NOW with Bill Moyers. Politics & Economy. Election 2004. The Solid South?

1.30.04

Election 2004

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The Solid South?

In the aftermath of the American Civil War the former Confederate states maintained a cohesive voting pattern nearly a century. It became known as "The Solid South" and was counted in the Democratic column for years. But as times, and party platforms, changed southern politics did too. Now for several decades the South has been solidly in the Republican camp. Find out more about the history, and possible future, of the southern vote below.



				THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION After the Union victory in the Civil War a series of laws were passed in Congress aimed at providing civil rights to recently freed slaves. During the post-war period known as Reconstruction, newly emancipated African American voters voted overwhelmingly for Republican, the party of Lincoln, candidates on both state and national levels. Southern whites voted en masse for the Democrats. In the election of 1876 Democrat Samuel J. Tilden led Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in popular votes, and 203-165 in the electoral college. However, there were 20 electoral votes in dispute due to fraud and violence in some southern states and eligibility questions in Oregon. The disputed votes were split leaving a deadlock. The Democratic House and Republican Senate created a fifteen-member electoral commission of ten congressmen and five Supreme Court justices, divided by party, with one independent. The divided conference awarded all the votes to Hayes, prompting a Democratic filibuster. A compromise was negotiated in which the Republicans would keep the White House and offer more federal aid dollars to the former Confederate states. In addition, the remaining federal troops would leave the South. As the troops left the area, voting and other civil rights protections for African Americans went with them. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: RECONSTRUCTION, THE SECOND CIVIL WAR HarpWeek, Hayes v. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877



				THE DIXIECRATS For the next seventy years the South voted for Democrats. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses and intimidation kept African-American votes to a minimum. Then, in 1948 domestic policy of Harry Truman and the newly announced civil rights plank in the Democratic Party Platform caused a rebellion among southern Democrats. At first discontented southern Democrats tried to foment an anti-Truman rebellion at the 1948 convention. When this strategy failed, some Democrats walked out and held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama. They nominated then South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond to head the ticket of the States' Rights (also known as the Dixiecrat) Party. This walkout represents the first crack in the previously solid Democratic South. In 2002 at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday celebration Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Repbulican from Mississippi, made this statement: I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either. Lott resigned his position as Majority Leader after a resulting controversy. NOW's Meet the Dixiecrats FREEDOM A HISTORY OF US: DEWEY VS. TRUMAN



				THE SOLID SOUTH Throughout the 1950s the South voted Democratic. African-American voter turnout remained low. In 1960 the southern voter turnout was over twenty percent below the national average. "Republican" was not a four-letter word, but until the 1960s it was a four-syllable word obnoxious in the minds of many South Carolinians. If one had leanings other than Democratic, he did not go around boasting of it in public.--From the memoirs of former Congressman C. Bruce Littlejohn PBS'S THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM CROW PBS' AFRICAN-AMERICAN WORLD



				GEORGE WALLACE AND THE AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS PARTY IN 1968 another southern politician split the solid South in the presidential race. George Wallace, the notorious segregationist governor of Alabama ran on the American Independent ticket. According to his biographer Dan T. Carter, Wallace "sensed and gave voice to a growing national white backlash in the mid-1960s." The federal government under the Democratic leadership of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had championed a series of new civil rights bills, among them the Voting Rights Act of 1964. Civil rights workers headed South to register African American voters — mostly new Democrats. If George Wallace did not create this mood of national skepticism, he anticipated and exploited the political transformation it precipitated. His attacks on the federal government have become the gospel of modern conservatism; his angry rhetoric, the foundation for the new ground rules of political warfare. --Dan T. Carter, THE POLITICS OF RAGE: GEORGE WALLACE, THE ORIGINS OF THE NEW CONSERVATISM, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: GEORGE WALLACE: 'SETTING THE WOODS ON FIRE' NOW's Bob Moses, Civil Rights Crusader



				THE REAGAN REVOLUTION AND BEYOND Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have built on the legacy of resentment tapped into by Wallace and Thurmond. Social issues figured prominently in southern races and white evangelical Christians proved a powerful voter base for the Republican Party. Consider these trends from historian Richard K. Scher: Beginning in 1980 the Republican presidential nominee has won about 54% of the popular vote in the South, virtually landslide proportions; the Democratic nominee averaged only 42%. Since 1984, the South has supported the Republican presidential nominee at a higher percentage than the country as a whole. At the presidential level, the South is now the most Republican region of the country. During the 2004 campaign southern states like South Carolina are seen as crucial in both the primary and national elections. Democratic candidates will likely emphasize the South's ongoing troubles. Key industries like textiles have been moving operations overseas — South Carolina's textile industry shrunk by 7 percent in 2003. And, southern states consistently rank near the bottom in national education and poverty statistics. ONLINE NEWSHOUR "The Christian Coalition's Impact on the Political Landscape of the South" ONLINE NEWSHOUR "The 1996 Election: A Southern Perspective"

Additional Sources: Bureau of the Census, National Education Association, South Carolina State Archive, SouthNow from the The Program on Southern Politics, Media, and Public Life, University of North Carolina