J. Evetts Haley and Texas Ultraconservatism

“THE VOICE OF MANY HATREDS:” J. EVETTS HALEY AND TEXAS ULTRACONSERVATISM JOHN S. HUNTINGTON As an ultraconservative activist and occasional political candidate in Texas, J. Evetts Haley registered few electoral victories. However, his far- right crusades revealed nationwide right-wing discontent within the Democratic Party and delineated the anti-statist contours of ultraconservatism from the 1930s through the 1960s. Haley’s combination of white supremacy, conspiracy theories, anti-statist populism, and rugged individualism reflected the extremities of agrarianism, Cold War anti- communism, and Old Right conservatism. Put simply, Haley constituted an explanatory link bridging anti–New Deal ultraconservatism and the mid-century conservative movement; in addition, he represented a point of convergence between Sunbelt reactionaries and mainstream conservatism. In 1936 Haley chaired the Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas, a state chapter of a national organization that sought to defeat Roosevelt by supporting Republican Alf Landon, despite the predominance of the Texas Democratic Party. The Jeffersonian’s failure forecast the electoral inefficacy—but grassroots appeal—of mid-century far-right conservatism. During the 1950s Haley fomented fringe movements through his gubernatorial candidacy and the ultraconservative group Texans For America (TFA), but his hardline platforms restricted the success of both. Haley’s time with TFA elicited his most fruitful activism, but his attacks against Lyndon Johnson in 1964 cemented Haley as a national far-right icon. During the 1956 Texas gubernatorial elec- tion, Democratic candidate J. Evetts Haley connected the populist anti-statism of West Texas with the segregationism of East Texas. Indeed, he advocated a fierce JOHN S. HUNTINGTON earned his Ph.D. from the University of Houston in 2016 and now works as a dual credit instructor for Langham Creek High School in Houston, Texas. He would like to thank Nancy Beck Young, Sean P. Cunningham, Leandra R. Zarnow, the Western Historical Quarterly editorial staff, and the anonymous reviewers. The Western Historical Quarterly 0 (2017): 1–25. doi: 10.1093/whq/whx105 VC The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Western History Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] 2 2017 Western Historical Quarterly traditionalism, which combined the folksy charm of cowboy caricatures with the rhetoric of anti-communism and white supremacy. Nevertheless, two CIO union organizers approached to ask his opinion on organized labor. Haley, a cattle rancher and prom- inent figure of the Texas far-right, responded, “I believe that you have the same right to organize that anybody else has, big business or little. I believe you have a right to quit work whenever you want to.” This answer contained the essence of right-to-work business conservatism, but Haley also worried about union organizers spoiling his cowpunch- ers. “If on my ranch a bunch of my hands quit and you fellows come up there trying to interfere with the people I then hire to flank a bunch of yearlings on my land, I’ll meet you at the fence with a .32,” Haley threatened, “and, if necessary, I’ll draw a bead on you and rim a shell and leave you lying on the fence line.” Demonstrating his fiery indepen- dence, Haley growled, “And if that isn’t plain enough, I’ll make it plainer.”1 As an ultraconservative activist and occasional political candidate, Haley registered few electoral victories, but his far-right crusades revealed nationwide right-wing discontent within the Democratic Party and delineated the anti-statist contours of ultraconservatism from the 1930s through the 1960s. Haley constituted an explanatory link bridging anti-New Deal ultraconservatism and the mid-century conservative movement, and his grassroots activism provided a point of convergence for mainstream conservatives and Sunbelt reactionaries. For example, Haley aligned with the ideals of Senator John Tower (R-TX), a modern conservative who lauded the ideals of individ- ual liberty, anti-communism, and limited government; however, Haley also identified with the anti-statist libertarianism of the Sunbelt West and the ardent segregationism of the Sunbelt South, embodied by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and Senator Strom Thurmond’s (R-SC), respectively.2 Haley’s combination of white supremacy, conspiracism, anti-statist populism, and rugged individualism reflected the extremities of southern agrarianism, western anti-statism, and Cold War anti-communism.3 These views led the journalist Jim Mathis to define Haley as the “voice of many hatreds,” and political analysts Rowland Evans and Robert Novak described him as an “extreme right-winger even by Texas standards.”4 1 Lynn Landrum, “Thinking Out Loud,” Dallas Morning News, 8 June 1956. 2 Sean P. Cunningham, Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right (Lexington, KY, 2010), 34 and 60; Robert Alan Goldberg, Barry Goldwater (New Haven, 1995), 139 and 150; and Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond’s America: A History (New York, 2012), 172. 3 Sean P. Cunningham, “The Political Culture of West Texas,” in West Texas: A History of the Giant Side of the State, ed. Paul H. Carlson and Bruce A. Glasrud (Norman, 2014), 171–2; Cunningham, Cowboy Conservatism, 10; George Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, 2016), 24 and 34; Paul V. Murphy, The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (Chapel Hill, 2001), 14; and George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York, 1976), 76. 4 Jim Mathis, “James Evetts Haley: The Voice of Many Hatreds,” Houston Post, 12 October 1964, Folder-Political Correspondence 1964, Wallet-Correspondence Clippings and Campaign Material 1964, Box 1, Sub-Series E, Series 3, J. Evetts Haley Collection, Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, Midland, TX (hereafter JEH Collection); Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, John S. Huntington 3 In 1936 Haley chaired the Jeffersonian Democrats of Texas, a state chapter of a national organization that sought to defeat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt by supporting the Republican Alf Landon, despite the predominance of the Texas Democratic Party. The Jeffersonians’ failure harbingered the electoral inefficacy, but grassroots appeal, of mid-century far-right conservatism. During the 1950s Haley fomented fringe movements through his gubernatorial candidacy and through Texans For America (TFA), though Haley’s hardline platforms restricted the success of both.5 Haley’s time with TFA elicited his most fruitful activism, but his 1964 attacks against President Lyndon B. Johnson’s liberalism, particularly LBJ’s civil rights advocacy, cemented Haley as a national far-right icon.6 Haley’s organizational leadership and ideological arguments helped shape the emergent mid-century conservative movement by crystallizing the grassroots networks between Sunbelt right-wingers and mainstream conservatives.7 The foundations of modern conservatism, and Haley’s own ideologies, can be traced back to the 1920s and 1930s with the budding business conservative movement, right-wing anti-statism, and the potency of anti-communism.8 Old Guard conservative politicians, like Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), disparaged Roosevelt’s New Deal, de- fining liberty as economic opportunity rather than security.9 Haley agreed with Taft’s wariness of federal growth and the libertarian, free market ideals of economists like Friedrich Hayek, but Haley exceeded mainstream political boundaries by alleging that liberal sabotage was “bankrupting the nation to forward the plans of Communists and “GOP Basing Coming Campaign On Books Written in Texas?,” The Daily Oklahoman, 30 July 1964, Folder-Political Printed Material 1964, Wallet-Correspondence and Clippings LBJ 1964 and undated, Box 1, Sub-Series E, Series 3, JEH Collection. 5 Sean P. Cunningham referred to Haley as a “seminal figure of the Texas postwar far right,” but he described the far-right’s electoral efforts as a “miserable failure” in “The Paranoid Style and Its Limits: The Power, Influence, and Failure of the Postwar Texas Far Right,” in The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism, ed. David O’Donald Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison (College Station, 2014), 111 and 113–5. Ultraconservatives like Haley indeed struggled to win elections, but I argue that their influence goes beyond electoral valuations because of their grassroots organizing strategies. 6 Cunningham, “The Paranoid Style and Its Limits,” 111. 7 Johnathan Schoenwald, A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism (New York, 2001), 5–6 and 10 and Keith Volanto, “The Far Right in Texas Politics During the Roosevelt Era,” in The Texas Right, ed. Cullen and Wilkison, 77. 8 For recent books emphasizing the conflicts between New Deal liberalism, anti-communism, and business conservatism, see Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2009) and Kathryn Olmsted, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (New York, 2015). 9 Clarence E. Wunderlin, Robert A. Taft: Ideas, Tradition, and Party in U.S. Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD, 2005), 25–6. Chad Pearson illustrated that Taft’s exhortation of “economic opportunity” continued the earlier open shop movement in Reform or Repression: Organizing America’s Anti-Union Movement (Philadelphia, 2015). 4 2017

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