The Cold War and Civil Rights 251Committee in 1946 and had urged Congress to enact the committee’s
recommendations to root out racial discrimination. On the left, there
were some Democrats who hoped for cooperation with the Soviet
Union to ensure global peace. They condemned Truman’s Cold War
policies as likely to lead to a third world war. These Democrats espe-
cially resented his dismissal of Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wal-
lace in 1946 , who was a leader of the Democratic left.
There were a great number of Democratic leaders who hoped that
Truman would withdraw from the presidential race in 1948 , but he
stubbornly determined to seek election as President in his own right.
When the party convened in Philadelphia on July 12 , it nominated
him, along with Alben Barkley, the Senate majority leader, as Vice
President, despite the fact that many members believed Truman would
be defeated in the general election. Late in the eve ning Truman fi nally
spoke to the delegates and gave a rousing speech in which he promised
to summon Congress into special session to address some of the na-
tion’s most pressing problems, especially civil rights.
A bitter fl oor fi ght broke out over the civil rights plank of the party
platform. This plank called for a permanent civil rights commission
and federal legislation outlawing lynching and poll taxes. Despite a
prolonged battle that turned ugly toward the end, the plank passed,
whereupon thirty-five members of the Alabama and Mississippi dele-
gations walked out of the convention, waving the Confederate battle
flag as they departed. Several days later, on July 17 , so-called Dixiecrats
from thirteen southern states organized the States’ Rights Democratic
Party and held a convention in Birmingham, where they nominated
Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for President and
Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi for Vice President. Although
they did not expect to win the presidency, they did hope to split the
electoral vote so that no candidate would win and the election would
go to the House of Representatives, where they could negotiate for
their votes and in that way achieve their objectives.
As right-wingers of the Democratic Party had deserted to form a
third party, the leftists of the party soon followed their example. On
July 22 they held a convention in Philadelphia and formed the Progres-
sive Party with Henry A. Wallace as their presidential candidate, along
with Senator Glenn Taylor of Idaho for Vice President. Their platform