In fact, the VRA worked so well that it gave rise to another seismic political shift: White voters left the Democratic Party in record numbers.

As Washington protected Black voting rights, this emerging Republican majority capitalized on fears of an interracial democracy. Conservatives resolved to turn the South Republican by associating minority rights with white oppression.

In 1981, conservative political consultant and GOP strategist Lee Atwater recognized that Republicans might exploit these fears. He argued:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.“

It wasn’t just Southerners who aimed to undo the revolution enabled by the Voting Rights Act.

President Richard Nixon helped begin this process by promising Southerners that he wouldn’t enforce civil rights. In fact, in a secret meeting with segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond, Nixon promised to ”retard civil rights enforcement.“

By the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan also used white people’s growing fear of African American political clout to his advantage.

Reagan’s administration, according to voting rights expert Jesse Rhodes, used executive and congressional control to reorganize the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the Supreme Court.

The objective?

To undermine how Washington enforced the Voting Rights Act – without appearing explicitly racist.

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