Yeah, but that was before the big switch.
I was watching a debate, a conservative vs. a liberal, and the conservative made the point that most Jim Crow supporters (KKK, etc.) were Democrats.
The liberal countered that that was before the big switch. That's when all the bad racist Democrats magically became Republicans, and all the good folks in the GOP magically became Democrats.
The lib didn't give any more details on that. No time line, etc. Kinda complicated, I guess. Probably caused by magnetic fluctuations in the earth's core, or something like that.
Facts are stubborn things.
The fact is, if you go back and check the roll call vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you will see that proportionately more Republicans than Democrats supported that legislation.
If you study the legislative efforts involved in passing that law, you will find that a key man was REPUBLICAN Senator Everett Dirksen, who was a key man in breaking the Southern Democrat filibuster of that legislation.
A REPUBLICAN President, Eisenhower, sent federal troops to Arkansas to enforce school integration at Little Rock Central High School.
I’ve never understood why Republicans get NO CREDIT at all regarding civil rights issues, and why Democrats in their revisionist history, have somehow convinced so many that they are the true party of equality and civil rights, when certain facts as I noted here say otherwise.
The Big Switch. It would be funny if there was not in fact a switch over time. My memory is too Southern-heavy, as the exchange of talking points is mostly that of seeing southern democrats drop their conservatism in the 1950s. When did blacks switch ... during the Depression as FDR promised what the republicans of the 1920s deprived them of? But that’s a change of electorate, not of the parties.
It’s a good question.