the time. It started at the 1936 convention when the party first seated black delegates (a black minister gave the convocation; South Carolina senator âCotton Edâ Smith walked out: âThis mongrel meeting ainât no place for a white man!â). That convention also suspended a rule that candidates needed two-thirds of the delegates to win the nominationâand with it the Southâs veto power. In 1947 Truman tentatively welcomed the conclusions of his Committee on Civil Rights, whose report To Secure These Rights defined the legislative agenda for the modern civil rights movement. At the 1948 convention Minneapolis mayor Hubert H. Humphrey declared it was âtime for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of statesâ rights and walk in the sunshine of human rights,â and he maneuvered a robust civil rights plank into the platform. South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond led a walkout to form a third party.
Southern Democrats claimed the gestures toward civil rights were only demagogic and expedient attempts to hustle the votes of urban blacks in the North so the party could turn its back on the South. But where else could Southerners go? Until about 1958, Republicans were more liberal on race than the Democrats were (although it wasnât hard to take a liberal stand on race so long as it was seen as a Southern problem, and the Republicans didnât have any white Southerners to placate). Many chose to vote for General Eisenhower as their protest against the civil rightsters taking over the national Democratic Party, some for quite idealistic reasons: a second party would light a fire under lazy Democratic courthouse hacks. Ike won a majority of the regionâs electoral votes in 1956. Those gains were lost after he federalized the National Guard at Little Rock Central High in 1957âreluctantly, to be sure; a frequent visitor to the South, Eisenhower was rather fond of its folkways, truth be told. But the GOP was not ready to give up the fight: also in 1957, Republican National Committee chair Meade Alcorn put one of his best men, the affable Virginian I. Lee Potter, to building a rank and file in the South in a project called âOperation Dixie.â
Its biggest success had been in South Carolina. The first state to bolt the Union had always been the surliest in the Democratic coalition. Its senior senator, Olin Johnston, already chaired the Post Office and Civil Service Committees, so South Carolinians didnât want for patronage. Strom Thurmond, now the junior senator, was hardly a Democratic loyalist after his 1948 Dixiecrat presidential run, and after threatening to bolt the party once again in 1956. Meanwhile, the state was eager to lure more right-to-work Republican industrialists. In 1956 Herb Kohler, in the heat of the strike, built a $12 million ceramics factory in South Carolina; in 1958 six new factories were built in the town
of Spartanburg alone. In 1959, after Gerber chose to build a $3 million baby-food plant in a nearby town whose blue laws didnât prevent the company from running shifts on Sundays, Spartanburg voted to repeal its blue laws altogether.
Two men were instrumental in bringing the modern South Carolina Republican Party into the world. Gregory D. Shorey was a poster child for the latest New South. A Massachusetts native, he had settled in Greenville in 1950, founded a water-sports equipment company, and led the stateâs Eisenhower campaign in 1952. But it is unlikely that the Republican Party in South Carolina would have got so far so fast through the 1950s without the cover given potential recruits by Roger Milliken, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the state. Milliken came from a Northeastern textile family who had been Republican since the 186os, and who began building mills in South Carolina in 1884. Shy and brilliant, a virtuoso in industrial modernization (his company would register almost fifteen hundred
Southern Democrats claimed the gestures toward civil rights were only demagogic and expedient attempts to hustle the votes of urban blacks in the North so the party could turn its back on the South. But where else could Southerners go? Until about 1958, Republicans were more liberal on race than the Democrats were (although it wasnât hard to take a liberal stand on race so long as it was seen as a Southern problem, and the Republicans didnât have any white Southerners to placate). Many chose to vote for General Eisenhower as their protest against the civil rightsters taking over the national Democratic Party, some for quite idealistic reasons: a second party would light a fire under lazy Democratic courthouse hacks. Ike won a majority of the regionâs electoral votes in 1956. Those gains were lost after he federalized the National Guard at Little Rock Central High in 1957âreluctantly, to be sure; a frequent visitor to the South, Eisenhower was rather fond of its folkways, truth be told. But the GOP was not ready to give up the fight: also in 1957, Republican National Committee chair Meade Alcorn put one of his best men, the affable Virginian I. Lee Potter, to building a rank and file in the South in a project called âOperation Dixie.â
Its biggest success had been in South Carolina. The first state to bolt the Union had always been the surliest in the Democratic coalition. Its senior senator, Olin Johnston, already chaired the Post Office and Civil Service Committees, so South Carolinians didnât want for patronage. Strom Thurmond, now the junior senator, was hardly a Democratic loyalist after his 1948 Dixiecrat presidential run, and after threatening to bolt the party once again in 1956. Meanwhile, the state was eager to lure more right-to-work Republican industrialists. In 1956 Herb Kohler, in the heat of the strike, built a $12 million ceramics factory in South Carolina; in 1958 six new factories were built in the town
of Spartanburg alone. In 1959, after Gerber chose to build a $3 million baby-food plant in a nearby town whose blue laws didnât prevent the company from running shifts on Sundays, Spartanburg voted to repeal its blue laws altogether.
Two men were instrumental in bringing the modern South Carolina Republican Party into the world. Gregory D. Shorey was a poster child for the latest New South. A Massachusetts native, he had settled in Greenville in 1950, founded a water-sports equipment company, and led the stateâs Eisenhower campaign in 1952. But it is unlikely that the Republican Party in South Carolina would have got so far so fast through the 1950s without the cover given potential recruits by Roger Milliken, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the state. Milliken came from a Northeastern textile family who had been Republican since the 186os, and who began building mills in South Carolina in 1884. Shy and brilliant, a virtuoso in industrial modernization (his company would register almost fifteen hundred
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