Sure, the signing of the Civil Rights Act profoundly affected politics in the south, but I think other things were as or more important.

There aren't too many people in office like George Wallace and Lester Maddox any more.

http://en.wikipedia...._presidential_run

In 1968, when Wallace pledged to run over any demonstrators who got in front of his limousine and asserted that the only four letter words hippies did not know were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p, his rhetoric became famous. He accused Humphrey and Nixon of wanting to radically desegregate the South. Wallace said, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties."

Major media outlets observed the support Wallace received from extremist groups such as White Citizens' Councils and the John Birch Society. It has been noted that members of such groups had permeated the Wallace campaign by 1968 and, while Wallace did not openly seek their support, nor did he refute it.[19] Indeed, at least one case has been documented of the unsavory Liberty Lobby distributing a pro-Wallace pamphlet entitled "Stand up for America" despite the campaign's denial of such a connection.[20]

While Wallace carried five Southern states and won almost ten million popular votes, Nixon received 301 electoral votes, more than needed to win the election. Wallace remains the last non-Democratic, non-Republican candidate to win any electoral votes. He was the first person to accomplish this since Harry F. Byrd, an independent segregationist candidate in the 1960 presidential election. (John Hospers in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1976, Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and John Edwards in 2004 all received one electoral vote from faithless electors, but none "won" these votes.) Wallace also received the vote of one North Carolina elector who was pledged to Nixon.

[...]

On 13 January 1972, Wallace declared himself a candidate, entering the field with George McGovern, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, and nine other Democratic opponents. In Florida's primary, Wallace carried every county to win 42 percent of the vote. When running, Wallace claimed he was no longer for segregation, and had always been a moderate.[8] Though no longer in favor of segregation, Wallace was opposed to desegregation busing during his campaign, a position Nixon would adopt early on as President.[27]

For the next four months, Wallace's campaign went extremely well. However, Wallace was shot four times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972, at a time when he was receiving high ratings in the opinion polls. Bremer was seen at a Wallace rally in Wheaton, Maryland, earlier that day and two days earlier at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan. As one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, Wallace was left paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. The three others who were wounded in the shooting also survived. Bremer's diary, An Assassin's Diary, published after his arrest shows the assassination attempt was motivated by a desire for fame, not by politics and that President Nixon had been an earlier target. Bremer was sentenced to sixty-three years in prison on 4 August 1972, later to be reduced to fifty-three years at the end of September 1972. Bremer served thirty-five years and was released on parole on November 9, 2007. Wallace forgave Bremer in August 1995, and wrote to him, but Bremer never replied. Bremer's diary inspired the 1976 movie Taxi Driver which in turn inspired the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. in 1981.

Following the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland, Michigan, Tennessee, and North Carolina. From his wheelchair, Wallace spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Miami on July 11, 1972. The Democratic nominee, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, was later defeated by President Nixon who carried 49 of the 50 states; McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Wallace had a lot to do with the way Nixon ran his campaign. Wallace moderated his views over time, as he read that his voters were either dying off or moderating their views themselves.

Lester Maddox was a little complicated, but he was a segregationist. http://en.wikipedia....iki/Lester_Maddox

Both were Democrats.

I think it's too simplistic to say that the Democrats took over the Republican party. A better way to say that might be that the Republicans took over the few remaining racist Democrats, perhaps? Since the Democratic party was dominant in the south after FDR, the Republicans had to take some of them, no? Economic changes, demographic changes, losing elections, and other factors played a big role in the Republicans transitioning to a (mainly) southern party.

One can actually take the stridency that we're seeing against Obama as a "death throws" event in the history of this brand of politics - similar to the mid-late 1960s. With any luck, the changes will be less violent this time... :-(

Cheers,
Scott.