Some argue that the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925, "Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents." Therefore, if one argues that what we see today is a result of a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what's the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery -- a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty? I think that a good part of the answer is there were no welfare and Great Society programs.
No, there is a good explanation for this. PBS did a documentary a couple of years ago that included a discussion of exactly what happened in black communities during the early to mid twentieth century.

Notice how Walter Williams cites studies from Northern urban areas in the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century to suggest that the black family structure was stable in the good old days of segregation and Jim Crow.

Yes, black communities in places like urban Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago were fairly stable during that era.

The turning point was the "Great Migration" era, when Southern black sharecropper families began to move North to take advantage of industrial jobs in Northern cities...

The Great Migration
The Great Migration was the migration of thousands of African-Americans from the South to the North. African Americans were looking to escape the problems of racism in the South and felt they could seek out better jobs and an overall better life in the North. It is estimated that over 1 million African-Americans participated in this mass movement.

The Great Migration created the first large, urban black communities in the North. The North saw its black population rise about 20 percent between 1910 and 1930. Cities such as Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland saw some of the biggest increases.

World War I and boll weevils were major factors in pulling blacks to the North. The war created a huge demand for labor in the North when it caused millions of men to leave their jobs to serve in the armed forces and forced immigration to slow down. In the South, a boll weevil infestation of the cotton crop that ruined harvests and threatened thousands of African Americans with starvation also caused people to head North.

Railroad companies were so desperate for help that they paid African Americans' travel expenses to the North. While northern labor agents traveled to the South to encourage blacks to leave and go find jobs in the North.

With black labor leaving the South in large numbers, southern planters tried to prevent the outflow, but were ultimately unsuccessful. The more progressive southern employers tried to promise better pay and improved treatment. Others tried to intimidate blacks, even going so far as to board northbound trains and to attack black men and women to try to force them into returning to the South.

Despite the jobs and housing available in the North, the challenges of living in an urban environment were daunting for many of the new migrants.

The stream of migrants continued apace, however, until the Great Depression and World War II caused northern demand for workers to slacken. LINK
Now, one of the effects of this migration was to change the character of black urban life. There was a 'black flight' as the better educated, well-to-do Northern blacks moved to escape from an influx of poorly educated working class blacks. The series documented this phenomenon in Chicago. What was left were large pockets of black folk who had just come from Jim Crow sharecropping and were thus completely unprepared for Northern urban life. They were also actively discrimated against in jobs and housing.

Of course, as we all know, the post war era saw white flight to the suburbs, a hollowing out of urban infrastructure and tax base, and the slow disappearance of urban manufacturing jobs. Those were the conditions that created the black urban underclass... not "welfare and the Great Society programs". Those programs were meant to address the problem of poverty in America in general, not just amongst the black community. Of course, you can argue that black urban families were 'held back' by becoming reliant on those social programs; but the reality is that a different dialect, inferior schooling, and credit and real estate discrimination made it hard for the mass of the black community to improve their economic condition.

Now this doesn't mean that a lot of black folk don't make really bad life choices, and it doesn't mean that black urban culture isn't toxic, it just means that there are real historical reasons for the economic and physical separation of the black population. Ultimately those reasons do go back to the enslavement, suppression, and discrimination that that community faced for hundreds of years. In many ways, it's remarkable how much progress has been made over the last 40 odd years.

The reason why so many blacks are skeptical of the Republican party is that they so obviously pander to the Southern good old boys that made it their hobby to keep black people 'in their place'. Reagan announced his candidacy in Philadephia, Mississippi - a place famous only for the murder of three civil rights workers. The Republican "Southern Strategy" and its call for "state's rights" and "law and order" was rightly interpreted by black Americans as a choice to jettison the traditionally black Republican vote in exchange for the votes of southern white racists. Southern Strategy.

Here's a piece from "The Black Slate " that lays out pretty well why black Americans weren't thrilled with the Republican party in the Reagan era.

Ultimately, the modern Republican party offers very little to black working class America. The Republican party is anti-minimum wage, it's anti-union, it cuts student financial aid... it's for concentrating wealth in the hands of those who already hold wealth... rather than using our common-wealth to make it easier for everyone to pursue their individual goals.