The scale, the swiftness, and the depth of the South’s defection from the national Democratic party make it a political phenomenon without parallel in American history. Only one other political change—itself mainly a Southern phenomenon—is comparable: the Negro desertion of the Republican party. Through war and peace, depression and prosperity, and vastly different candidates and policies, these rigid party loyalties persisted long beyond the historic events that gave rise to them. No other historic events were more traumatic than those that gave birth to the South’s traditional party ties, and no ties seemed more unshakable—until they suddenly began to disintegrate.
At just about that time, by a fortunate coincidence, the late V. O. Key, Jr., made his classic study, which in 1949 was published as the monumental Southern Politics in State and Nation. It is the starting point for all subsequent investigations of its subject and the indispensable reference for understanding the extent and character of the Great Defection that has taken place since his work was published. At the time Key wrote, he could still speak of the Southern political system as a historical continuum coming down with little change from its founders, the “Redeemers,” at the end of Reconstruction. It was white supremacy politics run by skilled leaders of the white minority in the Black Belt imposing their will on their states. Under their rule, the South could be regarded as “solid,” defined as “consistent and unquestioning attachment, by overwhelming majorities, to the Democratic party nationally.”
Key could still call the South a “one-party” region in 1949 in spite of the loosening of loyalty that took place the year before. Southern Republicans of that time were of three types—Presidential Republicans, who appeared timidly and only quadrennially, mountain Republicans locked in isolated enclaves, and Negro Republicans, who were thoroughly disenfranchised. Few in number, weak in influence, divided among themselves, and removed from strategic positions, oldstyle Southern Republicans were peripheral to the struggle for power. In only three states—North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, each with old mountain Republican districts dating from the Civil War—could the Republicans be said to possess anything approximating the reality of a political party.
What competition there was remained everywhere under the cover of the local Democratic party, competition that varied widely in style and intensity, depending on the degree of intraparty factionalism and the occasional development of a statewide machine. Typical state politics were conducted among several factions, often vehicles for leaders whose followings were anchored in their localities. Within that pattern existed great complexity and distinctiveness in the political styles of different states—ranging from every-man-for-himself Florida to machine-controlled Virginia.