After conducting 360 interviews of politicians, journalists, and
academic observers in eleven states, Bass and de Vries find a
transformed South. The one-party system, racial discrimination
against voters, and malapportionment of state legislatures have all
but disappeared, they say, and the motive force of Southern
politics is now rapid economic growth. If the authors strain
credulity in declaring that the South is often more solidly liberal
than the North, certainly the proliferation of Republican
governors, the rapid rise in the black vote, and the decline of
racism as a campaign ploy are notable. Yet there are only two black
people among every 100 elected officials, by the book's own
account, and strong traces of a restrictive political life still
remain. Representative of the state-by-state case studies are the
decline in Wallace support (and the eclipse of Bull Connor) in
Alabama and the breakup of backwater tyranny in Florida (though
reference to earlier progressives like Senator Claude Pepper belies
the stereotype of reactionary strangleholds). The authors conclude
that the South "has joined the nation's political mainstream,"
whatever that means today, and has shed "the sense of guilt and
shame and pessimism that so recently prevailed." A major work of
reportage and compilation, though it never approaches the enjoyable
profundity of the first political demographer of the South, V. O.
Key. (Kirkus Reviews)
Stressing the relevance of "The Transformation of Southern
Politics" as a background for understanding the South into the next
century, Jack Bass and Walter De Vries write that the "themes of
change in southern politics still involve the rise of the
Republican Party, black political development and the Democratic
response to it--and the interaction of these forces with social and
economic issues." "The Transformation of Southern Politics"
examines the post-World War II political evolution of the eleven
southern states and traces the effects of such influences as Brown
v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, urban migration, the growth of the Republican
Party, and the rise of African Americans in the political
landscape.
Relying on the methodology that V. O. Key used in his 1949
classic "Southern Politics in State and Nation," the work draws on
interviews with more than 360 politicians, scholars, journalists,
and labor leaders, and includes a wealth of data on voting trends,
political perceptions, and population flow to present a
comprehensive portrait of the region up to the 1976 presidential
election. In the preface to the Brown Thrasher edition, Bass and De
Vries offer an overview of the region's current political climate,
including an analysis of the 1994 mid-term elections. They also
provide excerpts from their interview with Bill Clinton during his
first campaign for political office.
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