Southern politics have undergone significant changes from the 1930s to the present. Describe the major elements of these changes and their impact...

Southern politics has undergone many changes since 1930. These changes have had a significant impact on presidential elections.

From the end of Reconstruction to 1930, African-Americans in the South voted for Republican candidates. This was done because it was the Republican Party that issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republican Party that developed the Reconstruction plan that gave African-Americans the freedoms they were lacking before the Civil War. Additionally, there were groups such as the Ku Klux Klan that were tied to the Democratic Party. These groups wanted to take away the rights the African-Americans had achieved after the Civil War.

African American voting patterns changed when the Great Depression occurred. The Great Depression hit African Americans very hard. They had higher unemployment rates than the national average. They viewed President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs as being very helpful to them. Thus, they began to vote for Democratic candidates in the 1930s.

White voting patterns also changed. After the Civil War ended, the white southerners generally voted for Democratic candidates. This was because the whites in the South viewed the Republicans as the political party that brought equality to the African-Americans and tried to change the way of life in the South. White southerners were upset with Republicans for bringing about these changes. This solid white voting pattern was called the Solid South. Since the Jim Crow laws effectively denied many southern African-Americans the right to vote, the Democrats had control over southern politics for many years.

As the Democratic Party began to support efforts to end segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, white Southerners began to vote for Republican candidates. In the election of 1968, President Nixon developed a strategy for the South known as the Southern Strategy. In this plan, Nixon would not support court-order busing to desegregate the schools. He also agreed to appoint judges who whose rulings reflected conservative viewpoints. Finally, he would choose a Vice President from the South. This strategy helped Nixon get elected.

In the 1990s, Republicans solidified their hold on the South with the development of the Contract With America. Republicans promised to lower taxes, balance the federal budget, fight crime, and impose term limits on elected officials. These ideas reflected the conservative thinking of many southerners. After the mid-term elections of 1994, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the first time in many decades.

To this day, the changes that began in the 1950s still hold true today. Republicans generally carry the South while Democrats carry the Northeast and the West.