Strom Thurmond: Keynote Address at the States’ Rights Democratic Conference

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In 1948 the nation saw growing opposition to President Truman's civil rights agenda, especially in the South. Emerging as the leader of southern resistance to Truman and his agenda, Thurmond essentially led a revolt against the president and the Democratic Party, with the States' Rights Democratic Party he represented, better known as the Dixiecrats, intending to preserve the right of states to maintain segregation. The Truman administration faced an additional revolt from the left in the Democratic Party with the candidacy of Henry Wallace, who was running for president on the Progressive Party ticket. Strong opposition also came from Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican Party candidate. Thurmond delivered his keynote speech to the States' Rights Democratic Conference on May 10, 1948.

Thurmond took the opportunity in his keynote speech to outline age-old grievances held by southerners against perceived northern domination in all three branches of the federal government. He points out the responsibility of the Democratic Party to protect the constitutional government, especially as outlined in the reserved powers clause found in the Tenth Amendment. In essence, Thurmond argues the case for the right of states to challenge laws emanating from the federal government and in particular from the executive branch, then under the control of the Democratic Party and the Truman administration. He states, “We are going to fight, as long as we have breath, for the rights of our states and our people under the American Constitution; and come what may, we are going to preserve our civilization in the South.” He goes on to point out how the South had suffered during the years following the Civil War. In essence, he describes the South as emerging from the Civil War as an economic and social colony of the North. Specifically, he points to the freight-rate battles fought between railroads and southern farmers through the Interstate Commerce Commission. The nation's two sections are described as having developed a “crown colony” relationship, with the South providing “raw materials for the industrial East.” Thurmond uses all of this background to frame the present-day grievances of the South against a federal government claimed to be dominated by northerners, an assertion many southerners believed. He does concede that the freight-rate battle was won by the southerners in 1947. Nonetheless, he uses this history to demonstrate the forced economic dependency of the South on the industrial North, as established through cripplingly high freight rates and tariffs.

It was clear to Thurmond that Truman was using civil rights as a pretext to continue “Federal encroachment on state sovereignty.” Thurmond did not understand why people in other sections of the country did not stand up against proposed legislation by the Truman administration. If civil rights were to be enacted, Thurmond believed all rights would be threatened no matter where people lived, North or South. In his defense of states' rights, Thurmond cites George Washington's Farewell Address, Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, and even a statement by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In the ensuing portion of his keynote address, Thurmond outlines specific areas under attack by the federal government and the Truman administration. He points to the anti–poll tax law, stating,

We all know that the poll tax does not burden the right to vote. It is a minor revenue measure yielding comparatively little money, and I have advocated that we repeal it in my State. Only seven states now have a poll-tax voting requirement, and the proposed Federal law would accomplish so little that many think it harmless legislation.

The real danger, he says, is “the Congressional assertion of the right to pass this law.” Such congressional intervention, he asserts, threatens states' rights, which are protected in the Tenth Amendment. With the precedent of the poll tax ban, Congress could then “exercise control over the ballot boxes of the Nation.” Invoking images of the military occupation of the South during Reconstruction, he predicts the use of the military to enforce federal laws governing the states' rightful domain of voting and suffrage.

Next, Thurmond addresses proposed federal antilynching legislation. “The Federal government does not have the constitutional right to deal with crimes occurring within the states” he says. He points out that all states have laws against murder and that some specifically address lynching. Thurmond goes so far as to declare that antilynching laws are unnecessary because “enlightened public opinion” has sufficiently stopped the crime. He then claims that Congress would nonetheless take advantage of emotions stemming from the horror of such crimes to “assert the power to deal with any crime within the states,” thereby radically invading local authority.

The other pending dangers to states' rights, according to Thurmond, are agencies and commissions that create laws by fiat, yet he fails to recognize that the freight-rate problems that he pointed to earlier in his speech were settled by one of these commissions, the Interstate Commerce Commission. Nevertheless, he uses this agency as a symbol of federal intervention into race relations within the South, in particular through laws governing segregation. He states,

We in the South know that the laws dealing with the separation of the races are necessary to maintain the public peace and order, where the races live side by side in large numbers. We know that they are essential to the racial integrity and purity of the white and Negro races alike.

He is alarmed by the creation of a “Federal police system to enforce” Truman's civil rights program. Advocating the status quo, he remarks, “We are working and living side by side in peace and understanding.” In so doing, Thurmond tells his audience, “We are struggling together for a bigger and better South, with greater educational and economic opportunity for all of our citizens, regardless of race, creed, or color.”

Thurmond encourages his audience to attend the Democratic National Convention to exercise their rights by choosing a presidential candidate who would represent their own interests in states' rights. If the Democratic Party failed to nominate such a candidate, he says, then “the Electoral College affords us a powerful weapon to restore the prestige of the South in the political affairs of this Nation and preserve the American system of free constitutional government.” In a portentous statement, he asks his listeners to vote for others who would protect state sovereignty if the Democrats did not select a presidential candidate who would do so.

Thurmond and other southern Democratic leaders indeed attended the Democratic National Convention from July 12 to 14, 1948; a number walked out after Hubert Humphrey sought to shift the party's focus away from states' rights. Delegates nominated Truman as the party's presidential candidate, and many southern Democrats met in protest on July 17 in a separate convention to select Thurmond to run for president from the States' Rights Democratic Party. Unexpectedly—as amid the competition Dewey, the Republican, seemed poised for victory—Truman managed to win the 1948 presidential election.