How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

by Heather Cox Richardson

The confluence of a slate of new government measures that would help minority communities with a guarantee that minority voting would now be protected was an almost exact replay of Reconstruction. White tax dollars would be “redistributed” to African Americans, Mexican Americans, and feminists through government programs and the bureaucrats necessary to administer those programs. Yet, just as those programs went into effect, the Watts riots forced the government to call out four thousand federal troops. Those riots, along with Chicanos going on strike and women allegedly burning their bras, convinced many white Americans that their black and brown neighbors, along with feminists, were not only undeserving and ungrateful but also trying to overturn American society. In the 1966 midterms, Republicans won forty-seven seats in the House and three in the Senate, enabling them to slow down what U.S. News and World Report called “the big bash.” Notably, Reagan won the governorship of California, promising “to send the welfare bums back to work” and also to “clean up the mess at Berkeley,” where students were protesting the Vietnam War.