All you have to do is look at how the south is voting today vs how it was voting then to answer that question for yourself.
The switch happened in the 1960s over a few very short years. We even know exactly HOW it happened: Nixon’s Southern Strategy- a brilliant piece of political strategy by any standard- by another group of lying GOP crooks- exploiting the latent racism, anger, and ignorant fears of the masses to protect the cultural hegemony and social privilege of the very few at the very top- today’s version of the plantation owners.
That’s why it’s so important for them to continue to keep this level of anger and fear, division and hate, stoked to a white hit fever temperature through their propaganda channels like Fox. The whole strategy depends on it. Be afraid. Be very afraid: blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, gays, women, Muslims, Chinese, Mexico, etc, etc.... heck, let’s even throw in the Canadians and Europeans in there too while we are at it. The more hate and fear the better. Everyone is a boogeyman out to getcha. Males are under siege. Whites are under siege. All good Christians are under siege. War on Christmas. Fear, fear, fear. Anger, anger, anger. Tribalism and division. It’s us vs them.
But you know what they say: you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.