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Franklin D Roosevelt And The New Deal Program For Economic Relief, Recovery And Reform

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For over 100 years the south was a democratic region, now in today’s society the south is seen as solidly Republican. The views of the parties may have changed but the views of the people did not. The Southern Democrats were the popular party and had many conservative views, many of which southern whites still believe today. This paper will describe the change from the solidly democratic region to a solidly republican region.
In the 1930’s Franklin D Roosevelt created the New Deal program for economic relief, recovery and reform. It expanded the role of the federal government to provide economic assistance for all (class notes). White southerners did not like this. They did not want the government’s hands in their finances and they felt the New Deal did just that (Boles, 2004p.567). Franklin D Roosevelt died in office in 1945 and Vice President Democrat Harry S Truman assumed presidency. During Truman’s presidency a huge change occurred for the Democratic Party. Truman who had not believed in equal rights prior to the war began to observe the discrimination and unfair treatment of African Americans and decided something had to be done and in 1947 he decided to make civil rights a national issue as he wanted to protect African Americans from discrimination (Class notes). This appalled many southerners. With continued talk about desegregating, wealthy white southerners created the Dixicrats formally known as the States Rights Democratic Party. They wanted to keep

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