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Substitute for Shift. The Democratic leaders relied (correctly, as it turned out) on the inability of the Southerners to do the normal thing and shift parties. But after the failure of the Dixiecrat bolt at the 1948 convention, opposition to Truman and the FEPC grew in the South. As 1952 approached, Southern leaders resolved to stop Truman and FEPC inside the party—or to bolt it and throw the victory to the Republicans, which is the South's substitute for a normal shift of votes across party lines.
Russell's candidacy was originally a demonstration in force against Truman. How much it had to do with his decision not to run may never be known. Succeeding in their main objective, the Southerners keep the Russell candidacy alive and the South solid in order to veto some other unacceptable candidate and to force a compromise on FEPC.
Before 1936, the South did not have to resort to the threat of revolt. Its interest was protected by the rule requiring two-thirds of the delegates to nominate a candidate for President. When Roosevelt ended the two-thirds rule, he opened the way to the Southern revolt of 1948 and the muffled Southern revolt of 1952.
Steeped & Basted. Richard Brevard Russell stands bald head and broad shoulders above the course he represents, although he was steeped in Southern traditions and basted on both sides. His great-great-grandfather, John Russell, was a South Carolina plantation owner who held 100 slaves. General Sherman, on his way through Georgia, burned the cotton mills and freed the slaves of Grandfather William John Russell. Richard Brevard Russell Sr., Dick's father, was a Georgia lawyer and judge who served as the state's chief justice for 15 years before he died in 1938, at the age of 77.
Dick was born in the windswept town of Winder (rhymes with binder) in the rolling, blood-red Georgia hills 52 miles northeast of Atlanta. With twelve brothers & sisters, he grew up in a stern, religious home. Father was a Presbyterian, mother a Methodist, and the full text of the Bible had been read aloud in the home twice before Dick was 13. Justice was dealt with a peachtree switch and a leather strap, and Dick still remembers the time his mother whipped him "until the blood came."
When Dick was six, his father put the name of Russell on Georgia's map by incorporating a settlement a mile and a half east of Winder. It became a flag stop on the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Atlanta line, so father Russell could commute to his office in Atlanta. Dick's mother, now frail and 84, still lives in Russell, Ga. (pop. 150) with her oldest grandson, Richard Russell Green.
Barefoot Boy. In his boyhood, Dick was a source of some family embarrassment. He wouldn't wear shoes. When the neighbors saw him walking around on cold days wearing a hat and overcoat but no shoes, some of them thought his parents couldn't or wouldn't buy him any. Not until he was twelve was he consistently shod. At 54 he still likes to pad barefoot around the farm when he is home, and around the house when he is in Washington. Says he: "I still don't like slippers."