Jesse Jackson Sr.

We won the Voting Rights Act of 1965 at Selma, combining the power of a principled mass movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a compassionate president who did the right thing despite the heavy political price.

What was that cost? President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best at the time when he told his aides that we’d “just lost the South for a generation.”

The Jefferson Davis Democrats in the South did the wrong thing by responding to the “Southern strategy” of President Richard Nixon and the racial dog whistles of Ronald Reagan. Because of race, the once solid Democratic South switched over to become today’s solid Republican South.

Now it has been half a century — not just a generation, as LBJ foretold, but two-and-a-half generations. And still the Republican Party dominates below the Mason-Dixon Line.

The Democratic Party in today’s South has been “hollowed out,“ with only a handful of successful statewide Democratic candidates.

As long as that situation exists, the Democrats will be able to win the presidency, but what about the Senate and House?

The sad irony is that the South has benefited the most from the Civil Rights Movement — white people as well as African-Americans.

The tearing down of the “Cotton Curtain“ by the civil rights martyrs and marchers meant that the South could join our modern economy. Populations jumped. The Civil RightsMovement forced the development of integrated football teams at Southern colleges that now dominate the sport. The Olympics could be held in Atlanta in 1996, with Muhammad Ali and Stevie Wonder at the closing ceremonies. Toyota and Mercedes Benz could locate plants in the South, providing better jobs than cotton ever had.

Yet Southern politicians, stuck in the politics of fear, still poke at racial wounds for short-term success.

In order to starve the government, Southern politicians still refuse to invest in infrastructure across the region. Rebuilding our ports and harbors, investing in jobs programs that would employ white and African-American workers, preparing our coasts to survive the future Katrina-like storms that climate change will bring, accepting the Medicaid expansion that would provide needed health care for so many families — these public policy initiatives would develop the region even more, and open up the futures for so many young Southerners.

Yet too many politicians and voters continue to choose race over reason, choosing the party that backs both tax cuts and job cuts.

How do we break through?

First of all, we need to compete everywhere in the country, from the local level to the state level to the presidency. The Democratic Party in the South needs to rebuild.

Second, as a candidate, President Obama showed us how we win in the South — with a message of hope and change, combined with a massive voter registration effort and a huge voter turnout. In 2008, that combination carried Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. In 2012, Florida and Virginia again went blue, with North Carolina barely missing out.

Third, we need to battle voter suppression. Sen. Bernie Sanders was right when he pointed out that too many Republican leaders are “cowards” for repressing the African-American vote. Sen. Sanders also mentioned universal voter registration during the Democratic forum, and right afterward he raised an idea that I have been pushing for — a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote to every American.

Fourth, we need to invest bottom-up in the South, economically and politically. If we raise wages, provide health care for everyone and open up voter registration to all our people, hope will rise, the South will develop and people’s lives will be better.

If white working-class families choose hope over fear, their lives will improve — and so will those of Southern Latinos and African-Americans. And Democrats will be able to win elections again.