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25 1 White South Goes Republican
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so welcome to our lecture on the white
south going republican today you should
be able to explain the southern strategy
and whether or not it was successful
and what carter's main policies were as
well as who opposed him
now because the republican the gop and
the democratic party's shift on civil rights
rights
are the main point of this lecture we're
going to start with a recap of the
democratic party's civil rights record
so since the new deal in the 1930s
democrats had an uneasy coalition of
white southern conservatives
and black voters in the north as well as
a growing number of white
liberals at the end of world war ii
president truman a democrat
outraged at reports of black world war
ii veterans being assaulted or lynched
launched a presidential commission on
civil rights
and desegregated both the military and
the civil services
under truman again a democrat the
democrats added a civil rights plank to
their party platforms they've
added this plank on civil rights to the
party platform
saying this is what we believe and what
we'll fight for when we're in office
the northern liberal voters within the party
party
beat the southern conservatives and
those conservatives then temporarily
bolted and formed the dixiecrat party
a third party so they agree with
democrats on lots of issues but on
race issues they are conservative they
want things to stay the same
when that dixiecrat party lost the dixiecrats
dixiecrats
reluctantly returned to the democratic coalition
coalition
but they're not happy about it both
parties republican and democrat
vied for southern white voters in the
1950s and both were fairly hands off on
civil rights after brown versus board
republican president eisenhower said
that appointing chief justice earl
warren was quote the biggest damn full
mistake i ever made
and of course brown versus board is the
school integration case that was
overseen by chief justice warren eisenhower
eisenhower
intervened at little rock only when
forced by democratic governor orville
falbas's defiance of a supreme court order
order
and democrat jfk was initially very
similar to eisenhower on civil rights he
made some symbolic efforts but nothing concrete
concrete
until the birmingham protest in 1963.
after securing the desegregation of the
university of alabama over democratic
governor george wallace's objections
jfk issued a call for a civil rights act
and after his assassination lbj wrote an
even stronger version of the civil
rights act pushed it through congress
and signed it with dr martin luther king
standing at his side southern democrats
tried to block this civil rights bill at
every turn so
liberal democrats had to turn to
minority leader everett dirksen who was
a republican to get it passed
after the 1962 midterms when
segregationist republicans made such
inroads into the south the republican
party could either
embrace civil rights and fight democrats
for similar voters
or they could court the votes of those
white segregationists throughout the
south who were leaving the democratic party
party
american pundits like joe alsop called
the latter option
the southern strategy and that is his
article we have here on the slide
describing this move
this is an anti-civil rights bill flyer
that was very popular in the south
calling the civil rights bill 100
billion blackjack that it's not a
moderate bill
um and it constitutes the greatest grasp
for executive power again they're going
to phrase civil rights as being
kind of this big government issue
because government shouldn't be so
powerful as to enforce
civil rights on the state or local level
in their view
so moderate and liberal republicans
outside the south those who had voted
for the civil rights act like dirksen
resisted this southern strategy of
appealing to conservative white segregationists
segregationists
but when goldwater won the republican
nomination in 64 these more moderate
views were pushed to the margins of
their party
goldwater carried the four deep southern
states with segregationists
rallying to the gop and goldwater
appealed to white conservatives
and opposed civil rights so that's
basically why the party shift is happening
happening
then senator strom thurmond the former
dixiecrat presidential candidate
officially left the democratic party to
become a republican in 1964. he's so furious
furious
the democratic party has picked up civil
rights that he is now leaving the party
he has built a career in
he had secured a deal with the
republicans where he would keep his
seniority and all the congressional
power that came with it he gets to stay
at the head of committees he'd been on
and so on
but 1964 changed how americans saw the
party so before 1964
before that civil rights act the
democrats were the party of economic liberalism
liberalism
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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