Running for Governor of CA as a Republican in 1966, as Lisa McGirr shows in SUBURBAN WARRIORS, Ronald Reagan supported the right "to discriminate against Negroes," "refused to repudiate the John Birch Society," used "coded language" and "profited by playing to white racism."
Even before that, in 1963, Joe Alsop wrote that “a Goldwater candidacy will automatically make the Republican Party into the ‘white man’s party.”/2
In his book, The AGONY OF THE GOP, 1964, Robert Novak used the same words as Alsop in describing the dangerous direction of the Republican Party: White Man’s Party.”/3
In 1961, William Loeb, the influential conservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader sought to “persuade the Republican Party to become the white man’s party” so “we can turn this political situation around.”/4
In 1964, Arthur H. Niemeyer, a former GOP precinct chief in Illinois, supported Lyndon Johnson and said the Party “has deserted the principles of Abraham Lincoln” and noted that “the two major parties have changed sides in 100 years.”/5
And, of course, Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party, leading the Bergen Record to ask, shortly before the 1964 election, "what has happened to the party of Abraham Lincoln that makes it so attractive to one of the South's most violent racists?" /6
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