Yellow Dogs and Republicans: Allan Shivers and Texas Two-Party Politics

Introduction

from the end of reconstruction until at least the 1950s, the American South was governed by a single party, the Democrats, with almost no effective competition from Republicans.1 Politics in the Solid South were oriented toward the preservation of white supremacy, county-seat oligarchies, and rural control over political power. The one-party system relied upon a restricted franchise, an emphasis upon personalities, distracting side issues , and pervasive racial fears for its survival. These obscured apparent class divisions among whites, producing an artificially conservative southern politics and state governments characterized by low taxes and poor public services. The political class that dominated this regime was self-perpetuating and sought to insulate state-local matters from national ones to maintain the status quo. From the 1930s through the 1960s, the southern Democratic one-party system experienced the strains that would lead to its eventual collapse. The New Deal and World War II posed critical challenges to southern political and social life. Roosevelt administration efforts to end the Great Depression not only brought federal dollars, they also showed federal concern over the organic bases of southern poverty. New Deal relief and work programs disrupted labor relations by encouraging the unionization of industrial workers and placing upward pressures on wages. For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government took a serious interest in the situation of southern blacks. The Democratic Party became nationally dominant and less dependent upon white southerners for its survival. Although the New Deal did not end the depression, it began an era in which average Americans looked to Washington for economic security. This was true of average southerners as well. Developments such as these threatened the traditional patterns of rural life, paternalism, deference, and int roduction race relations. Wartime industrialization brought increased urbanization. The new industrialization was also fed by federal money, driven by federal planning, and absorbed excess labor from across the region and beyond. Military service and postwar veterans’ benefits empowered a generation to dream far beyond anything imaginable in 1941. Some hoped to participate in politics the old-fashioned way within the old system. Still others—liberals, unionized workers, minorities —sought to shake up the one-party order and demand a place at the table of southern Democratic politics. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the one-party system was in a state of simmering crisis varying in intensity across the South. Because of its size, wealth, and relatively advanced economy and politics, Texas’ experience during this era of change deserves special attention when attempting to understand the wider regional story. In 1940, the majority of Texas’ population was rural, tied to the farm, and impoverished. Ten years later, the majority of the population was urban—already more so than any other state in the region. Its white citizens were among the most heavily middle class in the South. At the close of the 1950s, 66 percent of Texans owned their own homes—80 percent of which had indoor plumbing and television. Median urban white family income stood at $5,693. Suburbs with young, mainly white, populations spread outward from the centers of major cities. Working Texans saw significant increases in income and benefits, in no small part due to postwar increases in unionization. Despite restrictive labor laws, hundreds of thousands joined unions. The pressure they brought to bear on employers improved the lives even of nonunion workers. So much change within a twenty-year period caused Texas’ one-party system to shudder under the strain. Most white Texans identified with the Democratic Party. As the emerging urban middle and working classes became more prosperous and politically aware, they participated more than their parents and grandparents would have bothered. This forced changes upon a style of politics designed to prevent change. Intraparty competition became more intense and the battles more genuinely ideological as Texas’ elites struggled to keep control over the vehicle of their political power. This struggle began the birth of two-party politics . At times appropriate to the situation, each southern state underwent a similar pattern of transition. Within this vast sectional story, Allan Shivers, Texas’ governor from 1949–57, stands as a significant transitional figure. He never left the Democratic Party and thereby personally completed the political transformation he helped start in Texas. Shivers did not cause the Solid South to crack and the modern two-party South to emerge, but...