"Jim Crow" was a system of legal discrimination against Blacks codified in the constitutions, laws, and regulations of the states in the South. All aspects of life for Blacks were separate and unequal from birth to death.

The institutionalized segregation reinforced the inferior conditions that Blacks faced in housing, health care, and education. Blacks were legally required to use separate entrances to public places, drinking fountains, bathrooms and swimming pools; paid substandard wages and confined to the dirtiest and lowest paying jobs. This system was enforced with legal terror by southern state governments and extralegal terror including public whippings, lynchings and murder--organized by gangs like the Ku Klu Klan and White Citizens Councils. Lott is known to have been associated with the successor to the latter gang, the Council of Conservative Citizens.

In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, led a fight across the country and threatened to organize a national march on Washington to press demands for action against racial discrimination. Among these were demands for federal legislation to end lynchings and to desegregate public facilities, and an end to the poll tax--a payment used to keep Blacks from voting. Explicit prohibition against this practice would not be approved until 1964 with the ratification of the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In face of these growing struggles, the 1948 National Democratic Convention was splintered over civil rights planks to be added to the platform. In an effort to hold together the New Deal coalition he had inherited from Franklin Roosevelt, President Harry Truman was ready to compromise with the segregationists and settle for only the planks in the 1944 platform. But the struggles of Blacks and their allies in the labor movement had gathered too much momentum. The new planks were adopted, prompting 35 southern Democratic delegates to walk out. They met in Birmingham, Alabama, and formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party, which came to be known as the Dixiecrats (today historians delicately omit the "Democratic" from their name).

The States Rights Democrats adopted a platform that read in part, "We stand for segregation of the races.... We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes."  
 
Discrimination by federal government
One of the biggest institutions discriminating against Blacks was the federal government itself. Pointing to Colin Powell, one report in the New York Times referred to the military as the most dynamic institution for desegregation in American society. Nothing could have been further from the truth in 1948. Blacks served in segregated units under white officers. Black soldiers being assigned to bases in the South rode in segregated train cars or the back of the bus. Base commanders instructed Black soldiers to observe Jim Crow laws. It wasn’t until 1948 that the federal government ordered the full integration of the armed forces, and segregated military units continued for several years afterward.

One theme repeated in the coverage is that Lott’s remarks would reinforce the view that the Republican Party is opposed to social gains for Blacks. But Jim Crow segregation and racist policies in general have always been carried out with bipartisan support. After winning the 1948 elections, Truman failed to follow through on any of his electoral promises on civil rights. His administration appointed segregationist James Eastland to head the Civil Rights subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In the 1960s Malcolm X hammered away at the need to break from this bipartisan trap and chart a course of independent political action. In a speech entitled "The Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm explained, "They have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans.... In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans." Pointing to the Democrats’ control of both houses of Congress, Malcolm continued, "What alibi do they use when you and I ask, ‘When are you going to keep your promises?’ They blame the Dixiecrats. What is a Dixiecrat? A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise."

In fact, the "Dixiecrats" would not defect to the Republican Party until the early and mid-1960s following the victories of the civil rights movement.

Completely missing from the media coverage is any serious treatment of the civil rights movement. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that "separate education was inherently unequal," in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. But nearly a decade after that decision, schools throughout the South remained segregated. It would take a movement of hundreds of thousands who through their actions would win the support of millions throughout the country and around the world to bring an end to legal segregation of the schools and the overthrow Jim Crow rule itself. It meant defying the power of segregationist rule by sitting in at lunch counters, libraries, movie theaters; organizing "freedom rides" to desegregate public transportation, standing up to the terror of police departments and the Ku Klux Klan; organizing marches in every nook and cranny throughout the South.

In 1948 the Socialist Workers Party launched its first presidential campaign, nominating Farrell Dobbs for president and Grace Carlson for vice president. Dobbs and Carlson put forward an election platform that demanded:

"Smash the Jim Crow system! Full economic, political, and social equality for the Negro people and other minorities! Pass and enforce legislation to punish lynching, abolish the poll tax, establish a Fair Employment Practices Committee with power to root out discriminatory practices, eliminate segregation wherever it exists! Combat anti-Semitism in all its forms! Wipe out discriminatory immigration policies and open the doors of the U.S. to refugees! Unite the workers of all races for the common struggle against their exploiters!" In regard to military policy, the candidates demanded, "Abolish race segregation in the armed forces!"

On the opposite page are a selection of articles from the Militant from 1948 and 1949 that give a feel for the forces that were gathering, and that would explode again in the 1950s and 1960s.
 
 
Related articles:
Dixiecrats 1948: Democrats, defenders of racist lynchocracy
Lott’s racist views are not unique in Senate cloakroom  
 
 
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