Book Talk: Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968

Jeffery Jenkins
Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Director of the Bedrosian Center; at the Price School

Boris Heersink
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Fordham University

Heersink and Jenkins examine how National Convention politics allowed the South to remain important to the Republican Party after Reconstruction. They trace how Republican organizations in the South changed from biracial coalitions to mostly all-white ones over time. They explore how the 'whitening' of the Republican Party affected its vote totals in the South. Once states passed Jim Crow laws essentially to disenfranchise black voters, 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.
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