Dixiecrats, the keepers of Jim Crow. But the Dixiecrats largely left the Democrats to become Republicans.

No, they didn’t. The country changed, some dixiecrats changed with it and some died off or faded away. The South changed from a largely agricultural economy to a modern one and its rapidly growing population changed from supporting democrats to supporting republicans after institutional racism was legally ended.

The entire time the KKK was a viable political force for terror and oppression it was the political action arm of the democrat party (and not just South of the Mason-Dixon line.) The democrats need to own their racist roots and admit they were the party of institutional racism until civil rights legislation championed by republicans was finally passed over their objections.

This canard about the parties somehow changing places after the civil rights era is the product of deep denial and like this story completely unsupported by the facts.