Democrats also point to the rise of the Dixiecrats that supposedly shows that racist Democrats became Republicans. However, it is a fact is that only two Democrats-turned-Dixiecrat, left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party: Senator Strom Thurmond traded in his party alliance with the Democrats to join the Republicans in 1964—not because he continued to support racism, but because he began repudiating it. Frances Rice explains: "Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and, after he became a Republican, Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats."
Governor Mills E. Godwin, Jr. of Virginia abandoned the Democrats for the Republican Party in 1974. But again, like Thurmond, Godwin abandoned his racist past and served as Virginia governor first while a Democrat and then as a Republican.
