<P> The notion of Black Power advocated by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders captured some of the frustrations of African Americans at the slow process of change in gaining civil rights and social justice . African Americans pushed for faster change, raising racial tensions . Journalists reporting about the demonstrations against the Vietnam War often featured young people engaging in violence or burning draft cards and American flags . Conservatives were also dismayed about the many young adults engaged in the drug culture and "free love" (sexual promiscuity), in what was called the "hippie" counter-culture . These actions scandalized many Americans and created a concern about law and order . </P> <P> Nixon's advisers recognized that they could not appeal directly to voters on issues of white supremacy or racism . White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman noted that Nixon "emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks . The key is to devise a system that recognized this while not appearing to". With the aid of Harry Dent and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who had switched to the Republican Party in 1964, Nixon ran his 1968 campaign on states' rights and "law and order". Liberal Northern Democrats accused Nixon of pandering to Southern whites, especially with regard to his "states' rights" and "law and order" positions, which were widely understood by black leaders to symbolize Southern resistance to civil rights . This tactic was described in 2007 by David Greenberg in Slate as "dog - whistle politics". According to an article in The American Conservative, Nixon adviser and speechwriter Pat Buchanan disputed this characterization . </P> <P> The independent candidacy of George Wallace, former Democratic governor of Alabama, partially negated Nixon's Southern strategy . With a much more explicit attack on integration and black civil rights, Wallace won all of Goldwater's states (except South Carolina) as well as Arkansas and one of North Carolina's electoral votes . Nixon picked up Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida while Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey won only Texas in the South . Writer Jeffrey Hart, who worked on the Nixon campaign as a speechwriter, said in 2006 that Nixon did not have a "Southern Strategy", but "Border State Strategy" as he said that the 1968 campaign ceded the Deep South to George Wallace . Hart suggested that the press called it a "Southern Strategy" as they are "very lazy". </P> <P> By contrast, in the 1972 election Nixon won every state in the Union except Massachusetts, winning more than 70% of the popular vote in most of the Deep South (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina) and 61% of the national vote . He won more than 65% of the votes in the other states of the former Confederacy and 18% of the black vote nationwide . Despite his appeal to Southern whites, Nixon was widely perceived as a moderate outside the South and won African American votes on that basis . </P>

When did the south switch from democrat to republican