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Reuther's Southern Strategy
Victor Riesel Sees Political Plot
Reuther Draws Bead on South
(ca. 1956) New York—Walter Reuther is out to split the
Democratic Party. He said he and his aides are now polishing up plans to
provoke southern delegates into walking out from the nominating
convention in Chicago in August and then from the party itself.
This tactic was seriously discussed in Washington at
a series of private gabfests during the unions recent three-day
"educational Conference' which was virtually turned into a
Democratic Party forum.
It is a maneuver designed to give Reuther and his
colleagues, who already influence important sections of the party, still
greater power within the organization. If successful, the Reuther plan
could reshape the entire political picture of the country within the
next five years.
This splitting scheme is similar to one advocated by
a coalition of CIO leaders and top officials of the Americans for
Democratic Action four years ago.
They would have pressed for it at the 1952 nominating
convention but Reuther felt that the time was not ripe then for such
action. At the last minute he and his advisers decided to ride with the
regulars in the Democratic Party.
Now, the Reutherites believe the atmosphere is right
for this daring political venture. They are convinced that the violent
arguments raging over the racial question have provided them with the
chance to push their plan and consolidate their influence in the
Democratic set-up.
Reuther has told intimates that he believes the
Negroes will vote Republican right now. He is convinced that only a very
bold and dramatic move to isolate the Dixiecrats can swing the powerful
Negro vote to the Democrats. He is equally convinced that this vote is
enough to carry the ticket against Ike and Nixon or any other GOP
candidates.
The peppery Detroiter—recently hailed as
"Presidential timber" during his whirlwind whistle-stop tour
of India where he made 116 speeches—has painstakingly prepared his plan
and has come up with facts and figures to prove that his scheme is no
political pipe dream.
He and his advisers are ready to write off Virginia,
Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida,
and Louisiana. More than that, they are anxious for Democratic Party
regulars in those states to bolt.
They plan to give them a push toward the exits by
fighting for an ultra-militant plank on civil rights—so hot that the
southerners cannot go along with it. And don't think that they lack
either the 'savvy' or the strength to do just that.
The old CIO unions—but especially Reuther's Auto
Workers—will march into the Chicago nominating convention with large
batches of votes from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New Jersey, New
York, Wisconsin and Connecticut.
In many delegations they will be the controlling
force. And with the huge amounts of money and manpower at their disposal
for campaign purposes, they can influence much additional support.
"They are saying that the Democrats can win
without the South. They figure that they can count on 244 electoral
votes from 16 states which have Democratic governors.
This includes Texas which they are convinced will not
bolt. This is based on their belief that the anti-Gov. Shiver
forces—led by Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson—will win Texas and will
refuse to bolt with the solid bloc of deep southern states.
All they need to win, after that, according to the
Reutherites' theory, are the 25 electoral votes from California or
Illinois.
In both of these states the Negro vote could be the
difference between victory and defeat. Reuther believes his plan will
swing the vote to the Democrats, who will gain stature by dumping the
southern segregationists.
The labor people are prepared to spend more time,
money and manpower in this effort than ever before in the history of
their participation in national politics.
If the Reuther people can succeed in putting this
project across—and especially if the Democrats win in '56—they will be
the greatest power in the Democratic Party, North and South.
For once the southern Democrats bolt, the unionists
will inherit the formal party machinery which will give them votes in
future conventions. They will be in the position of southern Republicans
at GOP conventions—with votes to cast even though they have no real
membership behind them.
With this tremendous influence as a lever, Reuther
and his cohorts will be able to utilize the Democratic Party to push
labor candidates locally and nationally. And when national political
recognition comes, can Reuther be far behind.
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Putting the World Together
My Father Walter Reuther, The Liberal Warrior
By Elisabeth Reuther
Dickmeyer
A memoir about growing
up with labor legend and social visionary, Walter Reuther,
by his youngest daughter, Elisabeth. It is also a history of
the UAW with Walter Reuther at the helm, and the monumental
social impact he had on America and the world. The book
dispels the conservative propaganda that liberals are bad
for America. In contrast it tells how one of our nation's
greatest liberal and moral leaders created pensions and
health care for workers, during World War II gave FDR the
plan to turn Detroit's auto plants into manufacturing of
planes and tanks, thus creating the Arsenal of Democracy,
co-founded the United Way with Henry Ford II, marched
side-by-side with Martin Luther King, Jr., during all great
civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s, was the first to
give aid to Cesar Chavez and the migrant farm workers, gave
President John F. Kennedy the plan that became the Peace
Corps, gave the seed money for the first Earth Day, and at
the time of his untimely death in a mysterious plane crash
was leading the effort for national health care insurance
for every American. |
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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