In 2004, Alabama tried to amend the state constitution to remove (unenforceable) provisions requiring school segregation and poll taxes.

Roy Moore led the successful (the referendum failed) campaign to keep these provisions in the state constitution:

In 2004, a bipartisan coalition of Alabama leaders moved to eliminate sections of the state constitution mandating school segregation and poll taxes. They assumed it’d be an easy feat — until Roy Moore got involved.

Democrats and Republicans led by then-Gov. Bob Riley (R) worked together on an amendment to remove language in the state constitution mandating “separate schools for white and colored children” and allowing poll taxes, Jim Crow-era requirements that people to pay to vote that disenfranchised most black people.

The changes were purely symbolic — all of the state constitutional language had already been struck down by state and federal courts — but civil rights and business leaders saw it as a way to heal old wounds and make the state more attractive to big business.

The opposite happened instead, and Moore’s fierce opposition likely made the difference.

Modern conservatism is indistinguishable from racism, and has been since William F. Buckley filled The National Review with full throated endorsements of segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.