The story of the Dixiecrats and 1948 Truman election as president
The year 1948 was an interesting and momentous year in southern politics. World War II had just ended. The king of American politics, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had passed away in Warm Springs, Georgia.
FDR had reigned omnipotently as president from 1932 to 1945. His vice president was an obscure, peculiar looking Missourian named Harry Truman. Truman had been a haberdasher in Independence, Missouri, who had gone broke selling men’s clothing. The legendary St. Louis Pendergrass political machine took Harry in and made him a U.S. senator.
Harry was a backbencher in the senate to say the least. FDR plucked him out of the Senate and made him his running mate. FDR won the 1944 election overwhelmingly. Americans never un-elect presidents in the midst of a war. Thus the saying, “You never change horses in the middle of the stream.”
Truman settled into his obscurity as vice president. He would often quote another vice president, John Nance Garner, a tough talking Texan who would say the office of vice president is about as useless as a warm bucket of spit.
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2020/10/07/opinion-the-story-of-the-dixiecrats-and-1948-truman-election-as-president/
(Alabama Political Reporter)
= new reply since forum marked as read
not the St. Louis Pendergrass Machine.
