[16] Many in the press predicted that if the Dixiecrats did nominate a ticket, Arkansas Governor Benjamin Travis Laney would be the presidential nominee, and South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond or Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright the vice presidential nominee. The Republican party was strictly a sectional party, meaning that it just did not exist in the South, he says. Democratic defectors, known as the Dixiecrats, started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Frederickson, Kari. Q. [16] Thurmond himself had doubts about a third-party bid, but party organizers convinced him to accept the party's nomination, with Fielding Wright as his running mate. [16] In implementing their strategy, the States' Rights Democrats faced a complicated set of state election laws, with different states having different processes for choosing presidential electors. Was Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" different from or similar to the strategy that Lee Atwater describes? 2023 Alabama Humanities Alliance - All Rights Reserved. Omissions? Members of the party were referred to as "Dixiecrats." The party was formed by several Southern Democrats in response to the passage of a platform including civil rights at the 1948 Democratic National . In response, half of Alabamas delegation stormed out in protest. Although the Dixiecrats as a distinct political entity did not survive past 1948, white southerners used the movements organizational and intellectual framework to create new political institutions and new alliances in their desperate attempt to stymie racial progress and preserve power. The Dixiecrats were a group of Southern Democrats who broke away from their party in 1948 because they objected to the Democratic Party's stance on desegregation. The population baby boom began in the late 1940s. Plenty of southern states kept electing Dems for governor and Congress until the old Dixiecrat died in the 90s. In addition to voting for candidates for local and state offices, voters also chose the states presidential electors and delegates to the upcoming July national convention. What year was the modern civil rights movement peaked with the March on Washington in? States Rights Democratic Party, maintenance of segregation, and opposed to federal intervention in the interest of promoting civil rights, President Harry Trumans civil rights program, strength drew from below the fall line, platform was limited and negative, did not survive past 1948, Strom Thurmond, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/dixiecrats/. There, they drew up and unanimously adopted a party platform. Dr. Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for typhoid fever. (This referred to the Southern Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South and most seats in Congress, partly through decades of disfranchisement of blacks entrenched by Southern state legislatures between 1890 and 1908. The Dixiecrat Party broke the solid Souths historic allegiance to the national Democratic Party and in doing so inaugurated an unpredictable era in which white southerners grappled with a variety of vehicles designed to thwart racial progress. Ultimately all of the chosen 11 electors signed the pledge. The Peace Corps, a program of volunteer assistance to developing nations, was The Dixiecrats were members of the States' Rights Democratic Party, which splintered from the Democratic Party in 1948. "[23] Former Dixiecrats received some backlash at the 1952 Democratic National Convention, but all Southern delegations were seated after agreeing to a party loyalty pledge.