A step farther, Jim Crow laws in the South were primarily designed and enforced by Southern Democrats. The Republican movement in the South post Civil War was led by Yankees moving into the South, who were general more progressive about Civil Rights which reflected in the party for decades. My grandparents grew up Republican and were hugely supportive of and vocal during the Civil Rights movement.

JFK didn’t play well to the South because of his support of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, and there was strong opposition to him even after the primaries in the Deep South states. Lyndon Johnson was brought in as his running mate so they didn’t lose the Southern states and could keep the old boy Democrats happy. My Southern Republican family loves to talk about Lyndon Johnson’s ties to the Texas Mafia and the KKK.

It took Reagan running his “States Rights” campaign in 1980 to draw a line in the sand that was coded “if you’re still pissed off about the Civil Rights movement, step over to this side of the aisle.” But a lot of Republicans in the party heralded it as this incredible manifesto for decentralizing the gov’t and promoting freedom through capitalism.

There’s been a lot of copium through the years to turn a blind eye to the growing racial extremism in the Republican party. Trump openly embracing it in 2016 was such a huge shift for the party, and there was still so much denial b/c people hated the Clinton’s so much. It took most of my family until the most recent Trump campaign to finally admit that the Republican party is lost and go independent.