Arizona

[minionofmidas]

President Lyndon Johnson had to rely on Everett Dirkson, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Civil Rights Act passed, just like Clinton had to rely on Republicans to get NAFTA passed.

That's something of a misrepresentation of facts actually, and quite a common one.
Thing is that Northern Dems and Moderate Reps were in favor of the bill, and were a few votes short to break the Southern Democrat filibuster in the Senate.
In the end, they dropped a few of the more far-reaching provisions and won the support of most Northern Conservative Republicans, and the votes to break the filibuster, as a result. That group included Dirksen, who played a large role in drafting the new, slightly watered-down version.

[minionofmidas]

The politics of the political parties changed more than the politics of the states. Vermont + Massachusetts used to be solid republican states. South Carolina was 98% democratic in the 40's. Civil rights was one of the main reasons for the flip.

MA was a Democrat state since 1928. Vermont's change wasn't as clear-cut, but the slide to the Democratic party began during the 1950s.

And how many times will the lie that the Civil Rights movement caused the South to vote GOP be repeated?? In 1948, the South went with the Dixiecrats; in the '50s and '60s, they voted for "Unpledged Democrat Electors." The only GOP vote was Goldwater in '64, then the next election they went with Wallace. Discounting Nixon's '72 win, the South single-handedly elected Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.

If anything, the South tried every conceivable mean to avoid voting Republican in 40 years.

Yes...but then, there's reasons for that too. And they did not vote for "unpledged Democrat Electors in the '50s and '60s" - there were such slates, especially in Alabama, but mostly they split between those staying true to the Democrats and those voting Republican.