Southern Disillusionment with the Democratic Party: Cultural Conformity and “the Great Melding” of Racial and Economic Conservatism in Alabama during World War II

This essay explores growing disillusionment with the national Democratic Party in the southern United States, disillusionment that led to third-party movements such as the Dixiecrats and George Wallacism, and eventually southern allegiance to the modern Republican Party. The essay focusses on Alabama during the first half of the 1940s, where a “Great Melding” between economic conservatism and racial conservatism came to maturity. The melding resulted in a cross-class and pan-white alliance in a state that had experienced periodic plain-white challenges to business and planter elite dominance. It also resulted in the use by economic conservatives of white supremacy and allied conservative norms on gender, class, religion, and militaristic hyper-patriotism to suppress future working-class insurgency, and set the stage for a more formal southern disassociation from the Democratic Party and eventual conversion to Republicanism.

Download Full-text

Introduction

10.5406/illinois/9780252040955.003.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Laura E. Ruberto ◽

Joseph Sciorra

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

World War Ii ◽

Working Class ◽

Brain Drain ◽

The United States ◽

American Identity ◽

World War ◽

Italian American ◽

Migration History ◽

European Migration

This introductory essay documents the data of Italian migration to the United States from 1945 to the present and offers organizational categories through which to better conceptualize these seventy years of migration. Post-World War II Italians were mostly working class immigrants and constituted town-based Italian diasporas, while the last four decades have witnessed elite immigrants, or professionals considered a brain drain, leaving Italy for the United States (and elsewhere). Immigrant replenishment by new or “real Italians” greatly impacted the preexisting and still-developing sense of Italian American identity with its changing notions of race and style, and patterns of consumerism. By reconceptualizing migration history, this essay seeks to assess more generally how ongoing European migration is related to the continual development of postmodern notions of Italian ethnicity.

Download Full-text

When Business Is Not “Businesslike”

The Rise of Political Action Committees ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190075514.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 197-221

Author(s):

Emily J. Charnock

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Republican Party ◽

Democratic Party ◽

Business Groups ◽

Business Leaders ◽

Business Community ◽

Free Enterprise ◽

World War ◽

Initial Resistance ◽

Conservative Coalition

This chapter explores the initial resistance to the PAC concept within the business community and among conservatives more generally in the 1940s and 1950s. Though major business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and United States Chamber of Commerce had not entirely ignored elections to this point, they concentrated their energies following World War II on lobbying and publicity campaigns promoting “free enterprise,” while criticizing labor and liberal PACs as coercive, collectivist, and antidemocratic. They also placed faith in the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats to protect their interests, reflecting their strong belief that both parties should and could promote business aims. As fears grew that labor had successfully “infiltrated” the Democratic Party, however, conservative activists urged business groups to be “businesslike” and respond to labor electioneering in kind. Business leaders thus began to contemplate a partisan electoral counterstrategy centered on the Republican Party.

Download Full-text

War, Tropical Disease, and the Emergence of National Public Health Capacity in the United States

Studies in American Political Development ◽

10.1017/s0898588x12000107 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 125-162 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Daniel Sledge

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

United States ◽

World War Ii ◽

The United States ◽

Tropical Disease ◽

Southern United States ◽

World War ◽

Government Officials ◽

National Public Health

This article analyzes the emergence of national public health capacity in the United States. Tracing the transformation of the federal government's role in public health from the 1910s through the emergence of the CDC during World War II, I argue that national public health capacity emerged, to a great extent, out of the attempts of government officials to deal with the problem of tropical disease within the southern United States during periods of mobilization for war.

Download Full-text

“Taking a Nickel Out of the Cash Register”: Statutory Renegotiation of Military Contracts and the Politics of Profit Control in the United States during World War II

Law and History Review ◽

10.1017/s0738248010000039 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 343-383 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Mark R. Wilson

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

World War Ii ◽

Republican Party ◽

The United States ◽

Ohio State University ◽

State University ◽

World War ◽

Welding Equipment ◽

Football Team ◽

To Come

At 10:00 AM on September 24, 1943, James F. Lincoln, the sixty-year-old president and owner of the Lincoln Electric Company of Cleveland, Ohio, entered a meeting with U.S. Navy officials who wanted to discuss his company's recent earnings. A former Ohio State University football team captain and active supporter of the Republican Party, the outspoken Lincoln had already made it clear that he objected to the whole proceeding. One of the nation's leading suppliers of welding equipment, Lincoln's company had seen its sales boom since the beginning of World War II, as shipbuilders, aircraft producers, and other prime contractors demanded more welding machines and electrodes. Now, after a year of correspondence and preparations, the U.S. Navy had asked Lincoln to come to Washington to discuss how much of the company's 1942 profits were fair, and how much should be returned to the United States.

Download Full-text

Urban Governance and Tolerance: The Regulation of Suspect Spaces and the Burden of Surveillance in Post–World War I Asheville, North Carolina

Journal of Urban History ◽

10.1177/0096144215612470 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 43 (5) ◽

pp. 683-702

Author(s):

Seth Epstein

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

North Carolina ◽

African American ◽

African Americans ◽

World War I ◽

Urban Governance ◽

White Supremacy ◽

Self Regulation ◽

Southern United States ◽

World War

This article reconsiders the relevance of tolerance to urban history in the Southern United States. It examines the surveillance of commercial and residential spaces considered morally suspect by white authorities in post–World War I Asheville, North Carolina. Policing practices involved objects of suspicion in the management of order within pawnshops, dance halls, and African American neighborhoods. The regulation of such suspect spaces distributed the responsibility for surveillance to many actors. Pawnbrokers, dance hall operators, and prominent African Americans all were enlisted and enlisted themselves in policing networks. Participants’ involvement in such efforts at times facilitated their claims to self-regulation. These networks, however, did not remove white authorities’ suspicions from either the spaces or the individuals who surveilled them. Instead, the arrangements scrutinized here supported those suspicions. Examining the contradictions of these arrangements demonstrates how tolerance informed urban governance within the context of white supremacy.

Download Full-text

Memory Politics: US

Izvestiya of Altai State University ◽

10.14258/izvasu(2020)6-04 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 29-34

Author(s):

I.I. Kurilla

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

World War Ii ◽

Republican Party ◽

Democratic Party ◽

The United States ◽

European Countries ◽

Quarter Century ◽

The Past ◽

The Usa

Conflicts about the Past are no less characteristic of the United States than of European countries, although there they are more often referred to as a variant of culture wars. They are especially pronounced during periods of internal political crises, since the role of foreign policy in American discourse is almost negligible. Thus, memory of the World War II in the United States was used to unite the nation and did not, unlike in many European countries, become a basis for conflict with its neighbors. The article demonstrates how the two harshest conflicts over the Past in the last quarter century were connected with the crises, first of the Republican Party (the case of the Enola Gay exhibition in 1995), and then the Democratic Party (the case of the removal of Confederate monuments in 2017). The attack on the symbols of the Past after they ascribed to them negative meanings allows activists to mobilize supporters and overcome the ideological vacuum characteristic of a critical period. In other cases, both regarding the foreign policy “apologies for the USA” or the protests of the Italo-Americans after the authorities’ rejection to commemorate Christopher Columbus, conflicts did not acquire national character.

Download Full-text