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9 Racial Challenge, White Reaction, and Chauncey Sparks as the New Champion [T]he only compromise that will suit . . . American negroes is the abolition of segregation, which in turn means the abolition of laws against miscegenation, which . . . means amalgamation . . . which . . . means the self-destruction of this nation by a mongrelized people. —hamner Cobbs i have always voted the Democratic ticket, but by God i am through. And thousands of . . . American[s] are [too because the new Deal Democratic Party has failed miserably at keeping America] a good Christian nation . . . [and] preserving states’ rights. —C. l. vance “Kill the body, and the head will fall.” This advice is one of the best-known nuggets of wisdom derived from the sweet science of prize fighting. The proverb refers, of course, to the value of doing groundwork in any endeavor before attempting a coup de grâce. To a large extent race relations on the southern home front during World War ii bear a suitable relation. Whether viewed from the ramparts of defending white supremacy or the beachhead of assaulting it, the war pounded at the solid edifice of regional convention. by the end the defenses were still upright but several gaping holes were now present. Votes for Soldiers much of the hope for the political liberation of the south and the emergence of its latent and (what some liberals felt was) its predominant liberalism lay in voter registration. The most optimistic assessments proclaimed that a largely silent majority liberal south lay waiting to emerge if only it could be freed from the oppressive yoke of suffrage restriction strapped onto it at the turn of the century. Remove the poll tax, fertilize the region with the ample seed of poor-white and black votes, and the south would bear the fruit of an en- Racial Challenge, White Reaction, and Chauncey Sparks / 209 lightened liberal majority based on shared ground among plain folk—black and white. evidence existed to suggest that at least half the equation was correct . According to more than one southern voting registrar, as soon as blacks enrolled, they pledged to vote for Franklin Roosevelt because he had saved them from starving.1 led by virginia Durr’s sChW anti–poll tax committee, various wartime liberals made abolition of the tax their chief goal. Durr’s committee garnered support from the AFl, Cio, yWCA, the national Farmers Union, leading black organizations, and a host of other groups predisposed to liberal ideas. At least on the face of it, the liberal hope seemed more than just another pipe dream. eight southern states featured various poll taxes, cumulative and not, ranging from one dollar to twenty-five dollars.2 other mechanisms worked hand in hand with the tax to suppress participation : literacy tests, character clauses, property qualifications, and de facto subterfuges such as scheduling voter registration in intervals or in the parlors of white women where only the most intrepid of black men would venture. The sum resulted in a dramatically malformed and restricted electorate. During World War ii, only 19 percent of the south’s 14.5 million potential voters actually voted. in Alabama, the figures were 14 percent for the general election and only 8 percent in the all-important Democratic primary.3 yet the liberal dream held within it several questionable assumptions. First, it presumed that the disfranchising mechanisms of the turn of the century had been imposed on the poor—black and white—by southern elites without aid and comfort from plain whites. Despite its widespread currency, that notion was actually more myth than fact.4 second, and perhaps most naively , the liberal focus on the poll tax conceived of politics as a strictly rational endeavor. That is, once poor whites and blacks could vote freely, without de jure and de facto restrictions, they would recognize common ground and gravitate naturally to a biracial alliance based on mutual class concerns. An allowance for the power of emotional appeals and race prejudice did not factor into what was a somewhat antiseptic and unrealistic view of politics and human behavior. nevertheless, World War ii brought war on southern racial conventions at home just as surely as it brought war to the door of the Axis. sponsored by liberal Florida senator Claude Pepper and widely supported by African Americans who felt poll tax annulment was the least a grateful nation could do for blacks in uniform, the soldier vote bill of 1942 constituted the opening salvo against restrictive registration laws.5 The...

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