Perlstein's Before The Storm

In Perlstein’s novel Before the Storm, he summarizes Goldwater’s implementation of the Southern Strategy as “go hunting where the ducks are”, wherein the ducks were white Democrats in opposition of civil rights. Robinson was aware of the potential damage this realignment of white voting blocs could have on the negotiating power of blacks. Robinson believed in a two-party system of opposition, but that the black minority must always hold a place in American politics. For this reason, Robinson began to take an approach to politics like his civil rights contemporaries of the era. He began organizing the National Negro Republican Assembly (NNRA), a resistance movement contingent on getting blacks to fight the new Republican establish and

impart the policies of Johnson, whom he saw as a dependable ally.

Robinson’s endorsement and chairing of the group gave the Republican party an ultimatum: embrace the civil rights movement or lose the traditional black voting bloc. The NNRA was created to advance the objectives of black voters in the Republican party, despite Robinson being a political independent. Robinson’s candor was an effective tactic which paralleled his peaceful contemporaries. Furthermore, Robinson proved to be a digestible figure for whites. For blacks, especially older blacks, he provided a symbol of pride and dignity and to whites, he, according to Tygiel, “Represented a type of black man far removed from prevailing stereotypes, whom they could not help but respect”. Integral to Robinson’s success as a leader was his use of peaceful resistance, as this widened his appeal to whites, given their stringent opposition to black militancy seen in the tactics of Malcolm X. Despite not being liked by whites in his baseball career, he garnered their respect, and that was the driving force behind his politically charged success. In an ideological way, Robinson realized Goldwater supporters were similar in how they both had to stand up for their core beliefs in the face of an ever-changing America, just in very

different ways.
The post-baseball political identity of Jackie Robinson is one of a man who emphasised race as a uniting factor. Goldwater would go on to lose the 1964 election in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson, in part due to the civil rights work of Jackie Robinson. In the 1964 election, Johnson dominated the black electorate, winning 94% of their votes due to the implementation of Goldwater’s Southern Strategy. Robinson both saw this as a win and a loss. For him, his work had been fulfilled, as Barry Goldwater was denied the presidency, but the essence of Goldwater-ism was not defeated. Once again, the political parties had been segregated, only in reverse this time, and blacks were confined to the Democratic party, with no Republican candidate accumulating more than 15% of black votes since Goldwater. In his recurrent column in Amsterdam News, Robinson reflected, “The danger of the Republican Party being taken over by the lily-whiteist conservatives… is more serious than many people realize”, signalling his goals of a two-party system cooperating with the African American electorate were not achieved in totality. What Robinson helped achieve is the denunciation and subsequent defeat of Barry Goldwater through peaceful protesting and an involved campaign of writing, which shifted African American rights from a political bargaining chip to a political reality.