So I take it you aren't ready to rebuke the KKK and the Neo-Nazi's just yet?
I told you before, they are your boys to rebuke, not mine.
So you agree that racism has been used by both sides. That's a start anyway.
Don't be a fool and believe everything your high school history book (written by Democrats) told you. Use common sense. Put yourself in a 1960's era Southern Democrat's shoes for a minute. You probably have friends in the KKK, or at least know of folks who are. You've voted Democrat your entire life because that's what you parents and grandparents did. You definitely had relatives that fought in the civil war and your grandparents told you the stories. They probably have stories of the Yankees killing their relatives, stealing their farm animals and burning down their homes. You probably have a cousin that defected to the North and the family disowned them. Southerners have pride and never, ever, forget.
All of a sudden some Republican comes along and they "switched"? Because they said: "leave it to the 'party of Maddox, Mahoney and Wallace to squeeze the last ounce of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice'."?
Then when the Republican gets into the White House, he:
"raised the civil rights enforcement budget 800 percent;
doubled the budget for black colleges;
appointed more blacks to federal posts and high positions than any president, including LBJ;
adopted the Philadelphia Plan mandating quotas for blacks in unions, and for black scholars in colleges and universities..."
And those policies attracted you further to the Republican Party?
Also, what you don't realize is that the South was only solidly Democrat until the early 19th century. I know a lot about North and South Carolina history so I'll explain from that perspective. When the Germans migrated to The South starting in the 1820's or so ancestors of the English (Anglicans) owned all the prime farmland, from roughly Raleigh and eastward. These were the original slaveholders. When the Germans (Moravians) came the English hated them as they hated anyone not of their ancestry, and the Germans were forced further west into the Piedmont to less desirable farmland. The Moravians were relatively poor, few of them owned slaves and if they did they educated them, something that the Anglican slave holders really resented. When the Scot-Irish migrated they settled further west in the Piedmont as well as the Mountain counties and they were more poor than the Germans. Again, few if any owned slaves and they hated the English as many were descendents of people who were persecuted by the English. The English-Anglicans had control of the wealth and therefore political power and of course they were Democrats.
During the Civil War the Piedmont and Mountain counties of North Carolina was instrumental in defeat of the Secessionists. Union troops found haven in many areas and the Underground Railroad was also here. Many Western Carolinians not only opposed the war but were Unionist themselves. This deep political division still exists today between the regions in North Carolina, and it is reflected in the current 2012 red-blue county-by-county mapping. This is further evidence that no such "switch" took place.