The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968

Abstract

Few readers curious about conservative trends in the recent past would think of starting with Walter Sillers Jr., as Kari Frederickson does in this book, which began as a dissertation at Rutgers University. Heir to several plantations in Bolivar County, member of the Delta Council, speaker of the Mississippi legislature, and a foe of New Deal labor legislation, Sillers typified the die-hard core of the states' rights Democrats (Dixiecrats) in 1948. At one point Professor Frederickson toyed with the idea of calling this book “Revolt of the Black Belt.” That would have conveyed where the Dixiecrat movement flourished but less about its consequences. The Dixiecrats sprang from the Deep South states of greatest black population, which in 1928 were still the core of the solid South, loyal to Al Smith while the outer South was in rebellion. But twenty years later, in 1948, they were the center of rebellion against Harry S. Truman's civil rights policy.