Full Text of the Excerpt

JOHN EGERTON:

Here's a question I've wondered about a lot. When '48 came, you were running for governor. Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright bolted the Democratic Party, went off on their own, and you never blinked an eye. I never saw anything in the record to indicate that you even thought about going with them. Why not?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

I knew it was a futile effort. Third parties had no chance, and I had already been nominated for governor on the Democratic ticket. I knew I had four years ahead of me to govern this state, and I didn't want to make a blind end run for something like that. So I stayed away from it. Strom Thurmond was a cousin of mine. My mother was. . . .

JOHN EGERTON:

Is that right? Did you lend any visible or even token support to Franklin Roosevelt in that election, I'm sorry, Harry Truman in that election?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Stayed out it completely. Georgia went overwhelmingly for the Democratic ticket. Had I gotten involved, possibly I could have carried the state for Strom Thurmond, but I didn't attempt to do so.

JOHN EGERTON:

Over next door in Alabama. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

It went for Thurmond. South Carolina went for Thurmond, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

JOHN EGERTON:

In Alabama, even though Jim Folsom was the governor, and was, you know, pretty far more toward the left than. . . .

HERMAN TALMADGE:

He was a real liberal, yes.

JOHN EGERTON:

And yet they couldn't even get the Democratic Party on the ballot in Alabama. How do you read all that? I mean, that was a real salad bowl of mixed up stuff that year, wasn't it?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Yes, it was.

JOHN EGERTON:

But your conviction was that you could steer a course independent of the national Democratic Party and the Dixiecrats?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, I didn't steer any course. I just was the Democratic nominee and making plans to take office. I didn't participate in the general presidential elections at all.

JOHN EGERTON:

I see. Would you characterize your views at that time as being identical or similar to those of [the Dixiecrats]?

HERMAN TALMADGE:

Well, they were sympathetic with Thurmond, but I knew it was a useless chase. I believe that they call it Don Quixote chasing windmills. I didn't want to get involved in it.