The Ohio daily-express. (Dayton, Ohio) 1946-1950, 1948-12-02
BETWEEN THE LINES
By Dean Gordon B. Hancock
FOR AMP
White Leadership In The South

White Leadership In The South
Many weeks prior to the election this column averred that
the November election would in many ways be national poll
on the color question in this country. The issues were clear
cut and the stage was set for one of the nations most definite
decisions in matters of race. Harry Truman from Missouri,
acting President by the accident of Great Roosevets death,
chose to make an unequivocal stand for a civil rights program
that included Negroes, this being the first time a thing of that
sort had ever happened in this land of the free and home of
the brave.
Moreover, Truman took his stand sufficiently early for the
nation to know just where he stood. His decision was not an
overnight bunch. It was not merely an election platform
to catch votes on the wing. Truman took his stand months
previous to the Democratic National convention. He thus not
only took the most unpopular stand a President ever took, but
he took it in time to let the hecklers and holingans get in their
deadliest blows. The back-number southern leadership went
to the Philadelphia convention prepared for the slaughter, with
little Harry Truman the lamb and party of the first part.
The onward surge of liberalism swept the opposition aside
and Harry Truman was nominated over the protest of the
model-T southern leadership. But this was just the beginning
of one of the ugliest political fights ever waged in this country
in general and the south in particular. 1t gave occasion for
the rise of the Dixiecrats who proved to be merely a subdued
form of Tallmanism, Bilboism, Cole Bleasism, ~Vardamanism,
etc.
Of course the Dixiecrats counted on a stampede of white
southerners. Were there not 13 southern states and with these
Dixiecratic, Truman would be politically destroyed root and
branch. With Truman stubbornly refusing to back down on
his civil rights stand, these Southern Dixicrats would hand
over the presidency to Dewey as a rebuke to any man who
would ever after dare to include Negroes in anything that re-
sembled a bill of civil rights.
With all of their political ammunition, with all of their
appeals to %prejudices, with all of their white supremacy cred
rag-ism), pitiful Mr.. Thurmond could carry only three south
en states alabama is not to be included for there is no way
to prove that Truman would not have carried it had his name
been placed on the ballot. If Georgia could 60 Truman, under
the circumstances Alabama might have done likewise). When
all the votes were counted it SO worked out that Truman not
only swept the nation but the erstwhile solid south.
The main issue in the past campaign and election was civil
rights. Foreign policy came in for emphasis and initiation had
it's place in the minds of vote casting Americans; but the real
issue of the campaign was civil rights for Negroes. The nation
cast it's vote in favor of fuller citizenship of the Negroes who
have shed their blood and sweat and suffered to make this
nation the great nation that it is. 1t is true there are many
southerners of the Dixiecratic persuasion but their numbers
are declining rapidly. Righteousness and justice are on the
march; and all the Strom Thurmonds of South Carolina and
Tucks of Virginia cannot stem the tide of liberalism that is
rising, a tide that is bound to sweep the Negro into f~ull-fledged
citizenship status in these United States of ours.