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.

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.

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.

The Not-So-New Southern Religion

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-258
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
White Identity ◽  
The South ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Southern Religion ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Sacred Canopy ◽  
The Church ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

In an effort to win southern white voters, the GOP embraced the old southern religion turning the church faithful into the party loyal. They did so because in many parts of the South, the church remains the central institution defining, organizing, and politicizing its surrounding community. A “sacred canopy” drapes over the region, where there is a common cosmology that is intractable from southern white identity, including its reverence for white supremacy and patriarchy. In general, as a block, white southerners were more evangelical, Protestant, fundamentalist, and moralist than the rest of the country. The not-so-new southern religiosity satisfies an appetite for certainty, conformity, and even social status. As a means to solidify southern white support, the Long Southern Strategy framed southern white Christianity as under attack and cast the GOP as its protector, the price of which is increased cultural defensiveness, anxiety, fear, and distrust.

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.

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.

The Not-So-New Southern Racism

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The South ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Public Displays ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Do So

During and after the Civil Rights Movement, GOP leaders capitalized on white racial angst to attract southern white voters. However, in order to do so without alienating Republicans nationwide, the GOP utilized coded language as an end-around of public displays of prejudice and championed an “us vs. them” cosmology. The decline of overt, Old-Fashioned Racism seemed positive, but the decline masked the persistence of white supremacist attitudes so dominant in the South. Since whiteness functions as a vantage point, supremacy can be maintained as long as the gap between whites and an “other” is also maintained. When denigrating minorities publicly was no longer socially acceptable, the GOP manufactured a host of increasingly threatening “others.” These common enemies catalyzed both an elevation of and a clinging to whiteness, which, in turn, preserved the “not-so-new” racial hierarchy key to southern white voters that only relative measures of racial animus can expose.

The Southern Manifesto

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kyle Day
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
The South ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
Post War

The Southern Manifesto: Massive Resistance and the Fight to Preserve Segregation is the first complete study of the Declaration of Constitutional Principles, popularly known as the Southern Manifesto. On March 13, 1956, ninety-nine members of the Eighty-Fourth United States Congress promulgated the Southern Manifesto, formally stating opposition to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the emerging Civil Rights Movement. This book explores a crucial aspect of post-war American history in general and the Civil Rights Movement in particular, most notably that of efforts by southern segregationists to construct a quasi-legal and political defense against the desegregation decisions of the Federal judiciary. This promulgation was also a response to the increasing support by American public opinion to advocates of desegregation, as well as the increasing isolation of the South and its traditional social structures. The Southern Manifesto was seminally important in creating the concerted and ultimately successful effort by white southerners to oppose the implementation of the Brown decision, a movement that came to be known as massive resistance. This study treats the Southern Manifesto as a document in and of itself, analyzing its text, its authors, its supporters and opponents. The Southern Manifesto, therefore, explains where the formation of the segregationist majority came from and how it became the standard for the South during this period, and thus creates a useful window through which to view the racial dynamics of postwar America.

Where Is “the South”? Assessing the Meaning of Geography in Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1100-1134
Author(s):  
Melanie J. Springer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
American South ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
The South ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Many

The use of geographic classifications to make empirical or theoretical generalizations is common in political science research. Yet, in most cases, these groupings, in and of themselves, lack broader meaning. Offering an in-depth example of the American South, this study demonstrates the need to scrutinize the qualities we are actually interested in when using geographic classifications to explore political trends. The article begins by discussing the many ways that “the South” has been defined in the existing literature. Then, it evaluates the theoretical and empirical consequences of these various definitions using examples focused on discriminatory practices, voter turnout, and civil rights roll call votes. This evidence demonstrates the importance of grounding one’s definition in substantive metrics and historical context over and beyond basic geography. The study concludes with a discussion of its broader implications that apply to several topics of interest and research strategies.

The Myth of Post-Racial America

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-124
Author(s):  
Angie Maxwell ◽  
Todd Shields
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Federal Programs ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
White Voters ◽  
Racial Resentment ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Hearts And Minds

Beyond portraying race relations as a zero-sum economic game, GOP contenders courted southern white voters by championing “colorblindness.” The color-blind message gave white Americans and, particularly, white southerners a way to move past race, while rendering federal programs to counteract institutional racism unnecessary. Replacing race-baiting with race-burying, the Long Southern Strategy catalyzed a political muteness on race that endured and gave rise to a myth of post-racialism. This myth, while attractive to white southern voters, not only misconstrues the degree and nature of racial animus still present in the hearts and minds of many white Americans, but it also fuels Racial Resentment at continued efforts to protect minority civil rights, at politically correct speech, or at efforts to address structural racial inequities.

The Bounds of Their Habitation

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-67
Author(s):  
J. Russell Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The South ◽  
Significant Percentage ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Political Responses ◽  
Biblical Texts

Chapter 2 explicates the theology behind southern evangelicals’ resistance to civil rights. It explains why conservative white Christians opposed civil rights reforms, arguing that a significant percentage of these Christians constructed a theology from both the natural world and biblical texts in which God was viewed as the author of segregation, and one who desired that racial separatism be maintained. Referencing letters, sermons, pamphlets, and books, this chapter documents how segregationist theology was crafted, defended, and deployed throughout the 1950s and 1960s in the South. It also demonstrates how such a theology supported a segregationist Christianity that became common in southern white churches, proving influential in shaping the social and political responses white southerners had to the civil rights movement.

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