Tauku Lee Quotes
Roosevelt’s New Deal would have been impossible without the support of the Southern segregationists.
At that time, all the racist segregationists of the South were Democrats, unlike in the latter part of the 20th century where, after the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, pushed through the Civil Rights Act, the segregationists accepted an invitation to switch to the Republican Party. In the 1930s, FDR’s Congressional majority depended on these segregationists. This is why, even though the New Deal liberalized most of American life, FDR did very little about racial equality and Civil Rights. In the 21st century, Republican Administrations could not do much about the remaining equality and civil rights issues. The racists of America, although far fewer in number, voted for the Republicans and were an important part of their base, just as they had been for FDR during the New Deal.
Tauku Lee, Political Scientist & Legal Scholar, “New Deal, Old South”, Foreign Affairs, September – October 2013
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He was right. Even the vaunted Southern Filibuster was broken by the strategy and tactics Johnson and Senator Humbert Humphry, the Floor Leader for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
This was art of the Nixon "Southern Strategy" to alienate the white supremacists and racists from the Democratic Party with Civil Rights legislation and rhetoric, and get most of them to become Republicans. But as Phillips observed, when Negroes began voting in significant numbers in the South the party switching really accelerated.
Coughlin was an early and valued supporter of FDR, but after Roosevelt’s election the priest became dissatisfied that Roosevelt was not radical enough. FDR also wanted to distance himself from many of the Fascist and Socialist ideas of Coughlin and especially his racism and anti-Semitism. Coughlin then flip-flopped and became a vicious Roosevelt Critic. Few realize that he ever supported Roosevelt.
It was used as a whipping boy and led to a re-alignment of Southern politicians to the Republican party.
Prior to Johnson’s civil rights efforts, the South virtually always voted for Democrats in all elections. The only political competition was for the Democratic Party Primaries. The term “Solid South” meant that it was solid for the Democratic Party. But after the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the racist whites who used to be Democrats switched and joined the genuine traditional conservative and created a Republican Southern majority that was as solid for the GOP as the Democrats had ever enjoyed.
The statement was made even more dramatic as the outgoing Governor, Lester Mattox, standing behind Carter at the ceremony, was an arch segregationist.
Reconstruction was the period in the South after the Civil War. The change that emancipation brought to the white South was traumatic, and there was a constant struggle between those who wanted the Blacks to be integrated into Southern Society—and those Southerners who wanted to create a society that would be as close to slavery as possible, So the Klu Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations formed and with lynching and other intimidation, much of the initial progress of Reconstruction was rolled back and did not get reinstated until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in 1964.
Blacks were fighting and dying in WWII. They were equal when they were under fire, but otherwise not. The war was against fascist protagonists whose creed was inequality while the allies were upholding freedom and equality. But making that aspiration a reality was difficult.
Incredible as it seems today, no Black person had ever dined in the White House as a guest of the President. African American servants were common. And Abraham Lincoln had received many Black visitors as had Presidents after him. But no president had ever had a Black person to dine as a social equal. The photo, reproduced here, illustrates the parity. But that was the worst thing a President could do so far as Tillman and his fellow racists were concerned. They had, since the end of the Civil war, used violence and terrorism to murder, maim and/or intimidate the Negro population to remain in an economic and socially inferior position. In Tillman’s state over these decades they had more lynchings than legal executions and there were plenty of them. Newspapers over the South riled up the whites and there was a wave of terror to be sure that the President’s importune action would not be taken as an endorsement of the Negro’s right to any equality or even dignity. This dinner essentially wedded all the Blacks to the Republican Party and all the Southern Whites to the Democratic Party. This would remain the political situation for over 60 years until the Democrats passed the LBJ Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Republicans decided to solicit the Southern White racists who accepted the invitation and within a few years, there was a complete reversal of party loyalty of most Blacks and most Southern White Racists.
Vladimir Lenin. In their quest for world revolution, the Russian Communists had more problems with arguments in the United States whose reforms and economy had produced a very high standard of living. They knew that to effect a revolution, they had to reach the middle class and the intellectuals. They had little economically to attack America with but they were able to attack the United States morally. Even though segregation was legal in America at that time, many Americans thought it immoral. Most of the rest of the world did also. So that was one of the attack points. Since the communists opposed U. S. racial segregation, many Southern segregationists used a perverted logic and accused everyone who opposed segregation of being a communist. In addition to racial segregation, the Communists attacked other forms of discrimination such as anti-Catholic, anti-Asian, and anti-Semitic (See {638737} ) behavior.
