Thread by @ashtonpittman

How Racists Went R: From 1964-2018

—1964—

A 65% Dem Senate & 59% D House pass the Civil Rights Act.

Dem Pres. Lyndon Johnson signs it.

Republicans run Barry Goldwater for president, who opposes the CRA.

R states flip D.

Deep South goes GOP for the 1st time in 100 years.

https://twitter.com/tomcottonar/status/1144428307326410753

—1964— (cont.)

3 civil rights workers are murdered by segregationists in Mississippi.

Segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond endorses anti-CRA Republican Barry Goldwater for president.

Thurmond, angry about his party’s racial progressiveness, switches to the Republican Party.

—1968—

Republican Richard Nixon uses the southern strategy to woo some southern states by appealing to racial grievances among whites. It works in quite a few.

Most of the Deep South rejects Dems, but opts instead for extreme segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

—1970—

Dixiecrat segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms (pictured) switches to the Republican Party and urges other southern conservative Dixiecrats to do the same.

—1972—

Nixon wins re-election, this time with the Deep South, which he targeted with a race-baiting southern strategy.

—1972—

Mississippi elects Conservative Republican Trent Lott to Congress, with the endorsement of the outgoing segregationist Dixiecrat William Colmer.

Lott had worked as a congressional aide to Colmer.

In 1964, Colmer endorsed Goldwater, angry with his own party for the CRA.

—1978—

Dixiecrat & unrepentant segregationist & buing opponent Sen. James Eastland retires. MS replaces him with Republican Sen. Thad Cochran.

Cochran was still a Democrat when he chaired the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign in Mississippi. He officially switched to the GOP in 1972.

—1980—

Ronald Reagan, with support from segregationist Dixiecrats-turned Republican like Thurmond & Helms, runs for president.

He gives a pivotal speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, MS—where civil rights workers Schwerner, Goodman & Chaney were murdered in 1964.

—1980— (cont.)

At the Neshoba County Fair, Reagan gives a crowd-tickling speech on his supports for “state’s rights”—a term segregationists used to refer to the right of southern states to have segregated schools & public spaces.

He also talks about cutting taxes & welfare.

—1980— (cont.)

At a MS campaign rally for Reagan, Congressman Trent Lott praises segregationist Strom Thurmond:

“You know, if we‘d elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.''

(Thurmond ran for prez for the “State’s Rights Democrat Party” in 1948).

—1982—

In a secret tape (not revealed til 2012), Reagan White House official explains the long running strategy for wooing southern voters & how the GOP is winning them:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N**ger, N**ger, N**ger,’” Atwater begins.

https://www.twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1115705518562082817?lang=en

—1982— (cont.)

GOP consultant and Reagan staffer Lee Atwater explains that the point of talking to southern voters about cutting taxes/welfare is that “all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things & a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

—1988—

Lee Atwater, now the campaign manager for George H.W. Bush, masterminds a strategy to hurt Dem opponent Dukakis to win Bush the presidency: Runs ads tying Dukakis to Willie Horton, a black man charged with murder, rape, assault, and armed robbery.
vox.com/2018/12/1/1812…

—1988— (cont.)

The ads prominently show Horton, a black man, drawing on a history of racist fears about black men raping and killing white women.

"By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate,” Atwater says.

Bush wins.

—1989—

Segregationist Dixiecrat Sen. John C. Stennis, who renounced some but not all of his views, retires.

Mississippi replaces him with Republican Trent Lott, who once served as a congressional aide to segregationist Dixiecrat Rep. William Colmer.

MS now has 2 GOP senators.

—1990—

NC GOP Sen. Jesse Helms runs for re-election with the racist “Hands” ad.

“You needed that job, and you were the best qualified,” the narrator says. “But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?"

—1992—

GOP Sen. Trent Lott speaks to the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens: “The people in this room stand for the right principles & the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction & our children will be the beneficiaries.”
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politic…

—1992—

Mississippi elects Republican Kirk Fordice as its governor. He’s the state’s first Republican governor since the Reconstruction era.

He was a member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens with dozens of state legislators.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2015/jun/…

—1998—

GOP Sen. Trent Lott takes heat for appearing at the Black Hawk rally in Carroll County, MS because it is hosted by the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.

He denies knowledge of the CofCC, but his 1992 speech to them resurfaces.
nytimes.com/1999/01/14/us/…

—2000—

GOP Congressman Roger Wicker (who later became a US Senator once Trent Lott retires in 2007) speaks at a CofCC meeting in Byhalia, Mississippi.

Wicker later drew the ire of supporters of the Confederate symbol on the MS state flag when he called to change it in 2015.

—2002—

At Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, Republican Senate Majority Whip Trent Lott once again says the country would have been better off if Thurmond had won when he ran as a third party segregationist on the “State’s Rights Democrat” platform in 1948.

—2008—

America elects its first black president, a Democrat named Barack Obama. Opposition quickly forms before he even gets into office, and Republican-leaning Fox News hosts warn that he hates white people. (“He has a deep-seated hatred for white people,” Glenn Beck says).

—2010—

The reaction to Barack Obama’s election was the biggest electoral backlash since ‘48 (image). Most remaining Deep South Dems lost. Mississippi’s US House delegation went from 3-1 Democratic to 3-1 GOP.

—2016—

Donald Trump runs on an unabashedly racist platform & wins.

—2018—

Mississippi Ag. Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith, (who switched to the GOP in 2010 after Obama’s election), is appointed to fill Cochran’s US senate seat.

Then, a video appears of her making what sounds like a lynching reference.

https://twitter.com/lamarwhitejr/status/1061649185110417408?lang=en

—2018— (cont.)

Later, @jxnfreepress reveals Cindy Hyde-Smith likely picked that “public hanging” phrase up at the segregation academy she attended (or in her hometown).

Her academy was founded in 1970 for white kids only after desegregation orders.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/…

—2018— (cont.)

JFP also revealed that she later sent her daughter to a nearby school that also began as a segregation academy in 1970 & functionally still serves as one.

But with Trump’s help, Hyde-Smith wins election.
motherjones.com/politics/2018/…

busing*

—2019—

So where does Joe Biden’s recent praise of segregationist Dixiecrats fit into all of this?

Start with Part 1 of my story on Joe Biden and the Dixiecrats, published on May 1—before Biden’s recent praise of Jim Eastland blew this story up.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/may/…

—2019— (cont.)

Then, check out my followup story on Friday, which demonstrates how, contrary to Biden’s claims, his praise of segregationists, like Eastland, Stennis, and Thurmond spans decades—and more on how he worked with them to fight busing.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/jun/…

Note: This thread is Mississippi centric because I’m a Mississippi reporter, and I do a lot of research to add historical context to my work. Historian @KevinMKruse has a great thread on this topic that provides a broader historian’s view.

https://twitter.com/kevinmkruse/status/1013981449941331969?s=21

Trent Lott was *minority leader in 2002, not majority leader

Thanks @mikeforester

Correction: This was in 1981; Lee Atwater believed the recording would remain secret and his name would not be attached. It went in a book published anonymously, but later the quote drew widespread acknowledgment in 2005 before the tape went public in 2012.

More: “The spot featured convicted murderer William ‘Willie’ Horton, who‘d been able to escape while on weekend furlough, & went on to rape a woman and stab her fiancé in a brutal 1987 home invasion. It was widely condemned for playing on racial fears...”
vox.com/2018/12/1/1812…

Additionally:

—1986—

Mississippi’s majority black district elects Dem Mike Espy to Congress. He was the 1st black Mississippi congressman since Reconstruction.

In 2018, @MikeEspyMS ran for Senate, but lost to Cindy Hyde-Smith. Still, he came closer than any MS Dem since ‘86.

—1986— (cont.)

Today, that district is the only MS congressional district held by a Dem. It’s represented by Homeland Security Chair @BennieGThompson.

Mississippi’s other two Democratic congressmen got wiped out in the anti-Obama Tea Party wave of 2010.
jacksonfreepress.com/news/2019/jan/…

Extra:

—2005—

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman acknowledges & apologizes for the southern strategy the GOP used to lure in racist southern whites.

He’d just pushed an anti-gay baiting strategy in the 2004 election. He came out himself years later.

inside.sfuhs.org/dept/history/U…