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Critical Perspectives: Did Prosperity Contribute to the South's Abandonment of the Democratic Party?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

W. J. Rorabaugh
W. J. Rorabaugh
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

During the past generation the South largely has abandoned its traditional commitment to the Democratic Party and emerged as an increasingly strong bastion of the Republican party. In 2004, George Bush won 58 percent in the South but only 48 percent in the rest of the country. (Throughout this article the South is defined as the former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.) In contrast, as recently as 1960, John Kennedy carried the South; excluding the South, Nixon beat Kennedy. The South's commitment to the Democrats lasted more than 150 years, from the days of Thomas Jefferson until the 1960s. How, then, do we explain the decline of the Democrats and the rise of the Republicans in the South in the past forty years?

Type
Critical Perspectives
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 425 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2005

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References

Notes

1. Important studies include Bass, Jack and DeVries, Walter, The Transformation of Southern Politics (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Black, Earl and Black, Merle, Politics and Society in the South (Cambridge, Mass., 1987)Google Scholar, and The Rise of Southern Republicanism (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).

2. On the shift among northern Democrats from a mix of moderates and liberals to liberals, see Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 242; Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 392.

3. On religion, see Gaustad, Edwin S. and Barlow, Philip L., New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 2001), fig. C.18Google Scholar; Bass and DeVries, Transformation of Southern Politics, 488, 490; Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 213; Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 5, 215, 226–27, 242, 264.

4. On the South as a resentful economic colony, see Schulman, Bruce J., From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt (New York, 1991), 6Google Scholar; Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 42.

5. On southern ties to the military, see Bass and DeVries, Transformation of Southern Politics, 139, 490; Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 19, 33, 62; Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 102, 122; Glaser, James M., Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South (New Haven, 1996), 54, 61–62, 105, 117–18, 132–33Google Scholar; Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 94–100, 133, 139–51.

6. On low registration and voting, see Bass and DeVries, Transformation of Southern Politics, 400; Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 139, 175–77, 188, 190; Davidson, Chandler and Grofman, Bernard, eds., Quiet Revolution in the South (Princeton, 1994), 29–30Google Scholar; Lawson, Steven F., Black Ballots (New York, 1976), 284, 331Google Scholar. Election data are drawn from World Almanac, 1957 and later years. On challenges facing southern Democrats, see Davidson and Grofman, Quiet Revolution; Frederickson, Kari A., The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill, 2001)Google Scholar; Grantham, Dewey W., The Life and Death of the Solid South (Lexington, Ky., 1988)Google Scholar.

7. On voting, see Lawson, Steven F., In Pursuit of Power (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; Parker, Frank, Black Votes Count (Chapel Hill, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On strain inside the Democratic Party, see Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 79, 181, 349. In general, see Bartley, Numan V., The New South, 1945–1980 (Baton Rouge, 1995)Google Scholar; Graham, Hugh D., The Civil Rights Era (New York, 1990)Google Scholar. On individual property rights, see Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 213–18.

8. On the intertwining of class and race, see Honey, Michael K., Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights (Urbana, 1993)Google Scholar.

9. On 1940, see World Almanac, 1947 (New York, 1946), 396Google Scholar; on 1950, see World Almanac, 1952 (New York, 1951), 674Google Scholar; on 2000, see Time Almanac, 2002 (Boston, 2001), 636Google Scholar.

10. World Almanac, 2004 (New York, 2004), 327ff., 375Google Scholar. On the rise of the Sunbelt, see Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, esp. 3; Nelson, Albert J., Democrats under Siege in the Sunbelt Megastates (Westport, Conn., 1996)Google Scholar. See also Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 95.

11. On manufacturing, see World Almanac, 2004, 337ff. On union membership, see Time Almanac, 2002, 633. On unions, see Bass and DeVries, Transformation of Southern Politics, 394; Black and Black, Politics and Society in the South, 64–66; Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicanism, 264.

12. Miller, Zell, A National Party No More (Macon, Ga., 2003)Google Scholar.