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Thurmond's Dixiecrats born in Birmingham
Lott's remarks put spotlight on one day in Southern politics
12/20/02
MARY ORNDORFF
News Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Trent Lott's job is threatened because he praised a political movement born in Birmingham in the summer of 1948, when the Dixiecrats spent one fiery pro-segregation day nominating Strom Thurmond for president.
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Upset by an emerging national Democratic Party platform to eliminate the poll tax and pass fair labor practices and anti-lynching laws, Southern state delegates walked out of the party's convention in Philadelphia on a rainy night and caught the Silver Comet train to Birmingham.
Thurmond, interestingly, was not among them, according to Kari Frederickson, an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.
"I call him the square peg nominee in this," said Frederickson, who wrote "The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968."
Ever since Mississippi's Lott declared two weeks ago that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president, his job as Republican Leader in the U.S. Senate has been in jeopardy. The controversy has also given the hastily-arranged but colorful Birmingham convention and its roots as a Mississippi-led revolt renewed attention.
South Carolina's Thurmond, then a 45-year-old Democrat, stayed in Philadelphia to second the nomination of someone other than Harry Truman for president, to no avail. With the Truman nomination secured and the civil rights platform intact, Thurmond found his way to Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium, now Boutwell Auditorium, just in time for the lunch break of the renegade gathering.
When he arrived, the party still had no nominee. At the Tutwiler Hotel, where delegates drafted resolutions, a dummy of Truman was hanged in effigy. A television network stopped broadcasting the convention at one point because the language was too inflammatory, Frederickson said.
"They were sweating it out at that point," she said.
The Dixiecrat convention was one day July 17, 1948 but it was the culmination of several years of anxiety in the South over a Northern progression toward rights for blacks and labor.
"It was the conservative opposition to the New Deal," Frederickson said. "The hard core of the Dixiecrats were really the economic elites. They didn't support federal minimum wage laws or federal protection of the right to form unions."
After the war, more blacks began to register to vote and Truman out of political and humanitarian concerns crafted a civil rights platform that he pitched to Congress in February 1948. Two weeks later, Mississippi's governor was among the first to suggest a plot to deny Truman the nomination. Thurmond tried to mediate between Truman and the Southern governors.
"He prevails, much to the chagrin of the Mississippi delegation," Frederickson said. "But then Truman refuses to meet with them."
So the governors convened an official states' rights meeting in May in Jackson, Miss.
"And Thurmond goes and gives a speech saying, `We need to do everything we can to prevent the integration of blacks,'" Frederickson said. It was all gearing up to the Democratic convention in July.
But when their efforts in Philadelphia to steer the nomination away from Truman failed, the exodus to Birmingham included the entire Mississippi delegation and half the Alabama delegation.
Famous Alabamians active in the Dixiecrat convention were former Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor and Gov. Frank Dixon. "Loyalists" who stayed in Philadelphia included future states' righter George Wallace and U.S. Sen. Lister Hill.
By midday of the convention, Dixiecrat organizers were floundering.
Dixon had turned down an offer to be the party's nominee. Another potential candidate, Arkansas Gov. Ben Laney, had checked into his hotel, got cold feet and never emerged.
So Thurmond, who had a relatively moderate record on race as governor of South Carolina, surprised his advisers and accepted the nomination.
"There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools," Thurmond said in his acceptance speech.
With then-Mississippi Gov. Fielding Wright as his running mate, the States' Rights party took shape. It wouldn't earn the nickname Dixiecrats until September, from a newspaper headline writer, Frederickson said.
By supplanting the Democratic Party on ballots in the South, the new party won in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana.
Fifty years after the Dixiecrat convention, Thurmond told The Birmingham News that the revolt was "an exciting time" but that the purpose was not to preserve segregation.
"That was not the real issue. It was the encroachment on the rights of states by the administration," Thurmond said in 1998.
As for Lott's controversial statements that he wished Thurmond would have won the presidency, Lott explained in part that he was supporting Thurmond's positions against Communism.
But Frederickson said there was no mistaking that the driving force of the Dixiecrats was race. It may have been couched under a states' rights banner, she said, but the fight was for states' rights to preserve segregation and keep black citizens from voting. "There were no other reasons to support Thurmond because he didn't run on anything else," she said.
Lott's remarks put spotlight on one day in Southern politics
12/20/02
MARY ORNDORFF
News Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Trent Lott's job is threatened because he praised a political movement born in Birmingham in the summer of 1948, when the Dixiecrats spent one fiery pro-segregation day nominating Strom Thurmond for president.
From Our Advertiser
Upset by an emerging national Democratic Party platform to eliminate the poll tax and pass fair labor practices and anti-lynching laws, Southern state delegates walked out of the party's convention in Philadelphia on a rainy night and caught the Silver Comet train to Birmingham.
Thurmond, interestingly, was not among them, according to Kari Frederickson, an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama.
"I call him the square peg nominee in this," said Frederickson, who wrote "The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968."
Ever since Mississippi's Lott declared two weeks ago that the country would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president, his job as Republican Leader in the U.S. Senate has been in jeopardy. The controversy has also given the hastily-arranged but colorful Birmingham convention and its roots as a Mississippi-led revolt renewed attention.
South Carolina's Thurmond, then a 45-year-old Democrat, stayed in Philadelphia to second the nomination of someone other than Harry Truman for president, to no avail. With the Truman nomination secured and the civil rights platform intact, Thurmond found his way to Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium, now Boutwell Auditorium, just in time for the lunch break of the renegade gathering.
When he arrived, the party still had no nominee. At the Tutwiler Hotel, where delegates drafted resolutions, a dummy of Truman was hanged in effigy. A television network stopped broadcasting the convention at one point because the language was too inflammatory, Frederickson said.
"They were sweating it out at that point," she said.
The Dixiecrat convention was one day July 17, 1948 but it was the culmination of several years of anxiety in the South over a Northern progression toward rights for blacks and labor.
"It was the conservative opposition to the New Deal," Frederickson said. "The hard core of the Dixiecrats were really the economic elites. They didn't support federal minimum wage laws or federal protection of the right to form unions."
After the war, more blacks began to register to vote and Truman out of political and humanitarian concerns crafted a civil rights platform that he pitched to Congress in February 1948. Two weeks later, Mississippi's governor was among the first to suggest a plot to deny Truman the nomination. Thurmond tried to mediate between Truman and the Southern governors.
"He prevails, much to the chagrin of the Mississippi delegation," Frederickson said. "But then Truman refuses to meet with them."
So the governors convened an official states' rights meeting in May in Jackson, Miss.
"And Thurmond goes and gives a speech saying, `We need to do everything we can to prevent the integration of blacks,'" Frederickson said. It was all gearing up to the Democratic convention in July.
But when their efforts in Philadelphia to steer the nomination away from Truman failed, the exodus to Birmingham included the entire Mississippi delegation and half the Alabama delegation.
Famous Alabamians active in the Dixiecrat convention were former Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor and Gov. Frank Dixon. "Loyalists" who stayed in Philadelphia included future states' righter George Wallace and U.S. Sen. Lister Hill.
By midday of the convention, Dixiecrat organizers were floundering.
Dixon had turned down an offer to be the party's nominee. Another potential candidate, Arkansas Gov. Ben Laney, had checked into his hotel, got cold feet and never emerged.
So Thurmond, who had a relatively moderate record on race as governor of South Carolina, surprised his advisers and accepted the nomination.
"There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools," Thurmond said in his acceptance speech.
With then-Mississippi Gov. Fielding Wright as his running mate, the States' Rights party took shape. It wouldn't earn the nickname Dixiecrats until September, from a newspaper headline writer, Frederickson said.
By supplanting the Democratic Party on ballots in the South, the new party won in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana.
Fifty years after the Dixiecrat convention, Thurmond told The Birmingham News that the revolt was "an exciting time" but that the purpose was not to preserve segregation.
"That was not the real issue. It was the encroachment on the rights of states by the administration," Thurmond said in 1998.
As for Lott's controversial statements that he wished Thurmond would have won the presidency, Lott explained in part that he was supporting Thurmond's positions against Communism.
But Frederickson said there was no mistaking that the driving force of the Dixiecrats was race. It may have been couched under a states' rights banner, she said, but the fight was for states' rights to preserve segregation and keep black citizens from voting. "There were no other reasons to support Thurmond because he didn't run on anything else," she said.