I agree with everything you say in this article, save for a minor quibble. During the 1950s, there was a movement back to the Republicans by African-Americans towards both Eisenhower and Nixon. In both his Presidential elections Eisenhower received somewhere between 33 and 35 percent of the African-American vote and Nixon, hard as it may be to believ, received 29%. Eight years later embracing the Southern strategy, he only received eight percent; in the last sixty years only one Republican Candidate for President - Ford - received as much as fifteen percent of the African-American vote.

Much of this, I should make clear, was because of how firmly entrenched the Democrats still were to Jim Crow as late as the 1950s. It's worth noting that the only African-American elected to the Senate in the 20th century was Edward Brooke of Massacxhusetts, and his membership in the party was something that the conservative wing would use to hold over what remained of its liberal wing as a ghoul. (Reagan's campaign tried to appeal to Southerners by suggesting that Ford was considering Brooke as a vice presidential nominee.) Brooke lost his Senate seat to John Kerry in 1978. I don't know much about Brooke as a Senator, but both Democrats and Republicans who served with him - as diverse a group from Humprhey to Bob Dole - all considered him a very good Senator.

Sadly when LBJ signed the Civil Rights bill, all of the racists left the Democratic Party and more or less became Republicans. You're right, this is entirely on Goldwater who was publicly urged by Dirksen to vote for the Civil Rights Bill. (He was one of only seven Republican Senators to vote against it. The 1960s were a different time.) Jackie Robinson, who'd backed Nixon and Rockefeller before, never forgave the Republicans and switched parties to vote for Johnson. (He later realized how much the GOP had used him, though he was more aligned with their interests up until 1964.)

The rest of your article is completely on point and accurate, sad to say.