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Footnotes 1327
district’s boundaries meant nothing (as under a proportional representation system),
there would be no gerrymandering. But there would also be much less chance of electing
Negroes to office (except under a proportional representation system). When Negroes
are scattered throughout a. city, they cannot exert much influence in any district. Segre-
gation usually gives them control of at least one district, and also makes apparent to
politicians how they vote in city-wide elections. Voting on a city-wide basis takes away
the advantage of being a majority in a single district. In Detroit and Chattanooga, the
Negroes have little political influence, partly because of the city-wide election system
for local office. But if the city-wide system is combined with proportional representation
it gives greater weight to the votes of those Negroes living in non-Negro areas. Between
1930 and 1938 the New York City Council, operating under the single-member-
district plan, had a Negro alderman. When proportional representation was put into
effect in 1938, the Negro alderman was lost. But in 1941, Negroes managed to concen-
trate their votes, and with the help of some white votes, sent a representative to the
Council again.
In 1933 the victorious Democrats of St. Louis redistricted the city for the election
of state legislators. A large number of the Negroes formerly concentrated in the Twelfth
District were shifted into the huge Eleventh District and their vote in both districts
was completely overwhelmed. Previous to 1933, one or two Negro legislators were
always elected from St. Louis; after that year no Negro has ever been elected. Negro
leaders have been working to stop this gerrymander. (Memorandum by David M*
Grant in Bunche, ‘‘The Political Status of the Negro,” Vol. 6, p. 1316.) The re-appor-
tionment of 1931 in Detroit also served to prevent Negroes from electing a congress-
man. The Negro majority in the First District was wiped out by putting some of its
Negro constituents in the predominantly white Thirteenth and Fifteenth Districts.
Both of these cases of gerrymandering were perpetuated by the Democratic party,
apparently not because it was making a racial discrimination against Negroes but because
Negroes were tied to the Republican party before 1933. A more exhaustive study needs
to be made to determine whether Negro areas have ever been gerrymandered in the
North on account of race prejudice.
Recently a congressman was successful in forcing the New York Legislature to
promise to make the long overdue adjustments.
Since there are no registration or voting statistics in the North which differentiate
Negroes from whites, all quantitative studies of Negro voting and nonvoting are based
on differences between areas inhabited mainly by Negroes and areas inhabited mainly
by whites.
Edward H. Litchfield, “A Case Study of Negro Political Behavior in Detroit,”
?ubl%c Ofinion Quarterly (June, I941), pp. 267-274. Litchfield found that this
greater political apathy among Negroes existed even when economic status is held
constant. In the absence of figures on income, measures of economic status used to
compare Negroes and whites may be called into question. Rents, for example, are not
comparable when Negroes are segregated and crowded. Such weaknesses of economic
indices do not apply, however, to differences within the Negro group.
Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians (1935), p. 17. In Cleveland, too, it has
been claimed that Negroes vote more than whites, although statistics have not been
compiled to prove this. See memorandum prepared for this study by Harry E* Davis,
cited in Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” Vol» 6, p. 1279*
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