Disenfranchisement entrenched white Democratic supremacy in the South for nearly a century

Evidence

The most straightforward is simply to prevent one’s opponents or their supporters from casting ballots, while enfranchising as many of one’s own supporters as possible. Thus, after the Civil War, Republicans in Congress sought to enfranchise black voters in the South, partly for moral and ideological reasons, but also to ensure the electoral dominance of their party. The end of Reconstruction allowed Southern Democrats to turn the tables, using force, fraud, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics to disfranchise virtually all black voters and many poor whites, thereby restoring and entrenching their own political supremacy. Through the 1960s (and perhaps beyond), black disfranchisement was used as a tool of entrenchment for the Democratic party in the South; factions within the party; elected officials who might be vulnerable to defeat by black voters (or biracial coalitions); and, of course, white majorities, which were able to maintain political and social dominance by monopolizing control over government. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 83

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s chapter-1 definition of entrenchment as making change harder; this is the electoral-actors domain of the same mechanism. — connects to: Local officials can engineer their electorate with policy comfort and discomfort. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 281; The 1798 naturalization delay was Federalist entrenchment against Jeffersonians. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 309; Political entrenchment means making political change more difficult than it otherwise would be — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 47 (+8 more)
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• A Democratic black voting bloc slowed Southern whites’ natural dealignment from the Democratic Party. #expands (0.80) — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 186
• Racially conservative white Southerners abandoned Democratic identification after 1964. #qualifies (0.80) — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 1327
• Southern Strategy repositioned white supremacy as mainstream politics #complicates (0.75) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 186
• Post-enslavement black people faced total inescapable white supremacy #expands (0.72)