In the early years of the Reconstruction era, newly enfranchised Southern blacks in states including Mississippi enthusiastically threw overwhelming support to the Republican Party, which spearheaded the cause of ensuring their civil rights.
[3][4] Within state GOPs, they clashed with scalawags, native-born Whiggish Southern whites who generally placed greater emphasis on business interests and economic expansion than safeguarding the newly secured rights of freedmen.
[3] The increasing decline of Southern Republicanism brought about by the rise of Jim Crow led many white Republicans to view abandoning civil rights advocacy as the only means of maintaining significant party influence in the region, contributing to the rise of the lily-white movement which would clash with black-and-tans for decades to come.
[5] Among the black-and-tans, Mississippi leader Perry Wilbon Howard II advocated a nomination of conservative isolationist Hamilton Fish III for vice president on the Republican ticket to maintain GOP popularity among black voters.
In contrast to Eisenhower, who testified in opposition to integrating the United States military in 1945,[9] the strongly conservative Taft was devoted in his concern for blacks, continuously pushing civil rights measures in Congress.