Barack Obama scored some stunning victories Super Tuesday en route to winning more states than Hillary Clinton: He defeated her by 79-17 percent of the vote in Idaho, 75-25 percent in Alaska, 61-37 in North Dakota, and 57-39 in Utah. But to me, the biggest surprise is how well Obama is doing in the South.

After a victory over Clinton in South Carolina, Obama handily outpolled the New York senator in Alabama and Georgia and is expected to win in Mississippi and possibly Louisiana. This is an amazing accomplishment in a region known as much for its blood-soaked racial politics as it is for delectable food and hospitality.

As one who grew up in Alabama, I never thought I'd live to see this day.

I was 16 years old when Gov. George C. Wallace tried to block the admission of two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, my hometown. That televised "stand in the schoolhouse door" was in 1963, the same year four little black girls were killed in the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

The next year, in Georgia, future Gov. Lester Maddox gained notoriety by closing his restaurant rather than comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act requiring him to serve all customers. He stood in the door carrying a pistol as he denied service to blacks. His supporters were in the background, wielding ax handles.

Wallace and Maddox represented a mindset that proclaimed that every white person was superior to every African American. As a black child growing up in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, I was reminded of this depraved thinking at every turn. If I wanted to ride the bus, I had to sit in the back. If I wanted a drink of water, I'd have to get it from a "colored" fountain. And if I needed to use a toilet, it had to be one designated for black males.

The spirit of white superiority was enshrined in customs and laws.

A look at those laws today is a stark reminder of the not-so-distant past:

South Carolina: "No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants or station eating houses, in times limited by common carriers of said passengers, shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter."

Alabama: "Every employer of white or Negro males shall provide for such white or Negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities."

Georgia: "The officers in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons."
Those Jim Crow laws were in effect until the mid-1960s.

Throughout the years, both Democrats and Republicans have sought to exploit racial tension in the South for political gain. In 1948, South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond left the Democratic convention and launched a presidential bid as a Dixiecrat after Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota incorporated a civil rights provision in the party's platform.

In 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater decided to ignore the black vote and seek the support of white Southerners opposed to desegregation. He was soundly beaten but that did not deter Richard Nixon from adopting a similar, this time victorious, strategy in 1968. In 1972, Nixon had to split the white vote with George Wallace, who ran as an independent. After Wallace was shot while campaigning in Laurel, Md., and withdrew from the race, Nixon won every Goldwater state and was elected president over George McGovern.

Sending a strong message to conservative white Southerners, Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where the bodies of three civil rights workers were discovered. Claiming 51 percent of the Southern vote, Reagan defeated former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter in every Southern state except his native Georgia.

After Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis, another ineffectual Northerner, for president in 1988 and lost yet again, they finally countered in 1992 with a double-Bubba ticket - Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Al Gore of Tennessee. Not only did the Clinton-Gore ticket win, it also was the first time Democrats won the White House back-to-back since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Hillary Clinton was hoping to capitalize on her husband's popularity in the region. However, she has had only mixed results, winning Tennessee and an uncontested Florida.

Fortunately, the South is vastly different from the South I knew during my childhood. The University of Alabama has since elected an African American as its student body president. Atlanta and Birmingham have elected a string of black mayors; Alabama and Georgia have African Americans in Congress. Public schools in the South are more desegregated than in any other region of the country.

As Obama continues to do battle with Clinton, he has already demonstrated that the South is forever a changed place.