River of Hope: Black Politics and the Memphis Freedom Movement, 1865–1954

5. "A New Day Breaking" in the City and the South

175 5 “A New Day Breaking” in the City and the South The Decline of the Crump Machine and the Rise of New Leadership, 1946–1954 In the postwar years, Memphis saw the growing political independence of its citizens. Black Memphians joined forces with white unionists and reformers to hand Edward H. Crump his first electoral defeat in decades in 1948. Their effort resulted in the Crump machine’s decline, a more democratic political environment, and local government reforms. Robert R. Church Jr. carried on his battle to make the Republican Party embrace civil rights, while a new generation of black activists bolstered civil rights efforts in Memphis and the South. In order to increase voter registration, politicize African Americans, and ultimately break the Jim Crow system, more black Memphians began running for public office than at any time since the 1910s. Whereas black men generally held more visible roles, such as by bidding for office and doing public speaking, women mainly engaged in crucial behind-the-scenes work.1 The year 1954 saw the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a victory for the black Memphians and southerners who had long pushed for an end to the Jim Crow system. By ruling the white primary unconstitutional in its 1944 Smith decision , the Supreme Court spurred “a political revolution in the urban South.”2 Driven by the efforts of black veterans, NAACP branches, labor unions, and others, southern black voter registration shot up from less than 5 percent of those eligible before the ruling to 20 percent by 1952, even with obstacles such as violence, harassment, and legal efforts against the ruling. African Americans in urban areas of the Upper South and large cities of the Deep South made up the largest proportion of the black vote. In Mississippi, the state with arguably the most 176 RIVER oF HoPE intransigent system of white supremacy, black voter registration numbers increased from twenty-five hundred in 1946 to twenty thousand in 1950. Black voter clubs rose in number across southern states, and African Americans ran for public office, making bids in more than forty municipalities, and winning positions as significant as school board or city council seats in at least fifteen communities. African Americans held important appointive offices in many cities and increasingly held the balance of power in elections. Although black southerners held less than 5 percent of elective and appointive offices, the postwar environment signified more hope and potential for politics than at any time since Reconstruction.3 The Brown decision remains the most remembered and recognized civil rights decision, but the impact of Smith on black political activism cannot be overestimated. The postwar environment was ripe for economic change as well. Southern industrial workers had risen in number from 1.6 to 2.4 million during the war, and the federal government had forced many employers to provide higher wages and other union concessions. With labor union membership at an all-time high, the largest ever number of strikes took place in 1945 and 1946. The CIo embarked on an initiative called operation Dixie to organize more unions in the South in 1946 and met with some success in workplaces with large numbers of black workers.4 Anticommunist hysteria swept the country, however, and hurt efforts for social and economic justice. By 1946, operation Dixie declined because of white racism, police and company violence, and anticommunist propaganda. Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Bill in 1947; its antiunion provisions included prohibiting strikes by federal employees and requiring union officials to swear that they were not Communists. Victims of red baiting, both the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax ended their operations in 1948.5 In Memphis, the immediate years after World War II saw labor activism intertwined with formal political efforts. With about 20 percent of its workers belonging to a union, Memphis was the most organized city in the Deep South. Even though most white workers remained uncommitted to interracial organizing, a small group of white Communists and leftists opposed segregation and engaged in biracial CIo work. Black unionists agitated for better working conditions, challenged discriminatory practices in the workplace, and undertook voter “A New Day Breaking” in the City and the South 177 registration drives and other civil rights efforts in the community. In 1947, eighteen thousand labor activists—of the AFL, CIo, and railroad unions—marched in...