Political conventions are designed to choose presidential candidates, but underneath all the noise they can reveal profound truths about America.
That was the case at the 1924 Democratic Convention in New York City, where the party split. New York Governor Alfred E. Smith led a faction of urban Democrats who supported a vision of a nation built on manufacturing, immigrants who provided cheap labor, and sprawling urban centers full of opportunity.
William Gibbs McAdoo represented older Democrats based in the rural South and West, firmly rooted in agrarian values, who had no love for the racial intermingling, political corruption and crime of the big cities. The fight came to a head when Smith Democrats sought a plank in the party platform that condemned the Ku Klux Klan but lost by a single vote.
That set the stage for what would be the longest continuing convention in America history. It took 103 ballots over 16 days to nominate a candidate. That candidate was neither Smith or McAdoo, but a compromise entrant, John W. Davis.
But from the disaster rose Smith’s campaign manager, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was making his first real public appearance since 1921, when he began exhibiting symptoms of polio.
Roosevelt gave a rousing nominating speech for Smith, and demonstrated that despite his illness, he was a viable candidate who could move crowds. That set the stage for his transformative election in 1932.