And indeed all that changed after 1964, when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, who passed historic legislation on civil rights and voting rights — partly out of genuine conviction and partly under enormous pressure from the civil rights movement and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. As Johnson himself clearly foresaw, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 — which established full racial equality, at least as a matter of law — drove white Southerners out of the Democratic party to where they have resided ever since in the Republican party.
Republicans have an obvious race problem — one they prefer not to admit, even to themselves. The party's voter base is overwhelmingly white, and Republicans are now actively trying to suppress Black voters (and other voters of color) through a range of Jim Crow tactics. They reflexively support police even in the most egregious cases of racist violence (such as the murder of George Floyd last year) and have consistently depicted Black Lives Matter as a subversive, anti-American movement. But they can't win elections without moderate and independent voters who are uncomfortable with overt and blatant manifestations of racism, so they claim that Democrats and liberals are the "real racists."
https://www.salon.com/2021/11/21/ar...cists-well-they-used-to-be-heres-the-history/