1896 is way early. It came later than that and the South fought a rearguard action for decades to try to keep the Democrat party from going down that path. There's no way anybody in the South was going to vote for a Republican for several generations after the way the Republicans acted.
1896 was when the party turned it’s back on Grover Cleveland in favor of that insane Georgia Socalist Tillman, snd it hardly ever looked back after that. Mabey, Stevenson and Kenbedy resisted it some.