I have heard that there were some states in the south that used to only have one party in elections. IIRC, it was called the Democratic party, but did not resemble the Democratic party we know today. Is any of this true?
Between 1877 and 1964 most southern states, the"Solid South," voted mostly Democratic in most elections. In some places there was effectively only one party.
Neither major party in the US much resembles the way it was in 1964.
There were Republicans in the south, but they did very poorly and rarely won elections after reconstruction. It was a hangover of the Civil War: the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the North, and the South never took to them, even before the war.
Take a look at the election returns for any of the southern states in the years before the Civil Rights acts.
For example, the University System of Georgia has digitized many of the election reports prepared by the Georgia Secretary of State. Take 1956 (PDF file): in the 1st Congressional District, the Democrat received 40,000+ votes and the Republican had 236. In the 2nd district, the Republicans didn’t even have a candidate; in the 3rd, the Democrat received 51,703, a mere 51,701 votes more than his Republican opponent. In the 4th, 51,768 D to 17 R, while in the 8th district, it was 50,068 to 3. In only one of the ten districts did the Republican candidate receive even one percent of the vote (5th district, in Atlanta and surrounding, where the Democrat still won 85K to 58K). In the Senate race, the Republican did not have a candidate.
Similar patterns held in other years and other races. The election was won or lost in the Democratic primary, because the Republicans were simply irrelevant.
The members of this Democratic Party were overwhelmingly white, conservative, and vehemently in favor of maintaining the old order and the system of racial segregation that was enshrined in Georgia law (in other words, not much like today’s Dems at all).
Note that this was because they had found ways to prevent nearly all African Americans from voting in the South, even in places where they were the majority of the population.
The South didn’t really resemble a democracy in the sense that we know it until the 1980s or so. It was a series of one party states and constitutional rights didn’t mean much, even if you were white. They meant even less if you were black. That’s the price of keeping a minority population down, even the majority’s rights are squelched in the process. Corruption was rampant, in one case at least people had to resort to arms to get a fair election, although the little war was about more than just that:
No one has mentioned that the passage of the Civil rights act resulted in the segregationist Democrats becoming segregationist Republicans.
Because a) that discussion has been hashed out in many threads, and b) That didn’t actually happen. Segregationist Democrats almost all stayed with the party, with only a few exceptions, and none of them were advocating to bring back Jim Crow even if they did switch parties.
There are plenty of localities with the same one party dominance today. In my town the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor is considered the presumptive winner of the general election, and aside from the formality actually is the winner when there is occasionally no Republican or independent opponent. This isn’t the overwhelming majority seen in some places that will still elect someone from the minority party, in this town Republicans don’t bother to run, if you see a candidate for the Republican party you know he’s a loon.
Yes, but is it natural one party dominance? the Solid South wasn’t actually as Democratic as it seemed. Vote results from that period shouldn’t just be taken with a grain of salt, they should be judged completely fabricated.
It is pretty natural. I’m not making the comparison in any broad sense, just that single party control isn’t that unusual. The southern states showed the worst results of that but one party control across the country has tended to produce corruption at some level and it’s never a good idea to let one party actively lock out opposition.
(bolding mine)
I wonder what the backstory was with regard to the figures for the Republican candidates: Was there actually a Republican candidate on the ballot? And even given the fact that the electorate was mostly (exclusively?) white and pro-segregation, why wasn’t there at least some token opposition on a minuscule level, let’s say one, two, maybe three percent, by some fearless or maybe closeted liberals? 50,068 to 3 doesn’t even look like vote rigging any more, that’s more like taunting the whole electoral process.
It’s like Saddam’s elections. Blacks weren’t allowed to vote, and I’m sure they found reasons to disqualify known white Republicans and liberals as well.
The democrats supported slavery in the south in the old days. Back in the day they were the ones that opposed all efforts to stop the slave trade and life.
Their 80 years of a solid democrat south was payback to the republicans for the civil war and freeing the slaves.
All the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s was Republican votes in the house and Senate that passed the bills. A fact conveniently forgotten now.
Forgotten? It’s alluded to in the very thread!
The party in power also controlled the counting of the ballots. And they had ways of knowing how you voted, as were described in a PolySci course I had in college.
Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The real distinction was in where the Senators and Representatives came from. Overwhelmingly, Northerners voted for the bill and Southerners voted against the bill. It was Northerners against Southerners, not Democrats against Republicans:
The trend of Democrats turning away from the party because of civil rights was a national one. In the North it was seen as middle class voters fled cities for suburbs, which often had segregation built into housing. Levittown, on Long Island, restricted blacks, and so did other towns built by that builder and many others in many other cities. (See Redlining.)
The Republicans saw an opportunity in the formerly Solid South. The Southern Strategy was a deliberate and only nominally covert appeal to Southern Democrats to leave a party that was at the national level taking enormous steps to integrate and equalize blacks. In reality, they shouted long and loud, “we’ll keep the culture of segregation and bigotry alive as long as you want it.”
That worked phenomenally well. Of course it wasn’t instantaneous. A party is a pyramid build up from the widest possible base. Nobody seems to get that. Look at all the naifs and ignoramuses who this year somehow believe that a third party can appear just by running a presidential candidate. The world doesn’t work that way. Giving up old traditions is hard and done only under long extreme pressure. Over the course of decades, however, the attitudes espoused and practiced by the Democratic bigots were taken up by the Republican bigots (and expanded to other groups like gays and Mexicans). Over four decades the shift has become nearly complete. Republicans dominate Southern politics from the local to the state to the national levels. What is “Make America Great Again” other than a longing for Jim Crow days, except applied more widely?
Yes, this is political commentary, but the thread has moved from GQ territory long ago and should be moved physically. A statement as bizarrely ridiculous and ahistoric as the denial of the Southern Strategy cannot be left standing unchallenged.
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