Southern strategy
Encyclopedia
In American politics
, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party
strategy of winning elections in Southern states
by exploiting anti-African American
racism
and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters (generally lumped under the concept of states rights). Though the "Solid South
" had been a longtime Democratic Party
stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery prior to the American Civil War
and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixicrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation
.
The strategy was first adopted under future Republican President Richard Nixon
in the late 1960s. The strategy was successful in some regards. It contributed to the electoral realignment
of Southern states to the Republican Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black voters to the Democratic Party. As the 20th century came to a close, the Republican Party began trying to appeal again to black voters, though with little success. During the 2000s decade, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman
formally apologized for his party's use of the Southern Strategy in the previous century. Michael Steele served as the party's first African-American chairman from January 2009-January 2011.
, he did not originate it, but merely popularized it. In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
While Phillips sought to polarize ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as some legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. In addition, the Republican Party worked for years to develop grassroots
political organizations across the South, supporting candidates for local school boards and offices, for instance. Following the Watergate scandal
, there was broad support for the Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election
.
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, traditionally a stronghold for the Democrats
, became key swing state
s, providing the popular vote margins in the 1960
, 1968
and 1976 elections. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for states' rights
, which some critics claim was a "codeword" of opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights for blacks and intervention on their behalf, including passage of legislation to protect the franchise.
Political scientists Richard Johnston (University of Pennsylvania
) and Byron Shafer (University of Wisconsin) have argued that this phenomenon had more to do with the economics than it had to do with race. In The End of Southern Exceptionalism, Johnston and Shafer wrote that the Republicans' gains in the South corresponded to the growth of the upper middle class in that region. They suggested that such individuals believed their economic interests were better served by the Republicans than the Democrats. According to Johnston and Shafer, working-class white voters in the South continued to vote for Democrats for national office until the 1990s. In summary, Shafer told The New York Times, "[whites] voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences".
In 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan
's proclaiming support for "states' rights" at his first Southern campaign stop was cited as evidence that the Republican Party was building upon the Southern strategy again. The location was alleged to be significant - Reagan spoke at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the county where the three civil rights workers were murdered
during 1964's Freedom Summer
, although political speeches from local, state, and national politicians at the fair had been a long-standing tradition at the Fair dating back to 1896, with Jack Kemp, John Glenn, and Michael Dukakis among the politicians who have spoken there.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter
won most of the Southern states without offending northern Democrats, explaining, “I have no trouble pitching for Wallace votes and black votes at the same time."
In 1968, Nixon lost a majority of southern electoral votes while capturing 36% of the black vote; his 1972 victory, both Reagan victories, and the victory of George H. W. Bush
in 1988 could have been won without their carrying any Southern state. If Nixon's Republican successor, Gerald Ford
had won just one-half of the black votes of Nixon, Ford would have won the election. Bill Clinton
, a Southern Democrat, was twice elected president, winning a handful of Southern states in 1992. In 1996, he won more votes outside the South and could have won without carrying any Southern state.
In recent years, the term "Southern strategy" has been used in a more general sense, referring to the way in which political parties use cultural themes in election campaigns — primarily but not exclusively in the American South. In the past, politicians' highlighting of issues such as busing or states' rights appealed to white angst about integration. More recently, Republican politicians made appeals to "conservative values", and used cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and religion to mobilize their base. This has also been viewed as the "Southernization" of American politics.
, southern states
gained additional seats in the House of Representatives
and representation in the Electoral College because freed slaves were granted full citizenship and suffrage
. Southern white resentment stemming from the Civil War and the Republican Party’s policy of Reconstruction kept most southern whites in the Democratic Party, but the Republicans could compete in the South with a coalition of freedmen, Unionists and highland whites.
Rising intimidation and violence by white paramilitary groups such as the White League
and Red Shirts supporting the Democratic Party during the mid to late-1870s contributed to turning out Republican officeholders and suppressing the black vote. After the North agreed to withdraw federal troops under the Compromise of 1877
, white Democrats used a variety of tactics to reduce voting by African Americans and poor whites. In the 1880s they began to pass legislation making election processes more complicated.
From 1890 to 1908, the white Democratic legislatures in every Southern state enacted new constitutions or amendments with provisions to disenfranchise most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites. Provisions required complicated processes for poll taxes, residency, literacy tests and other requirements which were subjectively applied against blacks. As blacks lost their vote, the Republican Party lost its ability to effectively compete. There was a dramatic drop in voter turnout as these measures took effect, a drop in participation that continued across the South.
The South became solidly white Democratic until past the middle of the 20th century. Effectively, Southern white Democrats controlled all the votes of the expanded population by which Congressional apportionment was figured. Many of their representatives achieved powerful positions of seniority in Congress, giving them control of chairmanships of Congressional committees. Because African Americans could not be voters, they were prevented from being jurors and serving in local offices. Services and institutions for them in the segregated South were chronically underfunded.
During this period, Republicans held only a few House seats from the South. Between 1880 and 1904, Republican presidential candidates in the South received between 35 and 40 percent of that section's vote (except in 1892, when the 16 percent for the Populists knocked Republicans down to 25 percent). From 1904 to 1948, Republicans received more than 30 percent of the section's votes only in the 1920
(35.2 percent, carrying Tennessee) and 1928 elections
(47.7 percent, carrying five states). The only important political role of the South in presidential elections came in the 1912 election
, when it provided the delegates to select Taft over Theodore Roosevelt in that year's Republican convention.
During this period, Republicans regularly supported anti-lynching
bills, which were filibustered by Southern Democrats in the Senate
, and appointed a few blacks to office. In the 1928 election, the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover
rode the issues of prohibition
and anti-Catholicism
to carry five former Confederate states, with 62 of the 126 electoral votes of the section. After his victory, Hoover attempted to build up the Republican Party of the South, transferring patronage away from blacks and toward the same kind of white Protestant businessmen who made up the core of the Northern Republican Party. With the onset of the Great Depression
, which severely impacted the South, Hoover soon became extremely unpopular. The gains of the Republican Party in the South were lost. In the 1932 election
, Hoover received only 18.1 percent of the Southern vote for re-election.
, after Harry Truman had desegregated the Army, a group of Southern Democrats known as Dixiecrats split from the Democratic Party in reaction to the inclusion of a civil rights plank in the party's platform. This followed a floor fight led by Minneapolis mayor (and soon-to-be senator
) Hubert Humphrey
. The disaffected Democrats formed the States' Rights Democratic, or Dixiecrat
Party, and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina
for president. Thurmond carried four southern states in the general election; Alabama
, Louisiana
, Mississippi
, and South Carolina
. The main plank of the States' Rights Democratic Party was maintaining segregation
and Jim Crow in the South. The Dixiecrats, failing to deny the Democrats the presidency in 1948, soon dissolved, but the split lingered. In 1964, Thurmond was one of the first conservative southern Democrats to switch to the Republican Party.
In addition to the splits in the Democratic Party, the population movements associated with World War II
had a significant effect on the makeup of the South. From 1940-1970, more than 5 million African Americans migrated from the South to the North and West in the second Great Migration
. Starting before WWII, many took jobs in the defense industry in California
and major industrial cities of the Midwest.
Changes in industry, growth in universities and the military establishment in turn attracted Northern transplants to the South, and bolstered the base of the Republican Party. In the post-war Presidential campaigns, Republicans did best in the fastest-growing states of the South with the most Northern settlers. In the 1952
, 1956
and 1960 elections
, Virginia
, Tennessee
and Florida
went Republican all three times, while Louisiana went Republican in 1956, and Texas
twice voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower
and once for John F. Kennedy
. In 1956, Eisenhower received 48.9 percent of the Southern vote, becoming only the second Republican in history (after Ulysses S. Grant
) to get a plurality of Southern votes.
The states of the Deep South remained loyal to the Democratic Party, which had not officially repudiated segregation. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina actually lost Congressional seats from the 1950s to the 1970s, while South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia
remained static.
The "Year of Birmingham" in 1963 highlighted racial issues in Alabama. Through the spring, there were marches and demonstrations to end legal segregation. The Movement's achievements in settlement with the local business class were overshadowed by bombings and murders by the Ku Klux Klan
, most notoriously in the deaths of four girls in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
After the Democrat George Wallace
was elected as Governor of Alabama, he helped link the concept of states' rights and segregation, both in speeches and by creating crises to provoke Federal intervention. He opposed integration at the University of Alabama
, and collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan in disrupting court-ordered integration of public schools in Birmingham in 1963.
Many of the states' rights
Democrats were attracted to the 1964 presidential campaign
of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater
of Arizona
. Goldwater was notably more conservative than previous Republican nominees, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower
. Goldwater's principal opponent in the primary election
, Governor Nelson Rockefeller
of New York
, was widely seen as representing the more moderate (and pro-Civil Rights) Northern wing of the party (see Rockefeller Republican
, Goldwater republican).
In the 1964 presidential campaign
, Goldwater ran a conservative campaign which broadly opposed strong action by the federal government. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964
. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose.
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of the Deep South states (Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) since Reconstruction. However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (Other than the South, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964. A Lyndon B. Johnson
ad called "Confessions of a Republican," which ran in the North, associated Goldwater with the Ku Klux Klan
. At the same time, Johnson’s campaign in the Deep South
publicized Goldwater’s full history on civil rights. In the end, Johnson swept the election.
Goldwater’s position was at odds with most of the prominent members of the Republican Party, dominated by so-called Eastern Establishment and Midwestern Progressives. A higher percentage of the Republican Party supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did the Democratic Party, as they had on all previous Civil Rights legislation. The Southern Democrats
mostly opposed their Northern Party mates — and their presidents (Kennedy and Johnson) on civil rights issues.
In some Republican circles, the election after the 1964 Civil Rights act was termed, "The Great Betrayal". Even though some Republicans paid a price with white voters — in some cases losing seats — black voters did not return to the Republican fold. Indeed, in some cases, notably the re-election of Senator Al Gore Sr., a majority of black voters cast their votes for a man who voted against the Civil Rights Act.
saw the cracks in the Solid South
as an opportunity to tap into a group of voters who had long been beyond the reach of the Republican Party
.
Republican Senator Edward Brooke
of Massachusetts
replaced King as the most prominent black leadership. By this point, King had won the Nobel Peace Prize
and founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
. His death was followed by rioting by African Americans in inner-city areas in major cities throughout the country. King’s policy of non-violence had already been challenged by other African-American leaders such as John Lewis and Stokely Carmichael
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC
). The notion of Black Power
advocated by SNCC leaders was quite effective in altering the mood of African-Americans. This attitude did much to raise the expectations of African Americans and also raised racial tensions. Journalists reporting about the demonstrations against the Vietnam War often featured young people engaging in violence or burning draft cards and American flags. There were also many young adults engaged in the drug
culture
and "free love" (sexual promiscuity
), in what was called the "hippie
" counter-culture. These actions scandalized many Americans and created a concern about law and order.
With the aid of Harry Dent and South Carolina
Senator
Strom Thurmond
, who had switched parties in 1964, Richard Nixon ran his 1968 campaign on states' rights
and "law and order." Many liberals accused Nixon of pandering to Southern whites, especially with regard to his "states' rights" and "law and order" stands.
The independent candidacy of George Wallace
, former Democratic governor of Alabama
, partially negated the Southern strategy. With a much more explicit attack on integration and black civil rights, Wallace won all of Goldwater's states (except South Carolina
), as well as Arkansas
and one of North Carolina
's electoral votes. Nixon picked up Virginia
, Tennessee
, North Carolina
, South Carolina
and Florida
, while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey
carried only Texas
of the southern states.
In the 1972 election, by contrast, Nixon won every state in the Union except Massachusetts, winning more than 70 percent of the popular vote in most of the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) and 61% of the national vote. He won over 65 percent of the votes in the other states of the former Confederacy
. Nixon won 36% of the black vote nationwide. Despite his appeal to Southern whites, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate
into wins in other states. He took a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear moderate to most Americans because the Southern strategy referred to integration obliquely through references to states' rights and busing. This tactic was later described by liberals in the media as "dog-whistle politics
."
as the means to forestall Federal intervention in the culture war
s.
In addition to presidential campaigns, Democratic charges of racism have been made about subsequent Republican campaigns for the House of Representatives
and Senate
in the South. The Willie Horton
commercials used by supporters of George H. W. Bush
against Michael Dukakis
in the election of 1988 were considered by many Democrats, including Jesse Jackson
, Lloyd Bentsen
, and many newspaper editors, to be racist. The 1990 re-election campaign of Jesse Helms
attacked his opponent's alleged support of "racial quotas," most notably through an ad in which a white person's hands are seen crumpling a letter indicating that he was denied a job because of the color of his skin.
Bob Herbert
, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater
, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:
Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."
In later decades, some analysts made the argument that Southern whites' move to the Republican Party had more to do with whites' voting for their economic interests than racism. Clay Risen wrote in a review of The End of Southern Exceptionalism, a scholarly work by Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer, "In the postwar era... the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This very busy and perhaps, therefore, distracted class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party, it perceived, best represented its economic interests: the Republican Party.
Some analysts viewed the 1990s as the apogee of Southernization or the Southern strategy, given that the Democratic president Bill Clinton
and vice-president Al Gore
were from the South, as were Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. Cultural values became the battleground of national and local elections.
Few African Americans voted for George W. Bush
and other Republicans in the 2004 elections, although it was a higher percentage than any GOP candidate since President Ronald Reagan
. Following Bush's re-election, Ken Mehlman
, Bush's campaign manager and Chairman of the RNC
, held several large meetings with African-American business, community, and religious leaders. In his speeches, he apologized for his party's use of the Southern Strategy in the past. When asked about the strategy of using race as an issue to build GOP dominance in the once-Democratic South, Mehlman replied, "Republican candidates often have prospered by ignoring black voters and even by exploiting racial tensions," and, "by the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
in the 2008 presidential election
to represent the decline of Southernization in national politics:
"The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it's becoming distinctly less important,' said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University
."
“I think that [Southernization]’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller
, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South. He noted that the Republicans had become "a Southernized party."
"Merle Black
, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University
in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere."
Politics of the United States
The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.The executive branch is headed by the President...
, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
strategy of winning elections in Southern states
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
by exploiting anti-African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters (generally lumped under the concept of states rights). Though the "Solid South
Solid South
Solid South is the electoral support of the Southern United States for the Democratic Party candidates for nearly a century from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, to 1964, during the middle of the Civil Rights era....
" had been a longtime Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
stronghold due to the Democratic Party's defense of slavery prior to the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and segregation for a century thereafter, many white Southern Democrats stopped supporting the party following the civil rights plank of the Democratic campaign in 1948 (triggering the Dixicrats), the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and desegregation
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
.
The strategy was first adopted under future Republican President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
in the late 1960s. The strategy was successful in some regards. It contributed to the electoral realignment
Realigning election
Realigning election are terms from political science and political history describing a dramatic change in the political system. Scholars frequently apply the term to American elections and occasionally to other countries...
of Southern states to the Republican Party, but at the expense of losing more than 90 percent of black voters to the Democratic Party. As the 20th century came to a close, the Republican Party began trying to appeal again to black voters, though with little success. During the 2000s decade, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman
Ken Mehlman
Kenneth Brian Mehlman is an American businessman, attorney, and political figure who served as the campaign manager for the 2004 re-election campaign of George W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, President Bush appointed Mehlman to the U.S...
formally apologized for his party's use of the Southern Strategy in the previous century. Michael Steele served as the party's first African-American chairman from January 2009-January 2011.
Introduction
Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Nixon political strategist Kevin PhillipsKevin Phillips (political commentator)
Kevin Price Phillips is an American writer and commentator on politics, economics, and history. Formerly a Republican Party strategist, Phillips has become disaffected with his former party over the last two decades, and is now one of its most scathing critics...
, he did not originate it, but merely popularized it. In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:
- From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights ActVoting Rights ActThe Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
While Phillips sought to polarize ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as some legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. In addition, the Republican Party worked for years to develop grassroots
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
political organizations across the South, supporting candidates for local school boards and offices, for instance. Following the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, there was broad support for the Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election
United States presidential election, 1976
The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic...
.
From 1948 to 1984 the Southern states, traditionally a stronghold for the Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, became key swing state
Swing state
In United States presidential politics, a swing state is a state in which no single candidate or party has overwhelming support in securing that state's electoral college votes...
s, providing the popular vote margins in the 1960
United States presidential election, 1960
The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th American presidential election, held on November 8, 1960, for the term beginning January 20, 1961, and ending January 20, 1965. The incumbent president, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not eligible to run again. The Republican Party...
, 1968
United States presidential election, 1968
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial United States presidential election. Coming four years after Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won in a historic landslide, it saw Johnson forced out of the race and Republican Richard Nixon elected...
and 1976 elections. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
, which some critics claim was a "codeword" of opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights for blacks and intervention on their behalf, including passage of legislation to protect the franchise.
Political scientists Richard Johnston (University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
) and Byron Shafer (University of Wisconsin) have argued that this phenomenon had more to do with the economics than it had to do with race. In The End of Southern Exceptionalism, Johnston and Shafer wrote that the Republicans' gains in the South corresponded to the growth of the upper middle class in that region. They suggested that such individuals believed their economic interests were better served by the Republicans than the Democrats. According to Johnston and Shafer, working-class white voters in the South continued to vote for Democrats for national office until the 1990s. In summary, Shafer told The New York Times, "[whites] voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences".
In 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
's proclaiming support for "states' rights" at his first Southern campaign stop was cited as evidence that the Republican Party was building upon the Southern strategy again. The location was alleged to be significant - Reagan spoke at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the county where the three civil rights workers were murdered
Mississippi civil rights worker murders
The Mississippi civil rights workers murders involved the lynching of three political activists in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964, during the American Civil Rights Movement....
during 1964's Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
, although political speeches from local, state, and national politicians at the fair had been a long-standing tradition at the Fair dating back to 1896, with Jack Kemp, John Glenn, and Michael Dukakis among the politicians who have spoken there.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
won most of the Southern states without offending northern Democrats, explaining, “I have no trouble pitching for Wallace votes and black votes at the same time."
In 1968, Nixon lost a majority of southern electoral votes while capturing 36% of the black vote; his 1972 victory, both Reagan victories, and the victory of George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
in 1988 could have been won without their carrying any Southern state. If Nixon's Republican successor, Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
had won just one-half of the black votes of Nixon, Ford would have won the election. Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
, a Southern Democrat, was twice elected president, winning a handful of Southern states in 1992. In 1996, he won more votes outside the South and could have won without carrying any Southern state.
In recent years, the term "Southern strategy" has been used in a more general sense, referring to the way in which political parties use cultural themes in election campaigns — primarily but not exclusively in the American South. In the past, politicians' highlighting of issues such as busing or states' rights appealed to white angst about integration. More recently, Republican politicians made appeals to "conservative values", and used cultural issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and religion to mobilize their base. This has also been viewed as the "Southernization" of American politics.
19th century disfranchisement and rise of the Solid South
After the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, southern states
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
gained additional seats in the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
and representation in the Electoral College because freed slaves were granted full citizenship and suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
. Southern white resentment stemming from the Civil War and the Republican Party’s policy of Reconstruction kept most southern whites in the Democratic Party, but the Republicans could compete in the South with a coalition of freedmen, Unionists and highland whites.
Rising intimidation and violence by white paramilitary groups such as the White League
White League
The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that operated to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing. Its first chapter in Grant Parish, Louisiana was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the...
and Red Shirts supporting the Democratic Party during the mid to late-1870s contributed to turning out Republican officeholders and suppressing the black vote. After the North agreed to withdraw federal troops under the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
, white Democrats used a variety of tactics to reduce voting by African Americans and poor whites. In the 1880s they began to pass legislation making election processes more complicated.
From 1890 to 1908, the white Democratic legislatures in every Southern state enacted new constitutions or amendments with provisions to disenfranchise most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites. Provisions required complicated processes for poll taxes, residency, literacy tests and other requirements which were subjectively applied against blacks. As blacks lost their vote, the Republican Party lost its ability to effectively compete. There was a dramatic drop in voter turnout as these measures took effect, a drop in participation that continued across the South.
The South became solidly white Democratic until past the middle of the 20th century. Effectively, Southern white Democrats controlled all the votes of the expanded population by which Congressional apportionment was figured. Many of their representatives achieved powerful positions of seniority in Congress, giving them control of chairmanships of Congressional committees. Because African Americans could not be voters, they were prevented from being jurors and serving in local offices. Services and institutions for them in the segregated South were chronically underfunded.
During this period, Republicans held only a few House seats from the South. Between 1880 and 1904, Republican presidential candidates in the South received between 35 and 40 percent of that section's vote (except in 1892, when the 16 percent for the Populists knocked Republicans down to 25 percent). From 1904 to 1948, Republicans received more than 30 percent of the section's votes only in the 1920
United States presidential election, 1920
The United States presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I and a hostile response to certain policies of Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president. The wartime economic boom had collapsed. Politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's...
(35.2 percent, carrying Tennessee) and 1928 elections
United States presidential election, 1928
The United States presidential election of 1928 pitted Republican Herbert Hoover against Democrat Al Smith. The Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s, whereas Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from Anti-Catholic prejudice, his anti-prohibitionist stance, and...
(47.7 percent, carrying five states). The only important political role of the South in presidential elections came in the 1912 election
United States presidential election, 1912
The United States presidential election of 1912 was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing. After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the Republican nomination, he called...
, when it provided the delegates to select Taft over Theodore Roosevelt in that year's Republican convention.
During this period, Republicans regularly supported anti-lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
bills, which were filibustered by Southern Democrats in the Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
, and appointed a few blacks to office. In the 1928 election, the Republican candidate Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
rode the issues of prohibition
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
and anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism
Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents...
to carry five former Confederate states, with 62 of the 126 electoral votes of the section. After his victory, Hoover attempted to build up the Republican Party of the South, transferring patronage away from blacks and toward the same kind of white Protestant businessmen who made up the core of the Northern Republican Party. With the onset of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, which severely impacted the South, Hoover soon became extremely unpopular. The gains of the Republican Party in the South were lost. In the 1932 election
United States presidential election, 1932
The United States presidential election of 1932 took place as the effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, the Revenue Act of 1932, and the Great Depression were being felt intensely across the country. President Herbert Hoover's popularity was falling as...
, Hoover received only 18.1 percent of the Southern vote for re-election.
WWII and population changes
In the 1948 electionUnited States presidential election, 1948
The United States presidential election of 1948 is considered by most historians as the greatest election upset in American history. Virtually every prediction indicated that incumbent President Harry S. Truman would be defeated by Republican Thomas E. Dewey. Truman won, overcoming a three-way...
, after Harry Truman had desegregated the Army, a group of Southern Democrats known as Dixiecrats split from the Democratic Party in reaction to the inclusion of a civil rights plank in the party's platform. This followed a floor fight led by Minneapolis mayor (and soon-to-be senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
) Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
. The disaffected Democrats formed the States' Rights Democratic, or Dixiecrat
Dixiecrat
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948...
Party, and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
for president. Thurmond carried four southern states in the general election; Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
. The main plank of the States' Rights Democratic Party was maintaining segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
and Jim Crow in the South. The Dixiecrats, failing to deny the Democrats the presidency in 1948, soon dissolved, but the split lingered. In 1964, Thurmond was one of the first conservative southern Democrats to switch to the Republican Party.
In addition to the splits in the Democratic Party, the population movements associated with World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
had a significant effect on the makeup of the South. From 1940-1970, more than 5 million African Americans migrated from the South to the North and West in the second Great Migration
Second Great Migration (African American)
The Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the North, Midwest and West. It took place from 1941, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration...
. Starting before WWII, many took jobs in the defense industry in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and major industrial cities of the Midwest.
Changes in industry, growth in universities and the military establishment in turn attracted Northern transplants to the South, and bolstered the base of the Republican Party. In the post-war Presidential campaigns, Republicans did best in the fastest-growing states of the South with the most Northern settlers. In the 1952
United States presidential election, 1952
The United States presidential election of 1952 took place in an era when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating rapidly. In the United States Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional...
, 1956
United States presidential election, 1956
The United States presidential election of 1956 saw a popular Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully run for re-election. The 1956 election was a rematch of 1952, as Eisenhower's opponent in 1956 was Democrat Adlai Stevenson, whom Eisenhower had defeated four years earlier.Incumbent President Eisenhower...
and 1960 elections
United States presidential election, 1960
The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th American presidential election, held on November 8, 1960, for the term beginning January 20, 1961, and ending January 20, 1965. The incumbent president, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not eligible to run again. The Republican Party...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
went Republican all three times, while Louisiana went Republican in 1956, and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
twice voted for Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
and once for John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
. In 1956, Eisenhower received 48.9 percent of the Southern vote, becoming only the second Republican in history (after Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
) to get a plurality of Southern votes.
The states of the Deep South remained loyal to the Democratic Party, which had not officially repudiated segregation. Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and North Carolina actually lost Congressional seats from the 1950s to the 1970s, while South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
remained static.
The "Year of Birmingham" in 1963 highlighted racial issues in Alabama. Through the spring, there were marches and demonstrations to end legal segregation. The Movement's achievements in settlement with the local business class were overshadowed by bombings and murders by the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
, most notoriously in the deaths of four girls in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
After the Democrat George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
was elected as Governor of Alabama, he helped link the concept of states' rights and segregation, both in speeches and by creating crises to provoke Federal intervention. He opposed integration at the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
, and collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan in disrupting court-ordered integration of public schools in Birmingham in 1963.
Many of the states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
Democrats were attracted to the 1964 presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 1964
The United States presidential election of 1964 was held on November 3, 1964. Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Johnson, who had successfully associated himself with Kennedy's...
of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
of Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. Goldwater was notably more conservative than previous Republican nominees, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
. Goldwater's principal opponent in the primary election
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
, Governor Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, was widely seen as representing the more moderate (and pro-Civil Rights) Northern wing of the party (see Rockefeller Republican
Rockefeller Republican
Rockefeller Republican refers to a faction of the United States Republican Party who held moderate to liberal views similar to those of Nelson Rockefeller...
, Goldwater republican).
In the 1964 presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 1964
The United States presidential election of 1964 was held on November 3, 1964. Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Johnson, who had successfully associated himself with Kennedy's...
, Goldwater ran a conservative campaign which broadly opposed strong action by the federal government. Although he had supported all previous federal civil rights legislation, Goldwater made the decision to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
. His stance was based on his view that the act was an intrusion of the federal government into the affairs of states and, second, that the Act interfered with the rights of private persons to do business, or not, with whomever they chose.
All this appealed to white Southern Democrats, and Goldwater was the first Republican to win the electoral votes of the Deep South states (Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina) since Reconstruction. However, Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act proved devastating to his campaign everywhere outside the South (Other than the South, Goldwater won only in Arizona, his home state), contributing to his landslide defeat in 1964. A Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
ad called "Confessions of a Republican," which ran in the North, associated Goldwater with the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
. At the same time, Johnson’s campaign in the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
publicized Goldwater’s full history on civil rights. In the end, Johnson swept the election.
Goldwater’s position was at odds with most of the prominent members of the Republican Party, dominated by so-called Eastern Establishment and Midwestern Progressives. A higher percentage of the Republican Party supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did the Democratic Party, as they had on all previous Civil Rights legislation. The Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans and the more liberal Northern Democrats.Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in...
mostly opposed their Northern Party mates — and their presidents (Kennedy and Johnson) on civil rights issues.
In some Republican circles, the election after the 1964 Civil Rights act was termed, "The Great Betrayal". Even though some Republicans paid a price with white voters — in some cases losing seats — black voters did not return to the Republican fold. Indeed, in some cases, notably the re-election of Senator Al Gore Sr., a majority of black voters cast their votes for a man who voted against the Civil Rights Act.
Roots of the Southern strategy
Lyndon Johnson was concerned that his endorsement of Civil Rights legislation would endanger his party in the South. In the 1968 election, Richard NixonRichard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
saw the cracks in the Solid South
Solid South
Solid South is the electoral support of the Southern United States for the Democratic Party candidates for nearly a century from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, to 1964, during the middle of the Civil Rights era....
as an opportunity to tap into a group of voters who had long been beyond the reach of the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
.
Republican Senator Edward Brooke
Edward Brooke
Edward William Brooke, III is an American politician and was elected to the United States Senate as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966, defeating his Democratic opponent, Endicott Peabody, 60.7%–38.7%...
of Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
replaced King as the most prominent black leadership. By this point, King had won the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
and founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
. His death was followed by rioting by African Americans in inner-city areas in major cities throughout the country. King’s policy of non-violence had already been challenged by other African-American leaders such as John Lewis and Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael
Kwame Ture , also known as Stokely Carmichael, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party...
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
). The notion of Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
advocated by SNCC leaders was quite effective in altering the mood of African-Americans. This attitude did much to raise the expectations of African Americans and also raised racial tensions. Journalists reporting about the demonstrations against the Vietnam War often featured young people engaging in violence or burning draft cards and American flags. There were also many young adults engaged in the drug
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
culture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
and "free love" (sexual promiscuity
Promiscuity
In humans, promiscuity refers to less discriminating casual sex with many sexual partners. The term carries a moral or religious judgement and is viewed in the context of the mainstream social ideal for sexual activity to take place within exclusive committed relationships...
), in what was called the "hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
" counter-culture. These actions scandalized many Americans and created a concern about law and order.
With the aid of Harry Dent and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
, who had switched parties in 1964, Richard Nixon ran his 1968 campaign on states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
and "law and order." Many liberals accused Nixon of pandering to Southern whites, especially with regard to his "states' rights" and "law and order" stands.
The independent candidacy of George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
, former Democratic governor of Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, partially negated the Southern strategy. With a much more explicit attack on integration and black civil rights, Wallace won all of Goldwater's states (except South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
), as well as Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
and one of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
's electoral votes. Nixon picked up Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
carried only Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
of the southern states.
In the 1972 election, by contrast, Nixon won every state in the Union except Massachusetts, winning more than 70 percent of the popular vote in most of the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) and 61% of the national vote. He won over 65 percent of the votes in the other states of the former Confederacy
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
. Nixon won 36% of the black vote nationwide. Despite his appeal to Southern whites, Nixon parlayed a wide perception as a moderate
Moderate
In politics and religion, a moderate is an individual who is not extreme, partisan or radical. In recent years, political moderates has gained traction as a buzzword....
into wins in other states. He took a solid majority in the electoral college. He was able to appear moderate to most Americans because the Southern strategy referred to integration obliquely through references to states' rights and busing. This tactic was later described by liberals in the media as "dog-whistle politics
Dog-whistle politics
Dog-whistle politics, also known as the use of code words, is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience...
."
Evolution
As civil rights grew more accepted throughout the nation, basing a general election strategy on appeals to "states' rights" as what some believe was a play against civil rights laws would have resulted in a national backlash. In addition, the idea of "states' rights" was considered by some to be subsumed within a broader meaning than simply a reference to civil rights laws, eventually encompassing federalismFederalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
as the means to forestall Federal intervention in the culture war
Culture war
The culture war in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting cultural values. The term frequently implies a conflict between those values considered traditionalist or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal...
s.
In addition to presidential campaigns, Democratic charges of racism have been made about subsequent Republican campaigns for the House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
and Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
in the South. The Willie Horton
Willie Horton
William R. "Willie" Horton is an American convicted felon who, while serving a life sentence for murder, without the possibility of parole, was the beneficiary of a Massachusetts weekend furlough program...
commercials used by supporters of George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
against Michael Dukakis
Michael Dukakis
Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...
in the election of 1988 were considered by many Democrats, including Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
, Lloyd Bentsen
Lloyd Bentsen
Lloyd Millard Bentsen, Jr. was a four-term United States senator from Texas and the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in 1988 on the Michael Dukakis ticket. He also served in the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1955. In his later political life, he was Chairman of the Senate...
, and many newspaper editors, to be racist. The 1990 re-election campaign of Jesse Helms
Jesse Helms
Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001...
attacked his opponent's alleged support of "racial quotas," most notably through an ad in which a white person's hands are seen crumpling a letter indicating that he was denied a job because of the color of his skin.
Bob Herbert
Bob Herbert
Robert “Bob” Herbert is an American journalist op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times. His column was syndicated to other newspapers around the country. Herbert frequently writes on poverty, the Iraq war, racism and American political apathy towards race issues...
, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater
Lee Atwater
Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater was an American political consultant and strategist to the Republican Party. He was an advisor of U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee.-Childhood and early life:...
, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:
- You start out in 1954 by saying, "NiggerNiggerNigger is a noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a pejorative context to refer to black people , and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts. It is a common ethnic slur...
, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
- And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger".
Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."
In later decades, some analysts made the argument that Southern whites' move to the Republican Party had more to do with whites' voting for their economic interests than racism. Clay Risen wrote in a review of The End of Southern Exceptionalism, a scholarly work by Richard Johnston and Byron Shafer, "In the postwar era... the South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class. This very busy and perhaps, therefore, distracted class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party, it perceived, best represented its economic interests: the Republican Party.
Some analysts viewed the 1990s as the apogee of Southernization or the Southern strategy, given that the Democratic president Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and vice-president Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
were from the South, as were Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. Cultural values became the battleground of national and local elections.
21st century
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
and other Republicans in the 2004 elections, although it was a higher percentage than any GOP candidate since President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. Following Bush's re-election, Ken Mehlman
Ken Mehlman
Kenneth Brian Mehlman is an American businessman, attorney, and political figure who served as the campaign manager for the 2004 re-election campaign of George W. Bush and Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, President Bush appointed Mehlman to the U.S...
, Bush's campaign manager and Chairman of the RNC
Republican National Committee
The Republican National Committee is an American political committee that provides national leadership for the Republican Party of the United States. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. It is...
, held several large meetings with African-American business, community, and religious leaders. In his speeches, he apologized for his party's use of the Southern Strategy in the past. When asked about the strategy of using race as an issue to build GOP dominance in the once-Democratic South, Mehlman replied, "Republican candidates often have prospered by ignoring black voters and even by exploiting racial tensions," and, "by the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out. Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
Recent comments on Southernization and Southern strategy
Some commentators considered the decisive victory of Democratic Senator Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
in the 2008 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
to represent the decline of Southernization in national politics:
"The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it's becoming distinctly less important,' said Wayne Parent, a political scientist at Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
."
“I think that [Southernization]’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller
Thomas Schaller
Thomas F. Schaller is Professor of Political Science at University of Maryland, Baltimore County . A weekly political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, he has published commentaries in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Salon, The American...
, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win national elections without the South. He noted that the Republicans had become "a Southernized party."
"Merle Black
Merle Black
P. Merle Black is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He is a frequent media source on Southern politics,as is his twin brother, Earl Black, a professor at Rice University...
, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
in Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the South, alienating voters elsewhere."
See also
- Solid SouthSolid SouthSolid South is the electoral support of the Southern United States for the Democratic Party candidates for nearly a century from 1877, the end of Reconstruction, to 1964, during the middle of the Civil Rights era....
- Bible BeltBible BeltBible Belt is an informal term for a region in the southeastern and south-central United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average.The...
- Conservative CoalitionConservative coalitionIn the United States, the conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together the conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern, wing of the Democratic Party...
- Politics of the Southern United StatesPolitics of the Southern United StatesPolitics of the Southern United States refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States. Due to the region's unique cultural and historic heritage, the American South has been prominently involved in numerous political issues faced by the United States as a whole, including States'...
- RacismRacismRacism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
- Reconstruction
Further reading
- Joseph A. Aistrup, The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South, Kentucky Press
- Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture (ISBN 0-15-600550-6).
- Richard Benedetto, "GOP:'We were wrong' to play racial politics", USA TODAY, 14 July 2005
- Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans, Harvard University Press
- James Boyd, "Nixon's Southern strategy 'It's All In the Charts'", New York Times, May 17, 1970
- Patrick J. Buchanan, "The Neocons and Nixon's Southern Strategy", December 2002, Patrick Buchanan Official Website
- Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (ISBN 0-8071-2366-8)
- Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of Southern Politics (ISBN 0-8071-2597-0)
- David L. Chappell. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (ISBN 0-8078-2819-X)
- John Egerton, "A Mind to Stay Here: Closing Conference Comments on Southern Exceptionalism", Southern Spaces, 29 November 2006.
- Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (ISBN 0-691-09260-5) by
- Kevin Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority (ISBN 0-87000-058-6)
- UPI, "Why The GOP's Southern Strategy Ended", 23 February 2001, at NewsMax