[KC Burke]

In the large part the recent history you recount is true, but that doesn't tell the story completely.

Republicans, of the post reconstruction era, abandoned efforts to franchise and mainstream blacks in a silent compromise of the last two decades of the 1800s. Those efforts, as much as the democrat KKK, allowed Jim Crow to be established in the south, but also in rural states up north such as Indiana and elsewhere.

Likewise, in efforts to break the "solid south" of the Democrats, Republicans let "States Rights" issues become a code-word hiding place for unreformed Segregationists to migrate to the Republican Party with only slow ripening efforts to internally seperate bigotry from "keeping politics local."

Nixon introduced the first real temporary "affirmative action", but Truman was the guy that desegregated the Armed Forces.

Race relations in this country have lagged, and even taken steps backward, during that administration of both parties. The faults are in our individual characters and not exclusively in out political principles and parties that so poorly represent those same principles, IMHO.

[Luvcreole]

Republicans, of the post reconstruction era, abandoned efforts to franchise and mainstream blacks in a silent compromise of the last two decades of the 1800s. Those efforts, as much as the democrat KKK, allowed Jim Crow to be established in the south, but also in rural states up north such as Indiana and elsewhere.

Likewise, in efforts to break the "solid south" of the Democrats, Republicans let "States Rights" issues become a code-word hiding place for unreformed Segregationists to migrate to the Republican Party with only slow ripening efforts to internally seperate bigotry from "keeping politics local."

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True, see my post about the Creoles and how they were first out of the gate with true Civil Rights for the newly freed slaves during Reconstruction. The Republican party lost it's nerve and struck deals with the Dems, abandoning the Creoles of color, and their poorer freed slave brothers/sisters...sentencing them to 100 years of segregation.
Only to have to repeat the struggle again 100 years later.
However, the thing about State's rights Republicans becoming Democrats I believe is a myth. Since the Dems had the majority power all during the 20th century, it would make no sense to switch sides from their point of view to become Republican. They held the power, and they made the rules. As for Republicans, if any did switch to Dems, it was because they were the rare "Liberal Republican" sort of speak. Republican in name only, they voted and acted like a Democrat racist. Very few Repubilcans fit this bill, and even so...labeling the entire GOP racist would be wrong as they would not have agreed with the "fake Republicans" to begin with. Then, I could see the Republican switching to the true party he belonged in.