1890s and its demands for reform. Others became apathetic towards politics, feeling that their votes made little difference in the outcome of elections and government decisions. While the South was under Democratic Party dominance throughout the first half of the 20th century, the power and influence of courthouse cliques varied across the region. They generally wielded more control in lowland areas historically the site of plantations than in the more economically egalitarian Piedmont and mountainous areas. By the 1930s and 1940s courthouse machines in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia generally aligned themselves with a dominant faction within their respective state Democratic Party organizations. In other states, particularly Georgia, the cliques would form ad hoc alliances to shape the outcome of state elections. Nationwide, the general trend of apportioning state representatives to individual counties gave political organizations in rural counties outsized influence in state affairs. Courthouse cliques maintained a high degree of influence over Southern politics through the 1950s. Decline Corruption in county governments led civic groups such as the National Short Ballot Organization to begin calling for reform in the early 20th century. In response to the Great Depression in the 1930s, the United States federal government initiated a series of programs known as the New Deal, greatly contributing to the growth of federal and state bureaucracies and thereby challenging the courthouse cliques' positions as centers of political power. In the post-World War II era the South underwent significant social change. Returning war veterans made efforts to eject local political machines, which they viewed as obstacles to economic growth. In the "Battle of Athens" of 1946, armed veterans in McMinn County, Tennessee engaged in a shootout with sheriff's deputies in the employ of the local courthouse ring, forcing them to surrender ballot boxes and ousting the local government. Across the South urbanization, industrialization, and immigration from the North increased. Educational opportunities increased and improvements in mass communication were made. These changes cultivated the growth of a cosmopolitan culture in the South and boosted the strength of the Republican Party. The promulgation of the one man, one vote doctrine by the United States Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr and Gray v. Sanders and subsequent reapportionment shifted political power away from rural counties and towards urban areas. Meanwhile, civil rights legislation enabled millions of black people in the South to vote. Faced with these political disruptions, courthouse cliques quickly declined throughout the