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The Mask of the Southern Lady: Virginia Foster Durr, Southern Womanhood, and Reform

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The Mask of the Southern Lady: Virginia Foster Durr, Southern Womanhood, and Reform THE MASK OF THE SOUTHERN LADY: VIRGINIA FOSTER DURR, SOUTHERN WOMANHOOD AND REFORM By STEFANIE LEE DECKER Bachelor of Arts in English/History Texas Christian University Ft. Worth, Texas 1995 Master of Arts in History Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma 1998 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2007 THE MASK OF THE SOUTHERN LADY: VIRGINIA FOSTER DURR, SOUTHERN WOMANHOOD AND REFORM Dissertation Approved: Dr. Laura Belmonte Dissertation Adviser Dr. James Huston Dr. Linda Leavell Dr. Joseph Byrnes Dr. A. Gordon Emslie Dean of the Graduate College ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Laura Belmonte, for her patience, guidance, and suggestions. Her knowledge of women’s history and her original ideas were invaluable. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Joseph Byrnes, Dr. James Huston, and Dr. Linda Leavell, for their patient reading and helpful suggestions. The History Department at Oklahoma State University provided me with the knowledge and the resources to complete this project. I also wish to extend my gratitude to the staffs at the Alabama State archives, the Schlesinger Library, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and the archives at Tuskegee University. Nan Kemp at Amarillo College tirelessly interlibrary loaned material and found numerous bits of research for me. Most importantly, I want to express my extreme appreciation to my family. My mother not only proofread numerous drafts, but also assisted in research and research trips. Her help and her belief in me was priceless. My father and grandparents offered endless support when it looked as though the work would stall. Jon and Adam provided me with the motivation and the encouragement to finish, always believing that I could do it. Thank you to everyone! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION: PUTTING ON THE MASK.............................................…. …. 1 I. GROWING UP IN THE SOUTH………………………………….…………...15 II. MARRIAGE AND DEPRESSION…………………….………………………34 III. POLITICAL INITIATION…...………………………………………………...47 IV. SCHW AND THE FIGHT AGAINST THE POLL TAX………………………67 V. THE WAR YEARS……………………………………………………………..91 VI. RUNNING WITH HENRY WALLACE, 1948……….………………………..125 VII. A HEARING IN NEW ORLEANS…………………………………………….165 VIII. THE MONTGOMERY FIGHT…………………………………………………206 IX. CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE TURBULENT 60s………………………………..232 X. CONCLUSION: THE MASK AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL CHANGE ………260 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………..267 APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………………...281 iv INTRODUCTION PUTTING ON THE MASK In March of 1954, Virginia Foster Durr took the stand in a courtroom in New Orleans, Louisiana. The charge leveled at Durr by the Senate Internal Subcommittee was that of communist subversion. Through the Senate investigation, Mississippi Congressman James Eastland sought to further his political career by joining the anti- communist bandwagon and ridding the South of suspected communists. Virginia Durr, along with James Dombrowski, Aubrey Williams, Myles Horton, and two other men, stood before the committee to defend herself against the charges. Although Durr refused to invoke her Fifth Amendment right, she also refused to answer any of the committee’s questions, other than her name and that she was not a communist. To all other questions she replied, “I stand mute.” During the questioning, Durr not only refused to answer the committee’s charges, she also periodically reached into her purse and pulled out her compact, dabbing her nose with powder. It was a bold stand in the face of communist accusations and a deliberate protestation against the questioning of her loyalty. It was also a determined move to demonstrate her position as a Southern lady who was not accountable to men like James Eastland. Virginia Durr was one of several notable Southern liberals whose activism has gained the attention of historians in recent years. The Southern liberal movement, as it 1 operated during the New Deal until the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement, was not static, and the concept of liberalism and a liberal movement underwent a radical redefinition in American life, starting with the Progressive movement and traversing the New Deal era. According to Alonzo Hamby, New Deal liberalism embraced the Progressives’ call for increased government regulation in an attempt to promote democracy and economic fairness. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal merely expanded the Progressive reforms. The New Deal’s success “lay in the actual adoption of a massive body of reform legislation and in the construction of a strong, effective liberal political coalition.” 1 While Southern liberals adhered to Hamby’s analysis of the role of the federal government in society, they added another element to their liberalism—that of racial equality. Their conception of race relations and their denouncement of segregation, more than any other stand set white Southern liberals apart from their contemporaries below the Mason-Dixon line. According to historian Morton Sosna, “the ultimate test of the white Southern liberal was his willingness or unwillingness to criticize racial mores.” 2 Other scholars of these New Deal Southern liberals generally concur with Sosna’s assessment. It was race, more than economics or New Deal programs, that characterized the nature of Southern liberalism for the generation before the Civil Rights Movement. 3 1 Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), xv. 2 Morton Sosna, In Search of the Silent South: Southern Liberals and the Race Issue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), viii. 3 For studies on Southern liberals and liberalism between the wars, see Anthony Dunbar, Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981); John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). In recent years various biographies have been produced that examines Southern liberals of this generation. See Frank T. Adams, James A. Dombrowski: An American Heretic, 1897-1983 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992); 2 Debate surrounds the actual effectiveness of Southern liberals on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, but some scholars believe they were vital. Patricia Sullivan argues that “the activists of the earlier decades tilled the ground for future change. They created legal precedents, experimented with new political forms, and organized around issues of social and economic justice.” 4 One of the most ardent Southern activists of the period was Virginia Foster Durr. As a white Southern woman, Durr certainly faced numerous obstacles as she agitated for change. Working in a region in which patriarchy remained entrenched, Durr had to, at time, manipulate her position in society in order to be effective in her work. Historians are only beginning to explore how Southern women with their unique set of social ‘scripts’ refigured their role and worked within its confines. Anne Firor Scott’s seminal work, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics , provided one of the first examinations of modern Southern women working to enact social change. Since then, other histories have examined Southern women, either collectively or individually, to understand fully both women’s agency, as well as the concept of the Southern ‘lady,’ which prevailed long after the surrender at Appomatox. 5 A close examination of Jacquelyn Dowd-Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Richard B. Henderson, Maury Maverick: A Political Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970); Anne C. Loveland, Lillian Smith: A Southerner Confronting the South, A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986); John A. Salmond, The Conscience of a Lawyer: Clifford J. Durr and American Civil Liberties, 1899-1975 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990); John A. Salmond, Miss Lucy of the CIO: The Life and Times of Lucy Randolph Mason, 1882-1959 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988). 4 Sullivan, Days of Hope , 275. 5 See Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Bernhard, et. al,, Southern Women ; Janet L. Coryell, et. al., eds, Negotiating the Boundaries of Southern Womanhood: Dealing with the Powers that Be (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Michele Gillespie and Catherine Clinton, eds., Taking off the White Gloves: Southern Women and Women Historians (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998); Joanne V. Hawks and Sheila L. Skemp, eds., Sex, Race, and the Role of Women in the South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983); Anastatia 3 Virginia Foster Durr reveals not only Southern women’s activities between the wars (and, in Durr’s case, long after) but also how Southern women’s reconstruction of their identities in a region that maintained strict conventions regarding feminine behavior.
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