Not so long ago, the South was functionally a one-party region. The Democratic Party’s midcentury tent stretched from Richmond all the way down to New Orleans, a 13-state ex-rebel collective containing segregationists, white supremacists, progressives, pseudo-communists, integrationists, conservatives, liberals—united into a single political mass by whiteness and the hope of prosperity in a post-Depression economy.

In the latter half of the century, the regional advocacy took the form of the Southern Governors Association, the Southern Growth Policies Board, and the Appalachian Regional Commission—all groups with the common goal of bringing the South’s citizenry out of the prior decades of financial instability. Under this cohort, the South molded its own form of economic progressivism: New Deal Democrats and their successors, pushing for government action in developing the American South. Within SGA, governors lobbied Congress for federal farming subsidies for family farmers and paved country roads that had long been matted grass and dirt. They poured resources into attracting businesses to their burgeoning urban locales and flooded their public school and university systems with funding brought on by tax raises on the wealthy and businesses.

Fiscal conservatives still raged on, frothing over any federal expenditure, especially those that would be diverted to minority communities. But bold progressives championing government investment made their mark, establishing a tradition that would stagger on to the 1990s, among them Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt in North Carolina; John West in South Carolina; Ray Mabus in Mississippi; and Ann Richards in Texas.

Today, the South is split, politically and culturally. Long-time North Carolina journalist and historian Rob Christensen has said that there are two defining moments in modern Southern political history: the Civil Rights movement, and the reaction to the Civil Rights movement. In the wake of the 1960s fight for political and cultural equality, President Richard Nixon and his cronies employed the infamous Southern strategy, preying on the racist fears of white voters. The first signs of success emerged with the 1972 election of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a former staffer for segregationist campaigns.

In the decades that followed, the GOP chipped away at the Democratic stronghold, winning landslide elections in 1994 and 2008. Once blanketed in blue, the South is now a sea of red, with Southern cities and college towns dotting the landscape as Democratic islands. With the shift has come a decline in the idea of a common Southern interest. In 2013, with North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory reigning as chairman, the Southern Growth Policies Board was abolished, concluding a 42-year run. Shortly after in 2016, the SGA died with a whimper—and the dream of a regional, Southern progressivism with it.