"Former racists of both parties renounced their old views, as Kevin D. Williamson points out, Lyndon Johnson himself voted against anti-lynching laws and poll-tax repeals, and neither party has a perfect record on racial matters by any stretch. But it is a libel to suggest that the Republican party, the anti-slavery party, the party of Lincoln, and the party that traditionally supported civil rights, anti-lynching laws, and integration, became the racist party after 1964. The 'solid south' Democratic voting pattern began to break down not in the 1960s in response to civil rights but in the 1950s in response to economic development and the Cold War. Black voters in the north, who had been reliable Republicans, began to abandon the GOP in response to the New Deal, encouraged by activists like Robert Vann to 'turn Lincoln's picture to the wall. That debt has been paid in full'. In the 1940s, the GOP garnered only about 25 percent of southern votes. The big break came with Eisenhower's victories. Significant percentages of white southerners voted for Ike even though the Democratic party remained firmly segregationist and even though Eisenhower backed two civil-rights bills and enforced the Brown decision by federalizing the National Guard. They also began to send GOP representatives to the House. These Republican gains came not from the most rural and 'deep south' regions, but rather from the newer cities and suburbs. If the new southern Republican voters were white racists, one would have expected Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to be the first to turn."