Volume 18 , Issue 3

Civil Rights Talk In 1950

Remembering the 1950s and the Civil Right movement that was progressing through the United States. A Statesville, North Carolina newspaper, Statesville Daily Record, dated 28 January 1950, Saturday, page 1, reported the following bold front page headlines: "Civil Rights Talk Marks Democrat Meet." Governors gave views on the issues. National Leaders convened in Raleigh; Brannan Addressed oping session.

Found on Newspapers.com

Raleigh, Jan. 28 (1950) -- Southern Democratic leaders met here 28 January 1950 to hear high officials and party bigwigs applaud Truman administration policies on everything but civil rights but civil rights kept up a background hum despite its absence from the agenda. The three southern governors attending the one day southern Democratic pep rally freely voiced their opinions on civil rights despite its conspicuous absence from the program.

It was the civil rights argument which split southern Democrats in 1948.

Officially, civil rights was a taboo subject and that was all right with North Carolina's Gov. Kerr Scott.

"The less they say about the dang thing the better off we'll be" said Scott. "Just leave us alone here and we'll go on and do all right."

The other two governors present were split on the subject of discussing the problem.

"I agree with Governor Scott," said Gov. Sidney McMath of Arkansas. "It is a matter of state responsibility and I think we should assume it on the sate level. We hear a great deal about States' rights but I believe we also have sates' responsibilities."

Gov. James Folsom of Alabama wanted the cards on the table.

"We have a program here on the agenda," Folsom said, "But I have no objection to any subject relating tot he Decorative party. I like to see things brought out in the open with all the cards on the table."

Besides Scott, Folsom and McMath were the only two southern governors present of 13 invited. Gov. Roy Turner of Oklahoma would possibly attend it weather permitted his flying i for late sessions.

Delegates were present from 14 states. A possible delegate from Louisiana failed to turn up.

Johnathan Daniels, chairman of the meeting and North Carolina National Democratic committeeman said, civil rights had no place on the program. The program, he said, was national, not regional.

States Rights Democrats were not invited and that went for the two governors who bolted the party in 1948 - J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Fielding Wright of Mississippi.

Southern Democrats To Fight Civil Rights
Found on Newspapers.com

Washington, Jan. 28 (1950) -- Southern Democrats in the senate quit talking about compromising the civil rights issue on that day and prepared to fight by filibuster.

It was their answer to President Truman's no compromise stand on the far-reaching civil rights program he proposed to congress nearly two years before (1948). Queried at his news conference the day before about compromise overtures from the South, the president said his compromise was in his last civil rights message.

Sen. Richard B. Russell, D., Ga., spokesman for the southern bloc had this to say about Mr. Truman's stand:

"The president's statement would indicate that he still is insisting on all the civil rights measures he laid down in his message to congress including the compulsory FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission).

"This, of course, eliminates any possibility of compromise. It is in effect a demand that we take and like all these measures, including the socialistic FEPC. WE do not like them and we do not propose to take them."

Russell's view was not fully shared by Rep. Brooks Hays, D., Ark., chief house spokesman of compromise, who said he would continue to work for "the Arkansas plan." His plan calls for a series of substitute proposals for Mr. Truman's program.

One of the president's lieutenants in the sense echoed the president's news conference remarks, however, and said there was no basis for compromise. He said MR. Truman was committed to a program and that the administration saw no reason to modify it.

Russell is not sponsoring any detailed compromise plan. It is known, however, that he went to the While House about a year ago (1949) to sound out Mr. Truman on the possibility of one. Apparently he received no encouragement.

After the president's news conference the day before, Russell told a reporter that there were a number of southerners in congress "who in good faith have undertaken to work out an overall compromise of this political controversy."

"IF nothing less than the compulsory FEPC is to be demanded," he said, "we are prepared to meet its sponsors at Philippi."

In Truman's 1948 presidential campaign run, he asked congress to pass wider-ranging civil rights program. If congress had done that, the ones benefiting most would have been Negroes in the south.

Mr. Truman's proposal so infuriated white southern politicians that they opposed his nomination as Democratic candidate for president.

This was also about the time the Democrat Liberals for Truman split with the Dixiecrats (the Brannan Plan).
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