Program Information

Following his dismal failure in southern states in the election of 1960, Richard Nixon developed a cunning Southern Strategy for 1968 and for future years.

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Transcript

Introduction: A Moment in Time, 1968: A special series on the 40th anniversary of a year of upheaval, in a world seemingly out of control.

Content: Following his dismal failure in southern states in the election of 1960, Richard Nixon developed a cunning Southern Strategy for 1968 and for future years. Even in the midst of his horrific national loss in 1964, Barry Goldwater carried many southern states and proved to the Republican party that in the South, conservative white voters, skeptical of African American progress and disturbed by many modern trends in religion and society, were ripe for the GOP harvest. It was one of the most brilliant political transformations in American history.

In the 1968 election, Nixon took a page from Goldwater’s book and worked to convince southerners that the GOP was no longer the party of Lincoln, but rather the party looking out for white interests. Nixon and his successors, Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush, ran in the south using symbols and code words well understood by the white electorate, the so-called “silent majority” – words such as states’ rights, law and order, God, gays and guns.

White people, particularly in the south, were growing weary of the civil rights movement, feeling that it was beginning to step on their own rights. With every new black riot, of which there were many in 1968, more whites turned against them. This was deemed the “backlash vote” and it was exactly what Nixon was courting.

Governor Spiro Theodore Agnew of Maryland, Nixon’s ascerbic running-mate, was an even more overt race-baiter. When he would say, “civil disobedience cannot be condoned when it interferes with the civil rights of others and most of the time it does,” everyone: black, white, north, and south got the message. Indeed, Agnew’s presence on the ticket alienated many remaining prominent black Republicans, including Jackie Robinson.

The Nixon ticket offered a “hands-off” approach from the federal government when it came to states’ business, including integration and to appoint “strict-constructionist” judges who hopefully would help arrest the statist and elitist trends in modern American life. In an Atlanta hotel room in mid-1968 Nixon cut a deal with Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. With Thurmond’s support, Nixon carried the south and won the Presidency. Next time: a Republican’s lament.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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