Welcome to 3 and 3.

Three key facts in three minutes or less on the topics you care about most.

The myth of the Southern Strategy or Party Switch.

Key fact number one.

Southern support for Republicans started increasing long before the civil rights period.

For example, in the 1928 election, Republican nominee Herbert Hoover came 7,000 Alabama votes away from carrying a majority of states from the old Confederacy.

Key fact number two.

Strom Thurman and his redemption.

The most often cited politician to push the party switch narrative is, of course, the notorious

former Democrat turned Republican, Strom Thurman.

But history shows that Thurman became less racist after he became a

Republican. In 1957, as a Democrat, Thurman filibustered the 57 Civil Rights Act for 24 hours

and 18 minutes, the longest in history. After switching to the Republican Party, however,

Thurman made history by being the first member of the Southern Congressional delegation to hire a black aide, and he even had a

black man appointed to a judgeship on a military appeals court for the first time in South

Carolina history. Key fact number three.

It is Republicans, not Democrats, who pushed civil rights bills.

Republicans voted for both Civil Rights Acts at higher percentages than Democrats,

with the 57 Civil Rights Act seeing a yay vote from Republicans to the tune of 84% versus 51% of Democrats.

In the Senate, 93% of Republicans voted for said act versus only 59% of Democrats.

On the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78% of House Republicans voted yay versus only 69% of Democrats. In the Senate, we see a larger gap again, with 82% of Republicans voting yay and only 60% of Democrats.

Maybe that's why Jackie Robinson himself campaigned for President Nixon against

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