Defining the Peace: World War II Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition

Conclusion

   even curious political conflicts of the postwar 1940s wracked Georgia’s postwar stability, leaving a political landscape undeniably marked by the impact of World War II. Challenges to a smooth reconversion to peace came from many quarters: from black citizens fed up with their secondclass status and determined to assert their rights of citizenship whenever and however they could; from workers convinced that union membership represented the best ticket to higher wages and protection from the whims of management ; from middle-class whites who demanded a more dynamic and rational response by state and local governments to the economic potential unleashed by the war; and even from reactionary whites who mobilized against the threats to white supremacy they saw developing around them. For a time it appeared as if the plot to this postwar southern drama would take a surprising twist. In the number of newly registered black and white voters , in the ’s postwar campaign to organize the South, and even in the willingness of so many white Georgians to line up behind a moderate alternative to Eugene Talmadge in 1946, the state appeared at first glance to be poised on the cusp of a progressive era. Georgia’s postwar political life might actually have sustained a much broader and more diverse electorate—including an opening for black participation in civic affairs—as well as a seat for organized labor at the table of management and a state administration boasting a more forward-looking and moderate temper. But if the political mobilization of blacks and organized labor stood as a sigConclusion nal landmark on Georgia’s postwar landscape, so did the reactionary white backlash that soon followed. In addition, the advocates of the campaigns for change that garnered the most support saw little contradiction in advocating a program of modernization bereft of racial or industrial democracy. Indeed, if any lesson could be drawn from World War II, it was that Georgia’s political alternatives remained within the southern Democratic Party, positioned along a spectrum of conservatism, with scorched-earth reactionaries on one end and segregationist, anti-unionist, “but not a damn fool” modernizationists on the other.1 The insurgent white veterans who cooperated with blacks and organized labor to win election in 1946 easily dispensed with the interests of both parties when they sat in the state legislature in 1947. Good government veterans opposed Georgia’s incumbents not because those officials oppressed blacks and labor, but because they manipulated white supremacy as a means to sustain corrupt, provincial, and reactionary governance to the detriment of Georgia’s national image and future prosperity.2 In the postwar 1940s many white Georgians, veterans included , still regarded toeing the southern line on race and anti-unionism a viable means to achieve modernization. Herman Talmadge applied the lesson of 1946 quite effectively. He combined an unabashed defense of white supremacy that would have made his father proud with a program for urban,industrial,and educational progress that Eugene would have, no doubt, abhorred. In this way, Herman created a solid base of political support in the postwar years among ordinary whites, courthouse gangs, urban modernizers, and business interests. This “Talmadge blend” of change and tradition , according to one scholar, established a new foundation for political unity among white Georgians after the divisiveness of the immediate postwar years. That political “peace,” however, came at the expense of blacks, organized labor, New Deal progressives, and any real redistribution of wealth and power.3 Yet it would be myopic to conclude that no significant change at all emerged from the complex matrix of events that defined Georgia’s transition from war to peace. Veteran activism reflected a dynamic political tension building in Georgia and the South on the heels of the war’s end. Black veterans demanding a political voice, progressive white veterans fighting for democratic majority rule, and union veterans organizing against management exposed how destabilizing the economic, demographic, and social changes of the war years really were. In this sense,Georgia’s veterans exposed the cracks that were developing in the foundations of the one-party South, and their insurgencies against the postwar status quo pointed toward the ruptures that would split the Solid South apart in later decades. 170 :  Doyle Combs, George Dorsey, and Isaac Nixon risked their lives not only to defend American interests abroad during the war, but to make that sacri...