States' Rights Party
States' Rights Party, in United States history, the Southern Democrats who bolted the Democratic party during the 1948 election campaign over the issue of civil rights. The “Dixiecrats,” as they were popularly known, wrote a states' rights platform and nominated Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for President and Governor Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi for Vice President. The “Dixiecrats” had little influence outside the Deep South, winning only the electoral votes of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, and one vote from Tennessee for a total of 39.
Thurmond later was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat and eventually joined the Republican party.