After the civil rights movement knocked down voting barriers, white as well as Black registration and turnout rates rose in former Jim Crow states. And a fuller democracy meant more than just a larger number of ballots; it meant a more responsive government for the people who hadn’t been wealthy enough to have influence before. It meant a break, finally, from what the southern political scientist V. O. Key described in 1949 as the stranglehold of white supremacy, single-party politics, and the dominance of the Bible Belt planter class.
