 Discontented with that direction, Southern Dixiecrat candidates twice carried the county, and Republican candidates carried the county three times in this timespan, twice before many African Americans began to vote.Following Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as a consequence of the civil rights movement, most African Americans in Bamberg County entered the Democratic Party, which had supported enforcement of their rights on the national level.But they did not get to full voting strength in the county until after the 1972 presidential election, in which conservative whites carried the county for incumbent Republican President Richard M. Nixon.