Progressive Party (1948)
The United States Progressive Party was a political party in the United States . It was founded in 1948 with the aim of nominating Henry A. Wallace as a presidential candidate for the 1948 election. In some states she performed under the name Independent Progressive Party .
1948 presidential election
Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt , and later Secretary of Commerce under Harry S. Truman . The latter had dropped it because Wallace had publicly denounced Truman's foreign policy regarding the Cold War .
Wallace's vice presidential nominee was Glen H. Taylor . Wallace and Taylor were also supported by several other small parties, such as the American Labor Party (ALP) of New York and the United States Communist Party . As the Cold War gained momentum, the McCarthy era had begun, and anti-communism (so-called "Second Red Fear" ) played a growing role in American society , this support did more harm than good. Since Wallace refused to exclude Communists from participating in his party, he was violently attacked in the 1948 election campaign by the strictly anti-communist camps of candidates Truman ( Democrats ) and Dewey ( Republicans ). Anti-communist socialist politicians like Norman Thomas also turned their backs on Wallace.
Party platform
In their party program of 1948, the progressives opposed the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and the big corporations. They called for the abolition of racial segregation , full voting rights for Afro-Americans , minimum wages , universal state health insurance and the dissolution of the Committee on Un-American Activities . Your campaign seemed unusual for the time, as African American candidates were put together with white candidates in the southern states . Wallace refused to perform in racially segregated auditoriums and to dine and sleep in segregated bars and hotels during the campaign. When Vice-presidential candidate Taylor wanted to attend an event of the Southern Negroe Youth Congress in Birmingham, Alabama in May 1948 and demonstratively entered the room not through the door intended for whites, but the door intended for African Americans, Police Chief Bull Connor had him arrested and charged with an offense against the Indict Alabama state segregation laws. In the ascending Cold War era, Wallace and Taylor won no electors and only 2.4% of the vote. Nearly half of them came from New York State, where they were running for the American Labor Party.
1952 presidential election and dissolution
For the presidential election in 1952 , the party nominated the attorney Vincent Hallinan . The vice-presidential candidate was the publicist Charlotta Bass , who became the first African-American person to ever run for national office. Their election campaign met with little media interest and only earned 0.23% of the vote. Henry A. Wallace had already renounced the party at this point and had made great efforts to wash away suspicions of communism. In his 1952 book Why I Was Wrong , he explained his turn to anti-communism. In 1956 he supported the re-election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower , in 1960 he spoke out for Richard Nixon . The United States Progressive Party disbanded in 1955 when the Cold War dominated the political spectrum in the United States and a party that did not take a decidedly anti-communist position was deemed not to be viable.
See also
literature
- Karl M. Schmidt: Henry A. Wallace, Quixotic Crusade 1948. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 1960
Individual evidence
- ↑ Diane MacWorther: Carry Me Home. Birmingham, Alabama. The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. Simon & Schuster, New York 2001, ISBN 0-684-80747-5 , pp. 63-65