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  • Painting Dixie Red: When, Where, Why, and How the South Became Republican ed. by Glenn Feldman
  • Mark Griffith
Painting Dixie Red: When, Where, Why, and How the South Became Republican. Edited by Glenn Feldman. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011. xi, 386 pp. $74.95. ISBN 978-0-8130-3684-7.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he supposedly mused, “There goes the South for a generation.” The common explanation for the rise of the Republican Party in the South was race and politics. Painting Dixie Red makes a reasoned argument that we must go far deeper and farther afield to explain the change of parties. The book begins with an introduction: “Has the South Become Republican?” and ends with a conclusion: [End Page 71] “America’s Appointment with Destiny—A Cautionary Tale.” Both are written by volume editor Dr. Glenn Feldman. The rest of the book is divided into three parts: “Part I. Religion and Partisan Realignment”; Part II. State, Section, Suburb, and Race; and Part III. Economics, Faction and Neo–Confederacy.

The introduction addresses both the questions that will be discussed and the contributors who are included in the anthology. Because there are twelve chapters, this review necessarily focuses on a selection of them. The others can be easily found online. Throughout, the thesis is clear that the change to the Republican Party involved, “the intricate interweaving and interdependence of cultural elements that impede meaningful change: class, race, gender, ethnicity, hyper-patriotism, and their central adhesive, a rope of religion” (p. 13).

The Conclusion makes the familiar argument that the South did not change, rather the parties’ principles themselves had changed. The Democrat Party had become more liberal, and therefore southern voters and politicians remained consistent in their views by moving to the Republican Party. Given the other contributors points, I would have liked more in the conclusion that ties it to the views about such things as religion and the changes that occurred over decades, which were discussed in various chapters.

The key part of the anthology points to religion as a major reason for the ascendency of and change to the Republican Party. The whole of Part 1 is a persuasive argument that evangelical Christians turned against the Democrat party as the culture of the Democrat party turned more secular and liberal. Daniel K. Williams in a chapter titled, “Voting God and the GOP: The Role of Evangelical Religion in the Emergence of the Republican South” is the first essay and makes the major case for the role of religion in the political realignment of the South. As the introduction suggests, the cultural effect of religion and the changing nature of the Democrat Party nationally, alienated the Evangelicals from the national party. Eventually this alienation would also deteriorate the relationship with the state and local parties, but that would take a lot longer.

The second part of the book includes case studies about different facets of the change to the Republican Party in Georgia, Virginia, [End Page 72] Louisiana, South Carolina, and Arkansas. The most compelling of the essays is about the rise of the southern suburban voter as documented in Tim Boyd’s essay, “A Suburban Story: The Rise of Republicanism in Postwar Georgia.” Most Americans live in the suburbs, and the suburban vote decides elections. It is well documented that the suburban southern vote paved the way to the election of both Bill Clinton and George Bush.

The third part of the book covers the periods of change from the 1950s to the 1980s but really is more of an amalgamation of different topics. In counter–distinction to the second part of the book, these essays are not clearly related to any specific state and the essay at the end by Fred Arthur Bailey on “M. E. Bradford, the Reagan Right, and Resurgence of Confederate Nationalism” stands on its own apart from the other essays but this is interesting nonetheless.

The book would benefit by having a website assigned to it. The cost of the book might be prohibitive to some readers, and one can find similar books on the subject that are more affordable. The book...

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