David Falkner, Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

  19 Black enlistees accounted for Spencer C. Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 1998).

  20 The furious attacks on Ali in particular Herman Graham, The Brothers’ Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003).

  Hillary Rodham, then a junior JoAnn Bren Guernsey, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Secretary of State (Minneapolis: Lerner, 2010).

  21 Everett Dirksen, whose negotiating skills Under pressure from LBJ, the House would pass the Fair Housing Act on April 10. Though he’d broken with King, the president wanted the bill signed before King’s funeral. He signed it on April 11, 1968, two days after King was laid to rest. In announcing the bill’s final passage, Johnson said: “I do not exaggerate when I say that the proudest moments of my presidency have been times such as this when I have signed into law the promises of a century.”

  22 King’s murder sparked riots Christopher Chandler, “Shoot to Kill . . . Shoot to Maim,” Chicago Reader, April 4, 2002.

  23 The ads were tagged Transcript of Nixon campaign ad, “Vietnam,” 1968.

  Phillips foresaw a day Review of Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, by Warren Weaver Jr., New York Times, September 21, 1969, BR3.

  24 As the nomination was announced “A Brief History of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention,” CNN.com. Sources: Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago; Facts on File, CQ’s Guide to U.S. Elections.

  25 Humphrey, for his part David S. Broder, “Nixon Wins with 290 Electoral Votes; Humphrey Joins Him in Call for Unity,” Washington Post, November 7, 1968.

  Chapter 2: All in the Family

  28 Carroll O’Connor played the Queens native TVHistory.tv, Nielsen Media Research.

  29 In January 1969 The founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 were Representatives Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), William L. Clay Sr. (D-MO), George W. Collins (D-IL), John Conyers (D-MI), Ronald Dellums (D-CA), Augustus F. Hawkins (D-CA), Ralph Metcalfe (D-IL), Parren Mitchell (D-MD), Robert Nix (D-PA), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Louis Stokes (D-OH), and Walter Fauntroy (D-D.C. Delegate).

  31 “We come to Gary” “The Gary Declaration: Black Politics at the Crossroads,” National Black Political Convention, 1972; Dr. Quintard Taylor Jr., University of Washington, Department of History.

  “[b]oth parties have betrayed us” Ibid.

  32 The Gary Declaration asserted Ibid.

  Instead she was calling for Shirley Chisholm, campaign announcement, transcribed from video of January 25, 1972, news broadcast, ABC News archives.

  33 The rejection disappointed It would surface years later that Nixon operative G. Gordon Liddy, architect of the plan to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters, presented a plan to Nixon’s attorney general and former campaign manager John Mitchell in 1972, to funnel money to the Chisholm presidential campaign to sow racial discord within Democratic ranks. Liddy dubbed the plan, with no apparent sense of irony, “Operation Coal.” Mitchell turned it down.

  34 Even the selection of Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton Eagleton would eventually be forced to resign from the campaign, which led to a member of the Kennedy family, Sargent Shriver, joining the doomed ticket.

  It instantly added more than 10 million new voters Connecticut was the first to ratify the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, lowering the national voting age to eighteen. North Carolina was the last. Eight states, including Florida, never did.

  35 With more than 55 percent National exit polls, 1972 election.

  “The most pervasive factors” Eddie Williams, “Perspective,” note in Focus, the newsletter of the Joint Center for Political Studies, December 1972.

  36 In March 1974 David S. Broder, “The Democrats’ Dilemma: There Is Less to the Party’s Prospects Than Meets the Eye,” The Atlantic Monthly, March 1974.

  37 Carter made a major misstep Today, April 6, 1976, NBC News archives.

  “I think Americans” Ibid.

  “seventeen black members of Congress” Ibid.

  “I think you have to assume” Ibid.

  38 And for the first time Jordan was the first black woman to serve in the Texas legislature since 1883, a feat that earned her an invitation to the White House to preview Lyndon Johnson’s 1967 civil rights address.

  39 On the campaign trail, Carter “Carter Dogged by Church Incident,” United Press International, November 2, 1976.

  “If it was a country club” Ibid.

  But unlike McGovern Demographics of the 1976 Election, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, based on a CBS News exit poll of 15,300 voters taken November 2, 1976.

  41 By the time Carter arrived in Miami The Reagan administration later drastically cut those funds.

  42 In the South, the story morphed Paul Krugman, “Republicans and Race,” New York Times, November 19, 2007.

  43 It was Reagan who managed to field Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

  A Joint Center analysis noted Joint Center for Political Studies, analysis of the 1980 election.

  47 Even after millions of petition signatures When the King Day bill finally passed, 78 to 22, with 18 Republicans and 4 Democrats voting against it, Helms denounced the vote as a “tyranny of the majority.” Th
e bill was signed into law in November 1983. Arizona would become the last state to adopt the holiday in 1990.

  49 “That’s all Hymie wants to talk about” Gigi Anders, “ ‘Hymietown’ Revisited,” interview with Milton Coleman, American Journalism Review, May 1999.

  “Do not forget that this entire nation” Mario Cuomo, keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1984, San Francisco.

  50 “Our flag is red” Jesse Jackson, address to the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

  Jackson touted the country’s ending Ibid.

  52 Jackson broadened his message “For Jesse Jackson and His Campaign: Jesse Jackson Is a Serious Candidate for the Presidency,” editorial, The Nation, April 16, 1988.

  53 He’d won nearly as many votes E. J. Dionne Jr., “Jackson Share of Votes by Whites Triples in ’88,” New York Times, June 13, 1988.

  Where in 1984 Ibid.

  Chapter 3: The Third Way

  59 “I like Mario, but once again” Associated Press interview with Governor Bill Clinton by Ron Fournier, excerpted in Al From, The New Democrats and the Return to Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

  61 Angry protests, even riots Unlike in the 1980 Arthur McDuffie case, a police officer was convicted in the 1989 killings.

  65 “We are ready for any opportunity” William Raspberry, “Will Jesse Jackson Limit His Ambition for the Good of the Democratic Cause?” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2, 1992.

  “For all his brilliance” Ibid.

  66 “If black people kill black people” David Mills, “Sister Souljah’s Call to Arms,” Washington Post, May 13, 1992, B1.

  67 “I do not know why he used this platform” Sam Fulwood III, “Fool Me Once,” TheRoot.com, February 28, 2008.

  68 “Clinton had given them” Ibid.

  Sister Souljah quickly called Transcript of Sistah Souljah press conference, Rainbow/PUSH convention, June 1992, Rock Out Censorship online archive.

  68 “First of all, to imply” “Clinton Rap a New Strategy?,” compiled by staff writer Ron Goldwyn from reports by the Associated Press, Reuters, and other news services, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 16, 1992.