In Gadsden's Depression-Era Political Environment

University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2014 The Discursive Commons: The Establishment, "Outside Agitators," And "Communist Subversives" In Gadsden's Depression-Era Political Environment John Disque Agricola University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Agricola, John Disque, "The Discursive Commons: The Establishment, "Outside Agitators," And "Communist Subversives" In Gadsden's Depression-Era Political Environment" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 883. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/883 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE DISCURSIVE COMMONS: THE ESTABLSIHMENT, “OUTSIDE AGITATORS,” AND “COMMUNIST SUBVERSIVES” IN GADSDEN’S DEPRESSION-ERA POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Southern Studies The University of Mississippi by JOHN AGRICOLA May 2014 Copyright John Agricola 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This thesis addresses a turbulent and often violent political environment in Gadsden, Alabama during the Great Depression. Using a theoretical construct called the discursive commons my analysis suggests how very particular ideas such as the trope of the outside agitator, and the idea of the communist radical, were used by the establishment to incite violence against United Rubber Workers union organizers who came to Gadsden to enlist members in the 1930s and early 1940s. It is my contention that these discursive formations had affective power over the people who committed acts of violence against their own class interests. This thesis seeks to demonstrate through discourse analysis how entrenched combinations of political authority conspired to proscribe the freedom and opportunity of primarily Sand Mountain hill people. The Gadsden City Commission government, the local police, publishers of the Gadsden Times, business leaders, and Goodyear Company management all played a part in the attempts to dominate the underclass of former farmers taking up employment on the tire assembly lines. Concerned with maintaining their position in society, and concerned with building a “bigger” and “better” Gadsden, this hegemonic order used mythic ideas such as the sacrosanct idea of rugged individualism against the people. The establishment used the workers’ fears about an invisible communist menace against the people in order to foment violent attacks on the outsider union organizers. American violence is unique from European mob violence in the sense that it is usually mobilized as a way to protect the status quo, rather than attacking the upper class in a revolutionary or reformist way. This is what happened in Gadsden during the five-year period between 1936 and 1941. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to my thesis chair Dr. Charles Reagan Wilson for how he pointed the way for writing regionalist inspired scholarship. Dr. Andy Harper was an early mentor to this project and his steadfast support and encouragement helped my vision for this project come to fruition. Thanks to Dr. Kathryn McKee for asking difficult questions. Special thanks to Dr. Gregg Cawley who shared a theory he is developing that became the backbone of my argument. Additionally, I would like to thank the librarians and archivists at the Gadsden Public Library, the Birmingham Public Library, the Anniston Public Library, The University of Alabama Special Collections Archive, and The University of Mississippi library. Sincerest thanks to my mother and father. They gave tireless help in very different but complementary ways. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………………………………………….. iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………………………....... 1 CHAPTER 2: CRITICAL REGIONALISM AND NORTHEAST ALABAMA ……………………….18 CHAPTER 3: BIG MULES AND OPEN SHOP …………………………………………………………….. 43 CHAPTER 4: THE CHAIN OF IDEAS ……………………………………………………………………...... 67 CHAPTER 5: MANAGING THE SCOPE OF CONFLICT …………………………………………..…… 92 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 108 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 111 VITA ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 115 iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This thesis engages the early history of unionization in Gadsden, especially the turbulent series of events that are punctuated by United Rubber Worker’s President Sherman Dalrymple’s beating at the Gadsden Courthouse on June 5th, 1936; the mob assault on URW headQuarters at the Tolson building a month later; the bombing of an Attalla, Alabama theater in the summer of 1937; the arrest of two men found with dynamite who admitted to trying to kill flying sQuadron leader Jimmy Karam; finally, this tumultuous period of violence ended with the beating of URW local leader John House in his office in 1941. I am intrigued by this five year “reign of terror” beCause of how the workers in the Goodyear faCtory seemed to be largely working against their own interests with respect to the promises of New Deal liberalism and more speCifiCally the rights assured them by the 1935 Wagner Act. Earlier historians Contend that this was “establishment violenCe” where collusion existed between the police, City Commission government, and the Goodyear management.1 My argument is that Combinations of entrenChed politiCal authority Conspired to prosCribe the freedom of highly individualistiC hill people. At times the ConspiraCy of newspapermen, City government officials, police and business leaders will seem illusory, but these representatives of Gadsden politiCal authority were the recalcitrant agents who strove to prevent social change in a very conservative political landsCape. 1 Charles Martin, “Southern Labor Relations in Transition: Gadsden, Alabama, 1930- 1 In an earlier writing projeCt I explored the Tennessee Valley murals of the Great Depression beCause I felt that I would be able to examine the role soCial elites played in the iterative proCess of mural painting. Their power and their approval of the murals themselves were visibly manifested on the walls of post offiCes and Courthouses. In that study I found that murals beCame a kind of propaganda for New Deal liberalism and the Progress of TVA beCause New South leaders Consulted by artists saw the diversifiCation of industry as a positive direction for Tennessee Valley residents to take. The current thesis will show how New Deal liberalism was not always so universally aCCepted as benefiCial soCial Change. The projeCt of expanding Centralized governmental authority was aCCepted in some Cases and seen to threaten loCal power in other Cases. In fact, the expressions of violence which occurred in the city of Gadsden during the Depression years were not altogether uniQue from earlier expressions of AmeriCan violence, nor were they all that different from earlier North Alabama violenCe, whiCh included such incidents of vigilante violence as white capping or Klan-based night riding. What follows will be an examination of power and soCial elites in neighboring Etowah County, which was only a mountain apart from the Tennessee Valley. Gadsden business leaders and distant Corporate leaders’ influenCe over laborers is examined to address what has been called a “reign of terror,” a five-year period of establishment violenCe where highly individualistic hill people cooperated with business leaders against their own interests. The New Deal offered relief to many workers with the passing of the 1935 Wagner Act. This projeCt takes up the geophysiCal region of Sand Mountain and the Coosa-Valley, as this was the home of the laborers I propose to study. Though the last projeCt foCused more 2 on the visual Culture of Northeast Alabama, this projeCt is a labor history of the same geographic space. Methodologically I endeavor to analyze a series of events through the layering of literary texts as well as ConstruCting a theory for studying the violent mob attaCks on union organizers and other isolated inCidents of violenCe oCCurring from 1936- 1941. The “disCursive Commons” is the key to my study for it is my goal to look at how ConfliCt is marshaled by business leaders in the disCourses of the pro-business publiCation, The Gadsden Times. I have taken the notion of the disCursive Commons from a politiCal sCienCe professor named Dr. Gregg Cawley who is developing the theory presently. Cawley uses Deborah Stone to establish just what sCholars mean when they use the term disCourse. He invokes Stone in the following way: Ideas are the stuff of politiCs. People fight about ideas, fight for them, and fight against them… Moreover, people fight with ideas as well as about them” (Stone’s emphasis). SinCe ideas laCk a Corporeal presence, fighting for, against, and with them neCessarily takes the form of disCourse—talking, writing, slogans, etc.2 When I use the phrase disCursive Commons I refer primarily to the ideas expounded in the conservative publication known as The Gadsden Times. To call it conservative is to acknowledge its pro- business bias. It would be a mistake to perCeive the stories in the Gadsden Times as false just beCause they are slanted in the favor of the establishment or the Community’s

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