 Democrats are the party of slavery is a sentence that's both factually accurate and completely misleading. It's accurate because, yes, Democrats supported slavery in the 19th century and, yes, Lincoln was the first Republican president. But it's misleading because our two major political parties have changed drastically in the last 150 years. Because here's another completely factual statement. A Democratic president signed the Civil Rights Act 100 years later. A Democrat signing the Civil Rights Act was a huge moment in shaping our modern political parties. Because it shifted how the two sides would approach issues of race and equality to this very day. And my part of the country played a huge role in that realignment. See, white Southern Democrats weren't in love with the more progressive members of the party handing out all this equality to black folks. So they started to leave the party. And when they did, Republicans were waiting. But you might still be wondering why all this happened. Why did the Democrats suddenly care about black voters? Why did the Republicans, who had previously been the party of civil rights, decide to embrace all these racist campaign tactics? To explain that, I'll have to give you some history. First, I'll say something obvious. Things were different in the 1800s. Cars weren't invented yet, people hunted with muskets, and Larry King was still on his first marriage. The University of Tennessee wasn't even losing embarrassingly at football yet. So, like I said, things were very different. And that includes our political parties. Democrats were associated with the, you know, essentially the party of white supremacy in the South, where Republicans were the party of business, a small town in America, and the North. So yes, the dominant political party in the South in the 1800s was the Democrats. And the Republicans were formed to oppose slavery. So what's changed since the 1860s? Other than we fought a civil war, ended slavery, and invented spaceships, and hubba-bubba. Well, it's not like there's one single moment where the Democrats hiked the racism football to the Republicans, but there are a series of key turning points. Like in 1948, when Democratic President Harry Truman signed an executive order outlawing segregation in the military, this did not sit well with Southern Democrats. Especially a governor turned senator turned ghoulish skeleton from South Carolina named Strom Thurman. Ol' Strom was the epitome of a Southern Democrat, which meant he was a committed segregationist. Strom was so upset about Truman's armed forces integration efforts, he left the Democratic Party and launched a presidential campaign to defeat Truman on a states' rights platform. He called the new party the Dixie Crats. There's that Southern connection right in the name. He lost, of course, as Southerners who secede while claiming their states' rights were under attack often do. Despite the Strom and drain, Democrats with national political ambitions would continue to advocate for civil rights. Whether this was the result of purely cynical political maneuvering or genuine sympathy for the cause is up for debate. He's a strong opponent of civil rights. He blocked about every civil rights measure. But in the mid-1950s, he realizes that he's going to have to change his stance on civil rights. It was going to go anywhere. He helps move the 1957 civil rights act through Congress. He helps get it passed. He had come around to support civil rights, but really for cynical reasons. The Civil Rights Act and integration caused a huge backlash in the South among socially conservative voters. In response to this exodus of white Southern Democrats, Republican politicians developed what's now known as the Southern Strategy. I'll let an expert explain. The key person here is Barry Goldwater, who's a senator from Arizona. In 1961, Barry Goldwater goes down to Atlanta to speak to a gathering of Southern governors. And he says, we're not going to win the black vote in 1964 and 1968, so we ought to stop chasing it. Instead, we need to go after white Southern conservatives, and that's a vote we can win. So the idea here is to just go all in on the Southern white vote. In 1981, Republican political consultant Lee Atwater was caught on tape laying out how Republicans would appeal to white Southern Democrats prejudices without saying anything too explicitly racist. Just listen how casually this strategy rolls off his tongue. You start out in 1954 by saying, ****, ****, ****. By 1968, you keep saying that **** that hurts your back, so you say stuff like forced bussing, states lights and all that stuff. That bike right ahead, blacks get hurt worse than whites. LBJ was aware of what Republicans were doing, by the way. There's a quote from him that frames this hustle perfectly. If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you. It seems like it would make the most sense to align with people that are in your same socio-economic group. But, you know, why do that when there's an easily identifiable way to make yourself seem better than someone? Say there's three guys hanging out, like a white dude, black dude, and a rich dude, and there's like 10 cookies. A rich dude takes nine cookies and turns to the white dude and is like, that black dude's trying to take your cookie. Yep, yep. So yes, Southern Democrats were enthusiastically forced slavery in the 1850s. Almost as enthusiastically as Republicans turned against integration in the 1960s and 70s. Yeah, parties are like people. They change. When I was 18, I thought corn was the new Led Zeppelin. That barely tells you anything about me in 2020. It definitely doesn't tell you anything about what my grandchildren think about corn. The lesson should be to continually question who's on the right side of history now so we can figure it out and join them.