courage in defeat—there was always the memory of slavery, sharecropper tenancy, and white supremacy. For every word of forgiveness by a leader like Martin Luther King Jr. there was a Southern politician like Ben Tillman or Lester Maddox who needed exoneration. The debate as to how much of Southern politics is governed by class divisions, as opposed to racial ones, continues. One thing is clear, the legacy of white supremacy was the abiding memory of life in the region, and its presence was all the more paradoxical given the deep Christian religious practices in evidence in Southern communities.[16]
This historical legacy of racial conflict is reflected in contemporary patterns of partisan affiliation, as reported by Earl Black and Merle Black in The Rise of Southern Republicans:
Without question the racial divide remains the most important partisan cleavage in the South. Blacks are by far the most united of the three racial/ethnic groups. Favoring Democrats over Republicans by 87 to 10 percent, the extraordinary cohesion of Southern blacks resembles in magnitude and intensity the traditional Democratic attachments of Southern whites. White Southerners, by contrast, are now far more likely (53 to 27 percent) to be classified as core Republicans than as core Democrats.[17]
When we turn our attention to regional-national convergence, the research suggests impressive change (among otherwise mingled data and patterns of continuity). According to Robert P. Steed, Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker in Southern Parties and Elections: Studies in Regional Political Change, “What does seem relatively clear is that the most noticeable nationalization of Southern politics has occurred, and continues to occur, in the region’s political institutions and structures (for example, the party system, the legal system, the structures of influence in Congress).” On the other hand, they then reported data attesting to continued regional differences with regard to school prayer, religion, labor unions, and military policy. Furthermore, they said, “the role of race in Southern politics lingers on, albeit in different form.”[18]
Patrick R. Cotter, Stephen D. Shaffer, and David A. Breaux more recently surveyed the Southern opinion literature, and they found comprehensive evidence of positive change. Their 2006 review showed that white Southern support for the principle of racial equality had increased over time and had reached a high level of support for this position; moreover, they concluded that South-nonSouth differences in attitudes and behaviors were declining:
Overall, research in this area generally shows that white Southerners are different from their counterparts in other regions, although the differences in racial attitudes between white Southerners and others are diminishing . . .
For example, in 1942, 2 percent of Southern whites, compared to 42 percent of nonSouthern whites, said that black and white children should go to the same rather than separate schools . . . During the last half century support for school integration has increased throughout the country, and differences in opinions between the South and the North have diminished, though they have not disappeared. Thus, by 1985, about 86 percent of white Southerners and 96 percent of white nonSoutherners favored white and black children’s going to the same school.[19]
Cotter, Shaffer, and Breaux also found little regional difference regarding ideology and social welfare. They did detect differences in terms of tolerance and cultural issues (crime, gender roles, morality, and school prayer), although those differences seemed to be declining.
The Pew Research Center provided an equally interesting picture of the latest generation of white Southerners, for whom the heroic drama is only a fading memory or homework assignment.[20] The Pew survey, comparing 1987–88 and 2002–03 data, showed that, while black-white differences continue, there has been remarkable convergence between white Southerners and nonSoutherners:
The South remains a more conservative region on racial issues, but the differences between the South and rest of the country are narrowing. Over the past generation, a declining percentage of Southern whites view discrimination as rare and fewer say they have little in common with people of other races, decreasing or eliminating the regional gap on these questions.
We conclude this discussion by acknowledging serious opinion differences between blacks and whites in this region. Attitudinal progress among Southerners over the past few decades has been a piecemeal process, and racism still permeates many aspects of Southern culture. But we suspect that most scholars would agree that the problem has greatly mitigated since the civil rights movement.
We maintain, furthermore, that these blended patterns of cultural moderation and convergence correlate to fundamentally changing regional politics. In the rest of this chapter, we will focus on the more politically pertinent aspects of the Southern system during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
An Established Record of Normalization and Transformation
When we shift attention from public opinion to more consequential activities, we find a full body of scholarship documenting new national, regional, and local patterns—reflecting black empowerment and, in some cases, biracial politics—in the latter decades of the twentieth century. The Southern political system shifted significantly toward the normal practices of broader American democracy.
Partisan and Racial Adjustment: Particularly clear is a new Southern political order shaped by party and racial developments; these adjustments in turn have impacted the American political system.
Earl Black and Merle Black summarized the regional dynamics in The Rise of Southern Republicans:
The old Southern politics was transparently undemocratic and thoroughly racist. “Southern political institutions,” as V. O. Key Jr. demonstrated, were deliberately constructed to subordinate “the Negro population and, externally, to block threatened interferences from the outside with the local arrangements.” By protecting white supremacy, Southern Democrats in Congress institutionalized massive racial injustice for generations. Eventually the civil rights movement challenged the South’s racial status quo and inspired a national political climate in which Southern Democratic senators could no longer kill civil rights legislation. Led by President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, overwhelming majorities of northern Democrats and northern Republicans united to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Landmark federal intervention reformed Southern race relations and helped destabilize the traditional one-party system. In the fullness of time the Democratic party’s supremacy gave way to genuinely competitive two-party politics.[21]
Charles S. Bullock and Mark J. Rozell similarly summarized these developments in The New Politics of the Old South: An Introduction to Southern Politics:
When V. O. Key (1949) published Southern Politics, the region was solidly Democratic. No Republican had been elected U.S. senator or governor in decades, and a generation had passed since a republican collected a single Electoral College vote. For most of a century after Reconstruction, the South provided the foundation on which the national Democratic Party rested. When the party was in eclipse in the rest of the country, little more than the Southern foundation could be seen. During periods of Democratic control of the presidency and Congress, as in the New Deal era, the South made a major contribution. After the 2004 election, the Democratic Party in the South had been reduced to its weakest position in more than 130 years. Today Republicans win the bulk of the white vote, dominate the South’s presidential and congressional elections and control half the state legislative chambers.[22]
Furthermore, they note, the South’s racial situation evolved dramatically.
Key’s South had
