While many Democrats in the South supported substantive economic intervention, civil rights for African Americans were not specifically incorporated within the New Deal agenda, due in part to Southern control over many key positions of power within the U.S.

The Dixiecrats' standard bearer, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, eventually switched to the Republican Party in 1964, in opposition to national civil rights legislation.

[6] Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Since the beginning of Reconstruction, Southern white voters supported the Democratic Party by overwhelming margins in both local and national elections, (the few exceptions include minor pockets of Republican electoral strength in Appalachia, East Tennessee in particular, Gillespie and Kendall Counties of central Texas) forming what was known as the "Solid South".

Even during the last years of Reconstruction, Democrats used paramilitary insurgents and other activists to disrupt and intimidate Republican freedman voters, including fraud at the polls and attacks on their leaders.

They also imposed Jim Crow, a combination of legal and informal segregation acts that made blacks second-class citizens, confirming their lack of political power through most of the southern United States.

The social and economic systems of the Solid South were based on this structure, although the white Democrats retained all the Congressional seats apportioned for the total population of their states.

While many Democrats in the South had shifted toward favoring economic intervention, civil rights for African Americans was not specifically incorporated within the New Deal agenda, due in part to Southern control over many key positions of power within the U.S. Congress.

[16] In July, the convention nominated Truman to run for a full term and adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals led by Hubert Humphrey calling for civil rights; 35 Southern delegates walked out.

[18] Prior to their own States' Rights Democratic Party convention, it was not clear whether the Dixiecrats would seek to field their own candidate or simply try to prevent Southern electors from voting for Truman.

[18] Even if the Republican ticket won an outright majority of electoral votes (as many expected in 1948), the Dixiecrats hoped that their third-party run would help the South retake its dominant position in the Democratic Party.

We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.The platform went on to say:[22] We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.In Arkansas, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Sid McMath vigorously supported Truman in speeches across the state, much to the consternation of the sitting governor, Benjamin Travis Laney, an ardent Thurmond supporter.

[23] Efforts by States' Rights Democrats to paint other Truman loyalists as turncoats generally failed, although the seeds of discontent were planted which in years to come took their toll on Southern moderates.

Progressive Party presidential nominee Henry A. Wallace drew off a nearly equal number of popular votes (1,157,172) from the Democrats' left wing, although he did not carry any states.

[24] Wright continued to defend racial segregation, but conceded that complete obstinance along the lines of the 1948 departure from the Democratic Party would cause his home state of Mississippi to lose "its standing with everybody in America.

In the 1956 election, former Commissioner of Internal Revenue T. Coleman Andrews received just under 0.2 percent of the popular vote running as the presidential nominee of the States' Rights Party.

[28] In the 1960 presidential election, Republican Richard Nixon won several Southern states, and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia received the votes of several unpledged electors from Alabama and Mississippi.