PIPE* Workshop: Jeff Jenkins, USC Price

White Identity and the Emergence of the Republican Party in the Early-20th Century South

(Co-authored with Boris Heersink, Fordham University)

We explore the relationship between white identity, the GOP, and the South, by examining the role that white identity played in the Republican Party’s emergence in the former Confederacy prior to the mid-to-late-1960s. Just as white identity has come to be important in modern GOP politics, especially around the rise of Donald Trump, we argue that white identity was also an important factor in the slow rise of the Republican Party in the Jim Crow South during the first half of the 20th century. We find that the “whitening” of the Republican Party’s leadership in the South led to a significant increase in the party’s vote totals. And this increase occurred not just in presidential elections, but in congressional and gubernatorial elections as well.

Jeffery A. Jenkins is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, Judith & John Bedrosian Chair of Governance and the Public Enterprise, Director of the Bedrosian Center, and Director of the Political Institutions and Political Economy (PIPE) Collaborative. 

MUST REGISTER! Space limited.