The election of a liberal Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 began to separate the KKK from the Democratic Party. Roosevelt, a native of New York, agreed with Southern Democrats on issues of agriculture and helping victims of the Depression, but he did not fully agree with them on issues of race. His wife, Eleanor, was even more outspoken in support of Black rights. As Roosevelt moved to help the poor during the Depression, he made sure that Blacks were included in the efforts, even if the housing and farming projects were segregated. Such projects, which in some cases supported Black independence by giving them freehold rights to land in rural areas, did not sit well with white Southerners, and particularly those that supported the KKK.
At the end of World War II, the awareness of what Adolf Hitler had done led to a reassessment of the concept of race in America, and some within the Democratic Party began to call for a Civil Rights platform within the party, particularly the former vice-president Henry Wallace. In 1948, that platform was adopted, and the South bolted the Democratic Party, forming the States Rights Party, commonly called the Dixiecrats. They ran Strom Thurmond for the Presidency, and most pundits believed that the defection of the South would doom Harry S. Truman’s candidacy and make Thomas Dewey, the Republican, president. Incredibly Truman survived Henry Wallace’s defection on the Left (the Progressive Party) and the South’s defection on the right (the Dixiecrats) and defeated Dewey to become President of the United States. He soon thereafter ordered the integration of the armed forces.
From 1948 to 1968, the South remained somewhat uneasily within the Democratic Party, but they were not pleased with the growing liberalism in the national party, particularly on the issues of race and integration. On the other hand, they could not conceive of voting with the hated Republicans either. In the South, most Republicans were Black until the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two things finally resolved the issue….the Republican choice of segregationist Barry Goldwater for the Presidency in 1964, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed by Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson. Most white Southerners could no longer abide the Democratic Party after these two events, and Goldwater in fact carried every Southern state. Richard Nixon saw the potential in angry white Southerners, and suggested to them in 1968 that he would slow down the process of school integration, helping him win election as President. Although he later broke his promise, by 1968 it was clear that the hundred-year-old alliance between the white South and the Democratic Party was over. The KKK could not support the liberal “New South” Democrats like Jimmy Carter that were emerging. In fact, Carter would be the last Democrat to win the Southern states. If the Democratic Party had ever been the “party of the KKK,” by 1976 that era was over forever.
1964 and 1965. The Civil Rights Act was at stake in the election between LBJ and Barry Goldwater. LBJ wanted federal enforcement of civil rights. Goldwater wanted “State’s Rights.” That means the states could decide to crap all over the Constitution and deny rights to people of particular races. MLK told his people to reject Barry Goldwater.
Before all that, “Democrat” meant those who believed states should “democratically” decide the rights of minorities. “Republican” meant someone who believed that the federal government should enforce civil rights when the states took them away.
Most blacks soon became Dems. Lee Atwater, a campaign strategist, helped lead racist Southerners to the GOP. Their man was Goldwater, who happened to be Republican.
Atwater explains the Southern Strategy, which was the successful attempt to bring the support of racists to the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’"
- Lee Atwater, Republican Campaign Strategist, from an Interview in the early 80’s
reason.com
