JFK and the South

[Sharm]

Sort of a continuation of http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2488169 this post of mine, and pondering political history.
I have heard repeatedly, from the likes of -- say -- Zell Miller, praise for JFK as the type of Democrat that the South could rally behind and the current party is oh-so-liberal and oh-so-out-of-step. A bit of research, and I find this "And yet" with Kennedy and the South. He did not win his southern states very easily. From the New York Times:

9-6: "There's no doubt about it -- we're at our low point now," conceded William C Battle, director of the Democratic Presidential campaign in Virginia. An "uphill battle" for Senator John F Kennedy was forecast by Governor Ernest F Collings.

"I think it is a little too close," said Govern0or Luther Hodges of North Carolina.

"Tennessee looks like a toss-up right now," said one of the state's most respected political observers.

Florida will be lost unless the state's Democratic officeholders join in a unified campaign, according to Governor Leroy Collins and James Jilligan, the party chairman.

And although Texas is the home state of Senator Kennedy's vice-presidential running mate, Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Republicans claim the lead there. <...>

There is also evidence of erosion of the tradional loyalty to the Democratic Party in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. However, few were willing to predict that vice president Richard Nixon could carry any of those five states.

The Republicans have moved quickly to capitilize on the South's growing conservatism, a by-product of industrialization and urbanization. Party leaders voiced confidence that 1960 would bring the first big Republican victory in the South since Reconstruction. This is the situation facing Senator Kennedy as he prepares for his first extended campaign in the region:

-- A negative reaction of unexpected proportion to the liberal Democratic platform and his Roman Catholicism
-- The refusal of many Democratic officeholders to actively support the national ticket.
-- Enthusiastic receptions for Mr. Nixon and such conservative members of his supporting cast as Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. <...>

Opposition to the platform is generally assumed to lie behind the failure of Senator Harry F Byrd of Virginia to endorse the Democratic ticket. If his silence continues, many observers believe that it may cost Mr. Kennedy the state. They attribute President Eisenhower's two victories there to Senator Byrd's refusal to speak out for Adlai Stevenson. <...>

Mr. Kennedy can expect little more than token support from many Democratic officials and not even that from some. A number of those actively campaigning have shown little enthusiasm for their work.

Governor Hollings is the only South Carolina official of prominence who has taken the stump in an attempt to blunt the Republican drivel. Senator Olin D Johnston endorsed the ticket, but Senator Strom Thurmond announced that he was "not in the bag this election."

C Farris Bryant, Florida's Democratic Gubernatorial nominee, served notice that "my principal concern is my own campaign."

Neither of Georgia's two Senators -- Richard Russel and Herman Talmadge, has spoken out for Kennedy. Much of this reluctance, explained a leading Virginia Democrat, stems from a fear of local repercussions.

"Sure, I'll endorse the ticket sooner or later," Louisiana Governor Jimmie H Davis said, "But when I do, I'll have to spend 25 minutes of a 30 minute speech denouncing the platform."

In the current campaign, the Republicans are encouraging the Southerners to think that the Northern liberals are the party bolters. "The Kennedy organization has run off with the party. By Kennedy organization I refer to that broad alliance that managed to corral all the different shadings of the left -- an alliance in which every member of that Left is both represented and happy."

An important catalyst in the process of late has been the dawning realization that they cannot expect concessions from the Democratic Party on racial issues.

9-10: Georgians were surprised during the Atlanta appearance when James V Carmichael, president of Scripto Inc and a 1946 Democratic Gubernatorial candidate, announced that he would campaign for Richard Nixon. <...>

J. Oliver Emmerich, editor of the State Times of Jackson, Mississippi, has written, "Many loyal Mississippians out of respect for the past give loyalty to the Democratic Party. But it is a ghost, a skeleton of what it once was. Some Mississippians say, 'It is the party of our fathers and grandfathers' yet we know and they know that those honored fobears would be in rebellion were they alive today and confronted by the irresponsible Democratic Party of today."

9-24: Religion and "radicalism" have emerged as the major factors in the Presidential Contest in Virginia. both favor Nixon over Kennedy in this overwhelmingly Protestant state. <...> Virginia's Catholic population is only about 200,000, less than 5% of the state's total, and in the "southside" the percentage is much smaller. Fundamentalist Protestant ministers in that area have been preaching against a Catholic President. Anti-Catholic literature has been circulated there and elsewhere.

The issue of "radicalism" cuts deeply through most of the state. This issue is chiefly responsible for the refusal of Senator Harry Byrd, patriarch and titular leader of the State Democratic organization to endorse the ticket. The position of conservatives such as Byrd is that Senator Kennedy and the Democratic party platform stand for a high-spending, centralized, labor-controlled administration. Mr. Nixon and the Republican platform are also regarded as too liberal, but they are considered preferable as the lesser evil.

10-27: President Eisenhower cautioned Virginians against following "false leaders to their destruction." <...>
Some observers saw in the President's remarks an effort to advance the Presidential election prospects of Vice President Nixon. However, more political significance was seen in the introduction to the President to the campus audience by Senator Harry Byrd.

11-8: <...>

With important exceptions, civil rights never became an issue. Most voters seemed to believe they had little choice between the two parties. However, the pledge made and later withdrawn by vice presidential nominee Henry Cabot Lodge that a negro would be named to the cabinet undoubtedly cost the party southern votes. Some white southerners were alienated by Mr. Kennedy's expressions of interest in the case of Reverend Martin Luther King, a negro integration leader jailed in Georgia on a traffic charge. Most observers contended that these losses were offset by the negro support he picked up.

11-30: James Knight of four Texas electors chosen in the general election election said yesterday he had received three letters urging him to join a movement to keep Senator Kennedy from becoming President. Mr. Knight said one of the letters was signed by Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi, another by ML Harris - a Montgommery, Alabama attorney, and a third by two Alabama electors.

He said the letters asked him to join a a "Southern Revolt" by backing candidates other than Kennedy and Johnson. One of the letters, Mr. Knight said, urged him to vote for a ticket comprised of Senator Harry F Byrd of Virginia and Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

12-13: Mississippi's eight and Alabama's six unpledged presidential electors agreed after a five hour session today to vote for Senator Harry F Byrd in an effort to bar John F Kennedy from the presidency. The fourteen electors said in a statement that they had not chosen a vice presidential candidate because that would do no good. The 840 word statement laid down an ultimatum. It said:

"Whether such a man will be inaugurated as President or not depends upon whether or not the people of the South, who have expressed their dedication to the principles of Constitutional government and the right of a state to determine for itself the questions of segregation and freedom of association are sincere in the continued expression of such dedication." <...>

The statement said that if Kennedy were denied a victory in the Electoral College the matter would go to the US House of Representatives, where the choice would be among the top three voted in the Electoral College. Once there, the statement continued, Senator Byrd would win because "it is incredible that any congressman from any of the Southern States could refuse to cast his vote and that of his state as a unit for a Southerner such as Senator Byrd, who has been recognized over the years as one of the strongest champions of the principles of constitutional government."

"In this situation, the Republican delegation recognizing the inevitable defeat of Nixon and being fundamentally opposed to the liberalism of Senator Kennedy-- would join the Southern Congressional delegations in assuring the election of Senator Byrd. Successful oppostion to vice presidential candidates Lyndon Johnson or Henry Cabot Lodge would be impossible because the Senate chooses the vice president from the top two in the list."

The electors met in a session closed to the public, but open to WJ Simmons of Jackson, editor of a pro-segregation monthly newspaper, The Citizens Council. Also present at the meeting were

[Radical Activist]

1. Kennedy needed Johnson

There's no doubt about that. A lot has changed but I guess things kind of stay the same.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

2. Back when the Dems knew how to fight for the presidency.

Now we try to be "above" the fray and on the high road.

[Clark2008]

3. Yep - they actually campaigned in the South instead of conceding

those states to the Republican.

[Odin2005]

5. Your forgetting what the Southern Dem base was before LBJ.

The Southern Dem base used to be the same people who make up the sothern Repuke base now, the racists, fundies, and knucle-draggers.

[NativeTexan]

4. Only Carter and Clinton knew how to fight like that.

But you have to realize that there was no "Voting Rights Act" at that time, and blacks were kept from the poles in the South by the thousands, if not millions. Everyone likes to see LBJ as a liberal, especially the repukes, but in fact he was more of a moderate like JFK and RFK were. The problem with some moderates, like myself, is that we can't always agree on what to moderate. Anyway, I digress. LBJ pushed thru the voting rights legislation for 2 reasons. It was planned by JFK....and of course, it was the right thing to do. Now keep in mind, LBJ WAS a typical Texas politician from that time....hardnosed politics, questionable election practices, and maybe JUST bordering on, JUST A LITTLE.....well...illegal.

But he was like Kennedy in one BIG sense. THEY REALLY KNEW HOW TO FIGHT FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN. And JFK, well some believe it might have gotten him killed.

[wyldwolf]

6. "He did not win his southern states very easily." BUT he did win them.

5 1/2 to be exact.

Further, despite a little revisionism from the left, the left of his day did not like Kennedy. The New Deal Democrats, led by Eleanore Roosevelt, opposed his nomination, as did the Wallacites who had splintered off and opposed Truman in 1948.

BTW, thanks for the thread. DU needs more discussion of factual party history.

[liberalpragmatist]

7. Great catch

Where did you pull this from?

[Sharm]

8. some stuff

It's from the New York Times of the day.

(1) The Wallacites were dead and buried by this time, though, weren't they? The other Wallacites (George Wallace... "In Alabama, we have a Governor...") would come a few years down the line -- an even more overtly racist version of Strom Thurmond's Campaign in 1948 (Thurmond hid behind "State's Rights", and)...

7-19-1948: Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was chosen on Saturday as the Presidential candidate of the rebellious Southern Democrats, cracked down on his "white supremacy" followers today in a surprise action. He told reporters in a telephone conversation from the exceutive mansion in Columbia, SC that he was a "progressive Southerner" interested in bettering conditions for the Negro and that he would campaign on the "States' Right" ticket soley in support of his beliefs in the "sovereignty of the states as against Federal Government Interference."

Admittedly perturbed by the attitude of some of his followers on the subject of "white supremacy", a theme which studded many of the speeches made at the nominating convention three days ago, Governor Thurmond pointed to his record in bringing about the arrest of 23 white men accused of lynching a Negro in Greenville in January of 1947. He also emphasized that in his inaugural address two years ago he had called for repeal of the poll tax and he insisted that "at all times I have advocated better facilities for the negroes." <...>

Thurmond has always identified himself as a "progressive" although he has seemed to shy away from the "liberal" label. His public statements during the recent controversy over the civil rights proposal of Truman, however, lost him a large part of the liberal following that acclaimed him for his forthright conduct in the Greenville lynching case. <...>

(2) Coke Stevens versus Lyndon Johnson, the Senate primary battle in (one-party-state) Texas which Truman threw his support behind Johnson in. Truman started to play hard ball with the Thurmond Dixiecrats, and this was one show of defiance. Interestingly, both Coke Stevens and Lyndon Johnson were stated Segregationists... a prerequsite for election in Texas, I guess.

[karynnj]

9. Also, JFK was before the Civil Rights act

and many in the south were Dixiecrats then. This is a very interesting perspective.

[Sharm]

10. otehr stuff of note

I skimmed through the book "40 Ways to Think About Kennedy." The only chapters that struck my interest was the one about Civil Rights and the One about Vietnam, those two being the political battles that defined the decade. Two point-counterpoint chapters on whether Kennedy cared or did not care about Civil Rights, and whether Kennedy would or would not have taken us out of Vietnam.

The answer to the second question is, quite frankly, no. I don't know what the answer to the first question is, but I don't think it particularly matters. Sometimes you take a politician as a person who does the right thing and steps aside instead of getting in the way when progress is coming up from the ground up, and judge him/her favourable for simply doing that. Howard Dean, for instance, did not actively campaign for Homosexual Civil Unions -- he just quietly signed the bill that was written up after the Vermont Courts made their ruling. (Then he went out and won his toughest fought re-election bid of his career.)

As a curiousity on how politicians' minds shift: in 1944 when the Democratic Convention dumped Wallace and replaced him with Truman -- and it's difficult to tell if it was what Roosevelt wanted or if it was done under pressure by conservative forces (and given that Wallace Soviet Union apologist -- thank goodness he was dumped, or Joseph McCarthy would have had firmer ground to stand on), most constituencies that had favoured Wallace found Truman satisfactory... Labour, for instance. But Black Leaders weren't, finding Truman suspiciously silent in his Senate career on civil rights and more or less on the side of the Dixiecrats. And then Four years later...

2-23-1948: Senator J Howard McGrath, Democratic National Chairman, politely but firmly rebuffed today Southern Governors who sought to get the party high command to backtrack on Truman's Civil Rights program. He would not yield on a single point as they fired question after question at him in a conference of an hour and three quarters. The Governors departed grim-lipped and went across the street to their hotel to meet among themselves for two hours. Then they issued a statement:

"A vast majority of the Democrats of the South are determined to restore the Democratic Party to the principles of Jefferson and Jackson and, I might add, Lee and will resort to whatever means are necessary to accomplish this end. The Democrats of the South are united in their opposition to the so-called civil rights program proposed by the President and effective action in the Southern States will be taken to prevent adoption of this program. We feel we are expressing the firm conviction of our people when we say that the present leadership of the Democratic Party has deserted the principles of government upon which the party was founded. As never before, the time has come for strong and effective action by the Southern states not only to save the Democratic Party but to preserve the rights of the states to govern themselves and preserve American democracy."

I think that's when the Democratic Party lost the South... And btw: the civil rights plank at the Convention was firmer and stronger than what the Southern Dixiecrats were fighting here, a battle waged and won by Hubert Humphrey.