The Depression

THE YEAR 1929 started inauspiciously enough. Republican Herbert Hoover was inaugurated president after a mild upset over Alfred E. Smith, the smiling Democrat from New York. Hoover was the first modern Republican presidential candidate to make an open bid for the white South, and black Republicans and knowledgeable Northern Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall. The white South was taking away representation at the Republican National Convention which traditionally had gone to black Southern Republicans such as Perry Howard of Mississippi, Benjamin Davis of Georgia, and Robert Church of Tennessee.

The move had paid off for Hoover, who carried Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Al Smith was a Roman Catholic and his religion cost him support in the South, so white Republicans could not claim all the credit for Hoover's strength in traditionally Democratic states.