How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

Civil Rights and New Deal Liberalism in the Mass Public

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The South ◽  
Policy Initiatives ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Mass Level

This chapter traces the mass-level story of civil rights realignment among whites. The conventional understanding is that New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism were not related among whites until the 1960s or perhaps the late 1950s. The chapter shows that among northern whites, both Democratic partisanship and economic liberalism were linked to support for the major civil rights initiatives on the agenda in the late 1930s and 1940s. Although partisanship was uncorrelated with civil rights views among southern whites, economic conservatism was related to more conservative civil rights views. This connection between economic and racial conservatism in the South provided fertile ground for the GOP's eventual “southern strategy.” Ultimately, economically liberal northern Democrats provided much stronger support for most of the leading civil rights policy initiatives on the agenda than did economically conservative Republicans.

Critical Perspectives: Did Prosperity Contribute to the South's Abandonment of the Democratic Party?

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-432
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
The South ◽  
George Bush ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Critical Perspectives

During the past generation the South largely has abandoned its traditional commitment to the Democratic Party and emerged as an increasingly strong bastion of the Republican party. In 2004, George Bush won 58 percent in the South but only 48 percent in the rest of the country. (Throughout this article the South is defined as the former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.) In contrast, as recently as 1960, John Kennedy carried the South; excluding the South, Nixon beat Kennedy. The South's commitment to the Democrats lasted more than 150 years, from the days of Thomas Jefferson until the 1960s. How, then, do we explain the decline of the Democrats and the rise of the Republicans in the South in the past forty years?

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Partisan Realignment ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The New Deal

This introductory chapter provides a background of the civil rights realignment. The conventional account treats the civil rights realignment as the disruption of one stable partisan alignment and its replacement by another alignment in which race played a defining role. The critical decisions driving this process occurred in the 1960s as national party elites grappled with the question of how to respond to pressure from civil rights activists. The choices made at the center then reverberated throughout the political system, gradually remaking both parties at the mass and middle levels. In contrast, this book argues that the partisan realignment on civil rights was rooted in changes in the New Deal coalition that emerged in the mid- to late 1930s, not the 1960s. Rather than realignment starting in Washington and diffusing out and down, state parties and locally oriented rank- and-file members of Congress provided a key mechanism for pro-civil rights forces to capture the Democratic Party from below.

scholarly journals From Strom to Barack: Race, Ideology, and the Transformation of the Southern Party System

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Alan I. Abramowitz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Racial Composition ◽  
The South ◽  
Hispanic Voters ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Race Ideology

The southern party system has undergone a dramatic transformation since the 1960s, a transformation that has affected both the electoral bases of the parties and their leadership. This transformation has involved two related trends-a shift in the racial composition of the Democratic Party at the mass and elite levels and an ideological realignment that has produced a much wider gap between the ideological orientations and policy preferences of Democratic and Republican leaders and voters. In the South, to an even greater extent than in the rest of the nation, the Democratic Party has become increasingly dependent on the support of nonwhite voters. Meanwhile, despite the growing size of the nonwhite electorate in the South, the Republican base has remained overwhelmingly white. The growing dependence of the Democratic Party in the South on African-American and more recently Hispanic votes has contributed to the party's increasing liberalism because African-American and Hispanic voters tend to strongly support activist government. And this trend has also contributed to the growing conservatism of the Republican base as conservative whites have continued to flee the Democratic Party for the GOP. As a result, the two-party system in the South now consists of a Democratic Party dominated by nonwhites and white liberals and a Republican Party dominated by white conservatives.

Before Reagan: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

scholarly journals Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Voting and the Downfall of the Democratic Party in the South

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
James L. Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The South ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
White Voters

Throughout much of its existence, the Democratic Party was heavily dependent upon the votes of the white South for its electoral success. In the last forty years, that situation has changed drastically. The erstwhile Democratic Solid South has been transformed into a Republican bastion. While many commentators still seek to explain this phenomenon in terms of race, white Southerners publicly are able to maintain political correctness by setting their change of political heart in a quite different context. This paper seeks to place the current political situation in the South in a historical context that explains how the racial issues that actually launched the downfall of the Democratic Party in that region became eclipsed by a national cultural conflict that has allowed an ever increasing number of white voters in the South to explain themselves in the transcending language of morality that comes so easily to Republicans rather than in the debasing context of race.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Scott L. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Caste System ◽  
The South ◽  
Folk Revival ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
Frederick Law Olmsted

The introduction explores why the South became known as America’s “most documented” region beginning in the 1940s and into the twenty-first century. It argues that documentarians saw the region as a fertile place to do fieldwork for two main reasons. First, the region possessed unique and seemingly fragile folk cultures in need of preservation before modern influences erased them. Second, the region possessed seemingly endemic problems associated with its racial caste system and agricultural economies that needed documentation, study, and reform. The introduction also provides an overview of how historians and theorists defined “documentary” throughout the twentieth century and how and why some black and white southerners resisted the intrusion of documentarians into their lives. Additionally, it traces the history of documentary fieldwork in the South from the eighteenth through the nineteenth century and demonstrates how the tradition’s dominant themes developed during this time, particularly in the travel writings and sketches of Basil Hall, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jonathan Baxter Harrison and others. Finally, it highlights the distinguishing features of twentieth-century documentary by emphasizing the role of Progressive and New Deal reform impulses, the Folk Revival and Civil Rights Movement, and the development of portable recording technologies.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Identity ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Playing Field

The GOP’s Southern Strategy initiated the realignment of the South with the Republican Party by exploiting white racial anxiety about social changes to the southern racial hierarchy. However, the GOP’s success was not solely the result of its policy position on civil rights. Rather, that decision was part of a series of decisions the party made on feminism and religion as well, in what is called here the “Long Southern Strategy.” White resentment toward a more level racial playing field, for example, was intensified by the threat of a level gender playing field, and the promotion of “family values” by anti-feminists paved the way for the Christian Right. Moreover, Republican candidates did not just campaign down South, they became “southern.” Throughout realignment, the power of southern identity was rarely taken into consideration, but for whites who proclaim themselves to be southern, that has been the only party that really mattered.

The Changing Politics of Race in the South and Its Impact on National Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Voter Suppression ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Party Dominance

The long era of racial segregation and black voter suppression coincided with the old “Solid South” of Democratic dominance of the region. Among African Americans who could vote, they were loyal to the GOP, the party of Lincoln. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the civil rights movement more generally moved Southern blacks to the Democratic Party. The emergence of African American voters’ rights and their realigning to the Democratic Party have had the most profound impact on the politics of the region of the past half century. Today, Southern African Americans vote at about the same rate as whites and in some recent presidential elections have exceeded white participation. As whites realigned to the GOP, African Americans became a key component of the Democratic Party dominance of the South, with substantial influence on legislative priorities.

New Deal Liberalism and Racial Liberalism in the Mass Public, 1937–1968

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Racial Liberalism ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
The New Deal

Few transformations have been as important in American politics as the incorporation of African Americans into the Democratic Party over the course of the 1930s–60s and the Republican Party's growing association with more conservative positions on race-related policies. This paper traces the relationship between New Deal economic liberalism and racial liberalism in the mass public. A key finding is that by about 1940, economically-liberal northern white Democratic voters were substantially more pro-civil rights than were economically-conservative northern Republican voters. While partisanship and civil rights views were unrelated among southern whites, economic conservatives were more racially conservative than their economically liberal counterparts, even in the south. These findings suggest that there was a connection between attitudes towards the economic programs of the New Deal and racial liberalism early on, well before national party elites took distinct positions on civil rights. Along with grassroots pressure from African American voters who increasingly voted Democratic in the 1930s–40s, this change among white voters likely contributed to northern Democratic politicians' gradual embrace of civil rights liberalism and Republican politicians' interest in forging a coalition with conservative white southerners. In attempting to explain these linkages, I argue that the ideological meaning of New Deal liberalism sharpened in the late 1930s due to changes in the groups identified with Roosevelt's program and due to the controversies embroiling New Dealers in 1937–38.

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