The 1948 Democratic Convention
Gravel was an early civil rights activist who was derided by Louisiana segregationist Democrats in the 1950s as an "integrationist." He attracted national attention when he led the loyal Louisiana Democratic delegation to the 1948 national convention in Philadelphia, when delegates from Mississippi and Alabama walked out in protest of a civil rights plank in the party platform supported by the nominee, U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
Oddly, Gravel in the fall of 1948 was the elector for the Eighth Congressional District committed to then Governor Strom Thurmond, the official Democratic presidential nominee in Louisiana, running regionally on a States Rights' Party ticket against Truman and Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Another Thurmond elector was Leander Perez, Gravel's longtime intraparty rival from Plaquemines Parish.
In 1952, Gravel was again a Democratic Party elector committed to Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. The Stevenson-John Sparkman slate won in Louisiana that year.
By the late 1950s, when the state's political war cry was segregation, Gravel was one of the prominent white political figures who did not join the segregationist forces. "Purely as a moral proposition, I think segregation is wrong," he said in 1959.
Read more about this topic: Camille Gravel
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