By William K. Black
April 12, 2016 Bloomington, MN
The rise of the “New South” is generally dated to around 1970, when socially and economically conservative white Democratic politicians who were moderate on racial issues began to be elected as governors in many Southern states. The timing was just right in that, due to hatred for the Republican Party’s role in stopping the spread of slavery and then winning the Civil War, that Party was still anathema to many Southern whites. The Republican Party’s “Southern strategy” would soon reverse this process and lead to that party’s modern domination of the South. Today, the New South is rapidly reverting back to the pathologies of the Old South. This first column looks at North Carolina as an example of this reversion. The second column discusses the most recent manifestation of disinterring the bigotry that defined the Old South – the atavistic assault on the LGBT community.
