Conscience of a Black Conservative: The 1964 Election and the Rise of the National Negro Republican Assembly

n the immediate aftermath of the election of 1964, no group was more visibly alienated by the candidacy of Barry Goldwater than the black electorate. Abandoning the Republican Party en masse, black voters cast 94 percent of their votes to Lyndon Johnson in the national election. The percentage was a stunning decrease from the 32 percent Richard Nixon received in his 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy, and the 39 percent that Dwight Eisenhower amassed during his 1956 re-election over Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson.