White backlash against the Civil Rights Act delivered the South to the Republican Party

Evidence

Indeed, the rise of southern Republicanism, in the person of Bo Callaway and others like him, was largely due to the white backlash against the Civil Rights Act. No one understood this fact more than President Lyndon Johnson. Upon signing the landmark legislation, he famously told an aide that he had just “delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.” The proof of Johnson’s prediction became clear in his reelection campaign that year, when he was pitted against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, who had voted against the Civil Rights Act. Importantly, Goldwater claimed he opposed not integration itself, but federal intervention to achieve it. “It is wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites,” he wrote in 1960, but “I am firmly convinced … that the Constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by the federal government in the field of education.” With Goldwater and Johnson moving their parties in different directions in terms of federal involvement in civil rights, voters came to see the parties as distinctly divided on these issues. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 519

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Johnson’s remark plus Goldwater’s anti-federal stance is the canonical data point for the reader’s thesis.
• XREF: connects to: Maddox drew two-thirds of the white vote in his first mayoral race — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 449; Georgia’s legislature chose Maddox over Callaway for partisan reasons. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 522; The Civil Rights Act empowered white resistance by legitimizing anti-government conservatism. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 467 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Civil-rights-era policy shifts drove southern whites into the Republican Party #corroborates (0.92) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 105
• Racially conservative whites’ defection drove the Southern realignment #corroborates (0.85)
• Reagan’s states’ rights rhetoric signaled racial backlash #expands (0.78) — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 286
• White Southern backlash nullified Reconstruction amendments through law and terror #complicates (0.72) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 386