The Civil Rights Act paradoxically strengthened southern white resistance and elected its champion.

Evidence

By making manifest their darkest predictions about the supposedly coercive nature of liberal politics and the “tyranny” of a national government riding roughshod over the rights of individual businessmen, the enactment and enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 paradoxically strengthened the politics of white resistance throughout the South. This fact was perhaps made clearest in Georgia, where the first governor elected after its enactment was none other than Lester Maddox. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 515

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence for the reader’s thesis that desegregation pressure forced ideology into public retreat while re-grounding it in new conservative form. — connects to: The Civil Rights Act empowered white resistance by legitimizing anti-government conservatism. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 467; Civil-rights-era policy shifts drove southern whites into the Republican Party — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 105; Civil rights reform fortified structural racism rather than undermining it — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 218 (+1 more)
• recurring: this claim recurs 3 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Civil-rights-era policy shifts drove southern whites into the Republican Party #expands (0.85) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 105
• Racially conservative whites’ defection drove the Southern realignment #expands (0.82)
• Civil rights reform fortified structural racism rather than undermining it #complicates (0.80) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 218