relations and normalize racial aspects of Southern democracy.
Stealth politicians had to navigate a difficult, sometimes wayward course. Even our case-studied and surveyed leaders—oriented to racial, economic, and social progress—allow that they sometimes struggled with the challenges and compromises dictated in their regionalized calling. As will be evidenced throughout this book, certain aspects of service by public official Browder and his stealth colleagues seem uncomfortably similar to the cynical activities of traditional Southern politicos and new race-gamers. Coauthor Browder notes that since he was a professional political scientist and campaign consultant prior to entering politics, he was better prepared than most for dealing with this part of Southern politics; however, the continuing, constant, almost casual demands of racial politics were increasingly burdensome. He says that an inner-voice nagged him during those times: “I often wondered . . . Am I a ‘good guy’ fighting the right causes? Or am I becoming just another Southern political hack?”
Thus we readily acknowledge the unsavory downside of traditional Southern politics in which our touted stealth politicians were embedded. We hope the reader eventually will agree that, considered within the nature of their situations, these stealthy leaders pursued acceptable compromise between “doing what’s right” and “doing what works” during those historic times.
To conclude this cautionary discussion, we have acknowledged some broad unseemly tendencies and unsavory realities of Southern politics, and we have admitted the sometimes shadowy environs and ways of our stealthy politicians.
However, in our opinion, significant credit goes to those practical political leaders and activists—white and black—who helped restructure Southern elections and governance in moderate, progressive directions. They crafted a more savory and seemly politics, and the South did undergo fundamental political change during that period. Their stealthy service may have been tentative and transient, but during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s these politicians and activists helped close the curtain on the Old South, and they contributed greatly to the more positive aspects of a new system in this century.
An Amendment to the Race Game and Southern History
We present this thesis as a timely and critical amendment to the traditional race game and more recent Southern politics. As pointed out in the introduction, most Americans, and even Southerners themselves, have only a hazy understanding of black-white political relations in this region in response to the civil rights movement. Furthermore, scholars have ignored important realities of quiet, practical, biracial politics in the South during the rest of the twentieth century. As the 2008 presidential campaign so clearly and painfully demonstrated, public misunderstanding, ignorance, and raw sensitivities about the past woefully handicap any attempt to resolve America’s continuing racial dilemma in the twenty-first century. We believe that our research will begin filling this gaping hole in Southern and national political history.
Gerald Johnson, longtime Auburn political scientist and a Browder ally, agrees that the stealth project is a provocative, daunting, but worthy effort.
Following the provision of legal rights for black minorities in the South, what remained, and still remains to some degree in some areas, was and is the implementation of those rights. No doubt, the accommodation of mutual interests through relatively quiet quid pro quo arrangements played a positive role in this process. The attempt, however difficult, modest, and limited, to construct and tell in formal terms this untold part of history is a powerful addition to both the civil rights literature and the literature of Southern politics.[28]
Actually, according to Dr. Johnson, “Stealth Reconstruction” is simply re-conceptualization of an age-old process of accommodating marginal groups for very practical reasons. However, in this case, the accommodations are different in scope because they deal positively with a newly enfranchised set of players—black minorities—in the context of sweeping social, cultural, historic, economic, and political change:
I suspect that members of every community in the South knew about and can tell about some quiet accommodators who helped make things work during that period. But, I further suspect, most of the common talk is about the uglier aspects of the process, not to its contributions to the continuing evolution and development of the civil rights struggle and to Southern politics. Thus, “Stealth Reconstruction” can help us better understand the political history of this region.
Dr. Johnson, who now directs the Capital Survey Research Center in Montgomery, cautions about some sensitive ramifications of historical re-conceptualization; he particularly warns against the depiction of “white-hat” Caucasians supplanting African Americans as the heroes of the civil rights movement. But having stated that concern, he sees this project as an important part of contemporary public dialogue:
I think just the idea that the quiet, accommodating laborer in the vineyard contributed in substantive and substantial ways to the evolution of civil rights and Southern politics gives comfort and encouragement and hope today. The need for such service is as great now, if not greater, because the issues of Southern society are so much more subtle and complex.
Our stealth thesis, then, is an unconventional pronouncement and conceptual model that merits further consideration and investigation. We hope that the candid reflections in this chapter add credence and context to our contention, and in the pages to follow we will provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical concept.
More specifically, we will address several important questions about stealth leadership, politics, and reconstruction during that era, hoping to raise constructive issues for the future:
1 For openers, a broad, four-part question about stealth leadership in general: Who were these stealth leaders? What did they do? What was the context of their election and service? Were they consciously playing stealth politics? And why did they do it?
2 How did their stealth politics differ from and relate to traditional Southern politics?
3 What, specifically and exactly, did they do, stealthily, in their campaigns and what was the stealthy nature of their public service?
4 How did they balance their stealth politics to appeal to black voters without alienating white constituents?
5 How did their stealth politics pay off in terms of black and white support? And public policy?
6 What were the downsides of stealth politicking?
7 Did these stealth leaders ever feel that they were exploiting black people? Or deceiving white people? And did they ever feel that they were being used—and—abused in the process?
8 What about the black activists—how did they play in this stealth process?
9 Did these stealth leaders and activists actually change Southern politics?
10 Does this stealth phenomenon still work—and what does that tell us about the future of Southern and national politics?
Before dealing with these important questions, however, we need to back up and establish historical background for the Civil Rights Revolution and Stealth Reconstruction.
2
The South’s Enduring Dilemma and Changing Politics
Certainly, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, the race game referenced in the previous chapter
