🔍 Nixon and the "Backlash" (1968-1973)

🔍 Nixon and the "Backlash" (1968-1973)

Richard Nixon's election as President in November 1968 represented a political backlash against the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the social upheaval of the 1960s.

The "Southern Strategy"

Nixon deliberately courted white Southern voters who were angry about civil rights legislation. This "Southern Strategy" (a term for the Republican Party's deliberate appeal to white racial resentment in the South) used coded language — "law and order," "states' rights," "the silent majority" — to signal opposition to civil rights progress without using explicitly racist language. Nixon's campaign adviser Kevin Phillips later admitted: the strategy was to win by appealing to white voters who felt threatened by Black progress.

The Southern Strategy worked. Nixon won the 1968 election with 301 electoral votes. The Democratic "Solid South" — which had voted Democrat since the Civil War — switched to Republican. This political realignment, driven by the Civil Rights movement, reshaped American politics for the next 50 years.

Nixon's Presidency and Civil Rights

Nixon's record on civil rights was contradictory:

• Against: He opposed busing (transporting students between neighbourhoods to desegregate schools), slowed federal enforcement of civil rights laws, and appointed conservative Supreme Court justices who would limit civil rights protections
• For: He signed affirmative action requirements (policies requiring employers to actively recruit minorities) into federal contracts (the "Philadelphia Plan" 1969), increased funding for Black colleges, and created the Office of Minority Business Enterprise

Nixon's presidency ended in the Watergate scandal (1972-1974) — he was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had authorised a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters and then tried to cover it up. But the political direction he set — appealing to white resentment of civil rights progress — defined American conservative politics for decades.