Fielding Lewis Wright, May 16, 1895 (Rolling Fork, Miss.) – May 4, 1956 (Jackson, Miss.)
VP candidate for States' Rights Democratic Party (aka States' Rights Party aka Dixiecrats) (1948)
Running mate with nominee: Strom Thurmond (1902-2003)
Popular vote: 1,175,930 (2.41%)
Electoral vote: 39/531
The campaign:
When President Truman made moves to promote civil rights in general and to desegregate the military in particular, a group of Democrats from the Deep South walked out of the 1948 convention and formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, otherwise known as the Dixiecrats.
Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was selected as the Presidential nominee. The VP choice, Mississippi Gov. Fielding Wright, was actually much more involved in agitating to form the third party. The author James W. Leuwen described Fielding as "one of the most racist political leaders in Mississippi's history."
The Dixiecrats were a regional party and could never gain enough votes in the Electoral College to win and they knew it. Their aim was to gain 127 electoral votes and force the US House to break the deadlock, where a bloc of Southern members of Congress could have increased influence over the choice of the next President.
Here is the entire Dixiecrat platform, Aug. 14, 1948:
We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man.
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We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights guaranteed by it to every citizen of this republic.
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We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction of the constitutional rights of the states and individuals. We oppose the totalitarian, centralized bureaucratic government and the police nation called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican Conventions.
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We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.
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We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.
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We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national origin in appreciable numbers.
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We stand for the check and balances provided by the three departments of our government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the executive and judicial departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish in the United States a police nation that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.
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We demand that there be returned to the people to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights and the discharge of our responsibility as democrats for human welfare. We oppose a denial of those by political parties, a barter or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government. We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.
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We, therefore, urge that this Convention endorse the candidacies of J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding H. Wright for the President and Vice-president, respectively, of the United States of America.
Clearly this was a platform written as if only white people were the true citizens protected by the Constitution and the liberties the Dixiecrats loftily celebrated did not apply to others. One of the most quoted utterances from the campaign was made by Wright in a radio address aimed at African Americans: "If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some other state."
The Thurmond/Wright ticket began the Southern Democratic Party 20 year transition as they morphed into Republicans, which was made complete and total in the presidential election of 1972. Thurmond himself switched to the Republicans in 1964. The Dixiecrats were a third party the Democrats were not going to co-opt.
Some historians believe that Henry Wallace's Progressive Party split from the Left made it more difficult to pin the Communist label on mainstream Democrats, while Thurmond's split from the Right made it more difficult to call the conventional Democrats a bunch of racists. In some weird ways these third parties actually helped Truman.
Although the States' Rights Democratic Party had a tiny popular vote, they captured 39 Electoral votes (far short of their goal) from Mississippi (97.17%), Alabama (79.75%, Truman was not even on the ballot), South Carolina (71.97%), Louisiana (49.07%), and one faithless elector in Tennessee (13.41%). Other strong results: Georgia (20.31%, where they placed 2nd), Arkansas (16.32%), Florida (15.54%), Virginia (10.35%), Texas (9.11%) and North Carolina (8.80%). They had a small amount of votes from six other states.
Election history:
1928-1931 - Mississippi State Senate (Democratic)
1932-1940 - Mississippi House of Representatives (Democratic)
1944-1946 - Lt. Governor of Mississippi (Democratic)
1946-1952 - Governor of Mississippi (Democratic)
1955 - Democratic primary for Governor of Mississippi (Democratic) - defeated
Other occupations: attorney, US Army soldier (WWI), Speaker of the House (Miss.), semiprofessional baseball player
Buried: Kelly Cemetery (Rolling Fork, Miss.)
Notes:
Distant cousin of George Washington.
More comfortable as a backroom operator than as a hail-fellow-well-met politician.
