LINK "The story begins about a half-century ago, back when the right to vote in the South was the almost exclusive domain of white people. In those days, the Republican Party barely existed in the region. White Southerners had been raised on horror stories of the indignities visited upon their forebears by the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, a project of Yankee Republicans. Through the middle of the 20th century, there was no more loyal component of the national Democratic coalition than the South. When, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1936, he tallied more than 80 percent of the vote in six Southern states -- including 99 percent in South Carolina and 97 percent in Mississippi. The shift came when civil rights emerged as a leading national issue, one that ultimately forced the Democratic Party to choose between pro-integration Northerners (led by urban leaders whose machines were increasingly dependent on black voters, many of whom had fled the Jim Crow South) and the reliable South. The fateful moment, if there was one, took place in 1964, when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Republicans spurned the racially liberal Nelson Rockefeller for their presidential nomination, instead picking Barry Goldwater, who had joined the Southern Democratic filibuster of the new law. Dixie's swing in that fall's election was dramatic. Even as Goldwater lost in an epic landslide nationally, he carried five Southern states. His tally in Mississippi: 87 percent. But the '64 results were only a hint of what was to come. Southerners did not begin checking off Republican names up and down the ballot overnight. For years to come, in fact, Goldwater's success looked more like an aberration, at least when it came to statewide and local elections. White voters remained emotionally connected to the Democratic identities they'd inherited and receptive to the Democratic candidates -- many of them conservatives who would today be recognized as Republicans -- they saw on their ballots. And in most pockets of the South, Republican organizations were only beginning to show signs of life. Except at the presidential level, the South remained an overwhelmingly Democratic region through the 1970s." There aren't many southerners on this forum but I thought it was an interesting read. I've got to run to the store now to stock up on beer and toilet paper for the hurricane...
Republicans were the pro civil rights party for over 100 years. Radical Republicans nearly impeached president Andrew Johnson (D) who was Lincoln's VP, and then imposed a military occupation of the South to try to assure the freed slaves got their civil rights. They also passed the 13th and 14th amendments - the 14th being the only civil rights legislation really needed. Read it and tell me why the 1960s bill was needed! I'm pretty sure that Carter and Clinton carried much of the South, and George Wallace carried all of it as a 3rd party candidate, breaking from the Dems for that election. He's the last 3rd party candidate to get at least 2 electoral votes... Republicans were a minority in congress during the LBJ years. Otherwise they wouldn't need a filibuster, right? Even so, a higher % of those republicans voted to pass the bill than Dems. I'd also point out that there wasn't just one proposed bill. So if guys favored one that ultimately didn't pass doesn't mean they were opposed to civil rights. Jackie Robinson and many other civil rights figures supported Nixon in 1960. FDR made promises to black leaders at election time, then refused to even try to make good on his promises to them. Truman integrated the military and left office with a job approval rating lower than W's. It's also not particularly fair to single out the south. There were lynchings in Cleveland, Chicago, California, etc. all along. It's almost routine, even today, that the city of chicago is sued because the cops detain and outright torture black men.
Having gone through Ike, toilet paper is not going to protect your windows. Things to buy for a hurricane. Plywood, generator, water, gun, gas, plane ticket to somewhere else.
I've never understood--if you own a property in a hurricane-prone area--why you don't just go out and purchase plywood when there's not an emergency, fit them to each window, put up permanent clips for the plywood to slide or be screwed into and then be ready for anything that comes?
When we were walking through our house with our realtor, and saw the garage, I looked up and there was all this plywood. I asked what that was all about and she told us it was more than likely for the doors and windows in case of storms. We walked back through the house with the homeowners present, and they confirmed that's what it was. It was great having them all marked in advance of the storm. Took me about 2 hours to put them all up. Other neighbors were out there for days cutting and measuring, and some weren't lucky enough to get any at the supply stores because of demand
