As cited in Robert George's NRO column today, here is what was printed on the sample ballot for the Dixiecrats in Mississippi:
"A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious…anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever."
If you can find me documentation that "states' rights" had any other content in the 1948 Dixiecrat Campaign besides the poll tax, lynching, and segregation, please provide it.
It might be worth taking a look at the civil rights plank in the '48 regular Democratic platform:
The Democratic Party is responsible for the great civil rights gains made in recent years in eliminating unfair and illegal discrimination based on race, creed or color.
The Democratic Party commits itself to continuing its efforts to eradicate all racial, religious and economic discrimination.
We again state our belief that racial and religious minorities must have the right to live, the right to work, the right to vote, the full and equal protection of the laws, on a basis of equality with all citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.
We highly commend President Harry S. Truman for his courageous stand on the issue of civil rights.
We call upon the Congress to support our President in guaranteeing these basic and fundamental American Principles: (1) the right of full and equal political participation; (2) the right to equal opportunity of employment; (3) the right of security of person; (4) and the right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation.
These are all basically equal protection issues, not equal outcome issues. The issue of public accomodations is not even mentioned. As Clint Bolick has pointed out, from the 1860's to the beginning of the 1960's "equal opportunity of employment" as a civil rights goal meant overturning state regulations that artifically barred or hindered blacks from entering certain occupations; it did not mean racial quotas.
Besides, "state's rights" is not a conservative cause. Conservatives are concerned with the rights of human beings, not the rights of the state. "States' rights" is a phrase that has been abused for decades to mean the right of the state to take away individual freedom from people with the wrong skin color or parentage. That is what "states' rights" certainly meant in Strom's campaign in 1948. An enemy of human freedom is an enemy of human freedom, and that is what Strom was in '48. He outgrew it, and he should be commended for that, not for his earlier advocacy of tyranny.
The old Southern Democrats were the biggest statists around. From the point of view of liberty, a state-government statist is no better than a federal-government statist. Sometimes it is the proper function of the Federal government to restrain state-level statism in order to ensure American citizens the equal protection of the laws.