|
|
|
Book Review
| The White House Looks South: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson. By William E. Leuchtenburg. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. xiv, 668 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8071-3079-6.)
|
| In 1936, 97 percent of white Mississippians voted to reelect Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR); in the wake of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the next generation of whites in the state supported the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, by a nine-to-one margin over Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ). Although Jimmy Carter carried the South in his 1976 campaign, the Ronald Reagan years built on the success of Goldwater and Richard M. Nixon, converting the solid Democratic South into the predominantly Republican South, a transformation that has proved to be one of the most critical political developments of post–World War II America. |
1
|
|
Although scholars generally agree that race was the most important factor in that political shift by southern white voters, much of the historical literature of the last twenty-five years has deemphasized the role of presidential leadership, emphasizing instead the importance of underlying economic developments and broad social movements in reshaping the politics of the old Confederacy. In The White House Looks South, William E. Leuchtenburg acknowledges the force of that scholarship, but he unapologetically argues that the national government played a critical role in shaping those historical developments. And in his superbly researched biographical portraits of Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Johnson, he makes a compelling argument that these presidents shaped the national policies that did so much to undermine and eventually destroy the system of legalized white supremacy, which had been the basis for southern society and politics since the eighteenth century. (This is not to say that he ignores the importance of white southerners' deeply rooted hostility toward taxes and governmental activism, but his skillful narrative shows how race was interwoven with these supposedly "non-racial" attitudes.) |
2
|
|
The election of Roosevelt, even more than that of Woodrow Wilson, returned the South to the center stage in American politics. The one-party system and the rules of seniority meant that southern senators and representatives overwhelmingly dominated congressional committee chairmanships, and a politically astute Roosevelt understood that his political success rested on establishing a close relationship with that constituency. Historians have generally agreed that FDR scrupulously refrained from direct interference in the traditional patterns of southern race relations, but they have disagreed—often passionately—over the indirect impact of his policies. Leuchtenburg judiciously summarizes the case against Roosevelt, describing his timidity and reluctance to take any position that would antagonize his white southern supporters. Unlike his wife, Eleanor, FDR never developed a strong personal commitment to ending (or even attacking) racial discrimination. At the same time, Leuchtenburg documents the direct and indirect ways in which New Deal policies and personnel chipped away at the foundations of white supremacy. On balance, he shares Gunnar Myrdal's view that the New Deal had "changed the whole configuration of the Negro problem" by including African Americans, however incompletely, in social and economic programs that addressed basic human needs (p. 68). As the young African American scholar J. Saunders Redding concluded after a tour of the South in 1940, black southerners may have been aware of the racism and discrimination that marred many New Deal programs, but they were passionate defenders of the president's policies, in part because "their poor little was the greatest plenty they had ever known" (ibid.). |
. . . |
There are about 475 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
