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| Elections in Alabama |
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The 1948 United States presidential election in Alabama was held on November 2, 1948. Alabama voters sent eleven electors to the Electoral College who voted for President and Vice-President. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of (as in most other states) as a slate.
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Since the 1890s, Alabama had been effectively a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of poor whites via poll taxes, literacy tests [1] and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of Unionist Winston County and presidential campaigns in a few nearby northern hill counties. The only competitive statewide elections during this period were thus Democratic Party primaries — limited to white voters until the landmark court case of Smith v. Allwright , following which Alabama introduced the Boswell Amendment — ruled unconstitutional in Davis v. Schnell in 1949, [2] although substantial increases in black voter registration would not occur until after the late 1960s Voting Rights Act.
Unlike other Deep South states, soon after black disenfranchisement Alabama’s remaining white Republicans made rapid efforts to expel blacks from the state Republican Party, [3] and under Oscar D. Street, who ironically was appointed state party boss as part of the pro-Taft “black and tan” faction in 1912, [4] the state GOP would permanently turn “lily-white”, with the last black delegates at any Republican National Convention serving in 1920. [3] However, with two exceptions the Republicans were unable to gain from their hard lily-white policy. The first was when they exceeded forty percent in the 1920 House of Representatives races for the 4th, 7th and 10th congressional districts, [5] and the second was 1928 presidential election when Senator James Thomas Heflin embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, partially funded by the Ku Klux Klan, against Roman Catholic Democratic nominee Al Smith and supported Republican Herbert Hoover, [6] who went on to lose the state that year by only seven thousand votes.
In 1946 Alabama’s one-party Democratic rule was severely challenged not merely by the invalidation of its white primary system, but also by the potential effect on the United States' image abroad (and ability to win the Cold War against the radically egalitarian rhetoric of Communism) [7] from the beating and blinding of Isaac Woodard three hours after being discharged from the army. Truman then attempted to launch a Civil Rights bill, involving desegregation of the military. Southern Democrats immediately made such cries as "unconstitutional", "Communist inspired," "a blow to the loyal South and its traditions," "unwarranted and harmful," "not the answer," and "does irreparable harm to interracial relations". [8]
In May of 1948, Alabama’s Democratic presidential elector primary chose electors who were pledged to not vote for incumbent President Truman, [9] and the state Supreme Court ruled that any statute requiring party presidential electors to vote for that party's national nominee was void. [10] Half of Alabama’s delegation then walked out at the party's national convention in Philadelphia because of Truman's endorsement of civil rights for African Americans. [11] This segregationist faction met on July 17, 1948, in Birmingham, nominating South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as its nominee for president. Mississippi governor Fielding L. Wright was nominated for vice president.
A "Loyalist" group would petition governor "Big Jim" Folsom to allow Truman electors on the ballot alongside the “Democratic” electors pledged to Thurmond, but Senator John Sparkman, fearing popular defeat at the hands of the Dixiecrats and a hostile state legislature, decided against placing Truman electors on the ballot, [12] although a Gallup poll in October showed that about a third of state voters would support Truman if they were able to do so. [lower-alpha 1] In other Southern states where Truman was on the ballot, [lower-alpha 2] Thurmond was forced to run under the label of the States' Rights Democratic Party.
Thurmond overwhelmingly won Alabama by a margin of 60.71 percent, or 130,513 votes, against his closest opponent, Republican New York governor Thomas E. Dewey. [14] This was only a slight decline upon Franklin Roosevelt’s performance in Alabama four years previously, and it is known that many Thurmond voters thought incorrectly that they were actually voting for Truman. Two third-party candidates, Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party and Claude A. Watson of the Prohibition Party, appeared on the ballot in Alabama, though neither had any impact. This was the first time ever that a Democrat won the presidency without carrying Alabama, and the first time since 1872 that the state failed to vote for the national Democrats.
84% of white voters supported Thurmond. [15]
