States’ Rights Party Adopts Pro-Segregation Platform
The States’ Rights Party was formed by southern Democrats (usually called Dixiecrats) who walked out of the Democratic Party Convention on July 14, 1948, because of that party’s strong civil rights plank.
South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond became the States’ Rights Party’s candidate for president.
On this day, the party adopted an unyielding defense of racial segregation in its platform.
Segregationist southerners had vigorously opposed President Harry Truman’s appointment of a Committee on Civil Rights, the first federal civil rights commission, and his strong civil rights legislative program in early 1948.
Senator Strom Thurmond was one of the principle leaders of a southern filibuster in the Senate to block passage of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. The filibuster began on March 30, 1964 and finally ended on June 10, 1964. The bill passed and President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964.
The Platform: “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.”
Read the States’ Rights Party Platform:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=25851Learn more: Nadine Cohodas, Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change (1993)
And more about President Truman and civil rights: Michael Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (2002)
Watch Strom Thurmond in 1948: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1TVzf1UxhQ
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here