This is a great article on Trent Lott's early political career and its emphasis on segregation. The most interesting part, to me, is the text of this flyer connected to Strom Thurmond's campaign in 1948:

Fliers with sample ballots for the state Democratic ticket that year screamed a white supremacist call to arms against President Harry S. Truman and his "vicious anti-Southern program." A vote for Truman, the fliers warned, would mean "anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever."

Lynching is the "way of life" of the South? I thought back then it was agriculture...