and the gop was the party of economic conservatism
conservatism
but there wasn't a huge difference
between them on race
a 1962 poll in which americans were
asked which political party was quote
more likely to see to it that negroes
get fair treatment and jobs and housing
showed that americans saw virtually no
difference in the parties on civil rights
rights
by 1964 when asked the same question 60
said democrats were more in favor of
fair jobs and housing for black people
seven percent said republicans were so
1964 is really when we see the switch
basically before 64 everyone thinks both
parties are pretty terrible for civil rights
rights
after 1964 it's obvious that the
democrats are the pro-civil rights party
and republicans are more and more becoming
becoming
against that in 1960 republican richard
nixon won
32 percent of the black vote by 1964 the
gop nominee received
four percent of the black vote
goldwater's campaign and strom thurman's
party switch
ensured that this southern strategy
would take hold of the republican party
and that people who were more radical
than those moderates would also be the
ones running
the party and of course while goldwater
lost the strategy worked to move the
south to abandon the democratic party
and support the gop which we can see
here on this map which you've seen a
couple times now that goldwater carries
the deep south and his lonely home state
of arizona over there
new house republicans elected in 64
reflect this
shift in the gop's ideology and strategy
representative beau callaway the
republican from georgia
left the democratic party over the
party's support for civil rights
and then ran as a republican he was a
segregationist he promised to repeal the
civil rights act and he voted against
the voting rights act
representative james martin the
republican from alabama left the
democrats for the same reason in 1962.
during the 1965 selma protest he
denounced martin luther king jr as a quote
quote
rabble rouser who has put on the sheep's
clothing of non-violence while he pits
race against race
man against law and remember segregation
was the law
his colleague representative bill
dickinson the republican from alabama
insisted from the floor of the house
that the civil rights marchers in selma
were actually a radical group
engaged in wild orgies three of the
other new alabama republicans in 64
weren't as vocal against civil rights
but all five voted against the voting
rights act of 1965 as did the older
democrats from alabama
and that's an interesting mix that we'll
see older democrats who no longer agree
with their party because of civil rights
will mentor newer politicians and
encourage them to run republican
representative princess walker the
republican of mississippi spoke against
civil rights voted against the voting
rights act and in 1966
claimed that civil rights workers were
worse than the clan
he blamed them for inciting racial
hatred you can see that in the article
on the slide here king scored as seeker
of publicity
in south carolina dixiecrat candidate
senator strom thurmond who we've
just talked about left the democrats and
joined the gop
his colleague segregationist democrat
albert watson supported thurman's candidacy
candidacy
in retaliation house democrats stripped
him of his seniority
the democrat watson voted against the
voting rights act resigned from congress
in 65
became a republican and then ran again
and retook his old seat
he then called for investigations into
quote-unquote subversive civil rights groups
groups
other southern republicans attempted to
use the southern strategy with less success
success
george h.w bush ran unsuccessfully in
1964 against liberal democrat senator
ralph yarborough
his campaign ads called out yarbrough
for supporting the civil rights bill as
you can see here on the slide
which bush said he opposed quote on the
grounds that it transcends civil rights
and violates the constitutional rights
of all people
job opportunity education and fair play
will help alleviate inequities
sweeping federal legislation will fail
again a big part of opposing civil rights
rights
is suggesting that this is just a big
government problem if you just left it
to the states and local governments it
wouldn't be an issue
few congressional representatives could
negotiate a deal like strom thurman so most
most
old dixiecrats remained in congress as
democrats but brought up their proteges
as republicans
congressman william colmer the democrat
from mississippi was head of the house
rules committee and he hand-picked trent
lott to fill his seat
but had him run as a republican lot won
and later served
as the senate majority leader for the
republican party jesse helms came up
working on the 1950 campaign of southern
democrat willis smith in north carolina
but when helms ran for a north carolina
senate seat 1972
he ran as a republican so this
transition took
time as the older dixiecrats retired and
were slowly replaced by southern
conservative republicans who they had mentored
mentored
and brought up the sexual revolution
continued into the 1970s
challenging strict gender roles
cohabitation without marriage spiked and
straight couples married later
if they got married at all between 1959
and 1979 the divorce rate more than
doubled by the early 1980s nearly half
of all marriages
ended in divorce and it was the changes
in the laws that promoted these higher
divorce rates before 1969 most states
required one spouse to prove the other
guilty of a specific offense like
adultery to get a divorce and this
promoted widespread lying in divorce courts
courts
couples splitting amicably had to claim
that one spouse had cheated or lied even
if neither had
others temporarily moved to states with
liberal divorce laws like nevada in
order to get legally divorced so nevada
today you go to vegas to get married in
a hurry you used to go to there to get
divorced in a hurry because it was one
of the only places you could do that legally
legally
widespread recognition of these problems
prompted reforms and in 1969 california
adopted the first
no-fault divorce law and by the end of
the 1970s almost every state had adopted
some version of it
divorces increased as unhappy couples
took advantage of these new opportunities
opportunities
so what we're seeing here is not just
that all of a sudden everybody's getting divorced
divorced
but we're seeing couples who had wanted
to be divorced for 10
20 maybe 30 years finally being able to
end up with this kind of crazy peak in
the 70s and then it comes back to about normal
normal
i should note that you'll often hear
that stat that half of all american
marriages end in divorce
and it's only true on a technicality so
there's a thing that happens with people
who get divorced and get divorced
multiple times anytime a couple divorces
their future marriages are more likely
to end in divorce than their first
marriage right so if you have a couple
in their first marriage
that marriage is not 50 percent likely
to end in divorce but if you have a
couple on their second third and fourth
marriages you're getting closer
so when we average out all of the
marriages in the united states we do get
close to that 50
mark but that's because some marriages
are far more likely to fail
than others after stonewall gay
americans attacked cultural norms that
demanded that they keep their sexuality
hidden too
citing statistics that sexual secrecy
contributed to stigma and suicide gay
activists urged people to
come out and embrace their sexuality as
something that they shouldn't be ashamed of
of
in 1973 the american psychiatric association
association
stopped classifying homosexuality as a
mental illness
in 1982 wisconsin became the first state
to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation
orientation
and more than 80 cities in nine states
followed suit over the next decade now
that may sound kind of radical to us
that is not currently the
the way it is in the state of texas and
in most cities in texas
that's not the way it is in much of the
united states right now so what
happened well there was a backlash which
we'll get to in just a moment like most
social movements the gay pride movement
was not free of division
itself transgender people were often
barred from participating in gay pride rallies
rallies
they were seen as too controversial and
they were also largely prevented from
participating in lesbian feminist conferences
conferences
so transgender people had to mobilize to
fight the higher incidence of rape abuse
and murder of trans people
in response to broadening sexual
freedoms and greater gender equality a
sustained and
organized opposition emerged to gay rights
rights
evangelical christians and moral
conservatives mobilized to reverse these
gay victories especially the
anti-discrimination bans
which they argued violated their
religious rights
in 1977 dade county florida used the
slogan save
our children to overturn an ordinance
banning discrimination based on sexual orientation
orientation
now that save our children campaign is
using a myth that gay people
are somehow more of a threat to children
but there is no evidence to suggest
any correlation between homosexuality
and child abuse of any kind
watergate gave large congressional gains
to the democrats in the 1974 midterm election
election
and ford's pardon damaged his chances in 1976.
1976.
former one-term georgia governor jimmy
carter was a nuclear physicist
and a peanut farmer those two things
don't seem like they should go together
do they
he ran as a hard-working honest southern
baptist navy man so the navy trains him
to be a nuclear physicist and then his
dad dies and the farm is going to go
under so he goes back home to run the
family farm
his wholesome image was in direct
contrast to nixon and by association
ford by 1976 the southern strategy had
changed the republican party and the
democrats had fully embraced civil rights
rights
so at the democratic national convention
texas representative barbara jordan
gave the keynote address noting the
changes in the party
and its advancement of civil rights so
take a moment and listen to the clip
of barbara jordan's keynote address at
the 1976 dnc
and again we've talked about the ways
that the republican party is shifting
away from civil rights jordan is going
to address the way
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