The Lily-Whites were a conservative and white supremacist faction of the southern Republican Party which existed from 1888 to 1964. The Lily-Whites developed as a coalition of white supremacists who believed that blacks should not hold positions of power in the GOP, believing that - due to the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the American South during the Jim Crow era - the only way for the Southern GOP to survive was to appeal to the almost exclusively white electorate by choosing "respectable" white leaders. They were rivals with the biracial and liberal Black-and-Tans, who fought for the continued presence of the African-American electorate in the Southern GOP's leadership. Both factions sought to deal out patronage and manage Republican National Committee delegates, but the Lily-Whites' "respectability" argument won out, replacing the Black-and-Tans at different points in time. The Lily-Whites quickly seized power in North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Texas, eliminating blacks nearly entirely and permanently from leadership positions. In Tennessee, Arkansas, and Florida, whites came to dominate the local GOPs, but a small percentage of blacks were kept in place to maintain party harmony. In South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, Black-and-Tan leaders retained control of the party deep into the first half of the 20th century and sometimes beyond. Ultimately, the whitening of the GOP in the South led to a significant increase in the GOP's vote totals, and the GOP developed more quickly in the Lily-White strongholds than in the Black-and-Tan strongholds. The dominance of the Lily-Whites allowed for the Republicans Herbert Hoover and Dwight D. Eisenhower to make inroads into the South in 1928 and 1952, respectively, and, in 1964, the triumph of the white conservative Republican Barry Goldwater across the American South due to his opposition to the Civil Rights movement demolished the Black-and-Tan faction, as most African-Americans became staunch Democratic Party supporters. The legacy of the Lily-Whites was felt in the 2016 presidential election, during which whiteness became a major factor in Donald Trump's Republican presidential campaign, and only 8% of blacks supported him at the polls, while his voter base and administration was overwhelmingly white and elderly.
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