Fantasizing about a President Strom Thurmond

We fantasize out of deep hope sometimes, yearning for a happy outcome, a joyful event that changes life's course and, therefore, multiplies the world's possibilities for good.

What if that cursed bullet had sped astray, sparing Dr. King? Our lives would today be vastly different, the nation a happier place, brotherhood would enrich an entirely different world, and by now racial harmony would be a proud old American tradition.

On the dark side of the moon, though, what if in 1948 the Dixiecrat Party had prevailed, enabling the rebellious party's nominee, the late reformed racist, to become President Strom Thurmond?

Planks adopted by Thurmond's Dixiecrats during its national convention that year shows what America would probably have become only three years after the civilized world subdued Hitler's Nazis. The platform asserted, "We stand for the segregation of the races... (and) the constitutional right ... to accept private employment without governmental interference.

"We oppose the repeal of miscegenation statutes and the control of private employment ... by the misnamed civil rights program."

The hopeful segregationists, meeting in Birmingham, condemned their former home, the Democratic Party, because, they lamented, its platform called for "social equality by federal fiat (and) regulations of voting and local law enforcement."

Let's suppose Thurmond had made bigots' dreams come true and won the presidency. Let's speculate, as did researchers at The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education recently, how American life would have been if Thurmond had served two terms as president.

First, there's no possibility that California Governor Earl Warren would have been named Chief Justice. Nor would his life's greatest achievement, the historic Brown v. Board of Education milestone, been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of school desegregation.

If a President Strom Thurmond had served two terms, he would have had the chance to appoint a majority of the Supreme Court.

Scholars are confident that as a result, his court would have found major civil rights and voting rights cases unconstitutional. Decisions outlawing the poll tax, segregated public transportation and laws prohibiting intermarriage would have remained on the books.

No doubt a horde of conservative lawmakers would have deluged Washington on Thurmond's coattails and stayed around for decades. Federal civil rights legislation passed in the 1950s and 1960s would have been delayed, if not been impossible, the researchers believe.

Southern governors would have suppressed civil rights protests. That would have slowed, if not ended, the rise of Dr. King to national prominence and set the Civil Rights Movement back for decades or more.

The Ku Klux Klan would have been emboldened and in all likelihood the lynching of Blacks would have increased.

Alimp U.S. Justice Department would have tolerated greater restrictions in southern states on voter registration, hindering development of Black political influence for decades.

Speculation such as this inspires more speculation, and that's the fodder of very, very bad dreams.

Legally segregated higher education, thus no Michael? No Colin Powell? No Barack Obama?

Could things have turned out the Dixiecrat way? Of course that's a possibility.

Rest in peace, Strom, but stay at rest, please.

Article copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.