Being brought up in the deep South (I graduated from Brandon High School in rural Florida in 1964) I actually watched this happen. The minority Republicans were the party of integration, the majority Democrats supported segregation. As the civil rights movement picked up steam and both parties began to accept it, the South turned from Democrat to Republican almost overnight, based primarily on this racial issue.

There was, of course, every effort made to obscure it, by political misdirection and euphemism: there was "States Rights", "strict constructionism", anti-Communism and other buzzwords meant to obscure what was really happening, and the usual flag-waving and pious prayer designed to show that God and Country supported segregation too. The constellation of issues assembled to justify racism still survives almost unchanged in the conservative iconography. The banning of school prayers about that time (they had been mandatory prior to that) further polarized the situation. Being of Cuban heritage, I was extrememly conscious of, and sensitive to, racial issues although I could pass for white, and even had a very credible Cracker accent to help with my cover. In urban Tampa we were a prosperous community with economic and political clout. In rural Brandon just a few miles away, we were outsiders, but too scattered to be considered a threat. My high school had 1200 students. Seven spoke Spanish. Only the Spanish and Chemistry teachers were Latins.

The current Liberal/Conservative split in the country, in my opinion, can now be traced directly to that time and issue. Today, when you have black conservatives alongside Southern liberal whites, it may be very difficult for people not familiar with that time and place to understand the origins of the political split which now plagues the country. But in my opinion, it was definitely race. The issues have changed, but the partisans remain the same. I do believe that race no longer plays a role in conservative politics at the leadership level, and that is to their credit. But if you scratch deep enough at the rank and file, the old racism, now carefully hidden and covered up, occasionally rears its ugly head. I've even seen it here on this board.

And to be fair to the right, much of the hostile knee-jerk reaction to all things conservative from some liberals also stems from that time. People have long memories, and those
who lived through that time will not soon forget what they now see as the birth of the American conservatism.