Word: dixiecrats
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After an hour out for lunch (chicken salad, cowpeas and applesauce), the third speaker arose. He was Fielding L. Wright, who came out of Rolling Fork in the Delta country to become governor of Mississippi (in 1946) and Dixiecrat candidate for Vice President in 1948. Pointing to his longtime record in behalf of white supremacy, Wright adopted an I-told-you-so tone. Said he: "I started eight years ago trying to warn the people of the South what was taking place ... I warned you . . . They will destroy the sovereign states, and no longer will we live under a confederation...
...their endorsement. Then there is the Negro problem: in 1948 Happy's newspaper, the Woodford Sun, endorsed Strom Thurmond for the presidency. Happy blames his editor for the endorsement and invokes the shade of Jackie Robinson ("I put him in business") with every Negro he meets. But the Dixiecrat label sticks, and the Negro voters are far from Happy...
...Brown, a state senator who controls the state Democratic executive committee, talked the committee into nominating him as a replacement. Conservative Democrats and almost all the state's daily newspapers wanted a primary. Infuriated by the coup, they united behind J. Strom Thurmond, a former governor and Dixiecrat presidential candidate in 1948, as a write-in candidate. A write-in campaign has powerful obstacles to overcome, but loquacious Harry Vaughan certainly helped...
Interviewed by a Washington correspondent for several Carolina papers, he unwound with an attack on old Dixiecrat Thurmond, called him in the "same class with Henry Wallace." Truman, said Vaughan, "can forgive small things like rape and murder, but he can't forgive a guy that goes back on his party." Why was Truman for Brown? Said Vaughan: "You'd be absolutely safe in saying the decision . . . was made 100% on party regularity." Even more damaging to Brown's chances was Vaughan's comment that "civil rights and nonsegregation are as inevitable as the tides...
...election in one-party South Carolina. But there were hints that Byrnes, who fought Brown in 1952 by coming out for President Eisenhower while Brown stayed loyal to the Democratic ticket, was spoiling for a rematch. Byrnes may take the issue to the voters, ask them to elect former Dixiecrat J. Strom Thurmond as a write-in candidate...