Angry Racist Southerners Form Dixicrat Party To Oppose President Truman

 

Southern Democrats Convention At The Birmingham Municipal Auditorium.
Photograph by Marion Johnson, the Atlanta Constitution

July 14-17, 1948, President Harry Truman took to the podium at the National Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia and delivered a speech that marked a sea change in the Democratic Party and set a direction for the future. Truman spoke passionately about Civil Rights and the need to make America a nation of real equality.

The Democrats of the South didn’t like it. They didn’t like the inclusion of a party plank calling for Civil Rights changes. They had met on their own to decide to walk out of the convention during the state roll call to make their point.

So, on July 14 when the party began delegate roll call most of the Alabama delegation turned and walked off the floor. When the roll call reached M, Mississippi delegates all walked out. These were people committed to keeping segregation in place and enforcing Jim Crow.

This angered some of the high party bosses who were already concerned that Truman was vulnerable. These men saw little hope in a win for Truman without the Southern states in the pocket as they had been for decades.

Regardless, the party had taken a courageous step forward. On the other hand, the Southern states were determined to create something that would protect their way of life and something that in the 1960s would transfer the voting bloc to the Republicans in the “Southern Strategy”

Led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond and Arkansas Governor Benjamin Travis Laney these Democrats decided to call themselves the “States Rights Party” They met for their convention on July 17 in Birmingham, Alabama. While they did not identify as a real third party the intention was to draw enough votes from Truman and Republican nominee Thomas Dewey into through the election into the House of Representatives. Calling themselves “Dixiecrats” the breakaway Southerners nominated Thurmond as their presidential candidate and Mississippi governor Fielding L. Wright.

6,000 registered Democrats came to Birmingham to endorse the new segregationist party. This was the main plank of the party and their hope was by sending the election into the House they would be able to negotiate to support whichever candidate agreed to the continuance of segregation.

Somewhat surprised by the turnout for their quickly put-together convention in Birmingham, the party held another convention in Oklahoma City on August 14. At this convention, they adopted a very racist platform:

“We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, and the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home rule, local self-government, and a minimum interference with individual rights.”

This platform and campaigns targeting both Truman and Dewey as authoritarians who wanted to end the Southern way of life. Thurmond was able to win four states and 39 electoral votes. The Dixiecrat ticket won South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These upset wins did take votes from Truman in what would prove to be one of the closest presidential elections in history. Though he still won he wasn’t as powerful in the party as most sitting presidents are and so when the party drifted back some on Civil Rights, he wasn’t able to stop them, still even with the moral high ground taken from him Truman still ended segregation in the military and set the tone for the next 20 years.

 

Sources:

https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/1948_States_Rights_Democratic_Party_convention

https://data.philly.com/conventions/1948-d.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1948-democratic-convention-878284/

Regrettable Atrocity Leads To Outrage But No Significant Changes

Mae and George Dorsey, Roger and Dorothy Malcolm.

Two married couples were killed on this day in 1946 by the hands of “persons unknown” in Moore’s Ford, Georgia. This vile act gained national condemnation and helped push the national conversation regarding civil rights, except it was all for nothing in the end, four innocent African Americans were killed by a mob of White men and there were no consequences to the murderers.

The two men, Roger Malcolm and George Dorsey were sharecroppers working on the farm of Loy Harrison. Dorsey was a veteran who had served for 5 years in the Pacific theatre during the war; he was married to Mae Murry Dorsey. He had been working for Harrison first. Roger Malcolm had been working for another landowner Barnett Hester near Madison Georgia previously but on the 14th of July Hester ordered Malcolm and his wife Dorthy, who was seven months pregnant, to get off his property. The reason for the eviction was never stated but tempers were high and Malcolm stabbed Hester with an ice pick.

Remarkably for the time Hester’s family did not lynch Malcolm right then and held him until the Walton County Sheriff could come to arrest him. Malcolm was held in the Walton County Jail for the next 11 days until Mrs. Malcolm and the Dorseys could arrange for a bond to be paid. Harrison had agreed to pay the $600 bond if the two men would work in his fields.

After posting bond Harrison was driving the two couples back to his property when they were intercepted by 20 armed White men. The odd thing was that Harrison did not take the direct and shortest route back to his property but took a secondary road over Moore’s Ford Bridge between Walton and Oconee Counties. Although he was suspected of perhaps participating in the crime Harrison insisted he was innocent of any participation for the rest of his life, and being a stout, over-weight middle age man he stated he could do nothing to defend the two couples. I fact in his own account he states when the mob called to pull Dorsey from the car they called him ‘Charlie” and Harrison tried then to interfere but the mob leaders threatened to shoot him too.

Harrison also stated in his statement that at first the mob looked like they were going to leave the women alone until Mrs. Malcolm called out some of the men by name since they were not masked. It was then that the apparent leader of the mob ordered the two women to be brought over to the trees and tied there with their husbands. 

The mob then began firing their guns at the four hitting them at least 60 times each. Moore’s Bridge spanned the Apalachee River 60 miles east of Atlanta, and it was at the end of a dirt cut-off that Harrison later led law enforcement to the bodies.

The news of the killings was immediately nationwide news and rose to both the Georgia Governor’s office and the Presidency. 

Georgia’s Democratic Governor Ellis Arnell called for justice and better civil rights, but he was in a heated primary against former Governor, also a Democrat, Eugene Talmadge who was a White Supremacist who fought against voting rights and when Arnall called for equal rights Talmadge shot back that there was no valid reason to give equal rights and that nothing could be gained by doing so. 

Arnell offered a $10,000 reward but no one came forward with enough information to claim the reward. Arnell lost the election to Talmadge, who then stated that the lynching was regrettable and that he would do everything in his power to, “keep such atrocities at a minimum”.

While this wordplay went on President Truman ordered the FBI to investigate and they interviewed some 3000 people. Even though they took on the massive investigation they could turn up no witnesses. However many people had said that they saw Talmadge in Walton County talking with Barnett Hester’s brother. Although agents doubted Talmadge could be involved they sent the claim to Director J Edgar Hoover. What was concluded was that the Whites of the two counties were, “Clannish and silent and communicated to each other to stay quiet, the Negroes were fearful and wouldn’t talk either.”

While there were numerous questions about Loy Harrison and his decisions, Talmadge being in the area and the sheriff and arresting deputies not investigating the deaths no one ever went on record with testimony or allegations.By the end of 1946 the probe was quietly ended and the world moved on.

A federal grand jury was still empaneled in Athens, Georgia but failed to produce an indictment, deciding that the Malcolms and the Dorseys were shot multiple times, “at the hands of person’s unknown”

Sources:

https://coldcases.emory.edu/george-dorsey-mae-dorsey-dorothy-malcom-and-roger-malcom/

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/02/07/answers-last-mass-lynching-us-die-when-investigators-close-case-after-72-years

https://georgiahistory.com/marker-monday-moores-ford-lynching/

Loy Harrison

The Blinding of Sargent Isaac Woodard And The Concious Of President Harry Truman

 

Feb. 12, 1946, Sargent Isaac Woodard boarded a Greyhound bus in Augusta, Georgia headed for his home in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He was excited as he had just been discharged from the Army after serving in the Pacific during World War Two. Sargent Woodward had been given an honorable discharge; he was a decorated veteran of the war.

When the bus stopped again in North Augusta on the South Carolina side of the city Sargent Woodward asked the driver, Alton C. Blackwell, if he had time to use the restroom. The driver insulted him but allowed him time; “Talk to me like I am talking to you,” Sargent Woodward told him in response, adding: “I am a man just like you.”

Sargent Woodward returned to his seat and was unaware of Blackwell having contacted the police in the city of Batesburg, South Carolina. When the bus stopped in Batesburg police chief Lynwood Shull and officer Elliot Long came on the bus to remove Sargent Woodward whom the driver had reported as being drunk and disorderly.

The police took Sargent Woodward into an alley next to the station and preceded to beat him severely. They then took him to the police station and charged him with being drunk and disorderly and then left him in his cell. They at no point attempted to get him medical care, although he complained of great pain.

The next morning Sargent Woodward appeared in court and was convicted of the charges and fined $50, at this time he again requested medical care. It took another two days before he was seen by a doctor. Not knowing where he was and still experiencing amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, South Carolina but he was receiving substandard medical care since he was Black. Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital at Aiken. He was immediately rushed to an Army hospital in Columbia.

Finally receiving care his memory began to return his vision did not his eyes had been gouged by both fingers and a police nightstick as well as multiple contusions and possible Intracranial hematoma. The damage was at this point permanent there was no way for them to restore his vision.

Although it was not reported very much initially, news of the assault slowly began spreading across the nation and people were outraged that this happened to a veteran. The NAACP worked hard to make Sargent Woodard’s case a national referendum on civil rights. Orson Welles took up the case on his national ABC radio show. Welles criticized the lack of action by the South Carolina government as intolerable and shameful. Woodard was the focus of Welles's four subsequent broadcasts. The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case.

In August of 1946 the NAACP held a benefit for Sargent Woodward and his family at Harlem’s now-defunct Lewisohn Stadium, the show was headlined by Billie Holiday and boxer Joe Louis. Folk singer Woody Guthrie performed a song he wrote, “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard” the benefit concert drew a crowd of 20,000 and raised $10,000 for Sargent Woodard and his family.

Also, in August NAACP leader Walter White met with President Harry S. Truman and asked for the Department of Justice to look into the case. Truman had only heard a few things about the case but when White gave him a detailed account of the attack. Truman reportedly exploded in rage, “My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We’ve got to do something!” He immediately ordered Attorney General Tom C. Clark to investigate why the state of South Carolina had not done anything.

The DOJ did a short investigation and then indicted Lynwood Shull and several of his officers. The bus stop was at Camp Gordon and Sargent Woodward was in uniform so it was a federal crime.

What followed was by all standards a travesty of justice. Claude Sapp, the local U.S. Attorney charged with handling the case, failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, in fact, other veterans who witnessed the argument with the bus driver and had signed affidavits were never called as witnesses and their statements were not introduced as evidence. Sapp only called upon. The defense was as unprofessional with Shull’s lawyer using racial epitaphs, “The way he spoke is not how a sober nigger speaks in the south.” He called Shull himself as a witness and the bus driver Blackwell. Both insisted Sargent Woodward  was drunk and threatening; Shull said he drove Sargent Woodward  to the Veteran’s hospital himself  once it was clear he was wounded, this was perjury. He added that a conviction of Shull would be equal to South Carolina once again seceding from the union.

After the cases wrapped up Judge Julius Waring gave instructions to the all-white jury to review all evidence and do their due diligence as a jury, they took 15 minutes to do so and ruled Shull, Elliot Long, and other officers innocent. Waring was visibly upset with the verdict.

Truman was so moved by the entire case and its outcome that he signed executive order 9808 that established the Civil Rights Commission by; a fifteen-member, interracial group, including the President of General Electric, Charles E. Wilson; academics such as John Sloan Dickey from Dartmouth College; and Sadie Tanner Alexander, a black attorney for the city of Philadelphia, as well as other activists.

In a 1947 speech, the President said that civil rights were a moral priority, and it was his priority for the federal government. He had seen by Woodard's and other cases that the issue could not be left to state and local governments. He said: “It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans—I mean all Americans.”

On February 2, 1948, Truman sent the first comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress. It had incorporated many of the thirty-five recommendations of his commission. In July 1948, over the objection of senior military officers, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, banning racial discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, and Executive Order 9980 to integrate the federal government. (Facilities had been segregated under President Woodrow Wilson). This was in response to a number of incidents against black veterans, most notably the Woodard case. The armed forces and federal agencies led the way in the United States for the integration of the workplace, public facilities, and schools. Over the decades, the decision meant that both institutions benefited from the contributions of minorities.

Sargent Woodard moved to New York City after the trial and was active to some extent in the Civil Rights movement. He died in a VA hospital in the Bronx in 1992.

 

 

Sources:

Woody Guthrie’s Song “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A7A5VGjSFk

 

https://time.com/5950641/blinding-isaac-woodard/

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/woodward-isaac-beating-of/

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/woodard-isaac-1919-1992/

Egerton, John. Speak Now Against the Day, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Gergel, Richard. Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, FSG, 2019.