Southerner

...That the Democrats of Alabama would be most deeply hurt, shocked and disillusioned should any attack upon racial segregation be adopted as a plank in the 1948 party platform... Such an action by the National leadership of the Democratic party could but force every Southerner into the undesired position of determining which is the greater loyalty, that to the South, or that to the party.

In defending the racial status quo, Dixon had actually elevated himself to the role of defender of the white South itself and—in the minds of virtually all white southerners of the time—the "Southland". For African Americans were in no way considered "of the South" in the same way white southerners understood the proposition of their own nativity. Blacks were part of the South, to be sure, but one with alien roots, and only a legitimate part of the Southland when kept firmly "in their place" of subservience, quietude, and dutiful physical labor.