Honest John Williams
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Honest John Williams • .,;,.J:1-· . ,· \ •' U.S. Senator from Delaware Carol E. Hoffecker Senator John J. Williams. Photograph by Robert Gifford. Courtesy of the University of Delaware Library. HONEST JOHN WILLIAMS U.S. Senator from Delaware Carol E. Hoffecker ............... DElAWARE Newark: University of Delaware Press London: Associated University Presses © 2000 by Associated University Presses, Inc. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fe e of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid di rectly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massa chusetts 01923. [0-87413-713-6/00 $10.00 + 8¢ pp, pc.] Other than as indicated in the foregoing, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except as permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law, and ex- cept for brief quotes appearing in reviews in the public press). Associated University Presses 440 Forsgate Drive Cranbury, NJ 085 12 Associated University Presses 16 Barter Street London WC 1A 2AH, England Associated University Presses P.O. Box 338, Port Credit Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5G 4L8 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48- 1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hoffecker, Carol E. Honest John Williams : U.S. senator from Delaware I Carol E. Hoffecker. p. cm.-(Cultural studies of Delaware and the Eastern Shore) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87413-713-6 (alk. paper) 1. Williams, John J. (John James), 1904- 2. Legislators United States-Biography. 3. United States. Senate-Biography. 4. Delaware-Politics and government-1951- 5. Delaware-Politics and government-1865- 1950. I. Title. II. Series. E840.8.W55 H64 2000 328.73'092--dc21 [B] 99-047399 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Cultural Studies of Delaware and the Eastern Shore 1973 Carol Hoffecker, ed., Readings in Delaware History 1977 Harold Hancock, The Loyalties of Revolutionary Delaware 1983 C. A. We slager, The Na nticoke Indians--Past and Present 1984 Jay F. Custer, Delaware Prehistoric Archaeology: An Ecological Approach 1985 Claudia L. Bushman, Harold B. Hancock, and Elizabeth Moyne Homsey, eds., Proceedings of the Assembly of the Lower Coun ties on Delaware 1770-1776, of the Constitutional Convention of 1776, and of the House of Assembly of the Delaware State, 1776-1781. Jay F. Custer, ed., Late Wo odland Cultures of the Middle Atlantic Region 1988 Claudia L. Bushman, Harold B. Hancock, and Elizabeth Moyne Homsey, eds., Minutes of the House of Assembly of the Delaware State, 1781-1792 1989 Jay F. Custer, Prehistoric Cultures of the Delmarva Peninsula: An Archaeological Study John A. Sweeney, Grandeur on the Appoquinimink: Th e House of William Corbit at Odessa, Delaware 1993 John A. Monroe, History of Delaware (3d edition) 1995 Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds., New Sweden in America 1999 To ni Yo ung, Becoming American, Remaining Jewish: Th e Story of Wilmington, Delaware's First Jewish Community, 1879-1924 2000 Jane H. Scott, A Gentleman as Well as a Whig: Caesar Rodney and the American Revolution Carol E. Hoffecker, Honest John Williams U. S. Senator from Delaware 2001 William W. Boyer, Governing Delaware: Policy Problems in the First State Contents Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 15 1. By Sussex Shores 18 2. The Heart of Chicken Land 35 3. A Political Novice 55 4. The Freshman Senator 70 5. Uncovering the Ta x Mess 90 6. The Eisenhower Era 112 7. Desegregation 135 8. The DuPont Divestiture 156 9. The Honor of the Senate 171 10. He Just Played It Straight 210 Notes 240 Bibliography 260 Index 268 Acknowledgments In the years before he died, Senator John Williams gave consider able thought to the disposition of his papers. When he left Washing ton in January 1971, the voluminous collection of letters, speeches, reports, scrapbooks, photographs, and other memorabilia that he had created and collected during his twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate was transferred to his feed company office in Millsboro, Delaware. There, he and his long time secretarial assistant, Eleanor Lenhart, culled the material to destroy unsolicited letters that con tained unproven accusations against individuals. This attentiveness to protecting the reputations of innocent people was characteristic of the man who had earned the title as "the conscience of the Sen ate." Equally characteristic was his decision that the papers should ultimately find a home where they could be available to "the citi zens of Delaware." Shortly after the senator's death, his widow, Elsie Williams, and his daughter, Blanche Williams Baker, fulfilled the senator's wish by donating his papers to the University of Dela ware. When the collection arrived at the University of Delaware Li brary in July 1988, it was processed by a young assistant librarian, L. Rebecca Johnson (now L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin). Over the next few years she organized this mass of material, discarded dupli cates, and prepared a comprehensive guide to a collection that now occupies nearly 150 linear feet of shelf space in the library's Spe cial Collections. In the process of this endeavor, Rebecca Melvin became a most knowledgeable and enthusiastic promoter of the Pa pers of John J. Williams. Her organization of the senator's materi als, and Guide to their use, provide a clear map through a massive and many-sided collection. I first encountered the Williams collection in 1991 while doing research for a book about the Federal District Court for Delaware. Impressed by the senator's refusal to bow to pressure from state Republican Party leaders to nominate an upstate corporate lawyer to the U.S. District Court for Delaware, I decided to explore the Williams papers more thoroughly. In 1993, when I described my intention to Rebecca Melvin, she suggested that I begin my enquiry with the senator's scrapbooks of news clippings and magazine arti cles. Wisely, as it turned out, I did not ask how many of these there were. Had I known that there were forty-five large volumes, my en thusiasm for undertaking this project might have evaporated before the research was begun. As I persevered, first through the chrono logically organized scrapbooks, then later through office files, cor respondence, committee files, speeches, and other materials, the good sense of Rebecca Melvin's initial suggestion became ever more clear. From the outset, one of my goals in writing a biography of John J. Williams has been to better understand the history of Sussex County, Delaware and, most particularly, the spectacular emer gence of that county's poultry industry since its beginnings in the 1920s. The University of Delaware's College of Agriculture's li brary provided useful materials on that subject, but I also learned a great deal about Sussex, its poultry industry, the town of Millsboro, and John Williams's relations to his home surroundings through in terviews with a number of Sussex residents who included my uni versity colleague, William H. Williams; John G. Townsend, Jr.'s biographer, Richard B. Carter; and the present leader of Town send's poultry firm, Coleman Townsend. Millsboro residents who provided valuable insights into the town and its favorite son in cluded John Williams's close friend, the late Wilbur S. Shockley; former majority leader of the State Senate, Richard Cordrey; and a neighbor, E. Edward Carey, Jr. Other Sussex County natives who helped to fill in gaps about Sussex history were Grace and William Lowe of Lewes and Ronald F. and Rebecca Dodd of Georgetown. Political figures who interacted with Senator Williams and con sented to interviews included the Honorable Elbert Carvel, twice governor of Delaware, who ran against the senator in 1958 and 1964, and Senator William V. Roth, who replaced Williams in the Senate and currently chairs the Senate Finance Committee on which Williams served during most of his political career. Both of these men provided useful and interesting tales about John Wil liams. Another important source of first-hand recollections was the Honorable Michael Mansfield of Montana who was Senate Major ity Leader during Williams's final decade in Washington and, de spite belonging to a different political party, was among John Williams's closest personal friends in the Senate. Others who assisted my enquiries in important ways included Richard Bayard, currently chairman of Delaware's Democratic Party, who graciously shared with me the political scrapbook of his fa ther, Alexis I. du Pont Bayard, John Williams's opponent in the 1952 election. Federal DistrictCourt Judge Caleb Wright, the Sus sex lawyer whom Williams insisted upon appointing to the federal bench, told me about his relationship with the senator, and the Hon orable G. Burton Pearson, a former judge of Delaware's Supreme Court and a member by marriage of the du Pont fa mily, gave me insight into the controversial DuPont-OM divestiture. Robert F. Kelly, the late J. Allen Frear's legislative aide, was also a valuable source on the complexities of the DuPont divestiture controversy, while Littleton Mitchell , former leader of Delaware 's NAACP, pro vided a very useful perspective on the senator's interaction with the state's civil right's leaders. Others who assisted this project by sup plying information on specific points included Marjorie J. Tilgh man, Yvonne To wnsend Smith, and Marilyn Cooper. The most important subjects of interviews about John Williams were his daughter, Blanche Williams Baker, her husband Raymond Baker, and his former assistant, Eleanor Lenhart Hoefer.