Nixon accepts the Republican nomination and deploys "law and order" as racial code

Richard Nixon accepts the Republican presidential nomination at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach on August 8, 1968, building his acceptance speech around the theme of "law and order" in response to urban unrest, civil rights protests, and the antiwar movement. Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips has already mapped an internal campaign memo advising that winning conservative Democrats will turn on the "law and order/Negro socio-economic revolution syndrome." Nixon bluntly tells the convention that when he says law and order, it is not a code word for racism — but his core audience, including white Southerners fleeing the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act, understands the subtext. Nixon goes on to win Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Historians trace his convention speech as the public launch of the Southern Strategy's coded language phase that would define Republican messaging on race for the next five decades.