On July 17, 1948, as thunderstorms rolled over Birmingham, AL, the Dixiecrats gathered[1]. Almost 6,000 Dixiecrats came to town, nearly all toting Confederate flags. While Confederate flags had been a fixture in the South since the Civil War, the popularity of the Stars and Bars picked up after the Dixiecrat convention[2]. Some historians cite the Dixiecrat Convention as the come-back of the Confederate flag.
The convention's keynote speaker was Frank Dixon, the former governor of Alabama. The night before the conference, Dixon went on the radio and called the Dixiecrats a grassroots movement. He spoke about how amazed he was at the intensity of their actions. Then, on the morning of the 17th, a reporter stopped Dixon as he entered the convention. He said, “Truman’s civil rights program was an effort to reduce the white man to the status of a mongrel and inferior race.”
Frank Dixon wasn’t the only Dixiecrat whose ghastly words made it into the news. The convention was busy with governors, senators, delegates, and others socializing as they walked through the halls. The Southerners openly spoke about their dislike of Truman and the civil rights program. Reporters called the Southern meeting noisy, and the only people who weren’t talking were the press, radio, and newsmen who showed up from all around the country. These reporters silently followed Dixiecrats in the hallway, listening and taking notes of their conversations. Cigarette smoke filled all the rooms and the auditorium of the convention[3].
Another former governor who appeared was the former governor of Oklahoma, Alfalfa Bill Murray. Murray was 79 years old at the time, and when a reporter asked what he thought about desegregation, he said, “I’m the man who introduced Jim Crow in Oklahoma. If they introduce those civil rights bills, there will be hell to pay in the North[4].”
James Roosevelt also showed up at the convention. He called the Dixiecrats “the loyal rebels of the past[5].” The phrase stuck and was used many times during the presidential race after that.
The July 22 issues of the Washington DC Evening Star recalled the 1860 party split of the Democratic-Republican Party, which brought Abraham Lincoln’s election and the Civil War. According to the Evening Star, states’ righters split the party in 1860 when slave owners wanted to take their slaves into other territories. Then, they compared this split, saying that the 1948 party split was because of the federal intervention on racial issues like segregation, employment procedures, voting requirements, and other matters[6].
The Dixiecrats vowed to take the Solid South out of the regular party columns for the first time in 70 years. Even though the national party called for unity, the wounds in the Democratic party were too deep[7].
A packed auditorium full of angry Southerners hung on every word of Frank Dixon’s keynote address. He said the anti-lynching bill was “written patently to buy the negro vote[8].”
Here is how Dixon described Truman’s civil rights bill in his keynote address, “What is this so-called civil rights program which Truman, our Democratic President, has recommended to Congress? I do not want any misunderstanding about it among the Southern white people.
“First, the elimination of segregation in the public schools from grade schools to colleges. Your children are to be required to work and play in the company with the forced association of Negroes. Negroes are to teach them, guide them. What will that mean to your children, your hopes for them? What will it mean in immorality, in vice, in crime? Just what it means in those slum areas of the Northern cities where like conditions prevail, with results fatal to decency.
“Second, the elimination of segregation in private and ultimately in denominational schools, such as Judson, Huntington, Howard, and Birmingham-Southern, as to students and teachers as well. Suppose that you are determined not to subject your children to biracial schools and are willing to make any sacrifice to that end. You are helpless since even private schools are to be forced to permit Negroes to attend.
“Third, the elimination of segregation in trains, buses, restaurants, theaters, beauty shops, hotels, swimming pools, ball games, churches, and everywhere else people congregate. Picture life with us, men and women, when every time we leave our homes, these conditions are forced upon us. Picture the stores, the streetcars, the buses, restaurants, and churches. Picture the bitterness, the racial hostility, and the violence which will follow.
“Fourth, the elimination of segregation in places of residence and homes. This means that Negroes can build in any neighborhood, live in any apartment house.
“Fifth, the employment of Negroes in every business establishment, office, factory, and store, in the same numerical proportion that the Negro race bears to the white. In Jefferson County, this is 43%. In Alabama, generally 35%; in some counties, six to one. A department store in Jefferson County that has 100 clerks must have 43 Negroes among them; a restaurant or beauty shop employing ten must have four to five; a plant employing 1,000 must have 430. If this ratio does not prevail, then enough white employees must be fired to make it possible. Any law office, any physician’s office, comes under the law just as much and no more than any other place of business.
“Sixth, there is to be upgrading jobs and promotions on an equal basis, and the ratio must apply to all levels. There must be as many Negro foremen, as many department heads, as many bosses, as the ratio calls for. They are to be over whites Negroes alike, mixed without regard to the wishes of anyone.
“Seventh, there is to be no segregation in hospitals, either as to physicians, patients, or nurses. White men and women who must necessarily use the hospitals, public and private, are to be attended by Negro physicians and nurses, as well as by white.
“Eighth, all segregation in labor unions and professional associations such as the Bar Association and Medical Association are to be done away with.
“Ninth, the poll tax is to be eliminated, all Negroes to be registered to vote without regard to the intelligence or capacity, and all segregation is to be done away within the armed services.”
Dixon closed his speech by telling the Dixiecrats that if Republicans won, Southerners would have gotten recognition in the Democratic Party[9].
The States’ Rights Party’s Convention lasted seven hours, and the Southern States, which seceded during the Civil War, also joined the Dixiecrats in seceding from the Democratic Party. It was also the first time since 1878 that Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina turned their backs on the Democratic Party[10].
The Southern Dixiecrats selected Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to run as president and Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi for vice president[11].
At the end of the convention, the Dixiecrats had a Declaration on States’ Rights[12].
“We affirm that a political party is an instrumentality for effectuating the principles upon which the party is founded; that a platform of principles is a solemn covenant with the people and with the members of the party; that no leader of the party, in temporary power, has the right or privilege to proceed contrary to the fundamental principles of the party, or the letter or spirit of the Constitution of the United States; that to act contrary to these principles is a breach of faith, a usurpation of power, and a forfeiture of the party name and party leadership.
“We believe that racial and religious minorities should be protected in their rights guaranteed by the Constitution, but the bold defiance of the Constitution in selfish appeals to such groups for the sake of political power forges the chains of slavery of such minorities by destroying the only bulwark of protection against tyrannical majorities. The protection of the constitutional rights of a minority does not justify or require the destruction of the constitutional rights of the majority. The destruction of the constitutional limitations on the power of central Government threatens to create a totalitarian state and to destroy individual liberty in America.
“We believe that the protection of the American people against the onward march of totalitarian Government requires a faithful observance of Article X of the American Bill of Rights, which provides that: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.
“We direct attention to the fact that the first platform of the Democratic Party, adopted in 1840, resolved that: Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States and that the states are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution.” Such pronouncement is the cornerstone of the Democratic Party.
“A long train of abuses and usurpations of power by unfaithful leaders who are alien to the Democratic Parties of the States here represented has become intolerable to those who believe in the preservation of constitutional government and individual liberty in America.
“The executive department of the Government is promoting the gradual but certain growth of a totalitarian state by domination and control of a politically minded Supreme Court. As examples of the threat to our form of Government, the executive department, with the aid of the Supreme Court, has asserted national domination and control of the submerged oil-bearing land in California, schools in Oklahoma and Missouri, primary elections in Texas, South Carolina, and Louisiana, restrictive covenants in New York and the District of Columbia, and other jurisdictions, as well as religious instruction in Illinois. By asserting paramount Federal rights in these instances, a totalitarian concept has been promulgated, which threatens the integrity of the States and the basic rights of their citizens.
“We have repeatedly remonstrated with the leaders of the national organization of our party, but our petitions, entreaties, and warnings have been treated with contempt. The latest response to our entreaties was a Democratic convention in Philadelphia rigged to embarrass and humiliate the South. This alleged Democratic assembly called for a civil rights law that would eliminate segregation of every kind from all American life, prohibit all forms of discrimination in private employment, in public and private instruction and administration, and treatment of students; in the operation of public and private health facilities; in all transportation, and require equal access to all places of public accommodation for persons of all races, colors, creeds, and national origin.
“This infamous and iniquitous program calls for the reorganization of the civil rights section of the Department of Justice with a substantial increase in a bureaucratic staff to be devoted exclusively to the enforcement of the civil rights program, the establishment within the FBI of a special unit of investigators and a police state in a totalitarian centralized, bureaucratic government.
“This convention hypocritically denounced totalitarianism abroad but unblushingly proposed and approved it at home. This convention would strengthen the grip of a police state upon liberty-loving people by the imposition of penalties upon local public officers who failed or refused to act in accordance with its ideas of suppressing mob violence[13].
“We point out that if a foreign power undertook to force upon the people of the United States the measures advocated by the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, with respect to civil rights, it would mean war, and the entire Nation would resist such effort.
“The convention that insulted the South in the party platform advocated giving the Virginia Islands and other dependencies of the United States the maximum degree of local self-government. When an effort was made to amend this part of the platform to make it read that the party was giving the Virginia Islands and the several States the maximum degree of local self-government, the amendment adding the words ‘these several States’ was stricken out, and the sovereign States were denied the rights that the party favors giving the Virginia Islands.
“We point out that the South, with click-like regularity, has furnished the Democratic Party approximately 50% of the vote necessary to nominate a President every four years for nearly a century. In 1920 the only States in the union that went Democratic were the 11 Southern States. Notwithstanding this rugged loyalty to the party, the Master of Political intrigue now allows the Republican States in which there is scarcely a Democratic officeholder to dominate and control the party and fashion its policies.
“As Democrats who are irrevocably committed to Democracy as defined and expounded by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson, and who believe that all necessary steps must be taken for its preservation, we declare to the people of the United States as follows:
“1. We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man.
“2. We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights vouchsafed by it to every citizen of this republic.
“3. We stand for social and economic justice, which we believe can be vouchsafed to all citizens only by strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction of the constitutional rights of the States and individuals. We oppose the totalitarian, centralized, bureaucratic government and the police state called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican conventions.
“4. We stand for the segregation of races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without government interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home rule, local self-Government, and minimum interference with individual rights.
“5. We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program called for the elimination of segregation, social equality by the Federal flat, regulation of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement[14].
“6. We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic, and political life of the Southern people and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed, or national origin in appreciable numbers.
“7. We stand for the checks and balances provided by the three departments of our Government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the Executive and Judicial Departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish a nationwide police State in this republic that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.
“8. We demand that there be returned to the people, to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights, and the discharge of our responsibility as Democrats for human welfare. We oppose denial of those rights by political parties, barter, or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government.
We call upon all Democrats and upon all loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman and Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a police state in the United States of America[15].”
[1] Evening Star, “South Shaping Revolt Against Party Today, {July 17, 1948)
[2] Associated Press, “Southern Revolt Steps Up Sale of Stars and Bars,” Evening Star, (July 23, 1948)
[3] Associated Press, “Authentic Smoke-Filled Rooms Appear at Revolt Convention,” Evening Star, (July 17, 1948)
[4] Evening Star, “South Shaping Revolt Against Party Today, {July 17, 1948)
[5] Gould Lincoln, “Loyal Rebels of the Past Seek to Heal Party,” Evening Star, (July 17. 1948)
[6] Francis P. Douglas, “When Democrats First Split,” Evening Star, (July 22, 1948)
[7] Evening Star, “South Shaping Revolt Against Party Today, (July 17, 1948)
[8] Associated Press, “Partial Text of Revolt Keynote Address,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[9] Associated Press, “Partial Text of Revolt Keynote Address,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[10] Evening Star, “South Shaping Revolt Against Party Today, (July 17, 1948)
[11] J. A. O’Leary, “Thurmond, Wright Selected to Head States’ Rights Ticket,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[12] Associated Press, “Declaration on States’ Rights,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[13] Associated Press, “Declaration on States’ Rights,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[14] Associated Press, “Declaration on States’ Rights,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)
[15] Associated Press, “Declaration on States’ Rights,” Evening Star, (July 18, 1948)