I know you weren’t a History major at Princeton, Sen Cruz, but it’s too bad you didn’t get to take a course with Prof Nancy J. Weiss Malkiel, the another of “Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR.” A thread. /1
press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac…
press.princeton.edu/books/paperbac…
In that book she shows that African American disgruntlement with the GOP preceded FDR and was exacerbated by Herbert Hoover’s “record of disregard and disrespect for his colored brother” both as Secretary of Commerce and as President./2 
In 1948, as you doubtless know, the Democratic Party adopted a Civil Rights plank to, in the words of Hubert Humphrey, “get out of the shadow of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights”/3
americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huber…
americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huber…
In response, the “Dixiecrats” condemned the Democrats’ Civil Rights program, singling out their call for the “elimination of Segregstion” and their call for federal regulations of “private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.”/4
Again, in 1956, in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision, a group of prominent white Southern Democrats threatened to break away from the Party thet included, in the words of James Eastland, too many “fawning politicians who cater to organized racial pressure groups.”/5
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.” /6
By the summer of 1963, the pundit Joseph Alsop wrote that “a Goldwater candidacy will automatically make the Republican Party into the ‘white man’s party.” /7
In his book, The Agony of the GOP, 1964, Robert Novak used the same words in describing the dangerous direction of the Republican Party: White Man’s Party.”/8
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 yesrs.”/9
In 1966, Ronald Reagan, running for CA Governor, in opposing the Rumford Open Housing Act said that “if an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes...in selling or renting his house he has a right to do.” (This is from @LisaM_McGirr’s book, Suburban Warriors.) /10
In this 1973 article on the “GOP Southern Strategy,” Kevin Phillips notes that Mills Godwin, a former Democratic Governor of Virginia, had won the Republican nomination. (He indeed was elected in 1974, to become the first Governor to be elected as both a Dem and a Repub.) /11
In the same piece, Phillips noted that former Texas Governor John Connally had switched parties and quoted the RNC Chair, a guy named George H. W. Bush, saying, “The current realignment of the Republican party will continue long after Watergate is forgotten.” /12
There is a lot of scholarship on what Eric Schickler calls “racial realignment” (and I recommend his excellent book with that title). “The Long Southern Strategy” by @AngieMaxwell1 and Todd Shields analyzes this history in detail. /13
amazon.com/Long-Southern-…
amazon.com/Long-Southern-…
Apologies for the typos in this thread but it is an inviolable law of Twitter (at least for me) that tweets with no misspellings receive very few likes and those with at least one embarrassing typo get more notice. /14
