why did southern democrats walk out of the democratic convention
Dixiecrat After Roosevelt died, the new president Harry Truman established a highly visible President's Committee on Civil Rights and issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military in 1948. A group of Southern governors such as Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi met to consider the place of Southerners within the Democratic Party. After a tense meeting with DNC chairman and Truman confidant J. Howard McGrath, the Southern governors agreed to convene their own convention in Birmingham if Truman and civil rights supporters emerged victorious at the 1948 Democratic National Convention.[9] In July, the convention re-nominated Truman and adopted a plank proposed by Northern liberals led by Hubert Humphrey calling for civil rights; 35 southern delegates walked out. The move was on to remove Truman's name from the ballot in the southern United States. This political maneuvering required the organization of a new and distinct political party, which the Southern defectors from the Democratic Party chose to brand as the States' Rights Democratic Party.
United States presidential election, 1968 Incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson had been the early front-runner for his party's nomination, but he announced his withdrawal from the race after anti-Vietnam War candidate Eugene McCarthy finished second in the New Hampshire primary. McCarthy, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Vice President Humphrey emerged as the three major candidates in the Democratic primaries until Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. Humphrey won the presidential nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which saw numerous anti-war protests. Nixon entered the 1968 Republican primaries as the front-runner, and he defeated Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and other candidates at the 1968 Republican National Convention to win his party's nomination. Governor George Wallace of Alabama ran on the American Independent Party ticket, campaigning in favor of racial segregation.