Senator Jack S. Hill: 30 Years of Life in Georgia Politics presented by Kim Liebl: 1960-1970

In 1964, Howard Calloway became the first Republican congressman in Georgia since Reconstruction in Georgia by reflecting Goldwater's stance on the Civil Rights Act. To appeal to rural voters, he linked his opponent, Democrat Garland Byrd, to the Johnson-Humphrey presidential campaign and emphasized the rising crime rate seen in the country since the Presidential election. Calloway painted Byrd as someone who had never done a day of hard work in his life. Calloway's success transformed the Republican party in Georgia by showing it is a credible political party. In 1966, Calloway challenged Democratic radical segregationist Lester Maddox in Georgia's gubernatorial election. Maddox owned the Pickrick restaurant in Atlanta in 1964 and publicly boasted that he refused to serve African Americans. Because Maddox held similar views on segregation, Calloway could no longer campaign as the only conservative candidate. Callaway created clear-cut distinctions between himself and Maddox. He betrayed himself as a sophisticated family man and Maddox as an unrefined dropout. Maddox was then seen as a man of the people and won the rural vote and the majority. Though he lost, Calloway's campaign pulled many to the Republican Party. By forcing a definite distinction between the parties, the Democratic party had to choose which side of the political spectrum to be on.6

Since the end of the Civil War, African Americans generally supported the Republican Party. Leaders in urban areas like Atlanta remained loyal to the party that helped to end slavery. During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy and his family made a public plea to free Martin Luther King Jr. from the Georgia state prison in Reidsville. After this event, many African Americans switched to support the Democratic Party.7

In 1962, the Supreme Court invalidated the county unit system in Georgia after their decision in Baker v Carr which set a precedent for intervention by the federal court in state legislative apportionment disputes.8

The racial makeup of Georgia's urban populations in the 1960s grew as African Americans began to migrate back to the South from the North to southern cities like Atlanta.9 The influx of people, the end of the county unit system, and the Voting Rights Act combined heavily influenced the power shift between rural and urban areas. During the 1960s, it was a slow-moving process that began to be set up in motion by the re-enfranchisement of African American southerners after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.10 In Georgia, there was an unprecedented increase in state voter registration by the African-American communities fueled by local drives in the community.11 At this time, African Americans represented thirty-four percent of the voting-age population, with only one-fourth registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act changed this, and by 1970 Georgia had thirty African American elected officials, and registration had increased by eighty percent. A reason behind the increase of African Americans in office was due to the federally compelled creation of black majority voting districts from the Supreme Court decision of Baker v Carr in 1962.12 However, African Americans struggled to reach the same political equality as their white counterparts. The obstacles they faced included the refusal to have designated voting areas in African American communities and the lack of voter education. Because of this, it took longer for African American officials to be elected into office and for an immediate transformation in both parties to form.13

The partisan preference held by African Americans and whites has affected the Democratic Party’s control over the South. Before the Voting Rights Act, African Americans, nearly one-third of the southern population, were not allowed to vote and were denied representation in the southern electorate. The use of violence by the Democratic Party at the time preserved the power held by white southerners, and they were the primary voice the South had in politics on the local, state, and national levels. With the passing of Civil Rights Legislation and increased activism in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, African Americans joined the electorate by the thousands. This chain of events altered the strategy Democrats had for the southern electorate as they no longer needed a majority white vote to win and could attain black support. The first election that had a majority of the African American population in southern states registered to vote was in 1968 and saw a limited amount of white southern support. Although, the Democratic Party did see more support from southern women rather than men as a significant amount of southern white female voters remained Democratic. Since the 1960s, there has been an increase in the weight African-American votes hold within the Democratic Party in the South and increased the importance of their vote to potential Democratic candidates.14