National Affairs: Challenge from the South

Ever since the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, politicians and pundits have been speculating about the course Southern Democrats would follow in 1952. Truman failed to heal the rift between Northern and Southern Democrats. On the other hand, most of the Dixiecrat leaders lost ground within the Democratic Party. The South's problem this time was how to oppose Truman without leaving the party. Last week the Southern leaders disclosed the first step in their program.

At a quiet press conference on Capitol Hill, Georgia's Senator Richard Brevard Russell announced that he is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Said he: "I am a Jeffersonian Democrat who believes in the greatest practicable degree of local self-government." Would he support Harry Truman if the President is nominated? "I shall not answer that until he is and I see the platform," said straightforward Dick Russell. "... I have never been one of those men who say vote the Democratic ticket even if it destroys my country."

A Weevil's Chance. Some of the biggest stars in the Southern Democrat sky—Virginia's Senator Harry Byrd, South Carolina's Governor James Byrnes, Texas' Governor Allan Shivers, Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge and Senator Walter George—promptly came out for Russell. All of them know that, at the moment, he has about as much chance of being nominated as a boll weevil has of winning a popularity contest at a cotton planters' picnic. Then what are they trying to do?

Most of all, they would like to encourage Harry Truman to retire, by showing him that the South is ready to stage a first-class revolt. Their greatest complaint against Truman: his race policies. They abhor the proposal for a federal fair employment practices law, which would strike at segregation. The Southerners rationalize their stand by claiming that this problem should be handled by the states.

Whether or not Russell & Co. cause Harry Truman to take himself out, they want the South to have a powerful voice in the convention, both as to platform and nominee. What they will do if the Democrats nominate Truman or a Trumanite, and adopt another all-out civil-rights plank, is uncertain. Dick Russell wouldn't say what he will do. In 1948 he let his name go before the convention, and got 263 votes. But he refused to join the Dixiecrats' post-convention bolt. After a 1952 convention defeat, the Southern Democrats could again try a third party, or they could try to swing the South to the Republican side. Unless the G.O.P. nominee is Dwight Eisenhower, the second course is no more likely than the first.

A third and more novel possibility is being widely discussed south of the Mason-Dixon line. Several Southern states have adopted or are adopting laws which keep presidential candidates' names off the general election ballot. The citizens vote, instead, only for party electors, who will be free to cast their ballots for whomever they wish when the electoral college meets next December.