F OR SOME YEARS NOW political scientists have been examining the South for indications that its solid commitment to the Democratic Party on the state level may be following its former presidential solidarity to oblivion. No doubt this concern owes much of its motive force to awareness within the profession that the final breakup of the Solid South would be an integral part of a national political realignment which has been long awaited in some quarters.' Students of the region, however, have not been particularly optimistic about the possibilities of a genuine grassroots Southern Republicanism in the foreseeable future. In 1949 V. 0. Key suggested in Southern Politics that in the long run the forces of urbanism and industrialization will tend to dissolve sectionalism and its one-party political component by integrating the South's economy and social structure more closely into that of the rest of the country.2 But Alexander Heard expressed serious doubts in 1952 about the prospects for any significant change in local voting habits within the region.3 This doubt was reiterated by Donald Strong in his 1960 study of urban Republicanism in the South.4 Indeed, as late as 1961 0. Douglas Weeks concluded that while Texas and other Southern states are drifting toward a class and interest politics like that of the rest of the country, this movement is essentially confined to presidential politics; local developments in this direction, he argues, remain quite feeble.5