After talking with black voters across the country about why they overwhelmingly supports democrats, the common answer that’s emerges is the Southern Strategy.
I’ve heard of the Southern Strategy too. But since it doesn’t make a difference in how I decide to vote, I never bothered to research it. But apparently it still influences how many African Americans vote today. That makes it worth investigating.
For those that might be unfamiliar with the Southern Strategy, I’ll briefly review the story. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most blacks registered as democrats and it’s been that way ever since.
And that doesn’t make any sense when you consider the fact that it was the democrats that established, and fought for, Jim Crow laws and segregation in the first place. And the republicans have a very noble history of fighting for the civil rights of blacks.
The reason black people moved to the democrats, given by media pundits and educational institutions for the decades, is that when republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he employed a racist plan that’s now infamously called the Southern Strategy.
The Southern Strategy basically means Nixon allegedly used hidden code words that appealed to the racists within the Democrat party and throughout the south. This secret language caused a seismic shift in the electoral landscape that moved the evil racist democrats into the republican camp and the noble-hearted republicans into the democrat camp.
And here’s what I found, Nixon did not use a plan to appeal to racist white voters.
First, let’s look at the presidential candidates of 1968. Richard Nixon was the republican candidate; Hubert Humphrey was the democrat nominee; and George Wallace was a third party candidate.
Remember George Wallace? Wallace was the democrat governor of Alabama from 1963 until 1967. And it was Wallace that ordered the Eugene “Bull” Connor, and the police department, to attack Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. and 2,500 protesters in Montgomery , Alabama in 1965. And it was Governor Wallace that ordered a blockade at the admissions office at the University of Alabama to prevent blacks from enrolling in 1963.
Governor Wallace was a true racist and a determined segregationist. And he ran as the nominee from the American Independent Party, which was he founded.
Richard Nixon wrote about the 1968 campaign in his book RN: the Memoirs of Richard Nixon originally published in 1978.
In his book, Nixon wrote this about campaigning in the south, “The deep south had to be virtually conceded to George Wallace. I could not match him there without compromising on civil rights, which I would not do.”
The media coverage of the 1968 presidential race also showed that Nixon was in favor of the Civil Rights and would not compromise on that issue.