James Ault’s July 12 letter, “Southern Democrats on wrong side,” presented a self-described “honest historical review” of the history of Southern Democrats, suggesting that the Democrat’s donkey symbol should be banned as racist just like the Confederate battle flag.
Unfortunately, his review was superficial and ended 52 years ago. The Democratic Party did include the conservative and racist Southern Democratic faction, but after decades of intra-party fights between northern liberals and the Southern Democrats, that came to an end with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
At the time, Lyndon Johnson said that Democrats would “lose the South for a generation” as a result of this legislation that he championed along with liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats. That was the end of the “Solid South” for Democrats.
Richard Nixon exploited racial animus in his “Southern Strategy” to win election by picking off Southern states while extolling the virtues of “states’ rights,” wink, wink. Since 1965, many Southern Democrats switched parties and today the south is Republican territory. Republican willingness to accept the racists that fled the Democratic Party in the South should be an enduring source of shame to Republicans, if they are capable of shame.
