Release date: Jan. 10, 2003
Contact: Nancy Seideman, Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0640 or nseidem@emory.edu

Black Brothers' Book Named One of the Best of 2002

The Economist magazine has named "The Rise of Southern Republicans," co-authored by political scientists Merle Black of Emory University and Earl Black of Rice University, as one of its "Books of the Year 2002."

The Blacks’ third book on Southern politics documents how dramatically the political tide has changed in the South. Described by The Economist as "the definitive work on that important historical shift," the book illustrates how the Republican Party’s inroads into Southern precincts have transformed American politics and given the United States its first national two-party system since the heyday of the Whigs in the 19th century.

The book traces the development of the Republican Party in the South, beginning with the advent of the civil rights movement in the 1950s when white Southerners slowly began to identify themselves more and more with the GOP. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, that movement gained steam.

Citing survey and exit poll data, the Blacks show that fully 70 percent of white conservatives identified themselves as Republicans in 2000 when just 32 years ago, barely 20 percent of white conservatives identified with the GOP. Over the same period, the percentage of white moderates identifying themselves as Democrats has dropped from nearly 60 percent to just over 30 percent.

What all this means for national politics is that, to win national elections, the Republicans no longer are forced to draw massive majorities in Northern states to offset their equally large deficits in South, according to the Blacks. The book was published in May by Belknap Press, a unit of Harvard University Press.

Merle Black is the Asa G. Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory, and Earl Black is the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Political Science at Rice.

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