Redeemers in the context of Liberal wing of the Democratic Party (United States)

Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States.

Before the American Civil War, Southern Democrats mostly believed in Jacksonian democracy. In the 19th century, they defended slavery in the United States and promoted its expansion into the Western United States against the Free Soil opposition in the Northern United States. The United States presidential election of 1860 formalized the split in the Democratic Party and brought about the American Civil War. After the Reconstruction Era ended in the late 1870s, so-called redeemers were Southern Democrats who controlled all the southern states and disenfranchised African-Americans.

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation. The origin of the term "Jim Crow" is obscure, but probably refers to slave songs that refer to an African dance called "Jump Jim Crow." The last of the Jim Crow laws were generally overturned in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Formal and informal racial segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures (Redeemers) to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-white movement.

In practice, Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the South, beginning in the 1870s. Jim Crow laws were upheld in 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court laid out its "separate but equal" legal doctrine concerning facilities for African Americans. Public education had essentially been segregated since it began during the Reconstruction era after 1863. Companion laws excluded most African Americans from the vote in the South.

The Democratic Party is an American political party that has significantly evolved and includes various factions throughout its history. Into the 21st century, the liberal faction represents the modern American liberalism that began with the New Deal in the 1930s and continued with both the New Frontier and Great Society in the 1960s. The moderate faction supports Third Way politics that includes center-left social policies and centrist fiscal policies, mostly associated with the New Democrats and Clintonism of the 1990s, while the left-wing faction (known as progressives) advocates for progressivism and social democracy. Historical factions of the Democratic Party include the founding Jacksonians, the Copperheads and War Democrats during the American Civil War, the Redeemers, Bourbon Democrats, and Silverites in the late-19th century, and the Southern Democrats and New Deal Democrats in the 20th century. The early Democratic Party was also influenced by Jeffersonians and the Young America movement.