Edith Wilson widely and respectfully viewed as first women president during liberal 1940s?

I know this is just a movie, but the time frame is generally correct. Desegregation in Virginia schools happened in the early 1970s.

PS And Virginia was one of the "easy" states! It was not one of the seven holdouts talked about in the next two posts.
 
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Being Nixon: A Man Divided, Evan Thomas, 2015.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Z...e:Nixon inauthor:Evan inauthor:Thomas&f=false

' . . . Shultz would ask the attorney general what he planned to do about the schools in the South. "I am attorney general and I will enforce the law," Mitchell would say, gruffly, puffing on his pipe, and then leave the room. . . "
There was some committee where Agnew was the nominal head, but Secretary of Labor George Shultz did the real work. They set up "State Advisory Committees," an intentionally bland name, in each of the seven southern states still holding out against desegregation.

And they did this whole dog-and-pony show. One important part is that early in the day, Shultz let the committee members talk for about two hours to get it out of their system. Plus, Shultz had some street cred as a former tough marine.

So, it worked. Doesn't mean it's always going to work.
 
New York Times, Opinion, "How a Republican Desegregated the South's Schools," editorial by George P. Shultz, Jan. 8, 2003.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/opinion/how-a-republican-desegregated-the-south-s-schools.html

" . . . With the president's support, we formed biracial committees in each of the seven states. The idea was to reach out to key leaders. Many were reluctant to serve, the whites fearing too close an association with desegregation, the blacks concerned that the committee might be a sham.

"The first group to come to Washington was from Mississippi. . . "
To their credit, doing the hardest state first.
 
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"The Real Origins of the Religious Right," Politico, Randall Balmer, May 27, 2014.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

" . . . In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County [Mississippi] dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero. . . "
This is part of the "conservative" backlash, which managed to win over part of the religious right, at least for a while. Doesn't seem either one! Neither all that conservative nor all that religious. Not to me it doesn't.
 
And notice the tension between:

A) these biracial committees set up by the Nixon Administration worked really well, and

B) all the white kids in Holmes County, Mississippi went to "private" schools.
 
Exactly. She was not the President, and any Presidential power she may have exercised as a result was illegal. If Wilson was unable to fulfill his duties (and he was unable).

That raises an intriguing point.

Iirc, at times during Wilson's illness, messages purportedly signed by him would come to Congress, but with a signature so unlike his normal one as to raise doubts as to whether it was really his.

Of course, this may just have been a side-effect of his disability, but what would be the score if he let someone else sign his name to a bill? Would this invalidate it or would it count as a signature by the President, so long as it was done with his knowledge and consent?
 
the failure of Radical Republicans in Congress to be able to carry through a real Reconstruction led to a century of a racial injustice. Too high a cost.

When do you envisage simple majority impeachment being adopted? Afaics it would have to be at the Constitutional convention, in which case there might not be any kind of Reconstruction.

If things have gone the same up to 1860 [1] then Lincoln will be facing Democratic majorities in both House and Senate. So with simple-majority impeachment, the South has no need to secede, as they can probably get Lincoln (and VP Hamlin) ejected from office on some pretext or other, and install Democratic President of the Senate. If this kind of situation is acceptable to the Framers, it will be far more straightforward to simply have the President (and the VP if that office is still created) elected by a joint session of Congress or something similar.

[1] Itself a very big if. In such a situation the Whigs very likely get rid of John Tyler in 1842, which can lead to all sorts of butterflies.
 
When do you envisage simple majority impeachment being adopted? . . .
Maybe at the time of the 12th Amendment (ratified 1804) which changed the Electoral College? And I freely acknowledge that a more Parliamentary system merely has a different set of problems from a presidential system.

I do remain hopeful that Reconstruction could have gone MUCH better. In fact, spilling into our century so that the South was relatively advanced regarding both progressive economics and racial justice, and the North relatively behind the times. I mean, the North would be exactly where they are now. The South would just be further ahead in these important areas.
 
Maybe at the time of the 12th Amendment (ratified 1804) which changed the Electoral College? And I freely acknowledge that a more Parliamentary system merely has a different set of problems from a presidential system.

I do remain hopeful that Reconstruction could have gone MUCH better. In fact, spilling into our century so that the South was relatively advanced regarding both progressive economics and racial justice, and the North relatively behind the times. I mean, the North would be exactly where they are now. The South would just be further ahead in these important areas.


I don't really follow. Even if things have stayed the same down to 1866 or so (see my last message on that) the only difference is that Andrew Johnson gets removed a year or two earlier than OTL - which changes little.

And even if Blacks did manage to go on voting a bit longer, why should that affect the economy?
 
And even if Blacks did manage to go on voting a bit longer, why should that affect the economy?
It might avoid the devil's bargain in the south in which a relatively small number of people got to be the economic and political elites. And the poor whites? Well, they were thrown the sop of racism.

And the south probably needs a Reconstruction which has a few generals who are the equivalent of Douglas MacArthur in Japan. MacArthur was determined that Japan would be rebuilt into a modern society. So, William Tecumseh Sherman and a few other generals are determined to rebuild the south into a modem society. For farmers, maybe they see that you've got to break the semi-monopolies of grain elevators and railroads. Just that will make them very popular with the farmers! And with labor unions, maybe Sherman takes the position, hey, workers are entirely free to join a union, and then the company can either negotiate or not. And when this only kind of works in some circumstances, maybe he goes further and adopts pro-union policies. And maybe the American south becomes the first modern society to tilt 60-40 in favor of unions. And does this catch on? Maybe.
 
And the south probably needs a Reconstruction which has a few generals who are the equivalent of Douglas MacArthur in Japan.

What use are generals w/o an army?

Within barely a decade after Appomattox, the US Army was down to about 27,000 men, only about 3,000 of who could be spared for duty in the South. Fat lot of reconstructing you're going to do with such inadequate force.

Also, the Axis powers cooperated with their western occupiers because they needed protection from the SU. What equivalent of Stalin did the White South have to fear?

I feel, though, that we're wandering a long way from Edith Wilson, or even from simple-majority impeachment. If you want to get into Reconstruction, perhaps better to go over to "before 1900" and start a new thread?
 
possible ATL:

Reconstruction goes slightly better, so that by the second full year of World War II, African-American soldiers and sailors are serving in desegregated units. And then it flows like water. After the war, civil rights advances easily and comfortably, mainly by legislative active, and only occasionally by judicial action. There's simply no case to be made that persons who have served honorably are going to be treated any less than as first-class citizens.

The U.S. remains a more liberal country.

There's still a cold war. Stalin is still a nut. But when Stalin dies in the early '50s, the political environment is such that U.S. elected officials can matter-of-factly put out the peace feelers. No miracles. But over ten years or so, a more peaceful co-existence, the United States and Soviet Union are mainly competing in the Third World over who can do the better job of genuine economic development. Things go much better and earlier for the Third World! And this happy result might become the main story.
 
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