Declaration of Principles

We affirm that a political party is an instrumentality for effectuating the principles upon which the party is founded. That a platform of principles is a solemn covenant with the people and with the members of the party. That no leader of the party, in temporary power, has the right or privilege to proceed contrary to the fundamental principles of the party, or the letter or spirit of the Constitution of the United States. That to act contrary to these principles is a breach of faith, a usurpation of power, and forfeiture of the party name and party leadership.

We believe that racial and religious minorities should be protected in their rights guaranteed by the Constitution, but the bold defiance of the Constitution in selfish appeals to such groups for the sake of political power forges the chains of slavery of such minorities by destroying the only bulward [sic] of protection against tyrannical majorities. The protection of the Constitutional rights of a minority does not justify or require the destruction of Constitutional rights of the majority. The destruction of Constitutional limitations on the power on the central government threatens to create a totalitarian state to destroy individual liberty in America.

We believe that the protection of the American people against the onward march of totalitarian government requires a faithful observance of Article I of the American Bill of Rights which provides that: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States; are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

We direct attention to the fact that the first platform of the Democratic Party, adopted in 1840, resolved that: “Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution.” Such pronouncement is the cornerstone of the Democratic Party.

A long train of abuses and usurpations of power by unfaithful leaders who are alien to the Democratic Parties of the States here represented, has become intolerable to those who believe in the preservation of Constitutional government and individual liberty to America.

The executive department of the Government is promoting the gradual but certain growth of a totalitarian state by a domination and control of a politically minded Supreme Court. As examples of the threat to our form of Government, the executive department, with the aid of the Supreme Court, has asserted national dominion and control of submerged oil-bearing lands in California, schools in Oklahoma and Missouri, primary elections in Texas, South Carolina and Louisiana, restrictive covenants in New York, and the D.C., and other jurisdictions, as well as religious instructions in Illinois. By asserting paramount Federal rights in these instances, a totalitarian concept has been promulgated which threatens the integrity of the States and the basic rights of their citizens.

We have repeatedly remonstrated with the leaders of the National organization of our Party but our petitions, entreaties and warnings have been treated with contempt. The latest response to our entreaties was a Democratic Convention in Philadelphia rigged to embarrass and humiliate the South. This alleged Democratic assembly called for a civil rights law that would eliminate segregation of every kind from all American life, prohibit all forms of discrimination in private employment, in public and private instruction and administration and treatment of students; in the operation of public and private health facilities; in all transportation, and require equal access to all places of public accommodations for all persons of all races, colors, creeds and national origin.

This infamous and iniquitous progress calls for the reorganization of the civil rights section of the Department of Justice with a substantial increase in a bureaucratic staff to be devoted exclusively to the enforcement of the civil rights program; the establishment within the F.B.I. of a special unit of investigators and a police state in totalitarian, centralized, bureaucratic government.

This Convention hypocritically denounced totalitarianism abroad but unblushingly proposed and approved it at home. This convention would strengthen the grip of a police state upon local public officers who failed or refused to act in accordance with its ideas in suppressing mob violence.

We point out that if a foreign power undertook to force upon the people of the United States [unreadable] by the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, with respect to civil rights, it would mean war and the entire Nation would resist such effort.

The Convention that insulted the South in the Party Platform advocated giving the Virgin Islands and other dependencies of the United States “the maximum degree of local self-government.” When an effort was made to amend this part of the platform so to make it read that the Party favored giving the Virgin Islands and the several States the maximum degree of local self-government, the amendment adding the words “these several States” was stricken out and the sovereign states were denied the rights that the Party favors giving the Virgin Islands.

We point out that the South, with clock-like regularity, has furnished the Democratic Party approximately fifty percent of the votes necessary to nominate a President every four years for nearly a century. In 1920 the only states in the Union that went democratic were the eleven southern states.

Notwithstanding this rugged loyalty to the Party, the masters of political intrigue now allow Republican States in which there is scarcely a democratic office holder to dominate and control the Party and fashion its policies.

As Democrats who are irrevocably committed to democracy as defined and expounded by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson, and who believe that all necessary steps must be taken for its preservation, we declare to the people of the United States as follows:

We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty received by the mind of man.

We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights vouchsafed by it to every citizen of this Republic.

We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe, can be vouchsafed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction on the Constitutional rights of the states and individuals. We oppose the totalitarian, centralized, bureaucratic government and the police state called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican Conventions.

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.

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, regulation of private employment practices, voting and local law enforcement.

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.

We stand for the checks 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 nation-wide a police state in this Republic that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.

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 rights 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 and Thomas E. Dewey, and every other candidate for public office who would establish a police state in the United States of America.

Source: J. Strom Thurmond, “Address Before Convention of States Rights Democrats: Declaration of Principles,” July 17, 1948, Birmingham, Alabama. Microfilm at South Carolina Department of Archives and History. S546017 Governor J. Strom Thurmond (1947–1951) Speech File 1946–1951, Reel #1 St 1355, Folder: MSS 100 11A 00134.