White southern politicians avoid, rather than push back against, civil rights
LeMaistre argues that rather than exploiting racism to garner votes, most white politicians in Alabama after World War II tried to avoid the issue altogether, whether by not talking about it in the 1940s and early 1950s, or "talking it to death" in the late 1950s and 1960s. LeMaistre adds to this interpretation of race in southern politics with brief discussions of the Scottsboro case, lynching, and white southerners' conviction that they could "handle" African Americans.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with George A. LeMaistre, April 29, 1985. Interview A-0358. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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Now if we can kind of shift gears and take a running start toward the
politics of race, I think it's pretty well agreed that by 1950, in most
southern states including Alabama, race began to be the predominant
element, I guess you could say, in politics, but—
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
-
It probably was the most effective element in influencing votes. To say
it was predominant would probably indicate that it received the most
attention, and that isn't true. The people in
office would do almost anything to avoid having to take a position on a
racial matter, and —
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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Particularly after World War II, that's when it became—
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
-
And particularly after 1948 when the civil rights—well '47 I
guess the civil rights commission reported and then Hubert Humphrey made
his stirring speech to the Democratic party which provoked the walkout
and began the Dixiecrats rise. For the next three or four years it was a
matter of not so much race as party loyalty—how you get these
people to straighten up and be Democrats regardless of what happens to
the race question.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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Yeh
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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And then after the 1954 school decision, then it became more and more
open discussion, then when the civil rights act—what was the
date of that?
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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That was '64, but you mean the big civil rights act. There was a civil
rights act in '57.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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'57 was the first one.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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And then one in '60
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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They were the first ones that really carried the label "civil
rights act" except way back in Civil War times . . . but after
they went on the books you could get a few more people saying,
"Why don't you take a stand on civil rights?—Where
do you stand on this (or that)?" And the best that we could get
from most of the successful politicians was that whatever was being
proposed was so completely unfair to the whites that they could oppose
it on that ground rather than because it did
something for people that they agreed needed to be helped. If you
remember, the discussions in those days always referred—at
least the discussions by an incumbent—would almost always
include the mention of the "so-called" civil rights
act, the implication being that while they labeled it civil rights, it
really wasn't civil rights, it was taking something away from one and
giving it to another, and they stuck with that position, I guess, for
four or five years. That doesn't mean that they took that position on
principle that they were against the civil rights bill because it was
not a fair bill or anything like that, they just found some way to talk
it to death. Some of the most interesting parts of the Congressional
Record are some filibusters that were mounted one after another by
southern senators in discussing the civil rights act or various civil
rights acts—of '51, '60, '64, and they never did get around
to convincing any of those sitting senators that it would be politically
expedient for them to come out and say "I think we've been
wrong, I think we need to rethink our positions, I think these people
are entitled to what they're asking for, and I think it's time we gave
it to them because they're Americans." You never heard that.
The only one you've heard say that is George Wallace. He's recently said
that. Whether he means it, I don't know. But it is now possible for a
man in office to make such a statement. It wasn't in those days, he
would never have stayed in office.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
-
And back, if we keep backing up, we were talking about, for instance, the
Scottsboro case, now about the only thing that was discussed widely in
the 1930's as far as race was concerned was the question of violence and
lynchings, and that was the concern more than any mention of civil
rights as it came to be understood later.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
-
The real problem in the Scottsboro case was not that a mob was about to
take those seven people out and lynch 'em, the real problem was that the
jury did the dirty work for them. When the case was tried, Judge Horton
did almost everything a judge could do to say to the jury,
"They haven't proven these people to be guilty." And
yet it didn't take them any time to come back with a guilty verdict. And
yet, I suppose that one of the real reasons that competent lawyers felt
that they had to take part in the Scottsboro appeals was that this was
really subverting the judicial system—you were using the
system to do what the mobs had done before and I would think that Judge
Horton, who really suffered considerably because of his rather liberal
charges to the jury, his rulings in the case, should have been regarded
as something of a hero. But he wasn't. He had a great deal of difficulty
with the Ku Klux and White citizens and people of that stripe for the
rest of his life.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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But there was a great deal of sentiment in support of measures to curb
lynching—that goes way back—back into the World
War I period and in the twenties and the thirties. But, again, there was
this resentment that was mounted against outside
interference that was why Southerners generally opposed federal
anti-lynching legislation
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
-
Yes, and I think you have to face the fact that some of it was based on
the thought that prevailed in the Old West—we'll give you a
fair trial and then hang you. And that was better than letting a mob
take him out of jail and hang him, but the guy was just as dead one way
as he was the other. And it really didn't do much for the cause of
justice. But one of the most difficult problems, I suppose, with the
trial of those cases was to get adequate representation for defendants
of that kind in the South. Almost invariably the court had to appoint
the lawyers to defend them and almost invariably something like the
International Labor Defense, or whatever that group was called, would
send somebody down here who was recognized or charged immediately with
being a known radical with Marxist leanings and all that kind of stuff.
The fact that some of them later became very fine judges doesn't seem
[laugh]
to have made any difference. But the trial of people in Alabama,
and I'm sure it was true in Mississippi and other parts of the South, by
Southern trained lawyers before Southern juries and Southern judges was
almost impossible to bring about, because most of the time the people
that were appointed to defend such defendants were inexperienced and it
was almost giving up the defense of the case if you didn't send
experienced counsel down to help out.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
-
But now there was a very small group in the South trying to actively work
for better racial relations like the Commission on Interracial
Cooperation dated from right after World War I. It was active during the
twenties and thirties.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
-
And this group that was based in Atlanta. Can't think of the name right
now but they did a . . .
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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I think Commission in Interracial Relations was based in Atlanta, and
then that becomes Southern Regional Council?
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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I think so. And they worked hard at it and there were some dedicated
lawyers—Morris Ernst, for instance, his wasn't so much on
race as it was religion, remember the Frank case.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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Yes, Leo Frank.
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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Yes. He was lynched simply because he was a Jew.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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But you don't have any real—none of that was really actively
working in this part of the country, was it?
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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I really don't recall any campaign in the thirties or forties in which
race became a factor except when Tom Heflin was running
or—well maybe one or two others.
- ALLEN J. GOING:
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The other issues overrode all that— issues of the . . .
- GEORGE A. LeMAISTRE:
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But underneath all the other big issues, there was always a feeling,
"Well, he knows how to handle race relations." Frank
Boykin goes up to Washington and gets involved in a shooting scrape with
a black man —all that kind of stuff, you know, yet the people
never made him come out and say in his campaigns, "Just leave
the blacks to me, I can handle them." He
never had to take that position. He could talk about other things like
building up the Port of Mobile—that sort of
stuff—and they just spread the word and old Frank will take
care of whatever else we need.