Harlem James
| 👨🏿🏭 | |
| Era | The Sixties |
|---|---|
| Age | 35-50 |
| Home | Harlem, NY |
| Demographic | urban, Black, factory worker |
| Lean | civil_rights |
| Race | black |
A Black garment worker in Harlem who moved north from Georgia during the Great Migration. He represents the Northern Black vote, enfranchised and Democratic by default, and in the cast he measures how quickly a president is willing to act on civil rights.
Who they stand for
The Great Migration moved millions of Black Southerners into Northern cities, and by 1960 New York had the largest Black population of any state. Unlike Birmingham Rosa, he can register and vote, and his vote counts in states that decide presidential elections. This is why John F. Kennedy's telephone call to Coretta Scott King in October 1960 mattered politically, and why Lyndon Johnson won nearly the entire Black vote in 1964. The Democratic Party has held this bloc's support since Franklin Roosevelt without delivering much in return. Northern schools and housing are segregated in practice, through restrictive covenants, bank lending and real-estate practice rather than through law, and for him the police represent the government's authority more directly than any other institution.
His politics grow more militant during the decade. The Harlem riot of July 1964 follows a police shooting. Malcolm X preaches in his neighbourhood and is murdered there. Adam Clayton Powell Jr chairs a House committee and is expelled from Congress in 1967. South Side Dorothy pursues the same cause through the NAACP and the church, and he represents the voters she is losing to more confrontational politics on the street.
Playing to them
He responds more to enforcement than to speeches. This includes a fair housing act that is strongly enforced, federal education funding tied to school integration in the North, Justice Department lawsuits against police departments, jobs programmes that reach the garment district, and a president who is seen publicly with Dr King and A. Philip Randolph. A civil rights bill that passes into law is worth more to him than any number of executive orders.
He does not forgive a president who allows Southern senators to filibuster civil rights legislation, who allows Hoover's FBI to continue its surveillance of the civil rights movement, or who responds to a riot only with a law-and-order speech and no further action. Winning his support loses Dixiecrat Dale and the Bible Belt Reverend entirely. A housing or schools order that reaches the North costs the support of Levittown Larry, Suburban Betty and Teamster Sal, because it would change their own neighbourhoods. Union Hall Frank is caught between his party and his neighbourhood. Birmingham Rosa and South Side Dorothy support a president alongside him.
Where they live
The five states where Harlem James makes up the largest share of the electorate in the sixties:
- Washington DC
- PR
- Illinois
- Maryland
- New York