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A shift of forces within the Democratic Party, however, might change that. If the leaders of organized labor and the Northern liberals who asserted themselves at Philadelphia should capture the Democratic Party in its defeat and guide its policies, then the South's revolt, instead of subsiding to a smolder, might flare out again and this time bring about a permanent political realignment.
Whatever happens to the Dixiecrats, the emotions which produced them will still be there. In his flattest, harshest public utterance to date, and in an arrant distortion of the meaning of Truman's civil-rights bill, Strom Thurmond cried: "There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit the Negro into our homes, our eating places, our swimming pools and our theaters.'"
But politics, especially demagogic politics, is a symptom of social forces, not their cause. The Dixiecrats might dry up and blow away; but "states' rights" (the Negro problem) will remain as the fundamental problem of the South. No solution will be found until the South climbs back from the poverty in which the Civil War left it and finds the solution for itself. Said the Southern Regional Council: "Most of those who have spoken for the South have not spoken wisely. They have blinded themselves to a changing world that will no longer be content with old ways . . . [But] as anyone knows, the denial of human rights in the region goes hand in hand with poverty and backwardness."
The Negro was still a problem, a challenge to North and South alike. No new behavior pattern could be forced on the South overnight by federal fiat. The sick South needed health; the North needed wisdom.
*He was always talking about using pitchforks on his enemies. He even threatened to pitchfork President Cleveland, that "old bag of beef . . . in his old fat ribs."