I just finished reading James Reichley's "The Life of the Parties," which I found to be an excellent history of the political parties of the United States.

I don't remember the book having a lot about specifically appealing to women, though it did state that progressives were partly in favor of the 19th Amendment (which gave women the right to vote nationwide) because they thought it would hurt the state party machines.

However, there was definitely an effort to appeal to black voters. Blacks had long been a Republican-leaning group due to the Civil War, and, while it's easy to forget, several blacks were actually elected to Congress during the Reconstruction period. After Reconstruction, most blacks were successfully disenfranchised by Democrats. Eventually many blacks moved North as part of the Great Migration, and eventually became part of the Democratic coalition in large part due to the New Deal. Roosevelt had a tough line to walk in appealing to both blacks and the segregationist South, but he succeeded by supporting social programs that helped blacks while not pushing civil rights programs (even though many liberals, including Eleanor Roosevelt, supported civil rights). Blacks became an important part of political coalitions also consisting of groups like the Irish that elected Democratic mayors like Richard Daley of Chicago (the coalition was generally opposed to the established Protestants).

When Truman ran for election in 1948 he sought to appeal to blacks in order to head off a third party candidacy by the left-wing Henry Wallace. Truman announced his support for anti-lynching laws, anti-poll tax laws, an other measures, which caused a Southern Democratic rebellion; Strom Thurmond ran as a "Dixiecrat." Many Southern politicians seized on segregation as their key issue, and many switched to the Republican Party as they lost allegiance to the Democratic Party which pushed the Civil Rights Act (though it should be said that other issues also played a role in the declining popularity of the Democratic Party). This foreshadowed the near total downfall of the Democratic Party in the South, and we now see e.g. Obama winning 90% of black voters and <20% of white voters in the Deep South. After the

Politicians in the west (where women were allowed to vote before the 19th amendment) certainly made appeals to voting women. Black voters got a mixed bag. The civil rights act was passed in 1964 and there were certainly some politicians who courted black voters. The Republican party took a position from 1969 to 1984 (which the GOP apologized for in 2005) that is usually called the Southern strategy. By embracing those who felt like minorities were unworthy of the same rights they gained a demographic advantage in national politics.

its no accident that Prohibition (18th amend) and the Women's Suffrage (19th Amend) came one after the other. Prohibition had its strongest support among women's groups who saw alcohol as fuel for broken families and domestic violence. When Prohibition passed many politicians who would naturally be against it feared standing up to it less they alienate the giant block new women voters. Prohibition was brought to an end when the public, especially women, many who originally supported it, started to campaign against it for causing violence in the streets and fueling corruption which undermined communities.