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Traces how the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction transformed from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one.
List of contents
Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The Republican Party and the South: some preliminaries; Part I. The South and National Republican Party Politics, 1865-1968: 3. The rise and fall of a Republican South, 1865-1877; 4. The attempt to rebuild the Republican Party in the South, 1877-1896; 5. The system of 1896 and Republicanism in the South, 1897-1932; 6. Towards a modern Southern strategy, 1933-1968; Photos; Part II. Southern Republican Party Politics at the State Level: 7. Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama; 8. Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee; 9. South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi; 10. Conclusion. The relevance of the South in the Republican Party.
About the author
Boris Heersink is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, New York. His research focuses on American political parties, and campaigns and elections.Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on federal lawmaking, separation-of-powers, political economy, and American political development.
Summary
Traces the transformation of the Republican Party in the South after Reconstruction from a biracial organization to a mostly all-white one. This shift, combined with laws passed to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era, helps explain how the GOP emerged as a competitive and ultimately dominant electoral party in the late-twentieth century South.
Additional text
'If students of American political parties think of the history of the Republican Party at all, they focus on two bookends - its Reconstruction founding, with a core constituency of newly enfranchised Blacks, and its more recent manifestation, with a core constituency of conservative whites. Heersink and Jenkins show that the abandonment of southern Black voters was abetted by national party building strategies. The evidence brought to bear is a deft combination of quantitative analysis of the inclusion of Black delegates in national party conventions and insightful case studies of party development within each state of the former Confederacy.' Charles Stewart III, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
