Nathan Carter Newbold, White Liberals, Black Education, and the Making of the Jim Crow South Barry Malone University of South Carolina

University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 1-1-2013 Divine Discontent: Nathan Carter Newbold, White Liberals, Black Education, and the Making of the Jim Crow South Barry Malone University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Malone, B.(2013). Divine Discontent: Nathan Carter Newbold, White Liberals, Black Education, and the Making of the Jim Crow South. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/1465 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DIVINE DISCONTENT: NATHAN CARTER NEWBOLD, WHITE LIBERALS, BLACK EDUCATION, AND THE MAKING OF THE JIM CROW SOUTH by Barry F. Malone Bachelor of Arts University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1993 Master of Arts North Carolina Central University, 2002 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2013 Accepted by: Valinda Littlefield, Advisor Bobby Donaldson, Committee Member Lawrence Glickman, Committee Member Todd Shaw, Committee Member Lacy Ford, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Barry F. Malone, 2013 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the loving memory of my parents – Vernon and Susan Malone. The journey was long, but I heeded your advice “to run the race and keep the faith.” I kept my promise. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout the writing of this dissertation many people helped me along the way. First and foremost my advisor, Valinda Littlefield, warrants a special “Thank You.” She believed in this project from the beginning. I am eternally grateful and lucky to have her as a friend and mentor. Bobby Donaldson and Lawrence Glickman offered their assistance and advice from the first day I set foot on USC’s campus. They have my eternal gratitude. Minetta Newbold warrants a special note of thanks for her hospitality and willingness to share her family’s history. She is a true southern lady. I also want to acknowledge the wonderful librarians and archivists at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the State Archives. They were extremely resourceful and dedicated to their craft. They have my sincere respect. The Archie K. Davis Grant awarded by the North Caroliniana Society supported my research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One person in particular deserves special recognition. Barry Poole is the definition of a true friend. He read every draft of this dissertation and asked for nothing in return. I will never be able to repay this debt. Of course, any errors and mistakes in the dissertation belong to me alone. Finally, one person has stayed beside me along the path to completion. She never faltered in her faith that I’d finish this dissertation – my dear wife Elizabeth. She sacrificed so that I could spend days on end in the archives and writing. I love you deeply. iv ABSTRACT In the first half of the twentieth century, a small but vocal group of white southerners believed it possible to protect the flanks of the South’s caste system by dampening black impatience with Jim Crow. Nathan Carter Newbold, a white racial moderate and State Agent for Negro Education, became a leading voice for the “equalization without social equality” movement. Newbold believed blacks accepted the separation of the races as natural and beneficial to both, but they also expected whites to deliver equality of opportunity. The failure to meet this responsibility led blacks to engage in political and judicial activism. This “Divine Discontent,” as Newbold called it, would one day lead to an upending of the New South’s orderly race relations. A study of Nathan Carter Newbold’s career opens the door to the motives and consequences of southern reformers’ racially moderate agenda. As both a state agent and as the Director of the Division for Negro Education in North Carolina from 1913 – 1950, Newbold’s position placed him at the helm of a bureaucracy responsible for creating an infrastructure to buttress segregated education. Newbold influenced most facets of African American education including school construction, teacher certification, higher education, and curriculum development. Philanthropic organizations, white officials, and black community leaders turned to Newbold for advice and help with various projects making him an educational powerbroker and interracial diplomat. v This study charts the evolution of a white Southern liberal. At the beginning of his career Newbold envisioned blacks as a laboring class trained solely in the manual and vocational arts. By the end of his career, he was an “accidental liberal” promoting programs that helped develop the black middle class. With a career that stretched from the reign of Booker T. Washington to the eve of the Civil Rights Movement, Newbold provides unique insight into some of the debates surrounding Southern white liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century. His control over the public and private monies appropriated for African American education made him a conduit by which resources flowed into the black community. This dissertation examines the often competing interests of whites and blacks and the nexus of white liberalism, education, and race relations in the New South. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iv ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: THE ARCHITECT OF SEPARATE BUT EQUAL IN NORTH CAROLINA .......................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: THE MAKING OF A SOUTHERN PROGRESSIVE .................................................13 CHAPTER 3: THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS AND THE PAPER TIGER ......................................54 CHAPTER 4: REFLEXED GLORY – NEWBOLD AND THE ROSENWALD FUND........................105 CHAPTER 5: DIVINE DISCONTENT AND THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN – NEWBOLD’S RACIAL IDEOLOGY ........................................................................................................153 CHAPTER 6: “RIGHT WILL WIN” – SEPARATE BUT EQUAL’S LAST STAND ..........................204 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION: TOMORROW IS A BLANK CHECK – THE END OF NEWBOLDIAN LIBERALISM ......................................................................................254 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................263 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE ARCHITECT OF SEPARATE BUT EQUAL IN NORTH CAROLINA Securing access to an education was one of the foremost concerns of African Americans in the years following the Civil War. Over the next one hundred years whites, especially in the South, reacted with ambivalence and outright resistance toward the educational aspirations of African Americans. At the same time, however, an emerging class of northern philanthropists and southern reformers sought to build a New South.1 The white reformers’ plans for erecting this New South required stabilizing race relations without whites having to yield their economic, political, or social control over the lives of African Americans. After disfranchisement effectively stripped blacks of political power, white racial moderates increasingly viewed universal education as a useful means to achieve their political and social goals. The champions of the New South reasoned that whites needed a formal education to compete economically in the industrializing and 1 Edward Ayers defined the southern reformer as follows: “What they had in common was a willingness to use the power of the state government in more active ways than it had been used before. They shared that willingness partly because the new political environment of disfranchisement and primaries led influential white people to think that the government would now be more responsive to their needs and demands. The many whites who were neither reactionary diehards nor Populist radicals . now perceived a chance to address some of the problems that most concerned them.” Ayers added, “Despite their concern for the downtrodden, it is too simple to see the progressives as champions of the common folk. The progressives saw themselves as mediators, educators, facilitators. They wanted to encourage the forces of progress already active in the South. .” Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 413, 417; For another seminal work that addresses white liberalism see Morton Sosna, In Search of the Silent South: Southern Liberals and the Race Issue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Also Woodward defines progressive reform as a “for whites only” proposition in C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1951), 369 – 396. 1 urbanizing South. At the same time, a proper industrial education for blacks would further

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