were rare and blacks even scarcer. While he observed that “in its grand outlines the politics of the South revolves around the position of the Negro,” it was not a commentary on black political influence, which was non-existent, but rather an acknowledgment that the region expended much political capital to keep African Americans away from the levers of power. Since implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, black votes have become the mainstay of the Democratic Party—the vote without which few Democrats can win statewide. The votes cast by African Americans have helped elect a black governor (Virginia’s Douglas Wilder), eighteen members of Congress, and hundreds of legislators and local officials.
Partisan change and black mobilization have not been continuous but have come at different paces in various locales and for different offices. Nonetheless, the changes have been massive.[23]
Black and Black have also noted how these developments impacted the national party system:
The collapse of the solid Democratic South and the emergence of Southern Republicanism, first in presidential politics and later in elections for Congress, have established a new reality for America: two permanently competitive national political parties. Not since Democrats battled Whigs before the Civil War has there been such a thoroughly nationalized two-party system.[24]
Stanley P. Berard forecasts important consequences not only for Southern politics but also for our national future:
The particular mix of constituency perspectives offered by “the newest Southern politics” gives a measure of diversity to both the Republican caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, even if that diversity does not show itself clearly in aggregated roll call votes. The prospect that biracial coalitions will continue to provide a base for electing some numbers of white Southern Democrats has implications not only for the diversity of representation in Congress but also for partisan control. Understanding Southern politics continues to be an essential element of anticipating and explaining change in Congress.[25]
Black Empowerment: A central factor in this reconfiguration of Southern politics, of course, has been increasing black participation and empowerment. In a recent survey statement, John A. Clark cited the transformational role played by African Americans in the region’s politics over the past few decades:
The political implications of these trends also have reshaped the South from what it was at the time of Key’s work. Most notable, perhaps are the increases in black elected officials (almost all of them Democrats) and the development of a competitive (and sometimes dominant) Republican Party. Both were almost nonexistent in Key’s time, especially in the Deep South states. Today African Americans and Republicans have all but crowded out the formerly dominant white Democrats in many areas.[26]
The most direct and comprehensive research on black participation was Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965–1990, by Chandler Davidson, Bernard Grofman, and a top-notch team of experts from several practices and disciplines. According to their chapter on black and white voter registration, written by political scientist James E. Alt, there has been a remarkable transformation of the Southern electorate:
Consequently, it may safely be said that the Voting Rights Act transformed the basis of the Southern electoral system, inasmuch as it was the vehicle for destroying the institutional barriers to black registration. . Between 1972 and 1988, a pattern of racial mobilization and countermobilization, now possibly in decline, produced a reasonably stable system characterized by a ubiquitous but eroding white numerical registration advantage. The decline in this advantage raised the very real possibility of convergence in white and black registration rates as a percentage of eligible white and black voters, respectively, sometime in the 1990s. If and when that happens, the transformation of the Southern registration system that the act began will be complete.[27]
Additionally, the Alabama chapter, by practitioners Peyton McCrary, Jerome A. Gray, Edward Still, and Huey L. Perry, provided especially interesting results affirming gains in the Heart of Dixie through litigated provisions of the VRA (1994):
As long as at-large elections were in place, white majorities voting as a bloc were able to prevent black citizens enfranchised by the Voting Rights Act from winning local office. Most changes from at-large to district elections in Alabama resulted either from litigation or, to a lesser degree, objections by the Department of Justice. Although lawsuits won by the department played a key role in eliminating at-large elections in various black-belt counties, most of the changes were due to litigation by private attorneys. These changes substantially increased minority representation on local governing bodies, both rural and urban. Indeed, black representation in our sample has now reached the level of proportional representation in Alabama.[28]
Chandler and Davidson concluded that the VRA had indeed accomplished a “Second Reconstruction”:
When we began this research, we thought it would demonstrate the success of the Voting Rights Act in changing minority representation in the South. In particular, we anticipated that many Southern jurisdictions, with a substantial black population and a history of very limited black officeholding would have adopted district or mixed plans as a result of litigation, leading to large gains in minority representation. This is exactly what we found.[29]
Bullock and Rozell provided additional assessment of black registration:
Shortly after implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, black registration jumped. Only 29 percent of the region’s voting-age blacks were registered in 1962; six years later the figure exceeded 60 percent. The most pronounced changes came in states that had been most repressive with the share of age-eligible blacks registered rising from 19 to 52 percent in Alabama and from 7 to 60 percent in Mississippi. In recent years registration and turnout rates among blacks have almost equaled those of whites.[30]
They also showed the VRA’s impact on Southern state legislatures:
In addition to helping elect white Democrats, the black electorate has also contributed to a growing number of African American office-holders. Figure 1.4 shows the increase in the number of black legislators in the South from a scant thirty-five in 1969, of whom fourteen served in Georgia. In 2001, the most recent enumeration, more than 300 African Americans sat in Southern legislatures. Most of the increase followed a redistricting that created additional heavily black districts. Two-thirds of the growth in black representation occurred within two elections of the 1970, 1980 and 1990 elections.[31]
And in Washington:
Creating districts with black concentrations also opened the way for the first black Democrats in Congress from the South. In 1972, Atlanta and Houston districts redrawn to be over 40 percent black elected Andy Young and Barbara Jordan. Two years later Harold Ford won a 47 percent black Memphis district. The 1980s saw the election of Mike Espy from the Mississippi Delta, and when Lindy Boggs retired, William Jefferson succeeded to her New Orleans district. The 1992 redistricting sent a dozen new black members to join the five African Americans representing the South.[32]
Coalitional Politics: Our concern in this project, of course, is biracial representation; and the evidence clearly supports the development of coalition politics—mainly in the Democratic Party. David Lublin explained this phenomenon interestingly in a recent textbook on the Republican South; he said that the civil rights movement had, in
