The Life and Death of the Solid South: a Political History
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Political History History 1988 The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History Dewey W. Grantham Vanderbilt University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Grantham, Dewey W., "The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History" (1988). Political History. 5. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_history/5 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTH Charles P. Roland, General Editor This page intentionally left blank The Life & Death of the SOLID SOUTH A POLITICAL HISTORY DEWEY W. GRANTHAM THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright© 1988 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 1992 Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Grantham, Dewey W. The life and death of the Solid South : a political history I Dewey W. Grantham p. em. - (New perspectives on the South) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-8131-0308-8; 0-8131-0813-6 1. Southern States-Politics and government-1865-1950. 2. Southern States-Politics and government-1951- I. Title. II. Series. F215.G737 1988 320.975-dc19 88-50 ISBN 978-0-8131-0813-1 This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. ~.& Y .& , I ~ Member of the Associaiton of 'I~ - American University Presses Contents List of Tables and Graphs vi List of Maps and Illustrations vii Editor's Preface ix Preface xi 1. Forging the Solid South 1 2. The One-Party System 26 3. In the National Arena 58 4. The Classic Period of Southern Politics 78 5. The South and the New Deal 102 6. The Politics of Massive Resistance 125 7. The Second Reconstruction 149 8. Toward a Two-Party South 177 Epilogue 204 Notes 209 Bibliographical Essay 220 Index 248 Tables 1. Adult Males Voting for Each Party in Presidential Elections, 1872-1908 9 2. Southern Influence in Congress, 1933-1988 106 3. The Southern Coalition in Congress, 1957-1985 141 4. Party Identification in the South, 1952-1984 152 5. Republican Victories for Selected Federal Offices, 1965-1985 189 Graphs 1. Patterns of Turnout in Presidential Elections, 1860-1964 65 2. Democratic Percentage of the Presidential Vote, 1900-1944 76 3. Republican Vote in Presidential and Congressional Elections, 1948-1984 180 Maps The South 30 The Black Belt 93 Illustrations FOR and the Purge of 1938 110 "Massive Is in the Cold, Cold Ground" 146 'There's Something on That Line!' 175 This page intentionally left blank Editor's Preface Southern politics in the twentieth century, as during the entire course of southern history, was both national and regional in its purposes and means. But so visible were its regional manifestations during the first half of the century, so thoroughly were they stamped upon its national political presence, that V.O. Key in 1949 would accuse the South of employing the Democratic party as an "instrument for the conduct of (its] 'foreign relations' with the rest of the nation." One might also have said that the South used the United States Congress, in large part, as an assembly for accomplishing its regional diplomatic goals. Southern politics operated to preserve traditional southern prejudices and interests; its fundamental party characteristics were Democratic solidarity and white exclusivity. During the past three decades, immense changes have occurred in southern party politics, including the disappearance of Democratic solidarity and white exclusivity. The excellent study offered here by Dewey W. Grantham, the preeminent historian of recent southern politics, tells why and how these changes came about. The book's title comprises its theme: the life and death of the Solid South. Yet the author concludes that many of the Solid South's essential elements and much of the political culture in which it flourished are still sig nificant determinants of southern politics; that, ironically, these very elements and this very culture played an important role in the death as well as the life of the Solid South. This book is indispensable for inclusion in "New Perspectives on the South," a series designed to give a fresh and comprehensive view of the region's history. Each volume is expected to be a discrete essay representing both a synthesis of the best scholarship on its subject and an interpretive analysis drawn from the author's own research and reflections. Eight volumes are now in print; an additional twelve or more are anticipated to complete the set. Charles P. Roland To: Charles F. Delzell J. Leiper Freeman V. Jacque Voegeli Preface Southern politics, like racial segregation and one-crop agriculture, was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This southern system-long referred to as the Solid South-embodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and it was the means through which the South's politicians defended their region's special interests and political autonomy in national politics. This was the Democratic South. In its broad outlines, the history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of Democratic dominance in the land below the Po tomac and the Ohio. Interpreters have sometimes exaggerated the monolithic character of southern politics and its divergence from political currents in other parts of the country. But the South's political sectionalism was ex ceptional. There is nothing else quite comparable in the nation's po litical history. The strength and durability of the Solid South resulted in good part from three circumstances: the South's poverty, its de pressed economy, and the influence of its plantation-oriented elites; the federal system and the changing shape of national politics; and the potency of the region's political culture. The one-party system had, in V.O. Key's words, "an odd dual personality." In state politics the Democratic party was no party at all but "a multiplicity of factions struggling for office." In national politics, on the other hand, the party was the Solid South, "the instrument for the conduct of the 'foreign relations' of the South with the rest of the nation."1 Three fairly distinct periods mark the evolution of the Solid South. The first, lasting roughly from Reconstruction to the turn of the nine teenth century, represented the formative stage in the development xii The Life & Death of the Solid South of a one-party system in the southern states. The second, comprising the first half of the twentieth century, witnessed the operation of the system in the full panoply of its dominance. This was the classic era of the Solid South, which is defined in this study to include the eleven ex-Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. The third period, beginning with the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, brought the disruption of the Solid South, the gradual decline of the one-party system, and the transformation of southern politics. It is now possible to speak with some confidence of "the two-party South. " 2 Southern Democrats succeeded for almost three-quarters of a cen tury after Reconstruction in defending their peculiar sectional inter ests in national politics. The federal nature of political parties in the United States facilitated this endeavor, and the skillful use of congres sional power provided a means of warding off threats from the outside while simultaneously enlarging financial assistance from Washington. According to one political scientist, the South "influenced American politics in ways not dissimilar to the influence of Quebec in Canada or of Ireland in the United Kingdom in the years from 1870 to 1922. The massive influence of that deviant subculture upon national party politics and policy outputs has scarcely run its course a century after Appomattox."3 For all its sectional perversity, southern politics has been a national as well as a sectional phenomenon. Today the South's politics is subject to greater national influence than at any time since Reconstruction, and the region's political future obviously depends on what happens in the rest of the country as well as on such state and local considerations as the fortunes of the influential black-white Democratic coalitions. There is talk nowadays of the "Southernization of America" and of a new role for the South in American life-the "nation's second chance."4 This volume presents a brief history of the Solid South. It might be thought of as a kind of "natural history" of a powerful regional institution, an institution that played an influential role in the con tinuing drama of modern American politics. The book is both a syn thesis of the extensive literature on politics in the recent South and an interpretation of the region's political history since the end of Re construction.