I know that the Democratic party circa 1948 had a pro-desegrationist platform developing within the party and this caused the Dixiecrats (the pro segrationist sect of the democratic party) to split away. What I am stuck on is why and how did the Democratic party of this time have an antisegerationist platform developing within the party if the president at the time, Harry Truman was a KKK member. Wouldn't the democratic party as a whole reflect the the ideas of the president or more specifically the government which was ran by democrats?
Richard Nixon was a proponent of Civil Rights; he was a CA colleague Earl Warren who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a "Southern strategy" based on Goldwater's inroads. He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems. Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP.? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a "local government, small government" party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home. http://www.examiner.com/article/the-dixiecrat-myth
