The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865–1944

Preface

Preface The very things that made the south solid for the Democratic Party after 1865—white supremacy, religious and cultural conservatism, a boundless devotion to market values—also “made” the south begin to become, by 1936, disillusioned with the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and the new Deal. This was a disenchantment that would only simmer and grow in strength until it erupted in party revolt, third-party rebellion, and, ultimately , realignment in much of the south to Republicanism (especially in statewide and up-ticket elections). The implications have been national, and they have been profound. This constitutes the first irony of the solid south. Actually there was nothing inherent or intrinsic about the south’s affinity for the Democratic Party after 1865. The worshipful allegiance white southerners gave to that party emanated most fundamentally from the deepseated , pervasive, almost indelible cultural conservatism of the region—the same cultural conservatism that would, one day, ironically, dictate a rejection of the national Democratic Party and crack the solid south wide open. White southerners didn’t become Republicans so much as they stopped being Democrats. This was a function of the primacy of ideology over party, of the enduring nature of politics and culture over temporal partisan allegiances , of . . . continuity. This, more than anything else, is the story of the new south. even in the face of seeming modern political realignment to Republicanism , the south did not change in an elemental sense. The two major parties essentially changed in the middle of the twentieth century, especially on matters of race and culture. The white south merely chose to stay loyal to the most viable conservative party alternative available—be it a Dixiecrat rump group within the Democratic Party, a more formal third-party revolt of xii / Preface states’ Righters, the independentism of George Wallace, or, eventually, the GoP itself. This is the second and overarching irony of the solid south. The third major irony of this story, which runs counter to traditional understandings , is that the new Deal held within it the seeds of its own destruction . That is, at the precise moment when most scholars (correctly) identify the height and apex of Democratic strength in the south (the 1930s), a silent and largely invisible cancer was also growing within the party, one that would eventually eat away its foundations and doom its prospects for longterm survival in the south. The new Deal Coalition’s strength in bringing together Democrats of varying culture and color in the tempest that was the Great Depression virtually preordained that the coalition could not be held together once the storm had passed. When the unprecedented economic crisis of the Depression lifted, white southerners were free to return to “normalcy,” to go back to putting race regularity and white supremacy above all other competing factors—something they had held in abeyance during a crisis that threatened material ruin and actual survival. The new Deal (and its vaunted coalition) was not so much American politics at normality but an aberration in which economic conditions were so terrifying, so oppressive, and so unprecedented, at least in the United states, that people (including white southerners) were willing to temporarily subsume traditional racial and cultural concerns to immediate class imperatives . They were willing to suppress a rampant and deep-rooted individualistic impulse—and, more important, the mythology that surrounded it—to supplicate for public aid, lobby for state activism, and tolerate collective action . Thus the coalition to deal with crisis that was so hastily put together was (1) so heterogeneous and so variegated that it could not last and (2) understood by many of its participants to be exactly that: a temporary stop-gap measure allowing massive, liberal, government activism, not a permanent solution to politics or economics—especially in the still fundamentally conservative south. beginning in earnest in the 1930s a phenomenon that may be termed the “Great melding” took place in the south and eventually would radically realign politics in America. by 1980 the first Great melding, and a subsequent one, would result in a national Republican ascendance based on a bedrock of southern support. Three decades after that the ascendance (with its meldings ) would lead to a previously unthinkable assault on the modern welfare state, an unfortunate term of disparagement for a more just vision of society. The assaults would result in record levels of poverty, staggering disparities and wealth inequality, and a ferocious attempt to eviscerate America’s safety [3.145.17.46] Project MUSE (2024-04...