A group that split from the Democratic Party in 1948, the States’ Rights Party represented a group of dissident southern Democrats who opposed President Harry S. Truman and the Democratic Party’s civil rights policy, particularly its support of desegregation.
In the early 1940s, many southern Democrats argued that the national Democratic Party was too liberal in its support of African Americans and organized labor. These southern conservatives withheld their support from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1944 presidential election until he dropped liberal vice president Henry Wallace from the ticket. When Truman became president in 1945, however, he alienated these same southern conservatives by using the Fair Deal and his Committee on Civil Rights to gain support among liberals, labor, and blacks. Although he was aware of the South’s increasing alienation, Truman reasoned that southern Democrats would always remain loyal to the Democratic Party rather than support the Republican Party.
Southern Democrats, angry over Truman’s apparent disregard for the South, met at a conference of States’ Rights Democrats in Jackson, Mississippi, just two months before the 1948 national Democratic Party convention. They urged the national party to denounce civil rights programs and support states’ rights, but the conference was unsuccessful in changing the national party’s platform. At the July national Democratic Party convention, the Truman administration tried to placate the South by simply restating its vague and weak platform on civil rights from the 1944 presidential election. Minneapolis mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, however, led the Democratic liberal forces in insisting on a strong plank supporting specific civil rights measures. Following the adoption of this platform, the entire Mississippi delegation and half of the Alabama delegation walked out of the convention in protest.
On July 17, 1948, three days after the Democratic convention, Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi invited anti-civil rights Democrats to Birmingham, Alabama. The States’ Rights Democrats, or the Dixiecrat Party as they were popularly known, officially established their own political party when 6,000 southern delegates met to nominate their own candidates for the 1948 presidential election. The Dixiecrats nominated Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as their presidential candidate and Fielding Wright as the vice presidential candidate.
Following the nominations, the Dixiecrats crafted a platform that clearly articulated the objectives of the States’ Rights Party. The Dixiecrats argued that the policies of the executive branch of the government and its control of the Supreme Court led to a totalitarian state. Only by a strict adherence to the U. S. Constitution and its system of checks and balances could the rights of the states and individuals be upheld. The Dixiecrats, therefore, supported the supremacy of the Constitution and opposed the centralism and bureaucratization of the government. They also strongly advocated all forms of segregation and opposed any federal civil rights program, including that advocated by the Democratic Party. The Dixiecrats argued that the enforcement of a civil rights program destroyed the social, economic, and political life of the South. Furthermore, they argued that the adoption of a civil rights program should be left to the discretion of the individual states, not the federal government.
Although the Dixiecrats claimed to work for southern interests, neither the majority of southern Democrats nor the rest of the country supported the States’ Rights Party. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough votes to throw the election into the House of Representatives in order to bargain over civil rights. Many southern Democrats, however, remained loyal to Truman, fearful that a Democratic split would lead to a Republican victory and the loss of federal projects and patronage. In the 1948 presidential election, the party netted only 1,169,134 votes, or 2.4 percent of the popular vote. Its 39 electoral votes came from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
Immediately following the election, the States’ Rights Party sharply declined as most members returned to the Democratic Party. Thurmond became a member of the Republican Party while serving in the U. S. Senate. Although the party ran no candidates in the 1952 election, it did resurface to nominate Virginian T. Coleman Andrews for president and Californian Thomas H. Werdel for vice president in the 1956 election. This time, the party received only 107,929 popular votes and no electoral votes. The party disintegrated shortly after the election.
Further reading: Amile B. Ader, The Di:xiecrat Movement: Its Role in Third Party Politics (Washington, D. C.: Public Affairs Press, 1955).
—Donna J. Siebenthaler
World History
