Star Stories  

Yippee’ for Dixie: Ghost of Confederacy Revived by Southerners Amid Reverence for F.D.R.

Herald Civil Rights War: Seating of Mississippi Group, Pledged to Possible Bolt, Sets Off a Storm.

Philadelphia, July 13 – Two spirits, one unifying and the other disruptive, hung over tonight’s session of the Democratic national convention.

The first was the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose picture looks out upon the crowd in this big hall from high behind the speakers’ platform.

His record, through fourteen victorious Democratic years was recalled in speeches, and his memory, along with that of other Americans who died during World War II was honored in a formal memorial program, perhaps unique in the history of political conventions.

Every mention of his name brought forth from delegates and spectators evidence of his power to hold together the many elements of the Democratic party.

The second was the ghost of the Confederacy, as the South seized the opportunity afforded by two committee reports to make clear its opposition to President Truman’s civil rights program and its zeal for the restoration of the two-thirds rule, abandoned in 1936, which long had been the instrument through which the Solid South determined the course of the Democratic party.

The convention received a foreshadowing of what might be its bitterest floor fight tomorrow when the platform’s civil rights plank is presented. It was touched off by a disagreement over the seating of the Mississippi delegation, which is bound by a resolution adopted at Jackson last month that it will walk out of the convention if the platform does not contain a states’ rights plank or if it nominates Harry S. Truman or any other candidate in sympathy with his civil rights program.

After Representative Mary Norton of New Jersey had submitted the majority report of the committee on credentials recommending the seating of the Mississippi delegation, she yielded ten minutes to George L. Vaughn, Negro lawyer from St. Louis and a member of the Missouri delegation.

Vaughn was booed and cheered as he represented the minority’s report, which would have barred the Mississippians by reason of the acts of the Jackson convention. He launched into an impassioned defense of the President and his program calling for federal legislation against lynching, segregation, job prejudice and the poll tax.

He was interrupted by rebel yells from the vicinity of the Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana delegations, which remained in their seats while delegates around them stood, watching them.

Later Vaughn expressed bitterness that Missouri was not enrolled among the states supporting the minority position in the Mississippi quarrel.

“The Negroes of Missouri will remember it,’ he said.

Chairman Barkley was forced on several occasions to pound his gavel for order.

Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico, co-chairman of the committee, spoke briefly for the majority report, basing his appeal on the grounds of majority rule.

Barkley then put the minority and majority reports to a voice vote, and, amid scattered cries of “roll call,” “roll call,” the majority report was adopted.

The gallery, by its reaction, made clear its sympathy with the minority views.

The Illinois delegation then requested that it be entered on the record as favoring the minority report. Barkley said he would extend that courtesy. Immediately the New York Democrats demanded the same privilege and a beefy, indignant Californian, shaded by the flag of his state, bawled at the chair for recognition and finally went up on the platform to put his state on record in the same manner.

Finally, the chairman said that any other states who desired to be so entered would be taken care of. His statement quieted the shouting, gesticulating crowd of delegates from other Northern and Western states.