2 results
1 - Introduction
- Boris Heersink, Fordham University, New York, Jeffery A. Jenkins, University of Southern California
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- Book:
- Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968
- Published online:
- 06 March 2020
- Print publication:
- 19 March 2020, pp 1-17
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- Chapter
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Summary
What role did the Republican Party play in the South before the mid-1960s? On the national side, Republican presidents and presidential candidates engaged in near continuous attempts at winning Southern states. In addition, a number of Republican presidents – including Hayes, Arthur, Harrison, Harding, Hoover, and Eisenhower – invested significantly (though, most often unsuccessfully) in rebuilding local party organizations in the South. Importantly, we show that every single Republican president between Grant and Nixon relied on some form of a “Southern strategy” aimed at winning (re-)nomination at the national convention and/or strengthening state party organizations in the South. This corrects a misconception in various historical accounts that Republican presidents effectively gave up on the South by the early twentieth century. At the state level, executive (federal) patronage, and the considerable profits that could be gained from controlling it, inspired frequent contestation over control of the local party organizations. That is, while many Republican state parties no longer functioned as regular political parties – often failing to even run candidates in state elections – control of the state party organizations continued to be valuable to local party elites. Initially, these contests largely involved different mixed-race groups surrounding (former) elected officials and federal office-holders. But over time, contests began to take on an increasingly racial hue, as Black-and-Tans (a faction of black and white Republicans) vied for control with Lily-Whites (a faction of white Republicans that sought to ban blacks from leadership positions in the party).
Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968
- Boris Heersink, Jeffery A. Jenkins
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- Published online:
- 06 March 2020
- Print publication:
- 19 March 2020
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In Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968, Heersink and Jenkins examine how National Convention politics allowed the South to remain important to the Republican Party after Reconstruction, and trace how Republican organizations in the South changed from biracial coalitions to mostly all-white ones over time. Little research exists on the GOP in the South after Reconstruction and before the 1960s. Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968 helps fill this knowledge gap. Using data on the race of Republican convention delegates from 1868 to 1952, the authors explore how the 'whitening' of the Republican Party affected its vote totals in the South. Once states passed laws to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era, the Republican Party in the South performed better electorally the whiter it became. These results are important for understanding how the GOP emerged as a competitive, and ultimately dominant, electoral party in the late-twentieth century South.