Despite his public congeniality, Reagan was quite hostile to civil rights. He had a history of it leading back to his testimonies for the House Un-American Activities Committee—-tasked with weeding out and blackballing suspected Communist sympathizers.

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Ronald Reagan, prior to his political career, testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on October 23, 1947. At the time, Reagan was working as the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). During his testimony, he expressed his concerns about communist influence within Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

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Reagan named several individuals whom he believed to be members of the Communist Party or associated with communist activities. His testimony was notable for his strong anti-communist stance and his efforts to purge
suspected communist sympathizers from the industry.

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While some praised Reagan’s actions, considering them a defense of American values and national security, others criticized his participation in the HUAC hearings as contributing to the climate of fear and blacklisting during the McCarthy era.

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Reagan’s activities in front of the HUAC reflected his firm opposition to communism and foreshadowed his later political career, where he to advocate against his opponents, with coding language alluding to their un-Americaness.

This eventually led him to the governorship of California.

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The Democratic presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson marked a significant turning point with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These landmark legislations caused a seismic shift within the Democratic Party. Subsequently, the Democrats experienced a loss of support from the Solid South in national presidential elections for the majority of the subsequent fifty years.

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While some Democrats had already switched to the Republican Party prior to these acts, the number of defections increased significantly after Johnson's signing. This led to a period of profound reconfiguration within the political parties. However, the transformation did not occur instantly.

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In the 1960s & early 1970s, white Southerners were still in the process of transitioning away from the Democratic Party (while newly enfranchised black Southerners voted & continued to vote Democratic). During the 1972 presidential primaries, former AL Governor George Wallace, known for his staunch support of segregation, ran as a Democrat, even as Richard Nixon employed a Southern strategy that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters.

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Today the South is solidly Republican. In every presidential election since 1964 -- save the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 -- Dixie has been the heart of GOP presidential politics. The white Southern vote was key to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, and President George W. Bush was elected in 2000 because he carried every Southern state.

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Ronald Reagan was key to the South's transition to Republican politics. Goldwater got the ball rolling, but Reagan was at his side from the very beginning. During the 1964 campaign, Reagan gave speeches in support of Goldwater and spoke out for what he called individual rights -- (states' rights). Reagan also and portrayed any opposition as support for totalitarianism -- (communism).

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Reagan expressed opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, referring to the latter as "humiliating to the South." During his 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California, he made a promise to repeal the Fair Housing Act, stating "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has a right to do so."

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Reagan's extensive use of dog-whistle racism, which consisted of subtly coded messages, received insufficient media coverage at the time and has largely been disregarded in contemporary narratives. One group of people he continually harangued were people on public assistance, who he unilaterally relegated to “leech“ status.

While Governor of California, Reagan repeatedly targeted social service programs and “throwing the welfare bums out.”

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In 1976, Reagan sought the GOP nomination against the incumbent Gerald Ford. Reagan's campaign was on the ropes until the primaries hit the Southern states, where he won his first key victory in NC. Throughout the South that spring and summer, Reagan portrayed himself as Goldwater's heir while criticizing Ford as a captive of Eastern establishment Republicans fixated on forced integration.

Reagan lost the nomination to Ford in 1976.

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But when the former CA governor ran for President again in 1980, he began his campaign in Philadelphia, MS., where 3 civil rights workers were brutally killed by white supremacists. It was at that sore spot on the racial map that Reagan revived talk about states' rights & curbing the power of the federal government.

In front of a predominantly white audience numbering in the tens of thousands, Reagan proclaimed, "I believe in states' rights".

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