Alva Review-Courier -

After Congress passed civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965, the number of African American voters in the states of the old Confederacy increased dramatically.

And while the majority of these new voters registered as Democrats, the laws also caused many white southerners to abandon the Democratic Party. Some supported segregationist southern Democrats who had opposed the laws; others, however, became Republicans.

President Lyndon Johnson, who ushered the laws through Congress and signed them into law, knew that advocating civil rights legislation would cost his Democratic Party the support...