Ol' Strom has a successor in 'Ol Trent
By: Bill Minor, Capitol Correspondent
12/12/2002
Mississippi's vote in 1948 presidential election was nothing about which to boast.
JACKSON - Well, Strom Thurmond has turned 100, the oldest guy to ever sit in the United States Senate.
My, it doesn't seem that long ago when I heard a South Carolina Democratic governor named J. Strom Thurmond make a fire-eating states' rights speech lathered with white supremacy here in Jackson's old City Auditorium.
It was May 10, 1948. A crowd of 2,000 like-minded rebellious Southern Democrats whooped and hollered. Billed as a Southwide rally of states' rights Democrats, it became the starting point of the historic Dixiecrat break with the National Democratic Party.
Though later years those connected with the Dixiecrat movement, including Thurmond, would contend it was about the constitutional question of states' rights and not about race, they conveniently forget the racist rhetoric they used back then to rally the troops.
Thurmond in 1948: "I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, there's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches."
As history records, all-white delegations or parts of delegations from several Southern states, led by Mississippi's Gov. Fielding L. Wright, walked out of the National Democratic Convention at Philadelphia, Penn., in July 1948 when the convention adopted a pro-civil rights platform plank.
Thurmond's South Carolina delegation was not among them. Their reason, says South Carolina historian Jack Bass, was that either of two challenging delegations, one mostly black, was ready to move into the delegation's seats.
Less than a week after leaving Philadelphia, several thousand Mississippi-led states' righters from a half-dozen Dixie states convened in a Confederate flag-waving rump convention at Birmingham to nominate their own presidential ticket aimed at blocking the re-election of President Harry Truman.
The mild-mannered and gracious Wright had let two of us reporters from Jackson who covered his administration hang out in his hotel suite - something that would be unthinkable these days - and hear some of the horse trading that went on.
Practically every Southern state official on hand wanted Mississippi's Wright to head the ticket. But he modestly declined the top spot, though agreeing to become the vice-presidential nominee.
The ticket-makers next turned to Gov. Ben Laney of Arkansas for the top spot. But Laney, after listening to some of the bellicose rhetoric being hurled by speakers at the convention, packed his bags and went home to pledge himself for Harry Truman.
Thurmond, who had shown up at Birmingham to lend his backing to Wright and Laney, suddenly became the only available governor to take the top slot, and he promptly accepted it with gusto.
The Thurmond-Wright ticket, despite the best-laid and ballyhooed plans of the bolt architects to garner enough Southwide votes in the electoral college to block Truman's re-election, won only four Dixie states - Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina - far short of jamming the electoral machinery.
More than a half-century later, it seems incomprehensible that the same Strom Thurmond who ran for president on the Dixiecrat ticket in 1948 as a thundering white supremacist, is the U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, who now is stepping down at age 100 as a patron saint of the Republican Party.
Ol' Strom, they call him in South Carolina, in the early 1960s switched to the GOP. More importantly, he is identified as the key player in Richard Nixon's 1968 "Southern strategy," that eventually lured most of the once-solidly Democratic South into the GOP column.
Long ago, Thurmond set about to repair his former segregationist image by becoming the first member of the South Carolina delegation in Congress to hire a black staffer and later the first Deep South senator to nominate a black for the federal bench.
As several authors have written in their assessments of Thurmond's rather phenomenal career, rather than make an admission or apology to blacks for his past sins, Ol' Strom simply reshaped his political outlook to conform to the realities of a new electorate in his state.
Still, the most uncouth remark to come out of the occasion of Strom's 100th birthday party last week on Capitol Hill came from Mississippi's own Republican Sen. Trent Lott, soon to be the Senate majority leader.
Boasting that when Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, "We (Mississippi) voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we (the U.S.) wouldn't have had all these problems over all the years, either."
Was our Trent just kidding? That's how one right-wing talking head on TV dusted off the episode.
Mississippi voted 85 percent for Dixiecrat Thurmond in 1948 and only 15 percent for President Truman. However, not one black Mississippian was able to vote in that election. Zilch. Zero.
Is such a record of invidious discrimination against the African-American population of Mississippi (then higher percentage-wise than it is now) anything to kid about?
Strom is history. But Trent is still very much a prime-time actor on the national stage and carries a heavier burden to do penance for insouciant remarks.
That wasn't the only Trent transgression of the past week. He also violated a long-standing courtesy code of the Senate that one member will not invade another state to campaign against a fellow senator.
Lott joined the other Republican heavyweights, including George Bush, who swooped into Louisiana in an all-out drive to unseat Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.
However, the moderate Landrieu whipped the whole army of GOP invaders, Lott included. In the least, Trent needn't expect an invitation to next year's Louisiana Mardi Gras ball in Washington.
Showing posts with label Dixiecrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dixiecrats. Show all posts
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Dixiecrats Highlights
Dixiecrats
The Dixiecrats were members of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which splintered from the Democratic Party in 1948.
Strom Thurmond
The faction consisted of malcontented southern delegates to the Democratic Party who protested the insertion of a civil rights plank in the party platform and U.S. president Harry S. Truman's advocacy of that plank. Before the convention southern delegates were dismayed by Truman's 1948 executive order to desegregate the armed forces. With that backdrop many southern delegates were already concerned as they headed to the 1948 Democratic convention.
When the Democratic national convention convened in July 1948, some Alabama and Mississippi delegates were prepared to walk out of the convention if the civil rights platform passed. When it did, all of the Mississippi delegates and half of the Alabama delegates stormed out of the convention. On July 17, 1948, the Alabama and Mississippi delegations, and a few individual delegates from other southern states, met in Birmingham, Alabama, to select a presidential ticket to oppose the Democrats. The Dixiecrats chose South Carolina's governor, Strom Thurmond, for president and Fielding L. Wright, governor of Mississippi, for vice president.
The goal of the Dixiecrats was twofold. First, the splinter party hoped to deny both the Democrats and Republicans a majority in the electoral college, forcing the election into the U.S. House of Representatives.
Strom Thurmond
Second, Dixiecrat leaders maneuvered to have the Thurmond-Wright ticket declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket on the ballots of all southern states. In the end this ploy succeeded only in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, all Deep South states. Georgia was the lone Deep South state to remain loyal to the national Democratic Party; the Dixiecrat ticket appeared on Georgia ballots as a third party.
On election day 1948, the Dixiecrats won Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina but failed to win any state in which Thurmond appeared as a third-party candidate. In Georgia, Thurmond came in a distant second to Truman. A closer analysis of the Dixiecrat phenomenon revealed an interesting pattern: the Dixiecrats were most successful in the states and counties where black citizens were the most numerous. The Deep South states boasted the largest black populations, and white voters in those states were the most determined to preserve racial segregation and black disenfranchisement, and thus were more likely to vote for the Dixiecrat ticket. A similar trend is evident in county-level election returns, in which Thurmond was more likely to win counties where black populations were large and white voters feared racial change. In the border South, where blacks were less abundant and white voters were less preoccupied with segregation, support for the Dixiecrat candidates was negligible.
Although the Dixiecrats immediately dissolved after the 1948 election, their impact lasted much longer. Many white voters who initially cast Dixiecrat ballots gravitated back toward the Democratic Party only grudgingly, and they remained nominal Democrats at best. Ultimately, the Dixiecrat movement paved the way for the rise of the modern Republican Party in the South. Many former Dixiecrat supporters eventually became Republicans, as was highlighted by Strom Thurmond's conversion in the 1960s.
Suggested Reading
Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson, Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1998).
Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation, new ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).
Scott E. Buchanan, Columbus State University
The Dixiecrats were members of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which splintered from the Democratic Party in 1948.
Strom Thurmond
The faction consisted of malcontented southern delegates to the Democratic Party who protested the insertion of a civil rights plank in the party platform and U.S. president Harry S. Truman's advocacy of that plank. Before the convention southern delegates were dismayed by Truman's 1948 executive order to desegregate the armed forces. With that backdrop many southern delegates were already concerned as they headed to the 1948 Democratic convention.
When the Democratic national convention convened in July 1948, some Alabama and Mississippi delegates were prepared to walk out of the convention if the civil rights platform passed. When it did, all of the Mississippi delegates and half of the Alabama delegates stormed out of the convention. On July 17, 1948, the Alabama and Mississippi delegations, and a few individual delegates from other southern states, met in Birmingham, Alabama, to select a presidential ticket to oppose the Democrats. The Dixiecrats chose South Carolina's governor, Strom Thurmond, for president and Fielding L. Wright, governor of Mississippi, for vice president.
The goal of the Dixiecrats was twofold. First, the splinter party hoped to deny both the Democrats and Republicans a majority in the electoral college, forcing the election into the U.S. House of Representatives.
Strom Thurmond
Second, Dixiecrat leaders maneuvered to have the Thurmond-Wright ticket declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket on the ballots of all southern states. In the end this ploy succeeded only in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, all Deep South states. Georgia was the lone Deep South state to remain loyal to the national Democratic Party; the Dixiecrat ticket appeared on Georgia ballots as a third party.
On election day 1948, the Dixiecrats won Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina but failed to win any state in which Thurmond appeared as a third-party candidate. In Georgia, Thurmond came in a distant second to Truman. A closer analysis of the Dixiecrat phenomenon revealed an interesting pattern: the Dixiecrats were most successful in the states and counties where black citizens were the most numerous. The Deep South states boasted the largest black populations, and white voters in those states were the most determined to preserve racial segregation and black disenfranchisement, and thus were more likely to vote for the Dixiecrat ticket. A similar trend is evident in county-level election returns, in which Thurmond was more likely to win counties where black populations were large and white voters feared racial change. In the border South, where blacks were less abundant and white voters were less preoccupied with segregation, support for the Dixiecrat candidates was negligible.
Although the Dixiecrats immediately dissolved after the 1948 election, their impact lasted much longer. Many white voters who initially cast Dixiecrat ballots gravitated back toward the Democratic Party only grudgingly, and they remained nominal Democrats at best. Ultimately, the Dixiecrat movement paved the way for the rise of the modern Republican Party in the South. Many former Dixiecrat supporters eventually became Republicans, as was highlighted by Strom Thurmond's conversion in the 1960s.
Suggested Reading
Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson, Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond (Atlanta: Longstreet, 1998).
Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation, new ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984).
Scott E. Buchanan, Columbus State University
States Rights Party
SR
Description The States Rights Party was a political movement in the years 1948 to 1964, primarily in the southern states. The party was sometimes called the "Dixiecrat" Party, although the latter term is not limited to members of the States Rights Party.
The States' Rights Party broke from the Democratic Party in 1948. The Party opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. The party slogan was "Segregation Forever!"
The party was formed after thirty-five delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Even before the convention started, the Southern delegates were upset by President Harry S. Truman's executive order to racially integrate the armed forces. The walkout was prompted by a controversial speech by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota urging the party to adopt an anti-segregationist plank in the platform.
After President Truman's endorsement of the civil rights plank, Gov. J. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) helped organize the seceding delegates into a separate party, whose platform was ostensibly concerned with states' rights. The Dixiecrats held their convention in Birmingham AL on 7/17/1948, where they nominated Thurmond for president and Gov. Fielding L. Wright (D-MS) for vice president. Dixiecrat leaders worked to have Thurmond-Wright declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket in Southern states. They succeeded only in Alabama and Mississippi; in other states, they ran as a third-party ticket. These included Arkansas, whose governor-elect, Sid McMath, a young prosecutor and decorated World War II Marine veteran, vigorously supported Truman in speeches across the region, much to the consternation of the sitting governor, Ben Laney, an ardent Thurmond supporter. Laney later used McMath's pro-Truman stance against him during his 1950 re-election bid which McMath won handily. Efforts to paint other Truman loyalists as "turncoats" generally failed, although the seeds of discontent were planted which in years to come took their toll on Southern moderates, among them Congressman Brooks Hays of the Second (central) District of Arkansas, whose efforts at reconciliation during the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis made him vulnerable to defeat in 1958 by a segregationist surrogate fielded by forces loyal to then-Governor Orval Faubus, whose justification for using the national guard to bar entry to black pupils in defiance of a federal court order echoed much of the 1948 Dixiecrat platform.
On election day 1948, the Thurmond-Wright ticket carried the previously solid Democratic states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, receiving 1,169,021 popular votes and 39 electoral votes. Since the party saw itself as the Southern version of the Democratic Party, the SRP did not sponsor candidates for other offices in 1948.
Conservative Iowa Democrats formed a States Rights chapter and ran candidates in the election of 1950. Ernest J. Seeman, the nominee for U.S. Senate, received 571 votes, and Stanley S. Baker, candidate for U.S. House, received 147 votes.
In 1952, the hard right supported Douglas MacArthur in his unofficial bid for the Presidency. MacArthur was sponsored by three different parties, each with its own nominee for vice president.
The second States Rights Party National Convention was held in the Mosque Auditorium, Richmond VA, on 10/15/1956. An earlier convention of the Constitution Party held in Ft. Worth nominated T. Coleman Andrews for President. However, J. Bracken Lee of Utah wanted to hold a broader-based convention of the far-right. He helped to organize the SRP convention, held just three weeks before the election. The convention endorsed Andrews and nominated Sen. Thomas H. Werdel (R-CA) for vice president.
The third States Rights Party National Convention was held in Dayton OH on 3/19-20/1960. The convention was attended by delegates from 28 states. Given the more liberal leaning of the major contenders for the nominations of the two major parties, the SRP felt they had a chance of running a strong ticket for the 1960 election. They nominated Gov. Orval E. Faubus (D-AR) for President and John G. Crommelin (AL) for vice president. Faubus rejected the nomination but appeared on the ballot in several states nevertheless. The party won 209,314 votes, placing third behind the two major parties.
The fourth and last States Rights Party National Convention was held in Louisville KY on 3/1-2/1964. The party nominated John Kasper of TN for president and Jesse B. Stoner of GA for vice president. Two events happened in 1964 that worked together to kill the SRP (which by this time was operating under the name of the National States Rights Party). First, the Republian Party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater for President, cutting into the same base of supporters as the SRP. Second, northern right-wing parties held separate conventions and nominated other right-wing candidates such as Joseph Lightburn and T. Coleman Andrews. Kasper received only 6,953 votes. Jack Gunderson, the party's other candidate of 1964, received 644 votes in his race for the U.S. House from MT. The remnants of the party were absorbed into George Wallace's American Independent Party in 1968.
Description The States Rights Party was a political movement in the years 1948 to 1964, primarily in the southern states. The party was sometimes called the "Dixiecrat" Party, although the latter term is not limited to members of the States Rights Party.
The States' Rights Party broke from the Democratic Party in 1948. The Party opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. The party slogan was "Segregation Forever!"
The party was formed after thirty-five delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Even before the convention started, the Southern delegates were upset by President Harry S. Truman's executive order to racially integrate the armed forces. The walkout was prompted by a controversial speech by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota urging the party to adopt an anti-segregationist plank in the platform.
After President Truman's endorsement of the civil rights plank, Gov. J. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) helped organize the seceding delegates into a separate party, whose platform was ostensibly concerned with states' rights. The Dixiecrats held their convention in Birmingham AL on 7/17/1948, where they nominated Thurmond for president and Gov. Fielding L. Wright (D-MS) for vice president. Dixiecrat leaders worked to have Thurmond-Wright declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket in Southern states. They succeeded only in Alabama and Mississippi; in other states, they ran as a third-party ticket. These included Arkansas, whose governor-elect, Sid McMath, a young prosecutor and decorated World War II Marine veteran, vigorously supported Truman in speeches across the region, much to the consternation of the sitting governor, Ben Laney, an ardent Thurmond supporter. Laney later used McMath's pro-Truman stance against him during his 1950 re-election bid which McMath won handily. Efforts to paint other Truman loyalists as "turncoats" generally failed, although the seeds of discontent were planted which in years to come took their toll on Southern moderates, among them Congressman Brooks Hays of the Second (central) District of Arkansas, whose efforts at reconciliation during the 1957 Little Rock School Crisis made him vulnerable to defeat in 1958 by a segregationist surrogate fielded by forces loyal to then-Governor Orval Faubus, whose justification for using the national guard to bar entry to black pupils in defiance of a federal court order echoed much of the 1948 Dixiecrat platform.
On election day 1948, the Thurmond-Wright ticket carried the previously solid Democratic states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, receiving 1,169,021 popular votes and 39 electoral votes. Since the party saw itself as the Southern version of the Democratic Party, the SRP did not sponsor candidates for other offices in 1948.
Conservative Iowa Democrats formed a States Rights chapter and ran candidates in the election of 1950. Ernest J. Seeman, the nominee for U.S. Senate, received 571 votes, and Stanley S. Baker, candidate for U.S. House, received 147 votes.
In 1952, the hard right supported Douglas MacArthur in his unofficial bid for the Presidency. MacArthur was sponsored by three different parties, each with its own nominee for vice president.
The second States Rights Party National Convention was held in the Mosque Auditorium, Richmond VA, on 10/15/1956. An earlier convention of the Constitution Party held in Ft. Worth nominated T. Coleman Andrews for President. However, J. Bracken Lee of Utah wanted to hold a broader-based convention of the far-right. He helped to organize the SRP convention, held just three weeks before the election. The convention endorsed Andrews and nominated Sen. Thomas H. Werdel (R-CA) for vice president.
The third States Rights Party National Convention was held in Dayton OH on 3/19-20/1960. The convention was attended by delegates from 28 states. Given the more liberal leaning of the major contenders for the nominations of the two major parties, the SRP felt they had a chance of running a strong ticket for the 1960 election. They nominated Gov. Orval E. Faubus (D-AR) for President and John G. Crommelin (AL) for vice president. Faubus rejected the nomination but appeared on the ballot in several states nevertheless. The party won 209,314 votes, placing third behind the two major parties.
The fourth and last States Rights Party National Convention was held in Louisville KY on 3/1-2/1964. The party nominated John Kasper of TN for president and Jesse B. Stoner of GA for vice president. Two events happened in 1964 that worked together to kill the SRP (which by this time was operating under the name of the National States Rights Party). First, the Republian Party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater for President, cutting into the same base of supporters as the SRP. Second, northern right-wing parties held separate conventions and nominated other right-wing candidates such as Joseph Lightburn and T. Coleman Andrews. Kasper received only 6,953 votes. Jack Gunderson, the party's other candidate of 1964, received 644 votes in his race for the U.S. House from MT. The remnants of the party were absorbed into George Wallace's American Independent Party in 1968.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)