Solid South

For the play titled Solid South, see Lawton Campbell.
Solid South
Founded1876
Dissolved1964
Preceded byRedeemers
Succeeded bySouthern Republicans Conservative democrats
IdeologyReactionism
Conservatism
Segregation
White supremacy
Southerner interests
States' rights
Neo-Confederatism
National affiliationDemocratic Party
In the 1924 presidential election, a Republican landslide victory, all 11 former Confederate states and Oklahoma voted Democratic.
Arkansas voted Democratic in all 23 presidential elections from 1876 through 1964; other states were not quite as solid but generally supported Democrats for president.

The Solid South was the electoral voting bloc for the Democratic Party in the Southern United States between the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[1][2] During this period, the Democratic Party controlled southern state legislatures and most local, state and federal officeholders in the South were Democrats. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, Southern Democrats disenfranchised nearly all blacks in all the former Confederate states. This resulted in a one-party system, in which a candidate's victory in Democratic primary elections was tantamount to election to the office itself. White primaries were another means that the Democrats used to consolidate their political power, excluding blacks from voting.[3]

The "Solid South" included all 11 former Confederate states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. It also included to a lesser extent Oklahoma[a] and Kentucky, which remained electorally competitive during the Jim Crow era.[4] Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia were rarely identified with the Solid South after the 1896 United States presidential election, while Missouri became a bellwether state after the 1904 United States presidential election.[5]

The Solid South can also refer to the "Southern strategy" that has been employed by Republicans since the 1960s to increase their electoral power in the South. Republicans have been the dominant party in most political offices within the South since 2010.[6] The main exception to this trend has been the state of Virginia.[7]

  1. ^ Bullock, Charles S.; Hoffman, Donna R.; Gaddie, Ronald Keith (2006). "Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004". Social Science Quarterly. 87 (3): 494–518. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2006.00393.x. ISSN 0038-4941. The events of 1964 laid open the divisions between the South and national Democrats and elicited distinctly different voter behavior in the two regions. The agitation for civil rights by southern blacks continued white violence toward the civil rights movement, and President Lyndon Johnson's aggressive leadership all facilitated passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. ... In the South, 1964 should be associated with GOP growth while in the Northeast this election contributed to the eradication of Republicans.
  2. ^ Stanley, Harold W. (1988). "Southern Partisan Changes: Dealignment, Realignment or Both?". The Journal of Politics. 50 (1): 64–88. doi:10.2307/2131041. ISSN 0022-3816. JSTOR 2131041. S2CID 154860857. Events surrounding the presidential election of 1964 marked a watershed in terms of the parties and the South (Pomper, 1972). The Solid South was built around the identification of the Democratic party with the cause of white supremacy. Events before 1964 gave white southerners pause about the linkage between the Democratic Party and white supremacy, but the 1964 election, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 altered in the minds of most the positions of the national parties on racial issues.
  3. ^ Dewey W. Grantham, The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History (1992).
  4. ^ "US Census Region Map" (PDF).
  5. ^ Herbert, Herbert, Hilary A., Why The Solid South?, or, Reconstruction and Its Results, R.H. Woodward and Company, Baltimore, 1890, pgs. 258-284
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference The long goodbye was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference The New Dominion was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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