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Originally Posted by BroadwaySushy
Nope. Wrong again I'm afraid. That's a commonly held misconception but it's a myth.
How can you type this with a straight face. Prior to the Civil Rights Acts, the entire South was reliably Democratic, and ALWAYS went that way in Presidential elections. Remember, the Republican Party defeated the Confederacy and imposed radical societal and economic change in the South during reconstruction. There was actually a special name for Southern Democrats, Dixiecrats, whose entire reason for being was thwarting Black rights and equality. Senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond were life long Democrats who just switched to the Republican party after the Kennedy/Johnson Civil Rights reforms. The poster boys for Southern Racism were all Democrats, from the last two I mentioned, to James Eastland, Bull Conner, George Wallace, and pretty much every White elected official in the old Confederacy.
They started to bolt when the Democratic Party leadership of the Northern and Urban states began taking over the Party on a national level and pushing for new and expanded Civil Rights measures. Entire demographics shifted to the Republican Party and the Democrats haven't been competitive, in national elections, in the South since. I don't view this as inherently evil Republican pandering to racists, so much as political parties usually don't turn huge amounts of voters away, but still, deal in reality.
You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.