 Ever since the passage of the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation in the 1960s, black participation in the Democratic Party grew while the role of the whites diminished.This became evident in the 1988 U.S. Presidential election when Jesse Jackson, a black civil rights activist from Greenville, was chosen by South Carolina Democrats as their nominee for president.His nomination hastened the exodus of whites from the Democratic Party, but it also gave hope to blacks across the state that they could win a statewide office.