Forgetting History

Over the years many of my Republican friends have expressed wonder that the party of Lincoln, the creator of the Emancipation Proclamation, has failed to maintain its place in the political heart of the black electorate. After all the deep south Democrats were rightly viewed as the party of racial oppression via jim crow laws. What happened?

A case study of the causation:

Under pressure from the post war civil rights movement Democrat President Harry Truman, following the lead of President Roosevelt, began to raise civil rights issues as a national issue. This of course raised the political ire of the southern democrats and resulted in the formation of the Dixiecrat (southern “states rights”democrat) party.

The then Democrat Governor of South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, was chosen to represent the new segregationist party in the 1948 Presidential election.

This quote from a Thurmond campaign speech best typifies the attitude of the dixiecrat party and the beginning of the end of the democratic control of southern politics. “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that 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.”

Later Thurmond was elected to a Senate seat as a Democrat but as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and he along with other southern democrats switched parties.

Paul Hunter  budhunter@frontier.com