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The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South 1932-1968
In 1948, a group of conservative white southerners formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, soon nicknamed the "Dixiecrats," and chose Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate. Thrown on the defensive by federal civil rights initiatives and unprecedented grassroots political activity by African Americans, the Dixiecrats aimed to reclaim conservatives' former preeminent position within the national Democratic Party and upset President Harry Truman's bid for reelection. The Dixiecrats lost the battle in 1948, but, as Kari Frederickson reveals, the political repercussions of their revolt were significant.
Frederickson situates the Dixiecrat movement within the tumultuous social and economic milieu of the 1930s and 1940s South, tracing the struggles between conservative and liberal Democrats over the future direction of the region. Enriching her sweeping political narrative with detailed coverage of local activity in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina--the flashpoints of the Dixiecrat campaign--she shows that, even without upsetting Truman in 1948, the Dixiecrats forever altered politics in the South. By severing the traditional southern allegiance to the national Democratic Party in presidential elections, the Dixiecrats helped forge the way for the rise of the Republican Party in the region.
Frederickson situates the Dixiecrat movement within the tumultuous social and economic milieu of the 1930s and 1940s South, tracing the struggles between conservative and liberal Democrats over the future direction of the region. Enriching her sweeping political narrative with detailed coverage of local activity in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina--the flashpoints of the Dixiecrat campaign--she shows that, even without upsetting Truman in 1948, the Dixiecrats forever altered politics in the South. By severing the traditional southern allegiance to the national Democratic Party in presidential elections, the Dixiecrats helped forge the way for the rise of the Republican Party in the region.
328 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2001
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About the author
Kari Frederickson
7 books2 followersAn associate professor of history at the University of Alabama, Kari Frederickson is a specialist in post-Civil War U.S. political history, Southern history, and the history of African Americans. She earned her doctorate in history from Rutgers University in 1996.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 12, 2016
With The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968, Dr. Kari Frederickson did a service for students of 20th century American politics. She presented a thorough study of the States' Rights Democratic Party, better known as the Dixiecrats, its political successes and electoral failure, the roles played by key figures, and the group's strategies and tactics. Frederickson's research was broad and deep, while her prose was concise and clear. The book drags a little after the 1948 campaign with the waning of the Dixiecrat's organized efforts, but it's an excellent volume nevertheless.
The Dixiecrat campaign failed in its goal of winning sufficient electoral votes to force the election into the House of Representatives or compel Truman or Dewey to “horse trade” over civil rights. It succeeded in other ways. It presaged the end of the South as the bastion of the Democratic Party. The subsequent embrace by southern Republicans of much of the Dixiecrat agenda -- reduced federal involvement in state affairs, Right to Work laws, low wages and taxes, deregulation, limited social services, voter suppression -- devastated the Democrats' decades-long hold on the “Solid South.” The party hasn't recovered. It succeeded also in poisoning public discourse in the South for twenty years. The 1948 States' Rights campaign was not an appealing episode in American political life. It was marked by some of the most scurrilous and degrading campaign materials and public utterances ever to disgrace the American scene. Much of it was worthy of Alfred Rosenberg – but the targets weren't Jews.
The Dixiecrats grew from the Black Belt of the deep South. The Black Belt is a swath of lands across the lower south boasting dark fertile soils. It was the home of widespread cotton cultivation and most of the nation's enslaved African-Americans. In the post-Civil War era, it was the region in which freed, but impoverished, black Americans lived by the millions. The economic and social status quo in the Black Belt was threatened by the arrival of the New Deal. The existing economic system supported the interests of industrialists and planter families, but New Deal policies emboldened labor and stirred worrisome democratic values. The whiff of change in the air challenged both white supremacy and economic mastery by the local elites. But the impact was limited. FDR sacrificed civil rights upon the altar of the New Deal. He needed the support of Southern senators and congressmen to enact New Deal legislation. That support would have evaporated if he had pursued changes in racial policies in the South. The situation altered only with the ascension of Harry Truman, though he didn't rise in opposition to the injustices in the South until a wave of anti-black violence swept the region in 1946-47 – much of it directed against black veterans of World War II. Truman and many northern and western Democrats were appalled at the willful blinding of just-discharged Sergeant Isaac Woodard by the white police chief of Batesburg, South Carolina, the lynching of Willie Earle in Greenville, South Carolina in February '47, the murder by a racist mob of two black men and their wives in Monroe, Georgia in July of that year, and deadly anti-black riots in Columbia, Tennessee in February '46. In the light of such atrocities, Truman vowed to champion civil rights and a plank was included in the Democratic platform. It was this act that spurred the Dixiecrat split with the national party. The breakaway southerners couldn't find a home in the GOP either. Governor Tom Dewey's Republican platform of 1948 included a a civil rights plank too.
The Dixiecrat movement didn't die after its failure in the presidential campaign of 1948. It morphed, over years, into the southern wing of the Republican Party. Although Frederickson didn't spell it out, it doesn't require a deep background in American history and politics to etch a straight line from the Dixiecrat revolt of '48, through Strom Thurmond's defection to the GOP, to Barry Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act just prior to his 1964 presidential run (which carried the five Black Belt states of the South for that reason), onward through Nixon's “Southern Strategy,” to Ronald Reagan kicking off his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. The heirs of the Dixiecrats survive today in commanding political positions and public offices throughout the South, but now as Republicans. The Dixiecrat legacy embodies an ideological perspective and political bent which started in Dixie and has now spread to the Plains and Mountain states. The States' Rights zealots intended to gain influence in the Democratic Party, but now they dominate the GOP instead.
Kari Frederickson's The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 has resonance today. A reader easily may see parallels between the States' Rights campaign of '48 and the actions and rhetoric of candidates and their surrogates in the current presidential race. Her book is a valuable addition to the library of those interested in American political history. I recommend it with Four Stars.
The Dixiecrat campaign failed in its goal of winning sufficient electoral votes to force the election into the House of Representatives or compel Truman or Dewey to “horse trade” over civil rights. It succeeded in other ways. It presaged the end of the South as the bastion of the Democratic Party. The subsequent embrace by southern Republicans of much of the Dixiecrat agenda -- reduced federal involvement in state affairs, Right to Work laws, low wages and taxes, deregulation, limited social services, voter suppression -- devastated the Democrats' decades-long hold on the “Solid South.” The party hasn't recovered. It succeeded also in poisoning public discourse in the South for twenty years. The 1948 States' Rights campaign was not an appealing episode in American political life. It was marked by some of the most scurrilous and degrading campaign materials and public utterances ever to disgrace the American scene. Much of it was worthy of Alfred Rosenberg – but the targets weren't Jews.
The Dixiecrats grew from the Black Belt of the deep South. The Black Belt is a swath of lands across the lower south boasting dark fertile soils. It was the home of widespread cotton cultivation and most of the nation's enslaved African-Americans. In the post-Civil War era, it was the region in which freed, but impoverished, black Americans lived by the millions. The economic and social status quo in the Black Belt was threatened by the arrival of the New Deal. The existing economic system supported the interests of industrialists and planter families, but New Deal policies emboldened labor and stirred worrisome democratic values. The whiff of change in the air challenged both white supremacy and economic mastery by the local elites. But the impact was limited. FDR sacrificed civil rights upon the altar of the New Deal. He needed the support of Southern senators and congressmen to enact New Deal legislation. That support would have evaporated if he had pursued changes in racial policies in the South. The situation altered only with the ascension of Harry Truman, though he didn't rise in opposition to the injustices in the South until a wave of anti-black violence swept the region in 1946-47 – much of it directed against black veterans of World War II. Truman and many northern and western Democrats were appalled at the willful blinding of just-discharged Sergeant Isaac Woodard by the white police chief of Batesburg, South Carolina, the lynching of Willie Earle in Greenville, South Carolina in February '47, the murder by a racist mob of two black men and their wives in Monroe, Georgia in July of that year, and deadly anti-black riots in Columbia, Tennessee in February '46. In the light of such atrocities, Truman vowed to champion civil rights and a plank was included in the Democratic platform. It was this act that spurred the Dixiecrat split with the national party. The breakaway southerners couldn't find a home in the GOP either. Governor Tom Dewey's Republican platform of 1948 included a a civil rights plank too.
The Dixiecrat movement didn't die after its failure in the presidential campaign of 1948. It morphed, over years, into the southern wing of the Republican Party. Although Frederickson didn't spell it out, it doesn't require a deep background in American history and politics to etch a straight line from the Dixiecrat revolt of '48, through Strom Thurmond's defection to the GOP, to Barry Goldwater's opposition to the Civil Rights Act just prior to his 1964 presidential run (which carried the five Black Belt states of the South for that reason), onward through Nixon's “Southern Strategy,” to Ronald Reagan kicking off his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. The heirs of the Dixiecrats survive today in commanding political positions and public offices throughout the South, but now as Republicans. The Dixiecrat legacy embodies an ideological perspective and political bent which started in Dixie and has now spread to the Plains and Mountain states. The States' Rights zealots intended to gain influence in the Democratic Party, but now they dominate the GOP instead.
Kari Frederickson's The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 has resonance today. A reader easily may see parallels between the States' Rights campaign of '48 and the actions and rhetoric of candidates and their surrogates in the current presidential race. Her book is a valuable addition to the library of those interested in American political history. I recommend it with Four Stars.
April 25, 2018
The presidential election of 1948 is best remembered today for Harry Truman's famous come-from-behind victory and the iconic photo of him waving the inaccurate Chicago Tribune front page over his smiling face. Appended to it as a footnote is the third-party candidacy of Strom Thurmond, then the governor of South Carolina, who ran as the nominee of the "States Rights Democrats." Yet Kari Frederickson makes an excellent argument that Thurmond's candidacy may well have been the one with the more lasting significance in American political history, as it helped to end the long-standing dominance of the Democratic Party in Southern politics and bring about the political shift that has made the region into a Republican bastion today.
That Democratic Party's virtual monopoly in the South back then, as Frederickson notes, was the result of the allegiance of the white voters, who from Reconstruction onward depended on it to resist the intrusion of the federal government into race relations in the region. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, however, strained this relationship by fostering Southern politicians who were economically liberal and supportive of greater federal involvement in the lives of their (white) constituents. Because of this, the traditional elites in the South's Black Belt were increasingly disenchanted with the national party leadership, a disenchantment that grew with Harry Truman's advocacy of greater intervention on civil rights issues in the region.
It was this opposition that coalesced into the Dixiecrat movement. Frederickson makes it clear that its members never really believed that they could elect Thurmond president in 1948; rather, their goal was to throw the election into the House of Representatives by denying Truman and the Republican nominee Thomas Dewey the 146 electoral votes of the South, then to leverage concessions to the region in return for their support for one of the candidates. In the end, though, their efforts proved a failure, as the South failed to rally behind Thurmond. Most politicians the region distanced themselves from the Dixiecrats lest they sacrifice the political influence they already possessed, while the voters' ties to the Democratic Party proved more durable. Ironically, nothing proved this better than the victories in the four states that Thurmond won, all of which were ones in which the Dixiecrats had secured control of the state party machinery. Truman's victory, however, obscured that 1948 was the start of greater volatility in the Southern vote, especially in presidential elections, as the region gradually developed a two-party system, albeit one that in the end couldn't survive the increasing embrace of civil rights issues by the Democrats nationally.
Well research and expertly analyzed, Frederickson's book is an excellent examination of an often-overlooked aspect of a key event in American political history, She is careful not to draw a clear line connecting the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party's dominance in the South today, though her evidence makes it easier to understand the background and origins of that shift. Where her study falls short is in its exclusive focus on the political situation in the South, as Frederickson never really addresses the developments in the overall national political environment (such as the outreach by the Democrats to African American voters in the North) that were driving the changes that spawned the Dixiecrats' disaffection. Yet this is a flaw that can be forgiven given the insights she provides into the rise and fall of the Dixiecrat movement. It's a book that every student of American political history should read, as well as anyone who wants to know how American politics got to the state that it is in today — for while history may not repeat itself, we function within the grooves set by the past nonetheless.
That Democratic Party's virtual monopoly in the South back then, as Frederickson notes, was the result of the allegiance of the white voters, who from Reconstruction onward depended on it to resist the intrusion of the federal government into race relations in the region. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, however, strained this relationship by fostering Southern politicians who were economically liberal and supportive of greater federal involvement in the lives of their (white) constituents. Because of this, the traditional elites in the South's Black Belt were increasingly disenchanted with the national party leadership, a disenchantment that grew with Harry Truman's advocacy of greater intervention on civil rights issues in the region.
It was this opposition that coalesced into the Dixiecrat movement. Frederickson makes it clear that its members never really believed that they could elect Thurmond president in 1948; rather, their goal was to throw the election into the House of Representatives by denying Truman and the Republican nominee Thomas Dewey the 146 electoral votes of the South, then to leverage concessions to the region in return for their support for one of the candidates. In the end, though, their efforts proved a failure, as the South failed to rally behind Thurmond. Most politicians the region distanced themselves from the Dixiecrats lest they sacrifice the political influence they already possessed, while the voters' ties to the Democratic Party proved more durable. Ironically, nothing proved this better than the victories in the four states that Thurmond won, all of which were ones in which the Dixiecrats had secured control of the state party machinery. Truman's victory, however, obscured that 1948 was the start of greater volatility in the Southern vote, especially in presidential elections, as the region gradually developed a two-party system, albeit one that in the end couldn't survive the increasing embrace of civil rights issues by the Democrats nationally.
Well research and expertly analyzed, Frederickson's book is an excellent examination of an often-overlooked aspect of a key event in American political history, She is careful not to draw a clear line connecting the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party's dominance in the South today, though her evidence makes it easier to understand the background and origins of that shift. Where her study falls short is in its exclusive focus on the political situation in the South, as Frederickson never really addresses the developments in the overall national political environment (such as the outreach by the Democrats to African American voters in the North) that were driving the changes that spawned the Dixiecrats' disaffection. Yet this is a flaw that can be forgiven given the insights she provides into the rise and fall of the Dixiecrat movement. It's a book that every student of American political history should read, as well as anyone who wants to know how American politics got to the state that it is in today — for while history may not repeat itself, we function within the grooves set by the past nonetheless.
May 4, 2025
A concise and well written book that really centers on 1948 and the Dixiecrat revolt that election centered on the States Rights run by Storm Thurmond for president. Argues persuasively that 1948 only worked for this party in places where it replaced Truman on the ballot, but that long term it showed how a two party system in the South would work, laying the groundwork for 1968. Thurmond loss in 1950 for governor as a result of the loyalty of black voters for his opponent was maybe the most interesting revelation in the text.
March 19, 2026
4.5
while my thesis research is taxing and kind of a slog, dr. frederickson is an incredibly engaging writer. despite the absolute wealth of citations, this is very readable material, and it is structured in such a fascinating way that, if it weren't for the necessary heavy annotations, i would have sped through.
while my thesis research is taxing and kind of a slog, dr. frederickson is an incredibly engaging writer. despite the absolute wealth of citations, this is very readable material, and it is structured in such a fascinating way that, if it weren't for the necessary heavy annotations, i would have sped through.
March 7, 2025
This is THE best one volume history on the Dixiecrat Movement of 1948.
October 27, 2016
Mostly talking about State Rights Democratic Party, or more commonly called Dixiecrats, a group of Southern Democratic Party Politicians who were disaffected with the national party's stance on Civil Rights. Doomed from the start, the Dixiecrats fared poorly in 1948 Presidential Election and seemed to be destined as another footnote in history. However, the Dixiecrats left more long-lasting impacts on American politics, and became the milestone for the Republican's ascendance to domination in Southern America.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews