Proof that Racist Republicans and Democrats switched parties between the 1860s and the 1960s.

[Elderberry]

Threadreader by Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives 4/20/2023

• The Republican Party was created in 1848 with the eradication of slavery as its primary goal. Democrat-controlled southern states seceded right after their second presidential nominee, Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 fearing that he would destroy their slave-based economy.

• The freshly liberated slaves went to the Republican Party after the Civil War, as expected, but Democratic rule of the South from Reconstruction until the Civil Rights Era was almost absolute.

• Democrats controlled every Senate seat south of the Mason-Dixon line in 1960.

• Democrats held an astounding 117-8 majority in the House of Representatives in the 13 states that started the Confederacy a century ago.

• The Democratic Party was so dominant in the south that its 117 House members were 41% of the Democrats' 283-153 majority in the Chamber.

Similarly, Democratic governors and largely Democratic state legislatures ruled the South during the late 1950s and early 1960s, staunchly opposing the civil rights movement. It was called The Solid South

• Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, on the other hand, openly praised school desegregation in the Brown v. Board of Education verdict and sent the Arkansas National Guard to Little Rock to protect 9 black students after Democratic Governor Orval Faubus threatened them.

Eisenhower won his election by gaining traction for the Republican Party, winning elections in Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee. Four years later, Eisenhower won a landslide win in Louisiana and Kentucky.

This is important because:

• When he departed office in 1961, the Democratic Party's grip on the South was perhaps greater than it had been for decades.

While Democrats stuck to conventional segregation, the rest of the nation was changing, and the civil rights movement started.

More: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1649181228866600961.html

[Hoodat]

The title is deceiving.  Good article.  But I disagree on two points:

• JFK was not a strong supporter of Civil Rights.  As a US Senator, he did not vote for the 1957 Civil Rights Act that Republicans were pushing.
  
  
• The civil rights movement did not start with Kennedy.  Republicans had been pushing for equal protection for over a century.  This included women's suffrage, the 14th Amendment, anti-lynching legislation, and other civil rights bills introduced in the 1940s and 50s.  And without exception, Democrats opposed every single one of them.