200 years after the civil war,
Your date is wrong, but everything else is correct. Civil rights legislation
could not have been passed without Republican support, despite the fact that the Democrats owned congress lock, stock, and barrel at the time. For that matter, the south went Republican after Civil Right was passed because poor white southerners could actually vote ... and most of them were Republican.
What has changed places is where the rich people are in this country. The vast majority of them are Democrats. Democrat party candidates for office at the national level get much of their donations from large corporations. The lions share of republican donations, however, come from small single person donations.
The Democrat party just owns the media, so they had an overwhelming propaganda advantage until Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the blogosphere.
Which neatly explains why they hate conservative media so much. They no longer have an unquestioned monopoly on the news.