THE SOUTH: Sunny Day in Dixie

Standing hatless under a hot Southern sun last week, Vice President Nixon could wonder whether his brains had been fried to the point of sunstroke. There he stood in the heart of the solid South, in downtown Atlanta’s Hurt Park, while a cheering crowd of 45,000 stretched to the eye’s limit. There beside him stood Atlanta’s grey-thatched Mayor William B. Hartsfield. Democratic to the core but proclaiming the need for a Southern two-party system because “we want to be part of the main stream of American life.” Following the mayor came Georgia Democrat James V. Carmichael, who once got more popular votes than Gene Talmadge in a race for Governor (but was defeated by the county unit system). “It’s not in the script,” said Carmichael, “but I’m going to be honored to work for Dick Nixon and vote for him in November.”

Neither Nixon nor his hosts had been touched by the Atlanta sun. Rather, they were caught up by one more manifestation of upsurging Southern interest in the Republican candidate. The week before, Nixon found the same enthusiasm in a five-hour hop to Greensboro, N.C. (TIME, Aug. 29). He found it again prop-stopping in ruggedly segregationist Birmingham as he began his day-long swing last week.

Rebel Yells. The crowd was small when the chartered Nixon Convair landed at the Birmingham airport, but people ran out of factories and office buildings to line the curb as Nixon’s blue convertible came into the city. Firecrackers boomed and swirls of paper floated down from office windows. A crowd of 15,000—as big as Ike’s in 1952—filled Woodrow Wilson Park and spilled into adjoining streets to hear the Vice President speak.

Wiping away the confetti, Nixon unloosed a low-key attack on Democratic liberalism that moved his audience of Southern conservatives to rebel yells. Said he: “It is time for the Democratic candidates to quit taking the South for granted, and it is time for the Republican candidates to quit conceding the South to the Democrats without a battle.” To the conservative Southerners he pictured the Democrats, Northern style, as a party that wants “to progress through spending billions more of the people’s money, through increasing the functions, the size and the power of the Federal Government.” Echoing a Southern threat, he predicted that “millions of Democrats will vote for our ticket this year, not because they are deserting their party but because their party deserted their principles.” Only once were his remarks met with silence. Bringing up civil rights, Nixon called it a national problem, said simply, “You know my convictions on that issue.”

Confident Guess. In Atlanta an hour later, Nixon got an even rowdier welcome. A yellow banner at the airport proclaimed, “It’s Nixon Day in Atlanta.” Changing downtown from a closed to an open car, Pat and Dick suddenly found themselves on a ten-block parade route that was choked with 150,000 people. For the second time, the Nixons were bombarded with confetti, pulled and pawed by enthusiastic Atlantans, who broke past Secret Service men to reach for a hand shake.

Flying back to Washington that evening, Nixon felt confident enough for a prediction. “The Kennedy-Johnson ticket is in real trouble in the South,” he said. “They no longer can consider any Southern state safe. This trip proves that the people of the Southern states are justified in feeling cheated when they are ignored by the candidates of both parties.”