I have a few thoughts that arose from the "Southern Racists: Where Are They Now?" thread that ran recently. It seems to me that the thread asked the wrong question. Whether someone is a racist or not is a question that tries to read a person's mind. Someone might give no outward sign of racial hostility even though he or she feels it. Conversely, a politician in a racist region might make a public display of racial hostility while actually feeling none. If conditions there change, such a politician might appear to become very tolerant very quickly. So who knows who the racists really are?
A more interesting question, for me, is one that allows for objective analysis. One way to do that would be not to speculate about what goes on inside someone else's mind, but instead to focus on political changes over time. One question (obviously related to the "Southern Racists" question) that would be a candidate for this sort objective analysis is, "Southern Segregationists: Where Did They Go?" I think it would be interesting to look at the subsequent careers of politicians who publicly committed themselves to the cause of legal segregation.
Part 1: The Southern Manifesto
There is a remarkable document that could be useful in examining the careers of segregationists. The document is known as "The Southern Manifesto" (links to the appropriate Wikipedia article and the full text appear below) although its official title was "The Declaration of Constitutional Principles." The Southern Manifesto was created and signed by a group of southern U.S. Senators and Representatives. It was entered into the Congressional Record on March 12, 1956.
The Southern Manifesto carried three main ideas. The first was that the US Supreme Court's decisions in "segregation cases, " including Brown v. Board of Education, did not follow either the Constitution or established precedent. Here are some illustrative quotes:
"The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law....We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power....The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor any other amendment....The very Congress which proposed the [14th] amendment subsequently provided for segregated schools in the District of Columbia....This [separate but equal]
constitutional doctrine began in the North, not in the South, and it was followed not only in Massachusetts, but in Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other northern states until they, exercising their rights as states through the constitutional processes of local self-government, changed their school systems....In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme Court expressly declared that under the 14th Amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the States provided separate but equal facilities....Though there has been no constitutional amendment or act of Congress changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the Supreme Court of the United States, with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land."
The second idea in the Manifesto, echoing the slaveholders' argument of 100 years before, was that segregation was beneficial to everyone in the South:
"[The separate but equal doctrine], restated time and again, became a part of the life of the people of many of the States and confirmed their habits, traditions, and way of life. It is founded on elemental humanity and commonsense, for parents should not be deprived by Government of the right to direct the lives and education of their own children....This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding."
Finally, the Manifesto foresees turmoil if the separate but equal doctrine is eliminated by court action:
"This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected....Without regard to the consent of the governed, outside mediators are threatening immediate and revolutionary changes in our public schools systems. If done, this is certain to destroy the system of public education in some of the States....With the gravest concern for the explosive and dangerous condition created by this decision and inflamed by outside meddlers....In this trying period, as we all seek to right this wrong, we appeal to our people not to be provoked by the agitators and troublemakers invading our States and to scrupulously refrain from disorder and lawless acts."
The Southern Manifesto was signed by 19 Senators and 78 Representatives, all from the 11 states that had made up the Confederacy.
The Supreme Court . Expanding Civil Rights . Primary Sources | PBS Part 2: Who Were the Segregationists?
Democrats.
All of the 22 Senators from the eleven states were Democrats, and 19 (84%) signed the Manifesto. There were only six Republican Representatives in the entire region, and just two (33%) signed the Manifesto. In contrast, 76 (77%) of the 99 Democratic Representatives from the region were signers. Just five of Texas's 21 Democratic Representatives signed the document, so that in the other ten southern states a full 71 (91%) of 78 Democratic Representatives did sign. Six southern states -- Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina -- had Congressional delegations that were fully Democratic and signed the Manifesto unanimously.
There were notable figures among both those who refused to sign and those who signed. The non-signing Democrats included Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, future Speaker Jim Wright, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (all of Texas); Estes Kefauver, who would be the Democrats' candidate for Vice President in 1956; and Vice President Gore's father, Al, Sr. Among the Republicans who did not sign was Howard Baker, Sr., father of the future Senate Majority Leader and White House Chief of Staff. Kefauver, Gore, and Baker were all Tennesseans.
The Democrats who signed the Southern Manifesto included an unusual number of remarkable characters:
Sen. Strom Thurmond (SC): the former Dixiecrat who would eventually bolt to the Republicans, father a child at 74, live to 100, and posthumously reveal that as a young man he had fathered the child of one of his family's black servants;
Sen. Sam Ervin (NC): future chairman of the Senate's Watergate committee;
Sen. William Fulbright (AR): political inspiration to the young Bill Clinton and founder of the Fulbright Program for international educational exchange;
Sen. John Sparkman (AL): 1952 running mate to Adlai Stevenson;
Sen. Harry Byrd, Sr. (VA): who somehow managed to garner 15 electoral votes without ever running for President;
Sen. Russell Long (LA): son of two governors and heir to the political dynasty of Huey Long;
Sen. Absalom Willis Robertson (VA): father of evangelist Pat Robertson;
Rep. Iris Blitch (GA): the only southern woman in Congress;
Rep. Hale Boggs (LA): future House Majority Leader who would die in a plane crash, be succeeded in office by his wife, and father news correspondent Cokie Roberts; and,
Rep. Wilbur Mills (AR): future chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee whose career slid downhill after he decided during a traffic stop that it was better to jump into the Tidal Basin fully clothed than to be found drunk with an exotic dancer who was not his wife.
Part 3: Where Did the Segregationists Go?
(Wikipedia includes chronological lists of the congressional delegations for every state. A link to one is attached below as an example.)
The signers of the Southern Manifesto left office for a variety of reasons. The shift in population to the Sun Belt was not yet in full swing, so at least four of the representatives lost their seats to reapportionment. Complete biographies of each signer were not reviewed, but at least one became a federal judge, and another a governor. Perhaps significantly, none of the representatives who signed ever advanced to the Senate. At least six signers died in office. In accord with southern practice, four of the dead were immediately followed in office by their wives or son (in the list that follows, service by the wife or son is treated as if the congressman himself had survived and continued in office).
To a great extent, thiough, the signers just stayed where they were. The Southern Manifesto was issued during the 84th Congress, which left office in early 1957. I looked at the 97 signers at 6-year intervals thereafter, to see how many had left office:
Career ended by end of 87th Congress (early 1963): 26 of the 97 signers;
Career ended by end of 90th Congress (early 1969): 35 of the 71 remaining;
Career ended by end of 93th Congress (early 1975): 15 of the 36 remaining;
Career ended by end of 96th Congress (early 1981): 13 of the 21 remaining;
Career ended by end of 99th Congress (early 1987): 3 of the 8 remaining;
Career ended by end of 101st Congress (early 1991): 2 of the 5 remaining.
I have to cut off the list to avoid crossing over to current events. Three signers of the Southern Manifesto remained in office for more than 35 years after the document was issued. They were Sen. Strom Thurmond (R, SC) and Reps. Jamie Whitten (D, Miss.) and Charles Bennett (D, Fla.).
In only two instances did a signer retain his seat after leaving the Democratic Party. One of those instances is the well-known switch of Thurmond to the Republicans in 1964. The other is Sen. Harry Byrd, Jr. of Virginia (who had followed his father, the actual signer, in office). Byrd refused to sign a loyalty oath required by the Democrats and became an independent, but he continued to caucus with the Democrats and retained his party seniority with respect to Congressional leadership.
Part 4: Opinion
In reviewing this piece of history, and keeping in mind the southern political shift from Democratic to Republican during the era in question, I find it remarkable that only one of the 95 Democratic signers of the Southern Manifesto ever retained his seat by the strategem of switching parties. After 1963, attrition among the segregationists proceeded at a rate of about 50% every six years, but after Thurmond's switch in 1964 the remaining signers seem to have been comfortable in their original party (or perhaps unwanted in the other). Some advanced to high positions of Congressional leadership.
Why did so many segregationists feel comfortable remaining in the "new" Democratic Party? The answer, I think, can be found by looking at a couple of segregationists who were not covered in this review. One of them is Strom Thurmond's Democratic doppelganger, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd was an active recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, and as late as 1964 he filibustered against the Civil Rights Act (which would prohibit segregation in public accomodations). Yet Byrd, like Thurmond, remained in office for decades after federal law had been settled in favor of integration.
The second example is Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Wallace became famous in America for his "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" attempt to personally block the integration of the University of Alabama. He ran for president as an independent in 1968, but also ran in Democratic primaries in 1964, 1972, and 1976. Despite being shot in an assassination attempt during his 1972 run, Wallace received nearly as many popular votes as the eventual Democratic candidate, George McGovern, and he won primaries as far north as Maryland and Michigan. Wallace was elected governor as a Democrat four times (and was succeeded by his wife once when he was barred due to term limits). His final term ended in 1987, nearly 25 years after he stood in the schoolhouse door.
How did men like Byrd and Wallace remain powerful Democratic politicians after segregation ceased to be a Democratic policy? The answer, I think, primarily involves economics. Wallace began his career (see his New York Times obituary) as "an ardent New Deal Democrat." Byrd's pork barrel efforts for West Virginia were legendary, though they peaked in success (e.g., bringing Coast Guard support facilities to landlocked West Virginia) only after he assumed chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee in 1989. The Longs of Louisiana were similarly redistributionist.
Once segregation was eliminated as a permissible policy in either party, many of the former segregationists found that their other policies just fit in better with the Democrats, so there they stayed.
Southern_Manifesto
Linear Mode
