Richard Russell Jr.
*Richard Russell Jr. was born on this date in 1897. He was a white-American politician and segregationist.
Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was born in Winder, Georgia, the first son of Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard B. Russell Sr. and Ina Dillard Russell. Throughout his childhood, his father made multiple attempts to run for higher political office, and his father trained him to exceed his father's legacy in the state. Due to the family's loss of their ancestral plantation and mill during Sherman's March, Russell spent much time studying American Civil War history.
After graduating from the University of Georgia School of Law, Russell briefly worked at a law firm with his father before successfully running for the Georgia House of Representatives. Russell ran unopposed for the Speakership at 29, six years into his tenure. Russell joined the Senate in 1933. He supported the New Deal in his Senate career but helped establish the conservative coalition of Southern Democrats. He was the chief sponsor of the National School Lunch Act, which provided free or low-cost school lunches to impoverished students. Russell supported racial segregation and co-authored the Southern Manifesto with Strom Thurmond.
Russell and 17 fellow Democratic Senators, along with one Republican, blocked the passage of civil rights legislation via the filibuster. The Republican Party was no longer competitive, hollowed out in the state following the effective disenfranchisement of most blacks by Georgia's approval of a constitutional amendment, effective in 1908, requiring a literacy test but providing a "grandfather clause" to create exceptions for whites. Russell never justified hatred or acts of violence to defend segregation. But he strongly defended white supremacy and apparently did not question it or ever apologize for his segregationist views, votes, and speeches.
For decades, Russell was a key figure in the Southern Caucus within the Senate that blocked or watered down meaningful civil rights legislation intended to protect African Americans from lynching, disenfranchisement, and disparate treatment under the law. He condemned President Truman's pro-desegregation stance and wrote that he was "sick at heart" over it. In 1952, Russell was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination; while he did not discuss civil rights while campaigning, his platform named "local self-government" one of the significant "Jeffersonian Principles." In early 1956, Russell's office was continually used as a meeting place by the Southern Caucus, and he was through most of the caucus's life the acknowledged leader of the group, sending out invitations to what he called "Constitutional Democrats." The caucus included fellow senators having a commonality of being dispirited by Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
Russell was one of the most vigorous opponents of every desegregation measure in the Senate, but he remained loyal to the Party. Although he called the 1960 Democratic Party platform a "complete surrender to the NAACP and the other extreme radicals at Los Angeles," he did agree to campaign for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket for the 1960 United States presidential election. In January 1964, President Johnson delivered the 1964 State of the Union Address, calling for Congress to "lift by legislation the bars of discrimination against those who seek entry into our country, particularly those who have much-needed skills and those joining their families." Russell issued a statement afterward stating the Southern senators' commitment to oppose such a measure, which he called "shortsighted and disastrous," while admitting the high probability of its passing.
He added that the civil rights bill's true intended effect was to intermingle races, eliminate states' rights, and abolish the checks and balances system. After President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Russell and more than a dozen other southern Senators boycotted the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Russell led a Southern boycott of the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Russell served in the Senate until his death from emphysema. In the Senate, Russell served as Chairman of several committees and was the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services for most of the period between 1951 and 1969. He was also a member of the Warren Commission.
Many of the pro-Jim Crow South saw him as a hero. While a skilled politician of immense influence, his lifelong support of white supremacy is part of his legacy. Russell publicly said that America was "a white man's country, yes, and we are going to keep it that way." He also said he was vehemently opposed to "political and social equality with the Negro." Russell also supported poll taxes across the South and called President Truman's support of civil rights for black Americans an "uncalled-for attack on our Southern civilization." Richard Russell died on January 21, 1971.
