Speaking here in Mississippi and looking back over the 20 years I have served in public office, I am astonished and heartened. There’s so much to talk about, so much to remember with joy and pride. At one point in 1966-67 the War against Poverty was pumping more money into Mississippi than any other single enterprise - except cotton. The poverty program was “big business” in a sense, but our product was not oil or automobiles, computers or airplanes. Our product was people, children with a head start in life, workers with a new chance in life, senior citizens revitalized. and like G.E., we made lots of progress.
During every year of the war against poverty - from 1964 through 1968 - the absolute number of poor people in America declined. So did the percentage.
At the end of 1968, we had fewer poor, numerically and percentage-wise, than at any prior period in the modern history of America.
Beginning in 1969 these figures and trends were reversed. every year of the Nixon debacle saw increased numbers from increased welfare costs, increased inflation and a weakened country -- economically, politically and ethically.
But I am not discouraged. Times have been worse in America. Two hundred years ago the First Continental Congress met with 56 delegates from twelve colonies. Those delegates faced a bleak, even desperate future. The British had levied a tea tax, and we became a nation of coffee drinkers. The Port of Boston was blockaded. All trade stopped. Several citizens demonstrating in Boston were shot when frightened soldiers fired into a crowd. Yet, in a few short years, George Washington was named Commander-in-Chief at the Second Continental Congress, the revolution was fought, and victory achieved -- against overwhelming odds. The Articles of Confederation were adopted. Finally, the miracle of a Constitution establishing a federal union of states was written and approved.
It is upon that proud heritage which we embark on the third century since that First Continental Congress in October of 1774. 200 years later, we face problems that seem almost overwhelming - inflation without end, unemployment at ominous levels and still growing, incredible interest rates, corporate profiteering, diminishing resources and a sense of powerlessness rooted in an inability to understand - let alone channel the international economic and political forces at work in the world. Our forefathers rebelled against taxation without representation, and corruption in the highest places. Last month’s election results revealed a rebellion, a democratically constituted rebellion, perhaps of comparable magnitude.
Where does the South stand in all this? What can the South contribute to the solution of our national and world problems?
I suggest first that the South can play a leading role by reestablishing your historic function as a wellspring of progressive thought and action in American public life.
Progressive politics in the United States was born in the South under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Andrew Jackson brought common man democracy to the White House. Hugo Black, Cordell Hull, Pat Robinson, Alben Barkley, Estes Kefauver, Bill Fulbright, Ralph Yarborough, Frank Graham, Russell Long, John Sparkman, Lister Hill, Olin Johnston, Claude Pepper, and LBJ were all progressive southern Senators who contributed greatly to our national leadership. On the House side, men like Speaker Rayburn, Carl Vinson, Wright Patman, Brooks Hays, Carl Elliot, Carl Perkins, and many others have provided similar leadership. The South was a bastion of strength for William Jennings Bryan and for Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom. It gave overwhelming majorities to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The South that gave President Kennedy his first start toward the presidency at the Democratic convention of 1956 by supporting the young Senator from Massachusetts for the Vice Presidential nomination, Southerners were among his earliest supporters in the run for the presidency. Of course, LBJ was a son of the South. Today, Southern governors are demonstrating that the South is only the greatest source of progressivism in the nation.
In Congress the voting records of Southerners and Northern Democrats are drawing much closer together. Racial issues are beginning to fade as the base of the Southern electorate expands to include more blacks and disadvantaged people, and as the South makes more progress toward integration than any other section of the country. Ideological Republicans who for years masqueraded under the guise of Democrats to get elected are moving over to the Republican Party. That’s good riddance. I’m happy every time some one like John Connolly deserts.
The second important contribution the South can give the country is a reawakened sense of strength in the face of adversity. The South has faced devastation, severe economic problems and racial problems more severe and more intractable than any other part of the country; yet, today it has made more progress in overcoming these problems than any other section of our nation. The Southern record of military service, of courage under fire, of devotion to this country, has been exhibited in war after war. It is the quiet strength to face adversity that is so needed today.
Third, I believe the South can help with all our national problems -- because so many of them involve the need for a reawakened sense of honor and probity. No matter what section of the country people live in, they are fed up with corruption at all levels in all areas of our national life. They are sick of Watergate immorality, corruption at state and local levels in business, in labor unions, in police forces. What people are longing for more than anything else throughout the country is a rededication to morality in all aspects of our public life -- including foreign policy, for example, and the role, if any, that our government should play in overthrowing other governments. Food policy, for example, the morality, or better the immorality, of allowing millions to starve while others suffer only the ‘displeasure of overeating. Health policy, -- the immorality of rationing our health care -- life in effect -- on the basis of ability to pay. Tax policy -- tremendous burdens placed on the working class, while millionaires pay little or no taxes at all. Political campaigns where public favors are auctioned to the highest bidder -- often a corporate bidder at that. Poverty -- the immorality of millions Americans living at substandard incomes while others enjoy preferential treatment at the hands of the federal, state and local government.
These aspects of our national life today anger and infuriate Americans in all parts of our country. But fortunately, the South has been uncommonly productive of leaders with the highest principles. Robert E. Lee and General George Marshall in the military. Great jurists like Hugo Black.
Of course, all Americans are primarily concerned with the economy. Can we make it work? Can we prevent another 1929? They simply aren’t going to accept 7% unemployment rates, a declining gross national product, the fall of real purchasing power, the most outrageous interest rates in history, the highest inflation in peacetime -- while corporate profits are running at the highest level in history.
People everywhere, North, South, East, and West insist that more attention be given to the problems of the average working man. He must not be asked to make a disproportionate share of the sacrifices of our society -- whether it be in the form of job lay-offs, skyrocketing health costs, or the bearing of a disproportionate tax burden while others go tax free. Governor Wallace has understood better than most politicians in the recent years that it is the average workingman who is bearing a disproportionate share of the sacrifices of our society.
We need action from the new Congress -- action to create a comprehensive public employment program, a system of national health insurance, tax relief for the hard-pressed and tax reform for the tax enriched. And, I believe, we’re going to get it -- whether or not the President’s administration agrees.
Finally, Americans are concerned with the overriding issue of world peace and how to attain it. People want detente. By and large they support detente because they know it is the only alternative to a mutual balance of terror; but they insist that better bargains be made in the process. We can’t have any more Russian wheat deals. Overriding attention must be given to reducing -- as well as putting a lid on -- the arms race. And the Western World -- in disarray -- must find new systems of collaboration based on mutual respect rather than domination by any one country.
But, this requires executive leadership and we aren’t getting it. What we get instead is a pardon for Richard Nixon, a welfare program for Nixon’s aides and advisors, vetoes of bills to aid the handicapped or bills to expand public information about governmental decision making, surcharges on middle income families but tax indulgence for giant corporations, -- a total absence of effective controls or even moral leadership from the White House.
The truth is that the people are ahead of the government. The polls show that the people are overwhelmingly in favor of an effective controls for prices, wages, dividends, interest – as long as they are applied fairly to all sectors of society. The polls show that people are willing to accept compulsory measures for energy conservation, provided, once again, that the sacrifice is equally shared.
President Kennedy pointed out that we can do what we need to do in this country. It is a good country. It is a country with a good heart. It is a country of which all Americans, young and old, can be legitimately proud. But, it is a country which has made mistakes, sometimes big mistakes, and often has been ill served by its leaders, especially its national leaders in the last administration. It is a country whose better interests -- when honestly enlisted -- will respond in a generous way. The American people will make sacrifices, if asked by leaders secure enough to talk sensibly about real problems and to propose, candidly, meaningful programs.
Let me conclude by returning to the role of the South in this changing America. I have said that the South historically has supplied the impetus for progressive policies. That is no less true today than it was in Jefferson’s time. What is new, however, is that the rest of America is -- I believe -- ready to receive your ideas, your special sense of community, your strength derived from a rootedness denied to mobile America. I believe that you are coming to terms with race -- perhaps in a way few of the rest of us yet understand. That accommodation will free up the energies of this region, liberated from the imprisonment of racism. The coalition for change which gave FDR vital majorities in the 30s and 40s is capable of inspiring a broad, national coalition for progressive policies in the 70s.
And so, the era of regional isolation is ending -- to the vast benefit of the South and of the rest of America, and, I believe, too, that we are entering a new period in our history. the age of American domination has gone. We have learned at frightful cost that we cannot ordain our way of life for the rest of the world; at most we can offer to help them find their own way.
But we can perfect our way of life at home -- and that is perhaps the surest way to protect our place as a moral leader abroad, so that once again we may be known not for our power to drop bombs, but for our determination to pursue justice.
Then, too, we will be able to ask: what has happened to the idea of America, and answer: it is coming true in our lives.
The Greek poet Sophocles once wrote: “We must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.” America’s day has been splendid - and it is the faith of the Democratic Party that the evening has not come. so let us now serve that faith, and bring a new day to America and a new light to the world.
