After President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he reportedly turned to his press secretary and lamented that Democrats "have lost the South for a generation." Johnson's judgment was optimistic. Despite brief flashes of strength during the presidential elections of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Ba-rack Obama, Democrats-particularly white Democrats-have been losing ground in the South for half a century. In the Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the eleven former Confederate states-Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia-had a total of 128 senators and representatives, of whom 115 were white Democrats (see chart).
展开▼
