Uncertain Combinations

This chapter visits the internal tensions within the various southern Democratic parties, which successfully united competing factions around the cause of white supremacy but whose unity was always tense and insecure. It begins by detailing the process of “redemption,” in which the Democratic Party across the South wrested control of state legislatures and national representation from biracial coalitions organized primarily within the Republican Party. It then examines the structure of political conflict in Congress, the site where southern diversity was transformed into regional solidarity, to show that the familiar story of the Black Belt as the core of southern solidarity must be revised. Turning to the substantive bases for southern unity and diversity, the chapter identifies the issue areas that implicated distinctively southern priorities and arrayed the region's members in diverse coalitions with northern Democrats and Republicans. From this set, it selects for detailed examination legislation that reflected competing intraregional priorities.