Once upon a time, every student of history

and that meant pretty much everyone with a high school education knew this.

The Democratic Party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow

and the Republican Party was the party of emancipation and racial integration.

Democrats were the Confederacy and Republicans were the Union.

Jim Crow Democrats were dominant in the South

and socially tolerant Republicans were dominant in the North.

But then, in the 1960s and 70s, everything supposedly flipped.

Suddenly, the Republicans became the racist

and the Democrats became the champions of civil rights.

Fabricated by left-leaning academic elites and journalists,

the story went like this.

Republicans couldn't win a national election by appealing to the better nature of the country

they could only win by appealing to the worse.

Attributed to Richard Nixon, the media's all-purpose bad guy,

this came to be known as the Southern Strategy.

It was very simple.

Win elections by winning the South

and to win the South appeal to racist

so the Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, were to now be labored the Party of Rednecks.

But this story of the two parties switching identities is a myth.

In fact, it's three myths wrapped into one false narrative.

...