The Former Confederacy & Modern American Politics, Part Three

After federal troops were withdrawn from the former Confederate states, or the troops had their mission changed from "occupying" those states, gradually, white Democratic legislatures and city or town councils began to pass laws ordering the segregation of southern society. Over time, for example, black Americans were forced to use separate restrooms, sit in separate parts of bars or restaurants, travel in separate railway cars, sit in the back of buses, attend separate schools and drink from separate water fountains. All branches of the U.S. military were segregated, in something that was not just peculiar to the former Confederacy, nor was this practice limited to black Americans, but also often to Latino Americans and Asian Americans. During World War Two, First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, began to speak out to end the segregation and discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, but it wasn't until 1948 that President Harry Truman issued an order to end discrimination and segregation in the military, although implementation took a few more years.

As the election of 1948 approached, strains in the Democratic Party became an outright split by some white Democrats of the former Confederate states, and for a time, the Dixiecrat Party, a segregationist political party, was formed. As had been the case going back to pre-Civil War times, when pro slavery Southerners insisted that they were simply standing for states' rights, the segregationists claimed the Dixiecrats were simply "states' rights" advocates, opposing a power hungry federal government. Segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was the Dixiecrat candidate for president, with Fielding Wright of Mississippi as the vice presidential candidate. The election saw the Thurmond/Wright ticket carry Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, for a total of 38 electoral votes, as well as a 39th vote from an elector from Tennessee who defected from the Democratic Party (all four states and Tennessee were former states of the Confederacy). Incumbent Democratic president, Harry Truman, won a startling election victory and the Dixiecrats did not remain as an organized party.

WORD HISTORY:
Scale (2)-English has other words of this spelling, but this is the verb meaning, "to climb," and the noun form meaning, "measurements used to show proportion in depicted distance on a map," also, "musical notes in sequence." This "apparently" goes back to Indo European "skand," which had the notion, "to leap, to climb." This gave Latin "scandere," which meant, "to rise, to climb, to ascend." There must have been a altered Latin form somewhere in the conjugation of "scandere" to produce the Latin noun "scala," meaning, "steps, stairs, ladder, staircase," but I did not find such. I searched many etymologies of the word, including non-English ones, and they all have "scandere" as giving Latin the noun "scala." English borrowed the word from Latin in the latter part of the 1300s, with the meaning, "ladder, stairs, staircase," and the notion of "rising and falling of steps/stairs," gave the word it's extended musical meaning, but the word's "map scale" meaning came from Italian in the 1600s. The verb form, meaning, "to climb a ladder, staircase," or by extension, "wall or cliff," is from the Latin noun (circa 1400), but with reinforcement from the Latin/Italian verb form, "scalare" ("to climb").