the Republican candidates carried five southern states—Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, and Oklahoma—justifying Eisenhower’s farsighted decision, against the advice of political “pros,” to campaign below the Mason-Dixon line. Thus began the great modern transition of the South from a post–Civil War Democratic bastion to a post–World War II Republican stronghold.
No doubt the shift of the White southerners to the Republicans started with FDR’s social programs, Eleanor Roosevelt’s desegregation stances (such as her supporter for Marion Anderson) and Truman’s 1948 Executive Order 9981, ending discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin” in the armed services. The impact was first felt in these 1952 election results.
