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"Up until 1964, the South had only one political party, the Democrats. Out of hatred for Lincoln's Republicans and what they had done to the Confederacy, the GOP was almost entirely irrelevant in the region. That all changed when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. All of those loyal Democrats -- including Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and even Ronald Reagan -- shifted allegiances to the GOP. The last vestiges of the traditional southern Democrats, George Wallace voters, came over to the GOP a few years later."
It´s not so easy. Jimmy Carter won almost entirely due to the South, and until some years ago most of the senators and governors in the region were democrats(Some states are facing it first republican governor since Reconstruction now). Arkansas is becoming a solid blue state.
And James Eastland, a notorious racist senator, would keep his democratic affiliation long after the CRA. And most Dixiecrats were more than mere segregationists. Most people forgets that the South was the only region that didn´t fell to Catholic bigotry in 1928 with Al Smith.
