This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Goldwater landslide which was the tidal wave that swept the deep south into the Republican party. Alabama and the South had voted solidly Democratic for President for over 80 years prior to 1964. Every constitutional officeholder in Alabama and every congressman and senator representing Alabama in Congress ran under the Democratic banner.
Lyndon Johnson was the Democratic nominee for president. Johnson carried 44 states and won the presidency by a landslide. U.
S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona carried only his home state and the five deep south states, including Alabama.
Goldwater carried Alabama overwhelmingly, thus the label given to the Republican victory in the South was ironically the Goldwater Landslide. The so-called “Solid South” had been Democratic more out of tradition and protocol than philosophy. Both national parties took the South for granted in national elections.
The Democrats ignored us because we were in the barn and the Republicans ignored us for the same reason. The 1964 election was the turning point when the Deep South states voted for Barry Goldwater. The South has never looked back.
It was the race issue that won them over. Goldwater and the Republican party captured the race issue. George Wallace had ridden the race issue into the governor’s office in 1962.
Early in 1964 Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson passed sweeping civil rights legislation, which white southerners detested. Johnson had .