Editing Dixiecrat (section)

== Background (1865–1948) ==
{{conservatism US|parties}}
[[File:Map of USA Deep South.svg|thumb|left|300px|The states in dark red compose the Deep South today. Adjoining areas of [[East Texas]], [[West Tennessee]], and [[North Florida]] are also considered part of this subregion. Historically, each of these states were in the [[Confederate States of America]].]]

Since the beginning of Reconstruction, Southern white voters supported the [[History of the United States Democratic Party|Democratic Party]] by overwhelming margins in both local and national elections, (the few exceptions include minor pockets of [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican]] electoral strength in [[Appalachia]], [[East Tennessee]] in particular, [[Gillespie County, Texas|Gillespie]] and [[Kendall County, Texas|Kendall Counties]] of central Texas) forming what was known as the "[[Solid South]]". Even during the last years of [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]], Democrats used paramilitary insurgents and other activists to disrupt and intimidate Republican [[freedman]] voters, including fraud at the polls and attacks on their leaders. The electoral violence culminated in the Democrats regaining control of the state legislatures and passing new constitutions and laws from 1890 to 1908 to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchise most blacks]] and many poor whites. They also imposed [[Jim Crow]], a combination of legal and informal segregation acts that made blacks second-class citizens, confirming their lack of political power through most of the southern United States. The social and economic systems of the Solid South were based on this structure, although the white Democrats retained all the Congressional seats apportioned for the total population of their states.{{Sfn|Perman|2009|loc=part 4}} Three-time Democratic Party presidential candidate [[William Jennings Bryan]] opposed a highly controversial resolution at the [[1924 Democratic National Convention]] condemning the [[Ku Klux Klan]], expecting the organization would soon fold. Bryan disliked the Klan but never publicly attacked it.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Coletta |first1=Paolo Enrico |title=William Jennings Bryan: 1915-1925. Political puritan. 3 |date=1969 |pages=162, 177, 184 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1D_uzQEACAAJ |access-date=25 April 2023 |language=en}}</ref>

In the 1930s, a [[political realignment]] occurred largely due to the [[New Deal]] policies of President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]. While many Democrats in the South had shifted toward favoring [[Economic interventionism|economic intervention]], civil rights for African Americans was not specifically incorporated within the New Deal agenda, due in part to Southern control over many key positions of power within the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, civil rights gained an outspoken champion in First Lady [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], and supportive approaches from the administration's "[[Black Cabinet]]".<ref name=":0" />

[[File:DemocraticSolidSouth 1876-1964.png|thumb|left|270px|"[[Solid South]]": [[Arkansas]] voted Democratic in all 23 presidential elections from 1876 through 1964; other states were not quite as solid but generally supported Democrats for president.]]

With the entry of the United States into the Second World War, Jim Crow was indirectly challenged. More than one and a half million black Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II,<ref>{{Cite web |title=African American Service Men and Women in World War II |url=https://wwii.lib.ku.edu/background}}</ref> where they received equal pay while serving within segregated units. (While equally entitled to receive veterans' benefits after the war, the vast majority of African American veterans were prevented from accessing most benefits due in part to Southern success in Congress to have benefits administered by the states instead of the federal government.)<ref>{{Cite web |last=Blakemore |first=Erin |date=April 20, 2021 |title=How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans |url=https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits |access-date=March 5, 2023 |website=History.com}}</ref> Tens of thousands of black civilians at home were recruited in the labor-starved war industries across many urban centers in the country, mainly due to the promotion of [[Executive Order 8802]], which required defense industries not to discriminate based on ethnicity or race.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Equality |first1=Congress of Racial |last2=Committee |first2=Fair Employment Practices |last3=Robinson |first3=Jackie |last4=Randolph |first4=A. Phillip |last5=Ogata |first5=Kenje |last6=Ross |first6=Ellis |last7=Albertin |first7=Walter |last8=White |first8=Walter |last9=Houser |first9=George |date=2014-10-10 |title=World War II and Post War (1940–1949) - The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom {{!}} Exhibitions - Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html |access-date=2023-05-06 |website=www.loc.gov |language=en}}</ref>

Members of the Republican Party (which nominated [[Governor of New York]] [[Thomas E. Dewey]] in 1944 and 1948), along with many Democrats from the northern and western states, supported civil rights legislation that the [[Deep South]] Democrats in Congress almost unanimously opposed.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Glenn |last=Feldman |title=Southern Disillusionment with the Democratic Party: Cultural Conformity and 'the Great Melding' of Racial and Economic Conservatism in Alabama during World War II |journal=Journal of American Studies |date=August 2009 |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=199–30 |doi=10.1017/S0021875809990028|s2cid=145634908 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Simon |last=Topping |title='Never Argue with the Gallup Poll': Thomas Dewey, Civil Rights and the Election of 1948 |journal=Journal of American Studies |year=2004 |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=179–98 |doi=10.1017/S0021875804008400 |jstor=27557513|doi-access=free}}</ref> Southern Democratic ideology on non-racial issues was heterogeneous.<ref>{{Cite news |date=January 6, 2012 |title=Letters on the Republicans |newspaper=The Economist |url=https://www.economist.com/newsbook/2012/01/06/letters-on-the-republicans |access-date=2023-08-21 |issn=0013-0613}}</ref> Some such as [[Fielding L. Wright]] supported the tenets of the [[New Deal]], others such as [[Harry F. Byrd]] joined the [[conservative coalition]].<ref name=":0" /> The Dixiecrats' presidential candidate, [[Strom Thurmond]], became a [[GOP|Republican]] in 1964, as the Republican standard bearer opposed civil rights laws. The Dixiecrats represented the weakening of the "[[Solid South]]". (This referred to the Southern Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South and most seats in Congress, partly through decades of [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchisement of blacks]] entrenched by Southern state legislatures between 1890 and 1908.) The Republicans of the [[lily-white movement]] in the South also turned against blacks. Blacks had formerly been aligned with the [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican Party]] before being excluded from politics in the region, but during the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]] African Americans had found the Democratic Party in the North, West and the national Democratic party more suited to their interests.{{Sfn|Frederickson|2001|p=238}}