2.For a first-person account of how effective that culture was at indoctrination from someone who managed to get free eventually, see Edward H. Peeples, Scalawag: A White Southerner’s Journey Through Segregation to Human Rights Activism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014). His archived records contain abundant riches on Virginia social and political history in this era and beyond; see Edward H. Peeples Jr. Collection, James Branch Cabell Library, Special Collections and Archives, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
3.For more detail and illuminating analysis, see the excellent essays in The Moderates’ Dilemma.
4.Dr. Louise Wensel, press release, July 25, 1958, Louise O. Wensel Papers, Special Collections Department, Manuscript Division, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville (hereafter cited as LOWP); George Lewis, “‘Any Old Joe Named Zilch’? The Senatorial Campaign of Dr. Louise Oftedal Wensel,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 107 (Summer 1999). The New York Times Magazine featured Wensel in a 1958 article six months before her run. Margaret and William Meacham, “The Country Doctor Is Now a Lady,” New York Times Magazine, January 19, 1958, unpaginated offprint in LOWP.
5.Peter Montague, “Senatorial Candidate Wensel Blasts Byrd Organization, School Closures,” Cavalier Daily, November 4, 1958; Louise O. Wensel, typescript editorial for Northern Virginia Sun, November 1958, LOWP. Full—and very moving—documentation of this extraordinary and largely unrecognized campaign can be found in Wensel’s papers, including her own narrative, Louise Oftedal Wensel, “Running for the United States Senate in 1958,” typescript, LOWP.
6.Wensel, press release, July 25, 1958.
7.The state AFL-CIO leader had long condemned Byrd’s practice of barring would-be voters from the polls to maintain elite control. In fact, at the same time the Virginia General Assembly was passing the massive resistance package, it also authorized ordinances to require labor organizers to register with county clerks—pure and simple intimidation. “Union Organizer Freed in Virginia,” Washington Post, August 25, 1956. Thanks to James H. Hershman Jr. for this; also, “Dr. Wensel Is Backed by Virginia AFL-CIO,” unidentified clipping, September 7, 1958, LOWP.
8.See, for example, Mark Newman, “The Baptist General Association of Virginia and Desegregation,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 105 (Summer 1997): 268. Hershman notes that “the few white voices speaking publicly in favor of the Brown decision” after its issue “came almost entirely from religious organizations” (34–35, 49, 51, 56, 64–67, 133, 280).
9.Matthew D. Lassiter, “A ‘Fighting Moderate’: Benjamin Muse’s Search for the Submerged South,” in The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, ed. Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 182.
10.“The Changing Scene” (editorial), University of Virginia Cavalier Daily, September 19, 1958; Andrew B. Lewis, “Emergency Mothers: Basement Schools and the Preservation of Public Education in Charlottesville,” in The Moderates’ Dilemma, ed. Lassiter and Lewis, 72–102.
11.“Rally of Citizens Calls for Schools,” Virginian-Pilot, October 14, 1958.
12.Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006), 210; Lewis, “Emergency Mothers,” 80–81, 85–86, 216n37.
13.Editorial, “Political Lethargy Dispelled as David Faces Goliath,” Waynesboro News-Virginian, July 28, 1958.
14.Robert E. Baker, “Protest Vote Is Heavy, but Byrd Wins Easily,” Washington Post, November 5, 1958.
15.Kristin Norling, “Joel’s in by a Nose,” Staunton Daily News, November 5, 1958, 5; “The Election” (editorial), Norfolk Journal and Guide, November 8, 1958; Lewis, “‘Any Old Joe,’” 316; “Dr. Wensel Says Byrd Win Is No Indication School Closings Have Full Favor,” unidentified clipping, November 5, 1958, LOWP.
16.James H. Hershman Jr., “Massive Resistance Meets Its Match: The Emergence of a Pro–Public Education Majority,” in The Moderates’ Dilemma, ed. Lassiter and Lewis, 104–5, 109.
17.Lewis, “Emergency Mothers,” 92, 217n59.
18.Stuart Saunders, Memo on Virginia Industrialization Group, 6, in section 1.2, box 1, Lewis F. Powell Jr. Papers, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, VA; Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, “Reconstructing the Old Dominion: Lewis F. Powell, Stuart T. Saunders, and the Virginia Industrialization Group, 1958–1965,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 121 (2013): 146–72.
19.Lewis, “Emergency Mothers,” 96.
20.James M. Buchanan and G. Warren Nutter, “The Economics of Universal Education,” Report of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy, February 10, 1959, C. Harrison Mann Papers, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University (also in BHA); James M. Buchanan and G. Warren Nutter to Leon Dure, April 1, 1959, box 1, Leon Dure Papers, Manuscripts Division, Alderman Library, University of Virginia. They could see the consequences of letting the chips fall where they may right in Charlottesville. See Lewis, “Emergency Mothers” in The Moderates’ Dilemma, 72, 102.
21.Buchanan and Nutter, “Economics of Universal Education.”
22.Ibid. Their recklessness went deeper, in that they never recognized that to sell off school facilities, as they proposed, someone would have to come up with “money from somewhere to pay off $200 million of bonded indebtedness.” Benjamin Muse, “It Is Also a Matter of Principal,” Washington Post, February 22, 1959, E2. Thanks to James H. Hershman Jr. for this.
23.See Lorin A. Thompson, “Some Economic Aspects of Virginia’s Current Educational Crisis,” typescript report, September 1958, original in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library; “Virginia’s Economic Advancement Will Come to an End If Public School System Is Completely Abandoned,” Cavalier Daily, January 8, 1959; “Abandonment of Public Schools Seen as Threat to Virginia’s Economic Growth,” Charlottesville Daily Progress, January 7, 1959.
24.Buchanan and Nutter, “Economics of Universal Education”; Ford and Littlejohn, “Reconstructing the Old Dominion.”
25.“Faculty Statement Supports Schools,” Daily Progress, January 31, 1959. Faculty from ten other campuses across the state followed a few days later. “College Instructors Urge Open Schools,” Daily Progress, February 6, 1959. Buchanan and Nutter were also, implicitly, seeking to refute the influential report of a UVA business school faculty member: Lorin A. Thompson, “Some Economic Aspects of Virginia’s Current Educational Crisis,” typescript report, September 1958, original in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library; “Virginia’s Economic Advancement Will Come to an End If Public School System Is Completely Abandoned,” Cavalier Daily, January 8, 1959; “Abandonment of Public Schools Seen as Threat to Virginia’s Economic Growth,” Charlottesville Daily Progress, January 7, 1959.
26.Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert A. Solo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 123–44. Friedman’s manifesto had proved helpful to some massive resisters in the trenches in the fall run-up to the January 1956 tuition grant referendum, particularly in the expanding suburbs of Northern Virginia, where they had to contend with the moderate “save the public schools” movement. One organization in Fairfax County repeated his arguments almost to the letter and held a public forum featuring a local Chicago-trained economist to urge that the state subsidize private schools to enable true school “choice.” Harley M. Williams, “Virginia School Proposal,” Washington Post and Times Herald, October 16, 1955, E4; Mollie Ray Carroll to JJK, March 21, 1956, Series 6626-B, JJKP. I thank James H. Hershman Jr. for this material.
27.Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” 123–44. While telling the legislators that their brief was pure science,
Nutter told Friedman it was “a mixture of persuasion and analysis”; Nutter to Friedman, February 18, 1959, and attached reply, box 31, Friedman Papers.
28.Roger A. Freeman, Federal Aid to Education—Boon or Bane? (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Association, 1955). For their joint work, see membership roster, National Tax Association’s Committee on Financing of Public Education, December 11, 1958, box 346, Roger Freeman Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. “Several corporation” members, along with Freeman, complained that the tax group was “swinging left” and abetting “brainwashing” by “the ‘liberal’ side” on the need for higher taxes. Roger A. Freeman to Alvin Burger, November 21, 1958, and December 30, 1958, box 346, Roger Freeman Papers.
29.Freeman to Burger, November 21, 1958, and December 30, 1958, box 346, Roger Freeman Papers; Freeman, Federal Aid to Education.
30.Roger A. Freeman, “Unmet Needs in Education,” typescript report for the Volker Fund, July 15, 1959, 2, 16, 25, 28, in box 311, Roger Freeman Papers. On the efficacy of contemporary women’s groups on such matters, see, for example, Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press).
31.Hill quoted in Hershman, “Massive Resistance Meets Its Match,” 129.
32.James M. Buchanan to Frank Hyneman Knight, October 24, 1957, box 3, Frank Hyneman Knight Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. His was the kind of rebuttal Jack Kilpatrick regularly made to northern critics of southern segregation. On Kilpatrick’s rhetorical strategy, shared by other segregationist editors, see Roberts and Klibanoff, The Race Beat, 216–220.
33.For lucid introductions to the relevant legal history, see David L. Lightner, Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Laura F. Edwards, A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction: A Nation of Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and “AHR Forum: The Debate over the Constitutional Revolution of 1937,” American Historical Review 110, no. 4 (2005): 1046–51.
34.For astute analysis of the politics of Republican moderates in the growing suburbs of the South, see Lassiter, The Silent Majority.
35.J. Douglas Smith, On Democracy’s Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States (New York: Hill & Wang, 2014), 19.
36.“Constitutional Roadblocks” (editorial), Richmond News Leader, April 9, 1959, 12; G. Warren Nutter and James M. Buchanan, “Different School Systems Are Reviewed,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 12, 1959, D3; G. Warren Nutter and James M. Buchanan, “Many Fallacies Surround School Problem,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 13, 1959, 7. See also, for explanation of the Hobson’s choice facing moderates, Robert D. Baker, “The Perrow Report: Virginia Faces 2nd Dilemma,” Washington Post, April 5, 1959, B3. My thanks to James H. Hershman Jr. for hunting down this sequel and sending these sources.
37.Benjamin Muse, “Some Sounds and Signs of the Times,” Washington Post, April 12, 1959; “Segregation Bill Loses in Virginia,” New York Times, April 21, 1959, 25.
38.Robert D. Baker, “Serious Blow to Byrd Machine,” Washington Post, April 25, 1959, A1.
39.Jack Kilpatrick egged on the closures in a speech in Prince Edward County, praising its imminent stand for the “old liberties” against the “tyrannous aggrandizement of the central state,” while other Americans dozed “under the narcotic illusions of a welfare state.” The “battle” against “this monster,” he told his white audience, “cannot be won without occasional acts of unyielding resistance,” such as “courageous action” to close the schools rather than submit to “federal dictation”; “Farmville High School Commencement Speech,” June 4, 1959, box 2, series C, JJKP.
40.Paul Duke, “Dixie Eyes a Virginia County, First to Shut All Its Public Schools,” Wall Street Journal, December 1, 1959. The chilling story has received extensive coverage. Among the most illuminating recent scholarly works are Bonastia, Southern Stalemate and Titus, Brown’s Battleground. For a more memoir-like treatment, see Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County.
41.Broadus Mitchell to James Buchanan, November 15, 1960, BHA; Buchanan to Mitchell, November 28, 1960, ibid.; Buchanan to Edgar F. Shannon Jr., November 21, 1960, ibid.; Joan Cook, “Broadus Mitchell, 95, Professor, Historian and Hamilton Authority,” New York Times, April 30, 1988.
CHAPTER 5: TO PROTECT CAPITALISM FROM GOVERNMENT
1.Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 256.
2.Harry F. Byrd to T. Coleman Andrews, August 7, 1957, box 2, TCAP; on Montgomery, see the classic by Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988).
3.Keyssar, Right to Vote, 236–37, 262, 269, 271. Virginia charged $1.50 per year, on a cumulative basis (about $12 in 2016 dollars), and required that the taxes be paid in full six months prior to Election Day, thus before campaigns began. On the poll tax as “the cornerstone” of its “electoral controls,” see Frank B. Atkinson, The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and the Rise of Virginia’s Republican Party Since 1945 (Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Press, 1992), 15, also chapter 12, “Suddenly, an Expanded Electorate,” on the Byrd machine’s demise. Buchanan had earlier argued that “a uniform per-head poll tax would be appropriate as a major revenue source,” with the additional value that it would “encourage continued out-migration of unskilled agricultural labor”; undated manuscript [c. early 1960s], “Optimum Fiscal Policy for Southern States,” in BHA.
4.See especially J. Douglas Smith, On Democracy’s Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2014). Referring to concerns about property rights and taxation, James Buchanan worried about “dangers . . . [becoming] more urgent since the reapportionment decision”; James M. Buchanan to Colgate Darden Jr., June 24, 1965, BHA.
5.While not writing about the same figures as I am, the political theorist Corey Robin has captured this relational dynamic with keen insight in his book The Reactionary Mind: From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–28.
6.Gordon Tullock, “How I Didn’t Become a Libertarian,” August 7, 2003, LewRockwell.com; Gordon Tullock to James Buchanan, February 12, 1962, BHA.
7.J. E. Moes to James Buchanan, January 21, 1962, BHA; Richard E. Wagner, “Public Choice as Academic Enterprise,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63 (January 2004): 64, 66. “Your absence from Charlottesville makes it hard to get good criticism of anything,” Gordon Tullock once complained; Tullock to Buchanan, May 21, 1965, BHA.
8.Tullock to Richard C. Cornuelle, July 28, 1956, box 88, Tullock Papers. For Volker’s interest in legal theory, training, and practice, see Ivan Bierly to Tullock, March 21, 1958, box 86, Tullock Papers.
9.James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962; reprinted as vol. 3 of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1990]), 286. My understanding in this chapter and beyond is indebted to the pathbreaking work of S. M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 133–55. No other scholar outside the public choice fold has studied Buchanan’s thought as deeply, or identified as acutely the damage it augers for collective action and democracy.
10.Buchanan and Tullock, Calculus of Consent, 21, 286.
11.Ibid., 123, 158–61, 234.
12.Ibid., 166–68, 171. As S. M. Amadae notes, the analysis of the work “obliterates the concept of the public” in political theory, a sha
rp distinction from classical liberalism. See Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy, 143.
13.George J. Stigler, “Proof of the Pudding?” National Review, November 10, 1972, 1258; see also Steven G. Medema, “‘Related Disciplines’: The Professionalization of Public Choice Analysis,” History of Political Economy Annual Supplement 32 (2000): 313.
14.Buchanan and Tullock, Calculus of Consent, 96, 284.
15.Ibid., 286, 289, 303. On the legal history, Barry Friedman, The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 141–94.
16.On the social and political history, Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987).
17.Buchanan, Better than Plowing, 9. James M. Buchanan, Better than Plowing and Other Personal Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
18.James Madison to Edward Everett, August 1830, Constitution Society, www.constitution.org/rf/jm_18300801.htm. For the economist’s claim that his program was “indigenous” to Virginia whereas his “antagonists” were “aliens,” see Buchanan, Better than Plowing, 106.
19.Dwight R. Lee, “The Calculus of Consent and the Constitution of Capitalism,” Cato Journal 7 (Fall 1987): 332.
20.Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013), 249.
21.Eugene B. Sydnor Jr. obituary, Virginia House of Delegates, January 14, 2004, http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?041+ful+HJ208; “Sydnor Recalls Birth of Constitution Agency,” Richmond News Leader, February 5, 1966. My thanks to James Sweeney for this research and to James H. Hershman Jr. for bringing it to my attention. See also George Lewis, “Virginia’s Northern Strategy: Southern Segregationists and the Route to National Conservatism,” Journal of Southern History 72 (February 2006).
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