WI: Nixon won the black vote in 1960

Nixon was, and IMO, still is widely held in high regard amongst older Native Americans. Whatever his other faults, he did a lot for us.
 
. . . People in Boston didn't want kids of the ghetto getting bused into their kids school . . .
I'm glad you brought up Boston. We could also talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC in Chicago, which I think was as difficult as any place in the South.

I'll try and come up with something tomorrow that's both reasonably hopeful and reasonably realistic. I can't make any promises and feel free to jump in, too.
 
Is it possible that Nixon adopted the southern strategy in 1968 to punish blacks for voting against him in 1960?

Not a matter of punishment--just "going hunting where the ducks are" in Goldwater's words. https://books.google.com/books?id=2HoYDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA119

At the same time, he did not want to go *too* far in opposing the civil rights movement--presumably not because he expected to get many African American votes but because he did not want to alienate moderate *white* voters too much. His record on civil rights was therefore a bit more complicated than is sometimes assumed: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27551552?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
 
. . . in Boston . . .
My big answer's going to be that if Civil Rights had started just a little bit earlier post-WWII, then maybe we're trying medium-scale experiments on desegregating between urban and suburban schools, and on affirmative action, during the 1960s. That is, during a time of economic expansion. Much easier this way. :)

*Maybe if Truman had moved a little quicker in desegregating the armed forces and/or moderates in the South made the strategic decision to ramp up all public education, so that along the way they could more believably claim that schools for African-American children were in fact largely equal to those for white children.
 
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