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1948
The 1948 Democratic National Convention
The national Democratic Party of 1948 was split between liberals who thought the
federal government should assertively guarantee civil rights for non-whites and
southern conservatives who thought the states should be able to choose what
civil rights their citizens would enjoy (the "states' rights" position).
At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, the draft party platform reflected
this division and contained only platitudes in favor of civil rights. Though the
incumbent President Harry S. Truman had already issued a detailed 10-point Civil
Rights Program calling for aggressive federal action on the issue of civil
rights, he gave his backing to the Democratic establishment draft that was a
replication of the 1944 Democratic National Convention plank on civil rights.
A diverse coalition opposed this tepid draft, including anti-communist liberals
like Humphrey, Paul Douglas and John Shelley, all of whom would later become
known as leading progressives. Also strongly backing the liberal civil rights
plank were Democratic urban bosses like Ed Flynn of the Bronx, who promised
northern votes to Humphrey's platform, Jacob Arvey of Chicago, and David
Lawrence of Pittsburgh, who were generally regarded at the time as being more
conservative. Though many scholars have suggested that labor unions were leading
figures in this coalition, no significant labor leaders attended the convention,
with the exception of the head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations'
Political Action Committee (CIOPAC) Jack Kroll and A.F. Whitney.
Despite aggressive pressure by Truman's aides to avoid forcing the issue on the
Convention floor, Humphrey chose to speak. In a renowned speech, Humphrey
passionately told the Convention, "To those who say, my friends, to those who
say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172
years too late! To those who say, this civil rights program is an infringement
on states' rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the
Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk
forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!" Humphrey and his allies
succeeded; the pro-civil-rights plank was narrowly adopted.
As a result of the Convention's vote, the Mississippi and one half of the
Alabama delegation walked out of the hall. Many southern Democrats were so
enraged that they formed the Dixiecrat party and nominated their own
presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond. As a result, the powerful Richard
Russell of Georgia once said of him, "Can you imagine the people of Minnesota
sending that damn fool down here to represent them?" Although the strong civil
rights plank adopted at the Convention cost Truman the support of the Dixiecrats,
it gained him important votes from blacks, especially in northern cities.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough has written that Humphrey
probably did more to get Truman elected in 1948 than anyone other than Truman
himself.
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