Once elected, the group must develop a system to hold the candidates responsible to the group. (Barker, Jones, Tate 1999: 73) In effect, they must capitalize on their ability to come together as an interest group and to create some form of accountability for whoever they support politically. Until recently, the black community has not been able to do so often or consistently, because of their minority status (due to lack of size they must rely on strategic voting and the black community hasn't always been ideally located to capitalize on that), and intense party loyalties. The Black Vote Historically Ever since Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, African-Americans had been Republican. The GOP was the party of Lincoln, the party that had given them the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The Republican Party supported blacks, whereas the Democrat Party was the party of the South, and the Southern, White plantation owner. To the black community, the Republican Party represented "the high-minded, idealistic, God-fearing people," whereas Democrats "dabbled in influence-peddling and vice" (Weiss 1983: 3). All blacks knew where to lay their loyalties - with the party that had given them their freedom - not with the Democrats, who represented slavery and servitude, and coming into the 20th century, Jim Crow and segregation. And so, black Americans followed the Republican Party from emancipation to the 20th century, where it seems they got lost in the transition, because upon entrance to the new century government sanctioned segregation and discrimination seemed to increasingly become the norm. By the 1920's, the Republican Party had alienated the black community by their "interest in cultivating lily-white Republicanism in the South than in strengthening the party's traditional ties to blacks." (Weiss 1984: 5). Still, the black community remained with the Republican Party, because to stay seemed the lesser of two evils.
