1948 States' Rights Democratic platform

The 1948 States' Rights Democratic platform was the defining statement of the Dixiecrat revolt against Harry S. Truman's civil-rights program. Its explicit defense of racial segregation gave the breakaway movement a clear policy identity and framed its challenge to the Democratic Party in the 1948 election.

Definition and Provisions

The platform called for “the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” This formulation made the preservation of racial separation a central political demand, rather than a peripheral objection to Truman's policies. At the conference that adopted it, the states' rights Democrats denounced Truman's civil-rights program as an effort to reduce white Southerners to an inferior status.

Political Setting

The platform emerged from a hurriedly assembled conference of states' rights Democrats in Birmingham, Alabama, two days after Truman called a special session of Congress. The delegates waved Confederate flags, cheered attacks on his civil-rights program, and unanimously selected South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate, with Mississippi governor Fielding L. Wright as his running mate. Asked why he was leaving the Democratic Party over civil rights when Franklin D. Roosevelt had made similar promises, Thurmond answered, “But Truman really means it.” His response identified the perceived difference that had made Truman's program a breaking point for the dissidents.

Electoral Purpose and Significance

The platform's defense of segregation was part of a wider electoral strategy: the Dixiecrats hoped to deny both Truman and Thomas E. Dewey an electoral majority and force the presidential contest into the House of Representatives. It thus joined a specific racial policy to an attempt to disrupt the established party contest. In the account of the 1948 campaign, the platform marks the Southern Democrats' break with Truman as an organized challenge centered on his civil-rights commitments.