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of North Carolina Press. 2001. Pp. x, 311. Cloth $49.95,
paper $18.95.
In this book, Kari Frederickson sketches a detailed
picture on a large canvas. Her first two chapters
consider the impact of the New Deal and World War
11 on the South, and the book's last chapter discusses
presidential politics in the 1950s and 1960s. Much of
the material in these chapters is derivative, and informed students of southern history will find little new
or remarkable therein. The heart of the book focuses
on the insurgency of states' rights southerners against
the Democratic Party in 1948, a story that has been
told often before but never in the close detail presented here. The author has combed archives and
libraries across the South, with greatest attention to
repositories in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina (the three key states in the Dixiecrat revolt).
Relying on dozens of manuscript collections and a full
complement of local newspapers and periodicals, as
well as the requisite secondary sources, she tells the
fascinating story of one of the few significant challenges to the nation's two-party political system.
Frederickson spins a good yarn about a quixotic and
colorful movement. The Dixiecrats of this volumeplanters, mill owners, oil men, bankers, and attorneys-seem to have been motivated by a combination
of heartfelt ideology, political opportunism, obstinacy,
and racism. Disunity and fractiousness characterized
the states' rights campaign. One of the book's real
contributions is to give us a clearer view of the
movement's leadership. Fielding Wright, the governor
of Mississippi and vice-presidential candidate of the
Dixiecrat Party, emerges as a more important figure
than his subordinate place on the ticket would indicate. The party's presidential candidate, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, is portrayed as somewhat less than a true believer, a calculating politician
willing to use a generous dose of national publicity in
1948 as a springboard to the U.S. Senate in 1950. The
book also underscores the seminal contributions to the
states' rights movement of such comparatively unknown figures as Frank Dixon and Horace Wilkerson
of Alabama, WaIter Sillers of Mississippi, and Leander
Perez of Louisiana. As well, the book carefully details
the heroic efforts of African-American newspaperman
John Henry McCray to derail the Dixiecrat revolt in
South Carolina.
The efforts of the Dixiecrats produced less than they
had hoped, Frederickson suggests, but ultimately more
than they had planned. The insurgents sought to win
the Solid South's 127 electoral votes, thereby denying
Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman or Republican Thomas Dewey a victory and forcing the election
into the House of Representatives. But Thurmond and
Wright won only four southern states-South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana-for a total
of thirty-nine electoral votes. The failed Dixiecrat
revolt left Truman in the White House and the direction of the Democratic Party unchanged. Nevertheless,
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"by breaking with the Democratic party," the author
notes, "the Dixiecrat movement demonstrated to conservative southerners that allegiance to one party was
'neither necessary nor beneficial' and thus served as
the crossover point for many southern voters in their
move from the Democratic to the Republican column"
(p. 4). To be sure, the Dixiecrats brought the end of
the one-party South by trumpeting the cause of white
supremacy but also by formulating a critique of New
Deal liberalism and a powerful federal government.
Although the formal structures of the States' Rights
Democrats dissolved quickly in 1949-1950, a lasting
taste for political independence and dissatisfaction
with the Democratic Party remained. This residue
became the soil in which the Republican Party blossomed.
Frederickson's book makes several important contributions to our understanding of post-World War 11
politics in the South. First, her nuanced retelling of the
Dixiecrat saga shreds the interpretation, posited by
political scientist V. O. Key and southern journalists
writing in the late 1940s and early 1950s, that states'
rights forces failed to employ race baiting effectively in
1948. Her view more sensibly notes that loyal Democrats portrayed themselves as more capable defenders
of the region's racial mores and drove the Dixiecrats
out of the party. Second, her discussion of context,
ranging both backward and forward in time from 1948,
underscores the complexity of the political transformation in the South in the last half century. Finally, her
careful examination of the events of 1948 at the local
and state levels in the South presents a more vivid
picture at the grassroots level of political change. As a
result, we have a clearer idea of why southerners
voted-or did not vote-for Thurmond and Wright.
ROGER BILES
East Carolina University
MARY L. DUDZIAK. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the
Image of American Democracy. (Politics and Society in
Twentieth-Century America.) Princeton: Princeton
University Press. 2000. Pp. xii, 330. $29.95.
Over the past two decades, studies of the civil rights
movement have become increasingly localized. National civil rights leaders and organizations have been
pushed to the margins of scholarly focus by ordinary
and extraordinary grassroots women and men whose
inspiration and commitment propelled the civil rights
movement forward. Without detracting from the importance of the local origins of the black freedom
struggle, Mary L. Dudziak lucidly presents the case for
attaching a global perspective to racial reform in the
United States. "The international context structures
relationships between 'domestic' actors," she writes.
"It influences the timing, nature, and extent of social
change" (p. 17). Based on this premise, Dudziak
contends that, overall, the Cold War played a positive
role in extending first-class citizenship to African
Americans.
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Canada and the United States
Scholars of postwar America have generally portrayed the effect of the Cold War on social reform in
a less favorable light. They have suggested that anticommunist hysteria in the late 1940s and early 1950s
removed options for more radical racial and economic
changes in the South than those offered by the civil
rights movement. By repressing Communists, independent left-wingers, and union organizers, southern McCarthyites not only delayed the timing of reform but
also narrowed its possibilities to obtaining constitutional rights rather than restructuring class relations.
Dudziak does not discount the harmful effects of the
Cold War; however, she maintains that U.S. strategy in
waging it played an equal if not greater role in forcing
the federal government to support the black freedom
struggle. At a time when people of color in Africa, the
Middle East, and Asia were gaining liberation, American diplomats grew increasingly sensitive to the media
coverage that racial conflict in the South received in
these newly emerging nations. After all, how could the
United States hold itself up as the standard bearer of
democracy against Soviet tyranny while southern
blacks were prevented from voting and subject to the
indignities of segregation?
Dudziak correctly views the Cold War as a doubleedged sword. In stressing the beneficial aspects, she
provides a useful counterweight to previous accounts
that underscore the harmful sides of domestic redbaiting. Indeed, even without a vigorous anticommunist campaign to maintain white supremacy, it is
questionable that civil rights advocates would have
achieved their goals sooner in the face of powerful
white racism that continued to grip the South in the
postwar period. In spite of anticommunist repression
at home and because of the policy of containing the
Soviet Union abroad, reformers were able to convince
Washington officials to adopt civil rights measures for
fear of losing vital propaganda battles with their
Communist adversary. The United States Information
Service presented a narrative of racial progress that
accentuated gradual but steady advancement toward
equality, despite violent episodes in Little Rock, Arkansas and Birmingham, Alabama. Dudziak establishes that the U.S. was generally successful in persuading third world nations of its sincerity in extending
democracy to its own citizens of color. Ironically, by
the mid-1960s, much of this favorable image began to
decline as Vietnam and American militarism replaced
domestic racism as the chief foreign policy concern
throughout the world.
This book offers valuable insights into both the civil
rights movement and the conduct of American foreign
policy. Clearly written and based mainly on State
Department and presidential archives, this book
should have wide appeal for classroom use at all levels
of instruction. Dudziak successfully argues that, during
the period in which the United States undertook global
responsibility for constructing a world order compatible with its political, economic, and cultural interests,
the "boundaries of domestic and foreign affairs be-
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247
came blurred" (p. 253). Although she adeptly constructs this narrative from the vantage point of presidents and diplomats, she is not as effective in
showcasing how civil rights groups, both national and
local, were specifically influenced by global events and
forged protest strategies with an international audience in mind. To accomplish this would require carefully exploring the records of these organizations,
which, with the exception of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, Dudziak
appears not to have done. Furthermore, the international consequences of the Cold War on the American
scene had definite limitations. For example, the author
might have pointed out that the Cold War supplied
leverage that African Americans could exploit, but it
was not sufficient to force the State Department to
remove racial barriers in the hiring of its career service
officers. Although such issues merit further explanation, Dudziak has written an intelligent and informative book that is sure to become a staple of both civil
rights and Cold War historiography.
STEVEN F. LAWSON
Rutgers University
JAMES T. PATTERSON. Brown v. Board of Education: A
Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. (Pivotal
Moments in American History.) New York: Oxford
University Press. 2001. Pp. xxx, 285. $27.50.
In his history of Brown v. Board of Education, James T.
Patterson has set himself the task of exploring the
complex issues that Brown tried to resolve in 1954 and
of identifying "the most important legacies of the
decision in our own time" (p. xiv). The editors tell us
that the book is the first in a series called Pivotal
Moments in American History. "Each book will examine a large historical problem through the lens of a
particular event and the choices of individual actors"
(p. xi).
Brown has, of course, been the subject of countless
books and articles, including Richard Kluger's celebratory history, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v.
Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for
Equality (1975), and J. Harvie Wilkinson's From Brown
to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration,
1954-1978 (1979). Patterson spends over half of his
book revisiting the issues surveyed by Kluger and
Wilkinson. He uncovers no new facts regarding the
first twenty-five years after Brown but instead provides
the reader with both a clear picture of the pivotal
events and players and an assessment of the events in
light of developments of the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps
most valuable are the author's efforts to evaluate
Brown in light of the varying visions of the goals its
supporters pursued and its opponents feared, as well
as the varying interpretations of the meaning of Brown.
The preface reveals the problem in deciding whether
Brown was a "success" or not. One's expectations
largely determine one's reactions to the decision and
its aftermath, and "many large expectations of the
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