Speak Now Against the Day

by John Egerton

  Florida State University, Tallahassee

  Georgia State University, Atlanta (Robert C. Dinwiddie)

  Howard University, Washington, D.C.

  Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

  Memphis State University (Michele Fagan)

  Mississippi State University, Starkville (Mattie Sink)

  Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky

  National Archives, Washington, D.C.—Still and Motion Picture Branches

  Population Reference Bureau, Washington, D.C.

  Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

  Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama

  University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

  University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (Andrea Cantrell)

  University of Chicago

  University of Florida, Gainesville

  University of Georgia, Athens

  University of Kentucky, Lexington (Bill Cooper)

  University of Louisville (James Anderson)

  University of Mississippi, Oxford

  University of South Carolina, Columbia (Thomas L. Johnson)

  University of Tennessee, Knoxville

  University of Texas, Austin

  University of Virginia, Charlottesville

  University of Wisconsin/Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison

  Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green

  The Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville (Wayne Moore and others) and the Metropolitan Nashville–Davidson County Public Library (Sally Raye and others) also gave me substantial assistance, as did the North Carolina Division of Archives and History (Steve Massengill), the Virginia State Library and Archives (John T. Kneebone, Edward D. C. Campbell), and similar libraries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The Virginia Historical Society’s Library (Charles F. Bryan and others) in Richmond was very supportive too, as were the South Carolina Historical Society (Stephen Hoffius), the Tennessee Historical Society (Susan Gordon), several other state societies, and the Atlanta Historical Society.

  The library of the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta was vitally important to me, not least for its extensive file of newspaper clippings from the 1940s (noted below under Periodicals). In a similar vein, I made use of monthly summaries of events and trends in race relations during the 1940s, compiled during that eventful decade by Fisk University’s Social Science Institute. Bound volumes of these documents can be found at Fisk and in a few other university libraries around the South.

  Certain specialized or private libraries were also particularly beneficial, including these:

  The library of the Highlander Research and Education Center, New Market, Tennessee

  Mercantile Library, St. Louis, Missouri (Charles Brown)

  Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin

  Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York

  Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri

  Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas

  Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas

  Historical Office of the U.S. Senate (Donald A. Ritchie)

  I also received assistance from the city libraries of Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Charlotte, Charleston (South Carolina and West Virginia), Columbia, Dallas, Greenville (Mississippi and South Carolina), Jackson, Knoxville, Little Rock, Louisville, Macon, Montgomery, Memphis, San Antonio, Shreveport, Tampa, and Washington, D.C., as well as the public libraries of many smaller cities, including Athens, Columbia, and Crossville, Tennessee; Denton, Texas; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Hendersonville and Gastonia, North Carolina; Hopkinsville, Kentucky; Marion, Virginia; Monroe, Georgia; Minden, Louisiana; St. Augustine, Florida; Sumter, South Carolina; Tupelo, Mississippi; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

  The libraries, clipping files, photography collections, research services, and reportorial-editorial staffs of a number of newspapers proved to be especially valuable to me. For their substantial efforts to provide assistance to me from these resources, I wish to thank Jim Auchmutey, Diane Hunter, Pam Prouty, and Celestine Sibley of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution; Dannye Romine and Lew Powell of the Charlotte Observer; Sharon Bidwell, Judith Egerton, and David Hawpe of the Louisville Courier-Journal; Kay Beasley, Eddie Jones, and Sally Moran of the Nashville Banner; Beverly Burnett, Dwight Lewis, Annette Morrison, and Frank Sutherland of the Tennessean in Nashville; Robert Hooker of the St. Petersburg Times; Leland Hawes of the Tampa Tribune; and Linton Weeks and Deborah Needleman of the Washington Post.

  People and Institutions

  Iowe special thanks to a multitude of people who have helped me in large ways and small to bring this book to life. On a personal level, I speak first in praise of Ann Bleidt Egerton, whose encouragement and support and overarching generosity of spirit have always far exceeded whatever mutual obligations and expectations she and I might have attached to a long and happy marriage.

  It has been my good fortune from the beginning of this project to have the collaboration and support of Ann Close, my editor at Alfred A. Knopf. In this and a previous book we produced together, her editorial contribution has been enormous. I am pleased and proud to acknowledge her unseen hand—the mark of a great editor—and to express my profound appreciation to her. Her assistant, Ann Kraybill, has also been extraordinarily helpful, and so, too, have production editor Dori Carlson, copy editor David Wade Smith, and art director Carol Carson.

  In much the same way that many librarians have gone beyond the call of professional duty to support me in this venture, so have a large number of journalists, writers, historians, and other scholars. I wish in particular to express my grateful thanks to two of them, Bruce Clayton of Allegheny College in Pennsylvania and Steven A. Channing of Durham, North Carolina, who read the entire first draft of the manuscript as I was writing it and offered many critically important and useful suggestions (as well as personal support, friendship, and encouragement). Only those who have experienced the agony and ecstasy of bookmaking can fully appreciate what generous gifts these were. This book is far better than it could ever have been without them.

  Several others read one or more chapters behind me, much to my benefit, and I wish to thank them publicly for their critiques. Among them were Frank Adams, David Britt, Leslie Dunbar (who read it all), Tony Dunbar, Paul Gaston, Raymond Gavins, Rose Gladney, Randy Greene, Jeff Norrell, Linda Rocawich, John Salmond, Adele Schweid, Richard Schweid, Sam B. Smith, Steve Suitts, and Roy Reed.

  The generosity of the community of professional historians was further exemplified by five of its most respected senior members: Thomas D. Clark, John Hope Franklin, Dewey W. Grantham, George B. Tindall, and C. Vann Woodward. They not only gave me encouragement and wise counsel—and, in some cases, manuscript criticism—but also provided substantive information from their own experiences as active participants in the train of events about which I was writing. It has been my special pleasure to observe these noted scholars in three dimensions: as pick-and-shovel miners of the mother lode of the past, as observers of the continuous and exquisite realism of history, and as players on the stage of that unfolding drama. At every level, they have enlarged my understanding of Southern history and enriched my appreciation for the social and cultural diversity of the region.

  I also wish to acknowledge, both here and in the dedication of this work, several men who in the years after World War II were central figures in an informal network of Southern journalists and others with modern and progressive ideas about the future of their native region. The late Ralph McGill was their elder statesman; his band of younger colleagues, later to refer to themselves jocularly as the Southern War Correspondents and Camp Followers Association, included four charter members still active in the 1990s. Each of them sat for interviews with me and offered many expressions of encouragement and support as I went about the tas
k of researching and writing this book. I express to Harry S. Ashmore, John A. Griffin, and John N. Popham my deepest appreciation and gratitude, and in the same spirit I honor the memory of Harold C. Fleming, who died in September 1992.

  Motivated by their interest in the South and in this work, these and countless other professionals responded graciously when I turned to them for help. In like manner, a host of individuals from other walks of life went out of their way to be generous to me, not out of any professional or philosophical motivation, but simply because I asked. Some were old friends of mine, and others I had never met; they all responded unhesitatingly, without any thought or expectation of return. I have tried diligently to keep an accurate and unabridged list of these Samaritans, but forgetfulness and human frailty have no doubt caused me to overlook a few. To one and all—friends and strangers, scriveners and scholars, named and nameless—I offer heartfelt thanks, credit, and praise. For whatever weaknesses this book proves to have, I accept full responsibility; for whatever strengths it reveals, I proudly and gratefully share the credit with all those named above and below:

  Frank and Margaret Adams, Raymond Andrews, Raymond Arsenault, Beverly A. Asbury, Jim Auchmutey, Numan V. Bartley, Jack Bass, Kay Beasley, Ezme Bhan, Perry H. Biddle, Jr., Terry Birdwhistell, Staige Blackford, Nancy Blackwelder and Steve Oden, Erik Bledsoe, Julia Washington Bond, William Boozer, Clayton and Jowain Braddock, Anne Braden, Ella Brennan, Donna Brim, David and Mary Hart Britt, George Brosi, Bonnie Campbell, Edward D. C. Campbell, Robert F. Campbell, Webb Campbell, Will and Brenda Campbell, Buddy Carter, Dan T. Carter, Frances Neel Cheney, Al and Mary Ann Clayton, Paul and Ruth Clements, Alice Cobb, Roger and Cela Collins, Thomas L. Connelly, John F. Cooke, Bill Cooper, Jerry Cotten, Paula Covington, Edwin M. Crawford, Nathaniel A. Crippens, Joe Cumming, Bill and Paula Cunningham, Constance Curry, Patsy Curtis, Pete Daniel, Neil O. Davis, Lane Denson and Caroline Stark, Marcus DePietro, Harriet Doar, John Dorsey, Anthony P. Dunbar, Leslie Dunbar, Matthew Dunne.

  Ambrose Easterly, Brooks Egerton, Graham Egerton and Anne Redfern, Judith Egerton, March Egerton, Charles Elder, Charles Elkins, Bill and Lucy Emerson, Eli N. Evans, Betsy Fels, William Ferris, Ginna Fleming, Genevieve Morrow Folger, John and Midge Folger, Jimmie Franklin, Sam H. Franklin, Catherine Fry, Gretchen Adams Fults, Betty Furstenberger, Frye Gaillard, Gail Galloway, Paul Gaston, Raymond Gavins, James E. Ghee, Jr., Rose Gladney, Randall E. Greene, Wayne Greenhaw, Anne Griffin, Larry Griffin, Alice E. Griffith, Alex Haley, Bob Hall, Jacqueline Dowd Hall, Tom T. Hall, Wade Hall, John Hamilton, Philip and Jane Ross Hammer, Leland Hawes, Joe and Betty Hendricks, Robert Herring, Roy B. Herron, Joe Hewgley and Rebecca Bain, Skip and Barnie Higgs, Fred Hobson, Helen Houston, Richard Howarth, William S. Howland, Jr., Nancy Rowe Hull, Robert Hull, F. Jack Hurley, Ben Hutcherson, Blyden Jackson, Art Jester, Clifford Johnson, Loyal Jones.

  Carolyn King, Jack Temple Kirby, Lorene Wharton Kirby, John T. Kneebone, Clifford M. Kuhn, Calvin and Elizabeth Kytle, Jim Leeson, Joseph Logsdon, Sophie Lowe, Strawberry Luck, Ronni Lundy, Sharon Macpherson, Patrick E. McCauley, Marge Manderson, Bob and Elizabeth Mann, Frances Frank Marcus, Judi Marshall, Skip Mason, Anne and Jimmy McDaniel, Isaac McDaniel, Clifton Meador, Susan Mabry Menees, Beth Mercer, Jim Wayne Miller, Suzanne Morse and Ned Moomaw, Bill Moyers, Roy Neel, Margaret Bleidt Newby, John T. Nixon, Rosalie V. Oakes, Grace Benedict Paine, Gary Parker, Joe Pennel, David Perry, James S. Pope, Jr., Frances Evans Popham, John N. Popham IV, Andrew Ramsey, Alice Randall, Tom Rankin, John Shelton Reed, Roy Reed, Carolyn and Frank Richardson, Anne Campbell Ritchie and Donald A. Ritchie, Linda Rocawich, Howard Romaine.

  Del Sawyer, Jan Scanlan, Jim Schnur, Adele Mills Schweid and Bernie Schweid, Richard Schweid, Anne Firor Scott, Pam Seay, Margaret Shannon, Don Shoemaker, Celestine Sibley, Mike Sims, Claude Sitton, Charlie Slack, John Slate, Al Smith, Lee Smith and Hal Crowther, Sam and Sue Smith, W. O. and Kitty Smith, Ellen Spears, Vince Staten, James Still, Katherine Stoney, George C. Stoney, Howard G. Stovall, Jeffrey Stovall and Adria Bernardi, Thomas G. Stovall, Virginia and Tom Stovall, Steve Suitts, Patricia Sullivan, Jack Tarver, Pauline Testerman, Gertie Thomas, Patricia Thompson, Sue Thrasher, Marnette Trotter, Evelyn Wakefield, Ann Waldron, Ron Watson, Pat and Glenda Watters, Willis D. Weatherford, Jr., Linton and Jan Weeks, T. Weesner, Willoyd Wharton, Jim Whitehead, Eliot Wigginton, Teri Wildt, Randall Williams, Martin Williams, Miller Williams, Roger Williams, Phyllis Willis, Carolyn Wilson, Charles Reagan Wilson, Ashley Wiltshire and Susan Ford Wiltshire, Harmon Wray, Lawrence Wright, Michael Zibart.

  A half-dozen or more institutions have helped to sustain this work with research grants and other favors large and small, in cash and in kind. For these manifestations of support I express my deep appreciation to Robert K. Hampton, Joel L. Fleishman, and other officers of the Kathleen Price and Joseph M. Bryan Family Foundation of Greensboro, North Carolina; Leslie Phillabaum, Catherine Fry, and others on the staff of the Louisiana State University Press in Baton Rouge; Rick Montague, Jack Murrah, and members of the staff of the Lyndhurst Foundation of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Jacqueline Dowd Hall, Pamela Dean, Jovita Flynn, Tracy E. K’Meyer, and Jackie Gorman of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; Steve Suitts and other members of the staff at the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta; Robert C. Vaughan and others on the staff of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy in Charlottesville; and Charles F. Bryan and other staff members of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

  Interviews

  During the course of my work in the South since the mid-1960s, I have interviewed a large number of people who were, or had been, involved in the public life of the region. Many of the earlier conversations were with individuals who are now deceased but who belong to the “cast of characters” in this book. Included on that “old list” of interviewees are the following people, almost all of whom I met and talked with between 1965 and 1990 at the locations noted in parentheses:

  William C. Baggs (Tampa)

  James F. Byrnes (Columbia, South Carolina)

  A. B. “Happy” Chandler (Lexington, Kentucky)

  James McBride Dabbs (Mayesville, South Carolina)

  Robert B. Eleazer (Nashville)

  Orval Faubus (Nashville)

  Dagnall F. Folger (Asheville, North Carolina)

  John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie (Nashville)

  Harry Golden (Tampa and Charlotte)

  L. Francis Griffin (Farmville, Virginia)

  Brooks Hays (Nashville)

  Myles Horton (New Market, Tennessee)

  Howard A. Kester (Black Mountain, North Carolina)

  Benjamin E. Mays (Tampa)

  Ralph McGill (Atlanta and Lexington, Kentucky)

  C. A. “Pete” McKnight (Nashville)

  H. L. Mitchell (Montgomery and Nashville)

  Claude D. Pepper (Miami and Washington, D.C.)

  Nelson Poynter (St. Petersburg)

  Reed Sarratt (Nashville)

  James W. Silver (Tampa)

  Robert Penn Warren (Fairfield, Connecticut)

  Of the interviews I conducted for this book in the 1990s—some in person, others by telephone—a substantial number were either not tape-recorded at all or were taped subject to certain restrictions. Included on that list were these individuals, at the places noted:

  Ellis Arnall (Atlanta)

  Alberta Johnson Bontemps (Nashville)

  Will D. Campbell (Nashville)

  Jimmy Carter (Plains, Georgia)

  Frances Neel Cheney (Nashville)

  Thomas D. Clark (Lexington, Kentucky)

  Paul K. Conkin (Nashville)

  Samuel DuBois Cook (New Orleans)

  Pearl Sanders Creswell (Nashville)

  Philip G. Davidson (Nashville)

  John Dorsey (Nashville)

  Gwen Duffey (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)

  Wilma Dykeman (Newport, Tennessee)

  Jean Fairfax (Phoenix)

  Johnny Glustrum (Atlanta) />
  Dewey W. Grantham (Nashville)

  Philip G. Hammer (Washington, D.C., and Tampa)

  Minerva Johnson Hawkins (Nashville)

  Oliver W. Hill (Richmond)

  Blyden Jackson (Chapel Hill)

  Edith Irby Jones (Houston)

  Fletcher Knebel (Honolulu)

  Eula McGill (Birmingham)

  Sylvan Meyer (Dahlonega, Georgia)

  Helen Hill Miller (Washington, D.C.)

  W. E. Nash (Athens, Tennessee)

  Rosalie Oakes (Arlington, Virginia)

  Frances Freeborn Pauley (Atlanta)

  Lester Persells (Atlanta)

  Celestine Sibley (Atlanta)

  Frank E. Smith (Jackson, Mississippi)

  Stanton E. Smith (Chattanooga)

  W. O. Smith (Nashville)

  Katherine Stoney (San Francisco)

  Robert A. Thompson (Atlanta)

  George B. Tindall (Chapel Hill)

  Molly Todd (Nashville)

  Bonita Valien (Washington, D.C.)

  Pat Watters (Atlanta)

  The following interviews, all conducted in 1990 and 1991, were tape-recorded. A grant from the Bryan Family Foundation of Greensboro to the Southern Oral History Program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provided funds for transcription of the tapes. Both the tapes and the typescripts are in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC’s Louis Round Wilson Library. After each person’s name (and best-known identification during the time covered by this book), the date and place of the interview are noted:

  Harry S. Ashmore (Arkansas editor); June 16, 1990, Atlanta

  Daisy Bates (Arkansas editor); September 7, 1990, Little Rock

  Gould Beech (Alabama editor); August 9, 1990, Magnolia Springs, Alabama

  Betty Werlein Carter (Mississippi editor); September 6, 1990, Greenville, Mississippi

  James P. Coleman (Mississippi governor); September 5, 1990, Ackerman, Mississippi

  LeRoy Collins (Florida governor); April 13, 1990, Tallahassee, Florida