(See Cover)
James Strom Thurmond, a Southern politician little known and therefore possibly underrated in the North, made a sortie last week into political no-man's land. Appearing in Baltimore, in the border state of Maryland, he was met by a college student dressed in the full regalia of a Confederate brigadier and a mildly interested audience. Standing just over on his side of the Mason-Dixon line, the governor of South Carolina sounded his defiance of the "No'th."
"Those who follow the banners of the States' Rights Democrats," he cried, "are determined that the evil forces which have seized control of the national party shall be cast out. The tides of that great party will flow like muddy water over the sands and rocks and be purified. The impurities of that party—Harry Truman and all his followers—will be deposited like sediment on the banks."
There was every likelihood that J. Strom Thurmond would be an even smaller deposit of sediment than Harry Truman. As the Dixiecrats' candidate for President, he did not stand a chance in the world. He might capture as many as 50 electoral votes—next to Bull Mooser Theodore Roosevelt's 88 in 1912, the biggest block ever won by a third-party candidate. He was the result of Harry Truman's political courage—or lack of political acumen. His appearance had marked the collapse of the compromises which had held the Democratic Party together for 16 years.
Symptom rather than symbol of the South's revolt, Strom Thurmond was the South's spokesman for an old, still smoldering issue. Thanks to Harry Truman, that issue had erupted again and was splitting the Solid South. The issue was black v. white.
The "Fo'ce Bills." Candidate Thurmond would never admit that the issue could be put in such black & white terms. He draped his case in the dialectics of states' rights. In his harsh, flat voice he denied the authority of Washington to interfere with the South's pattern of behavior. These were the "fo'ce bills" which he denounced:
An anti-poll tax law: "It would take from you the right to regulate your own elections."
An anti-lynching law: "It would provide the opening wedge for federal control of your police powers."
An anti-segregation law: "When will they learn, as the South has learned, that you cannot legislate racial harmony?"
An FEPC law: "It would force all business and business relationships into a Washington pattern guided and enforced by a federal Gestapo."
But if it was states' rights that Thurmond was battling for, what was the theoretical difference between him and a lot of Northern U.S. citizens who were equally apprehensive of Big Government? The main front of the Dixiecrats, indeed, was a Southern upper crust of mill owners, oil men, tobacco growers, bankers, lawyers, who might have felt more comfortable voting Republican. Would the Dixiecrat party be a kind of political decompression chamber for conservative Southerners, on their way to the Republican party? No; for Tom Dewey also advocated civil rights for the Negro. The Southerners wore their states' rights with a significant difference.