Stalking the Southern Working Class

The South is up for grabs in the 1970s. With 22 senators, 106 representatives, and almost one-fourth of the votes in the electoral college, the region’s strategic significance in national politics has stirred the imagination of both right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats.

The South’s allegiance to one-partyism is weakening. Interpretations of this development, however different in other respects, depend upon a familiar stereotype of the white, lower-income Southerne...