Whither Dixie?

From Cape Charles to Corpus Christi, the word had spread: the election-year plan of the anti-Truman Democrats would be launched by Virginia's Senator Harry Byrd when he spoke at Selma, Ala. Advance billing implied that many of the Southland's big shots would be there.

The appointed day was bleak and drizzly. Only 2,700 people turned out, and they included few notables. Georgia's truculent Herman Talmadge and Mississippi's Fielding Wright, a lame duck, were the only governors present. Other than Byrd, there were no Senators.

The poor showing seemed to portend a lack of fervor toward the states' rights cause. "We must not," Byrd warned, "be lulled into a sense of false security if there is some delay in taking up these [civil rights] bills," which he called a "devil's brew." As his tie, ablaze with a Stars & Bars design, fluttered in the wet breeze, Byrd charged Truman with trying to "usurp state police power" by setting up a special FBI for the South, and with following "the primrose path to socialism."

While lambasting Truman, Byrd's main message was one of tactical caution. He said no word to encourage formation of a Dixiecrat party. "We must meet the conditions as they develop," was Byrd's theme. That meant that the anti-Truman Southerners would stay in the party, and try to win concessions at the Democratic Convention. If Truman is nominated and no concessions are forthcoming, Southern leaders might consider a candidate of their own. Their choice: Georgia's able Senator Dick Russell, who is shrewdly silent on his own attitude toward 1952. Or, if Eisenhower is nominated by the Republicans, Southern Democratic leaders can sit back and complacently watch a lot of Southern votes go to Ike. When Byrd had concluded his speech, Herman Talmadge agreed that he would wait "to see the whites of their eyes."

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