The civil rights movement, culminating in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, put an end to this partisan arrangement. Not only did it democratize the South, at long last, by enfranchising blacks and ending single-party rule, but it accelerated a long-run party system realignment whose consequences are still unfolding today. It was the Civil Rights Act, which Democratic president Lyndon Johnson embraced and 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed, that would define the Democrats as the party of civil rights and Republicans as the party of racial status
...more
