When Ballyhoo Isn’t Enough: Politics and Race Relations in New York City

• In Event: Racial Ideologies and Struggles for Social Justice

Abstract

Throughout his political career, Nelson Rockefeller employed special assistants who were active in the civil rights movement to help him appeal to African Americans. While the governor maintained congenial relationships with his staff, the question of how to win African American votes drove a wedge between Rockefeller’s permanent advisers who were overwhelmingly white and male and his special assistants who included people such as Jackie Robinson and Wyatt Tee Walker. While there were numerous occasions when Rockefeller’s gubernatorial and personal staff, regardless of race, disagreed on politics and governance, the disputes over race relations provide an opportunity to examine the evolution of New York’s racial politics and the adaptable leadership it demanded from the governor and black staff members who worked in government.

When Rockefeller first entered politics in the 1950s he had considerable success making overtures to black and Hispanic communities in New York City with the help of fanfare, musicians such as Lionel Hampton, his ability to speak fluent Spanish, and his family’s philanthropy. As the 1960s progressed, however, and race relations became more openly contentious, Rockefeller’s previous strategies of appealing to racial and ethnic minorities began to falter, both superficially and substantively. This paper examines the conflicts between Rockefeller’s advisers who disagreed on the best way to revise the governor’s outreach to the black community. These conflicts not only reveal the limited nature of Rockefeller’s previous overtures, but also his and much of his staff’s inability to accept that a changed political terrain required new strategies.

Author

• Marsha Barrett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign