Guardians of Historical Knowledge: Textbook Politics, Conservative Activism, and School Reform in Mississippi, 1928-1982

Mississippi State University Scholars Junction

Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations

1-1-2014

Kevin Boland Johnson

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Guardians of historical knowledge: textbook politics, conservative activism,

and school reform in Mississippi, 1928-1982

Kevin Boland Johnson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Mississippi State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Department of History

Mississippi State, Mississippi

May 2014

Kevin Boland Johnson

2014

Guardians of historical knowledge: textbook politics, conservative activism, and school

reform in Mississippi, 1928-1982

Kevin Boland Johnson

Approved:

______Jason Morgan Ward (Major Professor)

______Richard V. Damms (Minor Professor)

______Alison Collis Greene (Committee Member)

______Michael Williams (Committee Member)

______Mark Hersey (Graduate Coordinator)

______R. Gregory Dunaway Professor and Dean College of Arts & Sciences

Name: Kevin Boland Johnson

Date of Degree: May 17, 2014

Institution: Mississippi State University

Major Field: History

Major Professor: Jason Morgan Ward

Title of Study: Guardians of historical knowledge: textbook politics, conservative activism, and school reform in Mississippi, 1928-1982

Pages in Study: 326

Candidate for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

This project examines the role cultural transmission of historical myths plays in power relationships and identity formation through a study of the Mississippi textbook regulatory agency and various civic organizations that shaped education policy in addition to textbook content. A study of massive resistance to integration, my project focuses on the anticommunism and conservative ideology of grassroots segregationists.

Civic-patriotic societies such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, the American

Legion, and Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation formed as the major alliance affecting the state’s education system in the post-World War II era. Once the state department of education centralized its services in the late 1930s and early 1940s, civic club reformers guarded against integrationist and multicultural content found in textbooks, deeming both as subversive and communistic. From the early 1950s through the 1970s, Mississippi’s ardent segregationists and anticommunists shaped education policy by effective state- level lobbying and grassroots activism. I demonstrate that the civic clubs had more influence in the state legislature than did the upstart Citizens’ Council movement. In addition, I show that once social studies standards emphasizing God, country, and

Protestant Christianity became codified in state education policy, it became ever more difficult for other reformers, namely James W. Loewen and Charles Sallis, to dislodge and alter those standards. Through numerous legal cases, DAR and Farm Bureau ephemera, and state superintendent of education files, this work argues that the civic clubs played an integral role in defense of white supremacy—a role that has been underemphasized in the existing literature on massive resistance.

DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this work to two my very close and dear friends, Karen

Aki Senaga and Scott George Pujol, because without their encouragement this project could not have been possible. The past four years that I have known and been close to

Karen—a fellow graduate student—have been without a doubt the happiest time of my life, while in the past twenty years Scott has remained as my very best friend and closest confidant. When one receives unwavering support from people close to you, then good things are possible, and my two dear friends remained by my side. Karen has provided unflinching support and encouragement while also offering incisive wit and criticism of my work. Scott has never hesitated to listen to my trepidation and provide good vittles and kind spirits for a weary “professional” student.

Karen and Scott, this dissertation is for you!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful for the guidance of my committee members, Professors Jason

Morgan Ward, Alison Collis Greene, Richard V. Damms, and Michael Williams, all of whom provided me with suggestions and criticism that has made this dissertation a much better piece of historical scholarship. In particular, Jason Morgan Ward has been an outstanding major professor, and his role in that capacity began in August of 2008 when we met briefly at a pre-semester party at our department chair’s house. I explained my research interests and he spoke about his book manuscript. From that moment forward, I recognized that I wanted to work with Jason during my graduate career. Since our initial meeting, he has pushed me when I needed a nudge, and left me alone when I became unbearably busy. Unlike other major professors at large research universities, Jason has always been available when I needed advice.

A few other scholars have guided my career as an aspiring historian. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the role played by my department chair, Alan I.

Marcus. Similar to my committee members, Dr. Marcus has always encouraged me and has never failed to provide me with blunt honesty and authenticity. In his wisdom, Dr.

Marcus assigned me as Stephanie Rolph’s teaching assistant during my first semester at

Mississippi State. Working with Stephanie allowed me to understand what graduate school was all about: training. Stephanie provided me, as well, with much knowledge

iii

about how to teach at the university level, and I am very grateful for having worked with her during my first semester as a master’s student.

I must acknowledge several other faculty members and graduate students at

Mississippi State. Professors James C. Giesen and Anne Marshall are outstanding historians, and without their knowledge of my abilities my work on this dissertation could not have been possible. Moreover, Dr. Stephen Middleton in African American Studies is an exemplary scholar of American jurisprudence and constitutionalism, and his instruction has made an indelible mark on my work. Dr. Mark Hersey, in addition, always believed in me and helped cultivate my own research agenda. A couple of scholars who are no longer at Mississippi State, likewise, deserve acknowledgement: Drs. Jason and

Tricia Phillips. Jason Phillips helped me form the foundation of this project while taking his colloquium on the Early Republic. His wife Tricia took time away from her own work to mentor me during a couple of semesters of independent study in social and political philosophy—my true love outside of the field of history. Lastly, Dr. Peter Messer is an attack-dog in class; he sharpened my analytical skills and always emphasized the implications to an historical interpretation. And I must express gratitude to my fellow graduate students for listening to me and for proofing my many papers and dissertation chapter drafts, namely Karen Aki Senega, Nancy Traylor, Alyssa Warrick, Kayla Moore,

Whitney Snow, Owen Hyman (who is an outstanding teaching assistant), and Jason

Hauser. Because Mississippi State attracted such aspiring scholars as the aforementioned,

I found the moral courage and intellectual discipline to continue with this dissertation.

Since beginning graduate school in 2008, I have met quite a few historians from across the country, lending me support, advice, and consolation. I first met Dr. Aram

Goudsouzian at a conference hosted by the University of Memphis, and he made a point to find me after my presentation to give me positive feedback. Dr. Jon Hale at the College of Charleston has been very enthusiastic in the two short years that I have known him.

Similarly, Annmarie Valdes at Loyola-Chicago is a great friend and scholar who finds curriculum history to be a fascinating and important lens of analysis in producing original historical scholarship. In addition, while presenting on panels, I had the chance to share and bounce ideas off of some sharp minds, especially Sarah Theussen, Walter Stern,

Margaret Freeman, and Mercy Harper. While presenting selected chapters at conferences,

I received valuable advice from many scholars of education and conservatism, namely

Wayne Urban, Philo Hutcheson, Michelle M. Nickerson, Joan Marie Johnson, and Rene

Luis Alvarez. Dr. Alvarez convinced me, along with Jason Ward, that the Spencer

Foundation would be interested in my research.

In the spring of 2013, I received word that the National Academy of

Education/Spencer Foundation approved of my project for a dissertation fellowship.

Without generous support from the NAEd/Spencer, I could not have produced this work since the monetary award freed me from the confines of teaching that allowed me to dedicate all of my efforts toward the completion of this project. The NAEd/Spencer, moreover, connected me with several historians who offered more support and advice, including the esteemed Professors Carl F. Kaestle and William J. Reese. At one of the two NAEd/Spencer retreats, I had the opportunity to meet with them and rising education historians Scott Gelber, Rosina Lozano, Hilary Falb, Andrew Highsmith, and Raquel

Otheguy. I would like to especially thank previous Spencer Dissertation Fellows

Katherine Mellon Charron and Crystal R. Sanders for taking time out of their busy

schedules to provide me with advice about how to improve my proposal. I probably would not have received support from the NAEd/Spencer if it were not for their insightful criticism.

Finally, there are two people who I would like to acknowledge—one positive and the other negative. My close friend and colleague, Karen Aki Senaga, has been my most steadfast advocate for the past four years of my life. She has never faltered in her support of my work and my ideas—all the while pointing out problems and shortcomings like any good scholar would. In addition, I would also like note the role played by my uncle,

Wiley “Buddy” Boland. While Karen has always believed in me, my Uncle Buddy never has, and he once scoffed at me when I told him that I planned to write a book. My Uncle

Buddy, moreover, denigrated me for “reaching for low hanging fruit” and basically being unambitious. Yet the project that unfolds on the pages below, I am certain, will someday be in print whereas my Uncle Buddy’s dissertation is merely gathering dust on a library shelf.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION TEXTBOOK POLITICS AND CHANNELING HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IN MISSISSIPPI...... 1

II. “MAKE THE FREE SCHOOLS FREE!” THEODORE G. BILBO, THE STATE PRINTING PRESS CONTROVERSY, AND THE ORIGINS OF EDUCATION REFORM IN MISSISSIPPI, 1902- 1942……………………………………………………………...... 22

III. “AGAINST ALL THE ‘ISMS”: CIVIC CLUBS AND SEGREGATIONIST IDEOLOGY FROM THE NEW DEAL TO THE COLD WAR…...... 73

IV. “PREJUDICE WAS AN INDIVIDUAL’S RIGHT”: CIVIC ORGANIZATION ALLIANCES, MASSIVE RESISTANCE TO BROWN, AND TEXTBOOK POLITICS, 1950- 1964………...... 126

V. “THE TYRANTS IN WASHINGTON”: FEDERAL AID TO EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF BLACK ACTIVISM AND RAPID INTEGRATION, 1947- 1972………………………………………...... 184

VI. “A SYMBOL TO THE RESISTANCE TO INTEGRATION”: THE LOEWEN CASE AND GUARDING HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IN MISSISSIPPI, 1963- 1981…………………………………...... 239

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VII. EPILOGUE “LET THE BOTTOM GO HANG THEMSELVES”: WILLIAM F. WINTER AND THE LEGACY OF EDUCATION REFORM IN MISSISSIPPI……………………………………………… ...... 292

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………… ...... 304

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TEXTBOOK POLITICS AND CHANNELING HISTORICAL

KNOWLEDGE IN MISSISSIPPI

In February 1962, House Speaker Walter Sillers, Jr. received evaluations of state approved textbooks from the Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American

Revolution.1 One commented on a world history book, The Record of Mankind by

Wesley A. Roehm and others, objecting to the authors’ statement that “Formerly history was largely concerned with kings, monarchies, laws, diplomacy, and wars…Today history deals with the entire life of a people.” From this one textbook passage, the anonymous DAR reviewer concluded: “So, now we are told, that history must change along with this changing world.” She further believed that the authors’ view of history implied that George Washington, Valley Forge, and the U.S. Constitution were “no longer worthy of recognition” and should “be ignored so far as our children’s history books are concerned.”2 The DAR evaluations of textbook content had been prompted by

Florence Sillers Ogden, Walter Sillers’s sister, who warned Mississippians to “stop, look,

1 The Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution is the state chapter under the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR). For the purposes of this paper, the abbreviation DAR will refer to the state society unless otherwise noted.

2 Walter M. Johnson to Walter Sillers, Jr., Feb. 28, 1962, Box 32, Folder 17, Walter Sillers, Jr. Collection, Special Collections, Charles W. Capps Archives and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS.

and listen” to school curricula and textbook content. “Teachers and parents were in full accord,” before the First World War, she wrote in her syndicated newspaper column, and

“there was no disagreement, but that was long ago, before Eve ate the apple in the Garden of Education.”3

In a 1975 class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs charged the Mississippi State

Textbook Purchasing Board with willful censorship of schoolbooks presenting accounts of racial discrimination and oppression. The Board refused to adopt a controversial

Mississippi history text, Mississippi: Conflict and Change, edited by sociologist James

W. Loewen and historian Charles Sallis. On October 27, 1977, William A. Matthews, the executive secretary of the Board, filed an affidavit providing an exhaustive accounting of how many instances the editors mentioned the state’s forty-five governors from David

Holmes to sitting Governor William Waller. Matthews found that Loewen’s book covered only twenty-nine gubernatorial administrations whereas the state approved book,

Mississippi: Yesterday and Today by historian John K. Bettersworth, adequately covered forty-three. Based on this thorough content analysis, Matthews asserted that the Board maintained appropriate justification for rejecting Conflict and Change. Implicit in his affidavit, Matthews’s contention included the idea that a ninth-grade history course should merely offer a chronicle of gubernatorial administrations, which the book failed to do.4

3 Florence Sillers Ogden, “Time to Re-Evaluate This ‘Academic Freedom’ Code,” Jackson Daily News, Aug. 9, 1959, 7.

4 “Affidavit of William A. Matthews,” Oct. 27, 1977, 1-4, James W. Loewen, et al. v. John Turnipseed, et al., Civil Action No. GC 75-147-S, United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Greenville Division, Acc. 21870027 Box 2, Folder 2, National Archives and Records Administration, Southeast Division, Morrow, GA. Hereafter referred to as Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

Virginia McElhaney, a math teacher and one of the Board’s textbook evaluators on the Mississippi history screening committee, explained further reasons for the rejection of the Loewen-Sallis reader. “There was too much racism brought out,” she claimed. Indeed, the controversial history book recounted numerous racially-motivated atrocities that had occurred in Mississippi—from the wanton killing of black soldiers during the Civil War to the wave of violent repression in 1955 that included the murders of Reverend George Lee, organizer Lamar Smith, and 14-year old Emmitt Till.

McElhaney asked, “why dwell on this?”5 The authors’ treatment of Mississippi’s past turned into one of the state’s most intense flashpoints in textbook politics. Educators vehemently opposed its adoption that prompted journalist Bill Minor to conclude that continual concealment of Mississippi’s historical record caused irrevocable harm since students were not given “a chance to examine the state’s past in a more critical way in order to deal with the present.”6

History is and probably always will be a controversial field of study, especially at the primary and secondary level. How history is taught to high school and junior high students and the standards set by state departments of education reflects the field’s controversial nature. In more recent developments, Texas being a prominent example, public officials’ conservative ideology motivated the state board of education to strike words such as “imperialism,” “propaganda,” and “capitalist” from state-approved

5 Deposition of Virginia W. McElhaney, Oct. 27, 1976, Hattiesburg, MS, transcript, 6,8, Acc. 21870027, Box 3, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

6 Bill Minor, “Textbook Battle: Civil War vs. Civil Rights,” (Jackson) The Capitol Reporter, Sept. 6, 1979, 1. Emphasis added.

textbooks.7 In 2010, Virginia’s selection of certain history texts came under fire as well after a William and Mary College professor noticed erroneous statements in one book about black Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The state board of education vowed to investigate the matter and the process of revising curriculum standards became a source of public controversy and political activism.8

During the twentieth century concealment, embarrassment, and sensitivity to race topped the list of complaints levied by Mississippi’s school reformers and textbook critics, echoing the prophecy made by W.E.B. Du Bois that “the problem of the

Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”9 This study is about the defenders of the color line in instructional materials, which required official approval according to state law. As an adoption state several incarnations of a centralized regulatory body evaluated textbooks and selected the ones used by all public school students.10 By officially sanctioning carefully screened textbooks, state bureaucrats effectively guarded information and content presented to pupils.11 Disparate groups of education reformers

7 PBS Video, “Is the Texas School Board Rewriting History?” http://video.pbs.org/video/2107351145/ accessed on Sept. 9, 2012; and Gene B. Preuss, “As Texas Goes, So Goes the Nation: Conservatism and Culture Wars in the Lone Star State,” in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation, 19-39, Keith A. Erekson, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 34-35.

8 Kevin Seif, “Error-Filled Textbooks Prompt Va. To Call for Revamped Approval Process,” Dec. 29, 2010 Washington Post, accessed Sept. 1, 2012 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/12/29/AR2010122903028.html; Frontline, “Testing Our Schools,” accessed on Sept. 1, 2012, PBS Video http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/standards/virginia.html.

9 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Rockville, MD: Arc-Manor, 2008), 9.

10 Michael Tulley and Roger Farr, “Textbook Evaluation and Selection,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States, Pt.1, ed. David L. Elliott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 162-65.

11 Educational administrators guarding the lessons students learn in school has a long history in the United States. See, Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964). 4

targeted the department of education and the legislature for a change in policy. Since history, or reverence for the past, has been a profound cultural force in Mississippi society, reformers used the political process to gain influence over the content of history textbooks, shaping them to transmit their conservative worldview. Civics texts as well became appropriate targets for the reformers as a means of instilling dual levels of citizenship in pupils, and thus in some limited ways this study is an examination of the state’s social studies curriculum.12

The political context forced textbook critics to act, and they were at the forefront of several flashpoints of controversy between the 1920s and 1980s. The first one developed as the state began a long process of centralizing educational services in

Jackson in the interest of promoting social and government efficiency. During the Great

Depression and World War II further political upheaval engulfed the legislature as

Mississippi finally approved of appropriating funds, purchasing schoolbooks, and providing students with these crucial instructional materials rather than requiring parents to purchase them. The 1940s represented a complete change in Mississippi society as the

Second World War and the Cold War that followed contributed to the ideological evolution of conservative reformers who dominated schoolbook censorship campaigns through the 1960s. Well-connected civic leaders rallied ordinary citizens at the grassroots level to the cause of improving the public schools that coincided with the postwar

12 Education historian William J. Reese analyzes reasons why the schools are the focuse of numerous reform movements in History, Education, and the Schools (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 159-71.

movement for racial justice in America.13 Conservatives, alarmed by the government’s expansion and the international communist threat, delimited federal social prerogatives in education, promoting heightened educational standards and maintenance of Jim Crow to defend the state against communism and integration—understood as synonymous forms of subversion by these activists. By the 1980s, the civic club reformers orchestrating campaigns against objectionable textbook content had thoroughly instilled their ideological vision into school materials. Scholars James W. Loewen and Charles Sallis directly confronted the myths and ideology masquerading as social studies education, falling short in affecting education policy. Through the organizational and ideological direction from longstanding civic-patriotic societies, therefore, conservatives used their social position to channel complex philosophical ideas about history and constitutionalism from elites to ordinary white citizens below via the basic instructional materials used in schools: textbooks.

The national progressive education movement overlapped with Mississippi’s textbook controversy flashpoints. Progressive education stressed problem solving, critical thinking, and social skills, and theorists even formulated the umbrella “social studies” covering separate subjects of history, civics, geography, and economics. Educational leaders derived their ideas as the means for socially engineering future society that offended conservative values by repudiating traditional pedagogy stressing the role of the chronicle in history courses and coupled with rote memorization. The Progressive

Education Association (PEA) even supported revisionist works by historians such as

13 In many ways, this study is similar to a dual freedom movement approach offered by Chris Myers Asch in The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 6

Charles Beard, whose class-centric interpretation of constitutional history sent patriotic society members to state legislatures calling for reform.14 The DAR proved most active, forming other reform groups, in addition to rallying the American Legion and Mississippi

Farm Bureau Federation to the cause. The Sons of the American Revolution, while small compared to its sister organization, stoked the fires of the Cold War textbook imbroglio pitting the civic organizations against the state’s education professionals.15

Controlling history instruction and textbook content is hardly a new phenomenon, and in Mississippi its origins can be traced to the New South era when the prospect of universal public education was relatively new. Early efforts to control history education involved curricular reformers affiliated with civic organizations like the United

Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), who have since become emblematic of the Lost

Cause explanation for southern military defeat following the Civil War and perpetuating its legacy. Several historical accounts focus on the actual content of the textbooks themselves to reveal how southerners mollified the Confederate military loss and constructed myths about the Civil War that led to an enduring historical memory.

Monographs that analyze more recent textbook controversies showcase the pressure

14 The most concise examination of the aims of progressive education can be found in, John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press, 1944); Ronald W. Evans has published two recent monographs that closely examine the development of social studies. See, The Hope for American School Reform: The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning in the Social Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 15-32; The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children? (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 71-104; and Charles and Mary Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1921).

15 A recent national perspective of the Cold War’s effects on education and the tensions within the progressive education movement is Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

groups’ role in influencing the way the nation’s most prominent textbook publishers produced schoolbooks.16

Recent studies have emphasized the “wars” occurring within American society, such as the all-encompassing “culture wars” and subsets of “history wars” and “social studies wars.” Textbook politics, no doubt, are definitely scrappy and can get downright violent, such as the 1974 conflict in Kenawha County, West Virginia.17 Among these contributions Jonathan Zimmerman proposes a metaphor of two roads, one from

Chicago, Illinois that represents the history conflicts emerging out of the progressive education movement, and another originating in Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the famous Scopes evolution case that has served as synecdoche in acknowledging American

16 The Mississippi UDC was largely absent from textbook politics in the twentieth century. Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 139-45; Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts over American History Textbooks From the Civil War to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 18-22. He revises a famous textbook study from the 1980s. See, Frances Fitgerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the 20th Century (New York: Random House, 1980), 29-35; Rebecca Miller Davis, “The Three R’s—Reading, ‘Riting, and Race: The Evolution of Race in Mississippi’s History Textbooks, 1900- 1995,” Journal of Mississippi History (Spring 2011):1-45. She argues unpersuasively that the state used history textbooks predated crucial historiographical changes incorporating the African American experience. Other studies of states and history textbooks include Adam Dean, “Who Controls the Past Controls the Future: The Virginia History Textbook Controversy,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 117 (Winter 2009): 318-55; Fred Bailey, “How Heritage became Hate: Mississippi's Quest for a Suitable Past, 1890 to the Present,” The Walter M. and Evalynn Burress Lecture Series, Howard Payne University, Brownwood, Texas, October 2005, 2, 23-26; and James W. Loewen blames the market-driven quest for profits in the textbook publishing industry for the faulty history books in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: New Press, 1995), 3-6, 274-75.

17 Several titles indicate wars, including Evans, The Social Studies Wars; Edward Tabor Linenthal, History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996); Gary Nash, Charlotte A. Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, 1st Vintage Books Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2000); and Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2002); Kenawha County, West Virginia became an emblem for excesses in textbook criticism, see Campbell Scribner, “The Exurban Exchange: Local Control of Education on the Metropolitan Fringe, 1945-1980,” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012), 214-26; Todd Clark, “The West Virginia Textbook Controversy: A Personal Account,” Social Education 39 (April 1975): 216-19; and James A. Deeter, The Kenawha County Textbook Controversy: A Review and Analysis from a Ten Year Perspective (Huntington, W.V.: Marshall University Press, 1985).

religious fundamentalism.18 Zimmerman contends that the roads are separate, although they intersect somewhat. This examination of Mississippi textbook politics contributes some understanding about how these dual paths overlapped rather than crossed. The dual road metaphor explaining the culture war phenomenon usually pits liberals and minorities in one camp against the wiles of conservative pundits and clergymen in another, and curriculum has often been the arena where the two spar.19 A study of the very recent textbook battles in Texas, however, further demonstrates a reevaluation of the culture war thesis, showing that such analytical frameworks conceal intraparty divisions while deflecting attention away from curriculum to larger political divisions.20 Similarly, this study provides further illumination of the power struggles affecting the conservative side of the debate since Mississippi’s activists and education professionals generally agreed on interlocking commitments to God, country, and white supremacy.

Clubmen and women are key actors in this study of the politics regarding textbook adoption, anticommunism, and massive resistance. While the Citizens’ Councils proved to be a prolific grassroots white supremacist organization, this examination demonstrates the extensive reach and influence of powerful civic-patriotic society members. Massive resistance, once only applied to obfuscation and delay of

18 For examinations of religious fundamentalism and its effects on public education, see Charles A. Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870-1925 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2004); Adam Laats, Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America’s Culture Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and Joel Carpenter provides an argument demonstrating how fundamentalism never retreated from educational issues in Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

19 Zimmerman, Whose America? 2-4.

20 Keith A. Erekson, “Culture War Circus: How Politics and the Media Left History Education Behind,” in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation, Keith A. Erekson, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 8-12.

implementing school desegregation orders, now holds a scholarly meaning indicating organized defiance of the total black freedom struggle and government policies conducive to social change.21 Disentangling massive resistance from southern anticommunism proves difficult, but most interpretations rely on the toolkit thesis.

Communism represented just one of many tools segregationists used to clobber freedom struggle proponents into submission—and this contention undoubtedly holds merit.22 Yet

21 Perhaps the best study of anticommunism and the American Legion is William C. Pencak, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1989); A recent doctoral thesis explores the power wielded by civic club members. See, Ann K. Ziker, “Race, Conservative Politics, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post Colonial World, 1948-1968,” (PhD diss., Rice University, 2008); Historian George Lewis questions the origin of the term “massive resistance,” revealing that the Virginia senator’s comments during at 1956 could have been confused by an enthusiastic reporter sympathetic to the segregationists’ cause. He reported that Byrd called for “massive resistance” but Lewis believes that the senator might have said “passive resistance.” Regardless, historians generally attribute massive resistance to segregationists’ attempts to stymie civil rights reform in the South, especially in terms of public school desegregation. See George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement (London: Hodder Education, 2006), 1; Classic studies of opposition to the black freedom struggle include Neil R. McMillen, The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); and Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); For comprehensive treatments of Mississippi’s culture of segregation vis-à-vis education, see Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009); and Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005).

22 Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948- 1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2003), 2-3, 10; George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunists, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965 (Gainesville and other cities: University of Florida Press, 2004), xx; and Wayne Addison Clark, “An Analysis of the Relationship between Anti-Communism and Segregationist Thought in the Deep South, 1948-1964,” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1976); For national study with a similar thesis, see Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 160-69; Other overview works include two monographs by Ellen Schrecker. See Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998) and No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Scholarly works examining the detrimental relationship between the Cold War and the black freedom struggle, see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 8; Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Brenda Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans Against U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South (New York and other cities: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Mary L. Dudziak argues the opposite that the Cold War aided the black freedom struggle in Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 10

this dissertation calls for a revised view of segregationists’ anticommunism, showing that civic club leaders and rhetoricians understood rapid social change as an expression of communism. Similar to recent historical examinations of massive resistance, this dissertation reveals the cleavages between major organizations regarding ideas, action, and strategy. Unlike most accounts that focus on political elites, this examination locates

Mississippi’s defenders of segregation in groups underrepresented in the historiography, namely the DAR, American Legion, and Farm Bureau.23

One of the major contributions this project attempts is demonstrating the connections between political activism and religious identity. Mississippi’s education reformers mostly identified with Protestant Christianity, yet their evolving conservative ideology lauding the U.S. Constitution and the myth of the Christian founding reveal a syncretic phenomenon unfolding from the end of the Great Depression through the height of the black freedom struggle. Civic organization activists promoted the Constitution and a static view of American history as religious instruction, arguing that both reinforced the nation’s Christian identity. Using the clarion call of heritage, rigid and unchanging ideas about the past became expressions of a patriotic Christianity mobilized in defense of

23 The best example in this group is Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 29-35; Crespino’s interpretation of practical segregation disintegrates when examining moderates’ long-term contributions in defending white supremacy. See, Anders Walker, The Ghost of Jim Crow: How Moderates Used Brown v. Board of Education to Stall Civil Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Jason Morgan Ward argues for a long segregationist movement emanating from oppositional politics emerging from the New Deal through the 1960s black freedom struggle in Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 2; For an excellent book chapter on women’s clubs and its contributions to white supremacy’s defense, see Elizabeth Gillespie McRae. “White Womanhood, White Supremacy and the Rise of Massive Resistance” in Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction, ed. Clive Webb (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

white supremacy, constitutionalism and free-market capitalism. Sharing similarities with other accounts of southern civil religion and conservatism, this study focuses on the postwar ideological evolution of conservatism as it developed in response to political crises.24

This project situates the question of curriculum and textbook politics in the larger narrative of American anticommunism and the rise of the New Right.25 In the past two decades, studies of southern conservative politics and party realignment have transformed how scholars understand the region’s political history. But few case studies of conservative activism have centered on southern public schools outside of the context of the Brown decisions. Instead, in many of these New Right examinations, the authors elucidate the connections between segregationists and conservative activists without fully examining the ideological common ground among the most committed southerners.26

24 Perhaps the best recent monograph on Mississippi Protestants’ religious defenses of segregation is Carolyn Renee Dupont, Praying Mississippi: Southern White Evangelicals and Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2013); Another monograph focusing on Protestant organizations’ role in massive resistance is Andrew Michael Manis, Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Black and White Baptists, 1947-1957 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986). The aforementioned works take inspiration from proponents of the civil religion thesis, including Wilson, Baptized in Blood; and Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). See also, Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). Each of these analyses differ from David L. Chappell’s contention that white protestants aided the black freedom struggle. See, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 1-9; David Lowenthal provides an excellent systematic analysis of the heritage belief system and how social elites carefully defended it in Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of the Past (New York: Free Press, 1996); For studies of the new religious Right, see William C. Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 2005); and Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

25 M.J. Heale argues that anticommunism developed as an standard position among conservatives long before the twentieth century, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 3-96; Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 53-63; and Stuart J. Foster, Red Alert! Educators Confront the Red Scare in American Public Schools, 1947-1954 (New York and other cities: Peter Lang, 2000), 92-105.

26 Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 75, 276-77; Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace, xx; Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South 12

Mississippi’s nascent New Right proponents fused religious tradition with patriotic anticommunism and white supremacy, and they made textbook politics a central component of their mission. The activists’ goals included inculcating conservative ideology in social studies curricula, and they expended enormous energy and crafted far- reaching organizational acumen to influence the policies of the state department of education. Conservatives gained some control of education policy and wielded considerable influence over social studies curriculum, using religion, patriotism, and history as an interlocking cudgel.27

The following dissertation, likewise, is a study of the development of modern day conservatism. The Mississippi example, by focusing on civic club members, reveals a hardline and even reactionary conservative ethos.28 Clubmen and women reacted to social change by promoting key conservative principles such as anticommunism, individual freedom, states’ rights, free market capitalism, property rights, and familial privacy. As with other developments of conservative groups in different states, segregationists dropped overt racial appeals in favor of racially neutral code words and expressions.29

(Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3, 10-19; Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 8; See also Thomas J. Sugrue’s study of metropolitan Detroit which predates similar developments in the South, Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); James W. Ely, The Crisis of Conservative Virginia: The Byrd Organization and the Politics of Massive Resistance (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976); and Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

27 Randall Balmer has provided an account of conservatives’ effects on education policy in Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Destroys Faith and Threatens America (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 71-108.

28 McGirr warns against using such labels in Suburban Warriors, 5-8.

29 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 13

Yet the Mississippi example is indeed exceptional.30 Since clubmen and women focused on the schoolhouse as the vehicle toward shaping conservative values in society, they had to negotiate the lag in educational modernization. Mississippi’s education system providing universal public schooling began much later than in other states, and this legacy has had lasting effects on the administration of schools and the reach and influence of reformers. The commitment to segregation in state policy, moreover, outlasted that of other states in the region. By dual schools southerners meant different educational programs entirely, stressing vocational education for blacks and poor whites and classical, college-prep curriculum for white elites.31

As with many other education histories, one of the key themes is the gradual demise of and transition from a decentralized and locally controlled school culture to a

1995), 12; Lassiter, The Silent Majority, 30, 37, 41, 243-48; Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 12- 13; and Kruse, White Flight, 6-9; For analytical works demonstrating continuity with past civic organization conservative values, see June Melby Benowitz, “Reading, Writing and Radicalism: Right- Wing Women and Education in the Post-War Years,” History of Education Quarterly 49 (February, 2009): 89-111; Morten Bach, “None So Consistently Right: The American Legion’s Cold War, 1945-1950,” (PhD diss. Ohio University, 2007); Pencak, For God and Country, 106-22, 236-55; Margaret Nunnelly Olsen, “One Nation, One World: American Clubwomen and the Politics of Internationalism, 1945-1961,” (PhD diss. Rice University, 2008); Barbara Truesdell, “God, Home, and Country: Folklore, Patriotism, and the Politics of Culture in the Daughters of the American Revolution,” (PhD diss. Indiana University, 1996); George S. Robson, Jr. “The Mississippi Farm Bureau Through Depression and War: The Formative Years, 1919-1945,” (PhD diss. Mississippi State University, 1974); and lastly Martha Strayer’s chronology of the DAR’s political projects reveals ardently conservative positions in The DAR: An Unofficial History (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1958), 57-150.

30 Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3-15.

31 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 64-91; James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988); James D. Anderson, “Northern Foundations and the Shaping of Southern Black Rural Education, 1902-1935.” in The Social History of American Education. eds. B. Edward McClellan and William J. Reese (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 303-06; William A. Link, A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 7-16; Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 72-109; and Thomas V. O’Brien, The Politics of Race and Schooling: Public Education in Georgia, 1900-1961 (Lanham, MD and other cities: Lexington Books, 1999), xi-xiii.

standardized and centralized education system.32 Championed by reformers in many areas of the country, and especially in the New South, centralization and modernization contributed to a corresponding loss in democratic ideals. Invoking paternalism, small local communities resisted education reform; state-level standardization of education operated in opposition to the localism at the county and municipal level.33 Mississippians responded to centralization similar to their counterparts from Virginia and North

Carolina. Resistance gradually gave way to dependence on educational standards developed in Jackson, but the clubmen and clubwomen who are prominent in my study, formed the vanguard of protection against the forces of centralization emanating from

Washington following World War II. Civic-patriotic organizations understood such expansion of power as communistic or socialistic. Moreover, this project demonstrates another key vein in the centralization and standardization movement: the process by which curricular changes affected the broader society and vice-versa.34

This case study of Mississippi’s textbook politics and civic club-led education reform efforts between the 1920s to the 1980s is a story of “Satirical Romance,” to

32 William J. Reese, Power and Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1992).

33 Joan Marie Johnson, Southern Ladies, New Women: Race, Region and Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1890-1930 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2004), xx-xix; Andra Knecht, “We are From the City, and We Are Here to Educate You: The Georgia Federation of Women’s clubs and the Tallulah Falls School,” in The Educational Work of Women’s Organizations, 1890-1960, eds. Anne Meis Knupfer and Christine Woyshner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). William A. Link, “Privies, Progressivism, and Public Schools: Health Reform and Education in the Rural South, 1909-1920,” Journal of Southern History 54 (Nov. 1988): 623-42; Link, A Hard Country, xii-xix, 40; Charles A. Israel, who argues that Tennesseans believed that local control of education was necessary to protect communities from threats to morality like alcohol use in Before Scopes.

34 James Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), xii, 22, 30-33.

borrow the expression from scholar Hayden White. As he explained in his classic study,

Metahistory, the tropes of Romance and Satire are mutually exclusive but he did imagine the possibilities of irony rendering “the fatuity of a Romantic conception of the world.”

By close examination of each flashpoint period in the state’s textbook controversies, the narrative employed in this dissertation demonstrates how key actors in the state’s education reform movement actually pressured the legislature to devise impediments to improving educational quality. Hence, the term “reform” for the purposes of this study is value-neutral. Reformers’ goals, moreover, especially when these represented minority interests, generally fell flat demonstrating the tragic nature of Mississippi’s textbook controversies.35

The following dissertation furthermore offers a tragic account of white recalcitrance and defiance by illustrating the effects massive resistance policies had on the state’s education system. While Mississippi public and elected officials had every opportunity to craft a first-rate education system, they usually neglected their leadership duties in the interest of preserving segregation. The effects of Jim Crow are especially evident on Mississippi’s education system, which continually ranks either last or near last in many statistical categories with impoverished and minority students suffering the most.

History instruction has remained one of the public school systems’ major problem areas, and today athletic coaches trained in either education or kinesiology teach these courses with rote memorization of facts as the key objective. In other words, scholarly consensus

35 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 9-10.

such as the perils associated with a fully objective view of the past has failed to make an impression on educators.36

The state’s culture has been both the cause and has been affected by the changes sought by conservative education reformers.37 Mississippi, no doubt, is one of the more extreme examples, and by examining it we can learn more about these controversies generated by history, what historical knowledge is, and what it should be. Mississippi’s guardians of historical knowledge tried to inculcate unflinching patriotism, Christian devotion, intense anticommunism, and triumphalist historical interpretations in social studies curriculum as the means to preserve white supremacy. Their successes indicate that popular historical understanding is little more than a function of the political process rather than a knowledge type resulting from peer-reviewed research conducted in the halls of academia. The Mississippi example illuminates the difficulties experienced by state departments of education in fomenting connections between history conducted by experts proficient in the field and that which passes as conservative ideology in the guise of “history.” Lastly, once activists succeeded in state acquiescence to conservative curricular standards, the Mississippi example reveals the difficulties faced by other reformers trying to change those standards. In a state whose residents honor the past and

36 The Education Week report released in early 2014 ranked the state 51st in education. See, Ruth Ingram, “Mississippi Gets an F in School Performance,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 10, 2014, 1A; Brad Locke, “Poverty, Family Structure Imprint Mississippi’s Education Fabric,” (Tupelo) Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Sept. 29, 2013; and Peter Novick’s classic study of the objectivity question among professional historians provides an apt starting point for this dissertation. See, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

37 Two examples of Mississippi’s culture during the Cold War era and the black freedom struggle include Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975, 1st Vintage Books Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 5-16; and Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill and Washington, D.C.: The University of North Carolina Press for Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2000).

venerate tradition and “heritage,” the success of the conservative reformers is significant

because they convinced education professionals to accept the idea of history as an

objective knowledge type that rarely changes and remains fixed in time despite

innovations in the discipline and the political realities that shape how humans view past

events.38

While this project is a political history in nature, it does cultural work by showing

the development and perpetuation of historical myth, and how the public accepted these

as truth. Michel Foucault called these discourses a “general politics of truth,” functioning

as fact in people’s common understanding. He further explains “‘Truth’ is linked in a

circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of

power which it induces and which extend it. A regime of truth.”39 The central myth

inspiring the ideology and activism of segregationists and conservative education

reformers was black inferiority. Operating on this discursive truism, white Mississippians

targeted schools and book content and vehemently guarded against ideas outside the

scope of their worldview. Upon the demise of Jim Crow, whites continued to accept the

black inferiority discourse that shaped their actions in the post-apartheid era. The result

was divestment of public education in favor of private schools that provided unfettered

operations and ideological development. In short, private schools offered segregationists

the salvation they needed after social change, providing the racial purity standard for

educational quality. Whites ascribed to other discursive fantasies masquerading as truth,

38 Novick, That Noble Dream, 281-411.

39 Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 109-133.

especially that segregation was a natural ordained by God, rendering integration as

sinful.40

Once Mississippi emerged from its Jim Crow past in the 1970s, these truths failed

to vanish. They became encoded in Mississippi history courses, which makes the

following dissertation a study in historical memory. The term is confusing because it

ultimately points to collective forgetting of the past. As a study of historical memory, the

clubmen and women who sought power over education policy become much more

prominent. Patriotic societies such as the DAR and American Legion have crafted

popular understanding of past events that usually reflected their worldview. They served

the public by purporting expert knowledge of the national past, fashioning a heritage

ideal requiring collective faith and continual defense. The tremors caused by the black

freedom struggle via Freedom Summer activism followed by national laws outlawing

segregation and affirming black voting rights shook that faith if only temporarily. By that

time Mississippians merely looked to state educational and curricular standards as

emblems of a view of the past that few whites wanted to relinquish. To accept

revisionism, as offered by a pair of scholars who rewrote Mississippi’s history in the

early 1970s, would be acquiescence to negativity and loss of state identity. Instead, white

Mississippians lamented (and continue to do so) critical views of the state’s history and

remain on guard against historical facts that potentially cause collective embarrassment.

Too often whites claim that they love history, but at the same time want to conceal facts

40 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 169; Michael W. Fuquay claims that segregated schools had long been utilized “to promote [white] racial ideology” and were part of inculcating conservative sunbelt values. See “Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in Mississippi, 1964-1971,” History of Education Quarterly 42 (Summer 2002): 160-65; Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 237-58; and Dupont, Praying Mississippi, 75-84.

about the recent past, meaning the social convulsions of the 1960s that destroyed white supremacy and institutional discrimination.41

The contours of anticommunism, massive resistance, conservative ideology, and why state education policy changes can be fully explored in a case study of Mississippi’s textbook politics and reform tradition. Mississippi’s conservative activists influenced and lent organizational expertise to similar reformers in states such as Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas.42 These pressure groups relied on controlling textbook adoption processes, coordinating citizen activism, dominating the state legislature, and indoctrinating students. The major changes to education policy began before postwar massive resistance and continued until the 1980s, but the legacy of “segregationist hysteria” survived due in part to conservative ideology driven through the social studies curriculum that affected millions over a sixty-year saga of reform and reaction.43 Those students steeped in the

41 The best memory studies by a historian are two monographs by David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001). The other places the lens of analysis on four southern authors critical of Civil War mythology prevalent in southern society during the 1960s. American Oracle, The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); For a theoretical approach, see David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” Journal of American History 75 (March 1989): 1117-29; Renee C. Romano, Leigh Raiford, eds., The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006); Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 4-7; Jamal Watson, “Dr. James W. Loewen Changing the Way America Views its History,” Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Dec. 24, 2013, accessed online Jan. 6, 2014 < http://diverseeducation.com/article/59680/>; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1995); and Brianna Larkin, “History of the Civil Rights Movement,” n.d., student paper submitted to Professor James T. Campbell, African American Studies Program, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA and in possession of the author. Larkin interviewed numerous Mississippi educators about their methods for teaching the black freedom struggle in public school history classes. She found that most educators had poor training in the field and consequently avoided discussion of controversial material.

42 Jack Nelson and Gene Roberts, Jr. The Censors and the Schools, (Boston, MA: Brown and Little, 1964), 97, 151.

43 The quoted term comes from a couple of sources. See Andrew P. Mullins, Building Consensus: A History of the Passage of the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 1982 (Waynesboro, MS: Mississippi Humanities Council, 1992), vii, 13-14; and Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), 129-49. 20

“Mississippi way of life” eventually became the intractable state leaders and public officials of the next generation, making it ever more difficult for other reformers to dislodge curricular standards that had long been in place.

The following dissertation concentrates on the politics behind textbook adoptions, and builds its narrative through administrative sources such as superintendent’s papers, activist correspondence, and civic organization scrapbooks rather than previously published material. In addition, this project has been built from newspaper accounts and untapped trial material and other legal sources. Most significantly, the portion of this dissertation covering the ideological development of education reformers has been culled from a growing repository of ephemera from civic-patriotic societies, especially the DAR and Mississippi Farm Bureau. A pair of the most prominent actors in this study, the

DAR’s Edna Whitfield Alexander and the Farm Bureau’s Arthur Boswell “Bos” Stevens, donated their surviving papers to Duke University and Mississippi State University, respectively. Mining these sources has provided a rare glimpse into the minds of unapologetic segregationists. This dissertation relies on multiple collections of the state’s leaders, particularly the gubernatorial papers of both Theodore G. Bilbo, Paul B. Johnson,

Sr., and Paul B. Johnson, Jr. Building on the archival collections, prominent

Mississippians, including Charles Sallis, former Governor William F. Winter, and former assistant attorney general Ed Davis Noble, Jr. were kind enough to sit for extended oral history interviews.

CHAPTER II

“MAKE THE FREE SCHOOLS FREE!” THEODORE G. BILBO, THE STATE

PRINTING PRESS CONTROVERSY, AND THE ORIGINS OF

EDUCATION REFORM IN MISSISSIPPI, 1902-1942

In 1924, former Mississippi Governor Theodore G. Bilbo established a statewide opinion paper in Jackson called the Mississippi Free Lance.1 Bilbo intended the weekly journal as an organ of opposition in hopes of ousting the state’s ruling clique from political office. The white representatives from black-majority counties—signified by the leaders of the conservative faction headed by Governor Henry L. Whitfield and House

Speaker Thomas L. Bailey—drew Bilbo’s ire in sensational stories about political malfeasance. Bilbo, who had served as governor from 1916 to 1920, lost his bid for the

U.S. House of Representatives to a Hattiesburg Circuit Court Judge, Paul B. Johnson, Sr.

By appealing to the so-called dirt farmers, hill folk, and self-styled “rednecks,”—the exact opposite of business-minded conservatives from Delta and blackbelt counties—

Bilbo believed the Free Lance could rally his constituency and he could thereby regain

elected office.2

1 Chester M. Morgan, Redneck Liberal: Theodore G. Bilbo and the New Deal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 40-41.

2 V.O. Key, Jr. Southern Politics (New York: Knopf, 1949), 229-253. 22

Much of the discussion in the pages of the Free Lance promoted social efficiency standards in government programs to provide services to impoverished residents. In other words, Bilbo promoted a form of progressivism that advocated use of state government that could apply scientific efficiency standards to aid the unfortunate and downtrodden.

Beginning in 1925, Bilbo’s editorials railed against a “School Book Trust” that gouged

Mississippi’s school patrons.3 The Free Lance claimed that the agents of book publishing firms from East Coast cities bribed and extorted the members of the Mississippi

Textbook Commission to adopt new basal readers and other texts, saddling taxpayers with unnecessary costs in buying new rounds of schoolbooks for their children. Unlike many other states, Mississippi required that parents purchase schoolbooks instead of students borrowing them from the schools that they attended.

Bilbo further assailed the textbook commission for failure to properly screen book content. In late 1924, the commission adopted a Macmillan and Company text entitled

Advanced Geography, which Bilbo insisted “brands Mississippi…as the most undesirable section of the Union, when in fact it is the most favored spot in the Universe.” The former governor objected to the book’s content about southern climatic conditions, noting that the intense heat of summer along with unpredictable winter weather made truck crop agriculture problematic. The text’s author charged, moreover, that geographical conditions such as sandy coastal plain extending from Florida to Texas further meant that

Mississippi contained an inhospitable climate for food crops, implicitly indicting

3 Bobby Wade Saucier, “The Public Career of Theodore G. Bilbo,” (PhD diss. Tulane University, 1971), 64-76; Larry T. Balsamo, “Theodore G. Bilbo and Mississippi Politics,” (PhD diss. University of Missouri), 1967, 151; and (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, “Whitfield’s Two Million Dollar Text Book Commission, Taxpayers Forgotten,” Dec. 25, 1924.

planters’ overreliance on cotton production. Yet Bilbo countered, “Mississippi is the garden spot of the entire country,” considering the text’s negativity as an “unfair, vicious and a damnable libel upon Mississippi.” He charged the authors with “nothing short of treason.” The Free Lance editorials, moreover, denounced Whitfield and the school-book trust for foisting the text upon the state.4

In 1926, State Superintendent of Education Willard F. Bond, who took office ten years earlier by virtue of appointment by then-Governor Bilbo, demanded that

Macmillan’s editors revise the content or else he would ban Advanced Geography regardless of the textbook regulatory agency’s approval. Thus, Bilbo generated allies in the campaign against the offending text. In Free Lance editorials, he reprinted Bond’s letters in which the state education chief revealed his three goals while in public office.

Bond wanted to “have all matter unfair to the South removed from schools, get good books cheap and remove teachings in books that contradict the Bible.”5 The controversy over the text highlighted how progressives such as Bilbo and Bond attempted to fashion highly centralized educational services in hopes of revising curricular standards to inculcate student devotion to an idealized white Protestant vision of Mississippi.6

As a solution to offensive book content in addition to the mysterious school-book trust that gouged patrons, Bilbo proposed a state-owned textbook printing plant, stopping

4 “A Libel on Mississippi and the Entire Southland,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Jan. 15, 1925, 1. For an account of the sectional divide in textbooks nationally, see Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts Over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present,” (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 20-21.

5 “Head of Department of Education Will Have No Libelous Geography Texts,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Feb. 5, 1925, 1.

6 During his first term in office, in 1916 Bilbo appointed Bond to head the Mississippi Department of Education, and Bond won reelection to that office in subsequent years.

short of offering a plan to provide students with free textbooks. In other words, parents would continue to purchase books for their children, but Bilbo promoted the printing plant as a way of reducing costs. In the pages of the Free Lance, he generated support for the printing press to produce texts in Mississippi “instead of books by northern authors, many of whom are not informed nor in sympathy with the ideals, progress, and history of the South.”7 If Mississippi had a state press, Bilbo argued, school patrons could purchase texts at cost that would benefit the white population—most of whom were impoverished small farmers. Bilbo trumpeted his plan as an efficient, progressive idea to equalize the educational opportunities among different classes of the state’s white population.

Affordable textbooks would enable more Mississippians to receive an education that would in essence “Make the Free Schools Free!”—which he used in 1927 as a campaign slogan.8

From the pages of the Free Lance to the campaign stump to its repeated failure before the state legislature between 1928 and 1932, the state printing press panacea reveals myriad challenges progressives faced when crafting education reform initiatives.

Lawmakers and the state media joined forces to defeat Bilbo’s “pet” project. Complicated by the Great Depression, this issue became the state’s first flashpoint in textbook politics because it inflamed existing political tensions between Mississippi’s major white constituencies in the Democratic Party. On one side, Mississippi’s poor white majority believed an active government should shield them from exploitative business practices.

7 “Reaching Conclusions Without Investigation,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Feb. 5, 1925, 1.

8 Theodore G. Bilbo, “A Chief Cause of Failure of the Public Schools,” 3, n.d. Box 111, Folder 6 Textbook Issue. Theodore G. Bilbo Papers, Special Collections, William D. McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter referred to as Bilbo Papers-USM.

Conservatives in state and county government successfully blocked Bilbo’s printing press proposal and many other social welfare type proposals. Limits to standardized educational services doomed Bilbo’s proposal and his second term. A phalanx of business-minded conservatives—the legacy of the state’s elites or Bourbon politicians— led the charge against “The Man” (as his admirers called him).

Bilbo’s printing press battle represented a flashpoint in a longer struggle to fashion a universal and modern system of public education in Mississippi. The impediment to the governor’s goals involved the dual purposes schooling served in a rigidly segregated state containing a majority black population. If Bilbo lowered costs for textbooks, many of his detractors feared that black students would take advantage of educational services. Such an event offended most whites, who considered African

Americans as incapable of formal education beyond basic reading and other skills necessary for a life of agricultural labor. The 1920s, moreover, represented an era in which poor whites finally began to see the value of schooling. Yet the wealthier conservative faction believed that elementary and secondary education should serve only the elites as training centers for college and eventual leadership in business and state government.

During an era when paved highways connected Mississippi’s small towns making commodities available to the state’s consumers, education reformers like Bilbo and Bond advocated expansion of the state’s public school system. The debate over modernizing education raised a constellation of new political issues that dominated the remainder of the twentieth century, and many of these involved textbook production, distribution, and content. Since textbook controversies involved centralization and standardization of

educational services, such a change jeopardized many whites’ ideas about the differing roles of schooling for the wealthy, the poor, and African Americans. Standardization necessarily implied one system of education serving all equally, which most whites considered antithetical to segregated society. The textbook commission’s mandate for uniformity of schoolbooks and the change to a centralized administration of public schools spawned robust opposition by the conservative faction that bemoaned bureaucracy and expansion of government power at the expense of local control.

Curriculum issues and knowledge dissemination via schoolbooks emerged from reformers’ modernization efforts, and they struggled with designing a public school system serving whites universally while limiting the educational opportunities afforded to

African Americans.

Class and race issues bedeviled public officials’ management of school growth and curriculum centralization in the early twentieth century. As V.O. Key stated in his classic study of Mississippi’s political structure, “the beginning and end…is the Negro,” and a similar description is apt for the state’s education system.9 Any progressive measure designed to lower the costs of schoolbooks stood to benefit African Americans, which is why both sides of the 1920s debate shuttered at the prospect of simply appropriating funds, purchasing textbooks in bulk, and then providing them to patrons.

Reformers like Bilbo championed the schoolbook printing press instead of state-supplied texts as a way to forestall educational opportunities to African Americans. Education professionals with the Mississippi Department of Education relied on reform legislation and citizen organizations such as the Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers

9 Key, Southern Politics, 229.

(PTA) for implementation of reform. These same professionals likewise guarded increased state education expenditures by channeling General Education Board (GEB) philanthropy to benefit white schools while backing vocational education as the standard- bearer in black school curriculum.

Scholars have noted how education reform occurred much differently in the South when compared to national trends.10 Historical analyses of the Progressive Era have situated school reform in a broader movement for standards, efficiency, and order.11 The roles played by a large cast of reformers foreground many of these studies. Education reform either mimicked efficiency standards crafted by business experts or it developed from grassroots activism.12 In the South, historians have concentrated on examining the

10 Wayne J. Urban, ed., Essays in Twentieth-Century Southern Education: Exceptionalism and its Limits (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), x; and Dewey W. Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), xv.

11 For overview examinations of the Progressive Era, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R, 1st Edition (New York: Knopf, 1956); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1913-1917 (New York: Harper, 1954); David M. Kennedy, ed., Progressivism: The Critical Issues (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); David P. Thelen, “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” Journal of American History 56 (September 1969): 323-41; Robert H. Weibe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (London: Macmillian, 1967); Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Re- Interpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963); Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans in the Progressive Era (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Michael A McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003); and Maureen Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890s-1920s (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 2007).

12 Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962); Michael B. Katz, Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York: Praeger, 1971); S. Alexander Rippa, Education in a Free Society: An American History, 4th Edition (New York: Longman Inc., 1980); Michael W. Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); David Hogan, “Education and Class Formation: The Peculiarities of the Americans,” in Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education, ed. Michael Apple (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); Joel Spring, The American School, 1642-1985: Varieties of Historical Interpretation of the Foundations and Development of Education (New York and London: Longman Inc., 1986); and William J. Reese, Power and Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). 28

expansion of black educational opportunities. Other analyses locate southern progressivism vis-à-vis education as a result of New South promoters’ hopes of restructuring society to entice financial and industrial development. More case studies of southern progressivism emphasize local opposition and ambivalence toward centralization of state services, especially education.13 Examinations of Mississippi’s universal public education system have followed the historiographical debates, but only one book chapter has focused on the tensions over centralization that emerged from state mandated textbook uniformity.14 Centralization of educational services is an important

13 Charles W. Dabney presented an early regional study in Universal Education in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936); Wayne E. Fuller studied the differences of progressive reform in the Midwest in The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Yet Fuller’s assumptions have been challenged by Paul Theobald in Call School: Rural Education in the Midwest to 1918 (Carbondale and other cities: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995); The earliest account of black educational experiences was written by Horace Mann Bond, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order, updated edition (New York: Octagon Books, 1970 [1934]). See also, Henry Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); and Louis R. Harlan, Separate and Unequal: Public School Campaigns and Racism in the Southern Seabord States, 1901-1915 (New York: Atheneum, 1968); and Paul D. Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 1912-1916 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Leon Prather, Sr. Resurgent Politics and Educational Progressivism in the New South: North Carolina, 1890-1913 (Rutherford, NY and other cities: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1979), 11; James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 282-83, 285; James D. Anderson, “Northern Foundations and the Shaping of Southern Black Rural Education, 1902-1935,” in Social History of American Education, 287-312, eds. B. Edward McClellan and William J. Reese (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 293-307; Thomas V. O’Brien, The Politics of Race and Schooling: Public Education in Georgia, 1900-1961 (Lanham, MD and other cities: Lexington Books, 1999); William A. Link. His many books and articles include A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); “Privies, Progressivism, and Public Schools: Health Reform and Education in the Rural South, 1909-1920” Journal of Southern History 54 (Nov. 1988): 642; and The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1992). Like Grantham and others, Link argues that most southern educational reform was led by indigenous southerners. The best analysis that emphasizes how school curricula and educational pedagogy affected external society rather than society changing the schools, see James L. Leloudis, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

14 Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 3-33; David Sansing, Making Haste Slowly: The Troubled History of Higher Education in Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990); 29

historical and contemporary topic, but this example from 1920s and 1930s Mississippi

shows political obstacles in creating uniform educational opportunity for all of its

residents despite class or race.

The Mississippi example offers unique sets of circumstances based on the

political divisions among the white power structure. Progressive impulses outlined by

Bilbo represented a hiccup since the movement had largely waned due in part to post-

World War I prosperity. Yet Bilbo developed his political ideas during the height of the

Progressive Era when he served as governor between 1916 and 1920. Prevented from

running for consecutive gubernatorial terms, Bilbo reappeared as a viable candidate in the

mid-1920s complete with a progressive political agenda that he fashioned earlier.

Conservative white elites, likewise, claimed the mantle of progressive reformer, but their

vision competed with the interests of Bilbo and his dirt farmers and redneck constituency.

These elites, represented by Henry L. Whitfield, sought fewer government regulations

and retrenchment of programs that aided the impoverished. Both political factions could

agree on one point, and the furthering of the social separation between blacks and whites

remained an important goal for both the progressives and conservatives.

Similar to other southern states, universal public education in Mississippi began

after the Civil War and developed slowly through its first five decades. During the late

nineteenth century, locally-controlled common schools serving white communities dotted

the countryside. The white common schools emphasized the proverbial “three R’s” in

ungraded one-room operations usually led by one or two teachers. Historian Christopher

and Arthur W. Foshay, “Textbooks, Textbook Publishers, and the Quality of Schooling,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States, David L. Elliot, ed., 23-41 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).

Span documents how hearty local initiative and northern benevolent societies like the

American Missionary Association (AMA) enabled growth of black common schools from the end of the war until the turn of the century.15 The 1890 Mississippi Constitution mandated separate schools for whites and for “colored” children between the ages of six and twenty-one. It likewise required uniformity of the dual system of public schools, but earlier reform advocates believed state government did not bear the responsibility of providing education for African Americans.16

One early education reformer, Governor James K. Vardaman, rose to high office through a mixture of populist sentiment and racial demagoguery. Nicknamed the “Great

White Chief,” Vardaman appealed to the state’s impoverished whites while solidifying political ties to black-majority county elites, which included Bourbon political leaders, business-minded investors, and large planters. Vardaman likewise feared blacks’ upward social and economic mobility gained by formal schooling that jeopardized the socioeconomic structures inherent in a racial caste system. “Education ruins a good field hand,” Vardaman declared, revealing his disdain for black schools. His administration crafted a reform agenda as a protective measure to perpetuate racial social distance that would be undermined if blacks received a state-supported education.17

15 Christopher Span, From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1875 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), xx.

16 Mississippi Constitution of 1890, Article 8, Section 207, database on-line < http://www.mscode.com/msconst/archives/8-207.html> accessed Aug. 5, 2013; and Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 12-13.

17 Neil McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); and Stephen Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi After Reconstruction, 1877-1917 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 221; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 15.

Inequitable distribution of education funds exacerbated existing tensions between the state’s impoverished whites and wealthier business elites and large planters. County population demographics, moreover, complicated the White Chief’s ability to reform the schools, and many of these institutions lacked uniformity. Blacks, largely disfranchised and exploited by financial relationships such as the crop-lien law, paid little if any taxes.

Yet taxation benefitted whites living in black majority counties such as the Delta and in the extreme east-central counties stretching from Meridian to Aberdeen that formed part of the geographic blackbelt. A county’s total number of black and white educable children determined state education funds disbursed. Since black counties had a larger total population of educable students, they received a larger cut in state appropriations despite the fact that few African Americans had the opportunity to attend school; most spent more time in the fields than in the classroom. White majority counties in the northeastern Red Clay Hills region and the south-central Piney Woods needed more money to maintain viable schools, yet the lower number of total educable children than their Delta and blackbelt counterparts rendered less backing from the state. Vardaman’s administration failed in equalizing state expenditures and the animus between poorer and wealthier whites became the major political issue that dominated early twentieth century state politics.18

While Vardaman directed anti-education sentiment toward blacks, impoverished whites likewise considered formal schooling of little value beyond basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. White tenant farmers needed more field hands rather than educated

18 Stephen Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi After Reconstruction, 1877- 1917 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 221-22; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 13-15.

children.19 The curriculum at the time hardly prepared anyone for a life outside of the agricultural economy. Reading skills taught at common schools focused on Bible study and arithmetic instruction that emphasized the rule of three. Children learned rote memorization rather than critical thinking, problem solving, and understanding. Teachers, many of whom lacked an education themselves, relied on textbooks as the curriculum standard. In the state’s semi-autonomous and decentralized schools few education professionals attempted curriculum development while the state department of education hardly interfered with local decision-making. New South economic changes and the transition to consumer culture while farm acreage diminished generated political advocacy of education reform.20

Uniformity of the system provided the major thrust for many reformers, but the disparate types of common schools that existed complicated their goal. Before Bilbo’s first term as governor, four thousand white common schools dotted the countryside, relying on one or two teachers to perform all educational operations. Larger towns such as Vicksburg, Jackson, and Meridian had graded schools, serving the children of town elites. African Americans lacked many educational opportunities, but by 1919 black common schools increased to 3,456. These depended on northern philanthropic institutions for funding and personnel since Mississippi spent a paltry $1.53 per black student. Despite these humble beginnings, black common schools remained a core part of

19 Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 42, 98-99.

20 James Leloudis, Schooling the New South, 22, 30-33; Link, A Hard Country, 40; Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 131-32, 164-67; An excellent study of centralization concerns and shaping school content to reflect Protestant Christianity, see Charles A. Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicals, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870-1925 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2004); and Edward L. Ayers offers a near comprehensive examination of economic changes affecting Mississippi in The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (London: Oxford University Press, 1993). 33

these communities well into the 1960s.21 Whether black or white, as many as fifteen to twenty common schools were scattered across a typical county. An 1886 state law allowed towns exceeding 750 in population to separate from the county system to form municipal separate school districts that strengthened local authority.22

Similar to the common school system, hundreds of high schools existed throughout the state and each operated on a semi-autonomous basis. In the early nineteenth century, the secondary school movement began and spread into the South following the Civil War.23 Mississippi education scholar Euclid Ray Jobe documented the growth of high schools beginning during the Vardman administration. By 1902, some counties and towns offered tuition-based secondary education for the white minority population; these eighty-nine high schools relied on tuition and fees for operating funds.

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Mississippi’s secondary system reflected the class divisions among whites; town schools maintained a curricula to craft future state leaders while rural institutions reinforced poor whites’ role as agricultural laborers. The Mississippi legislature refused appropriations for these schools until 1910 when it establish agricultural high schools.24 Rural whites preferred these institutions for

21 Mississippi Department of Education, Twenty Years of Progress and a Biennial Survey of Public Education in Mississippi (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Education, 1931), 9-10, 19-21; McMillen, Dark Journey; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal, 17, 21.

22 Mississippi Department of Education, Twenty Years of Progress, 9-10; and Euclid Ray Jobe, Curriculum Development in Mississippi Public White High Schools, 1900-1945 (Nashville, TN: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1950), 4.

23 William J. Reese, America’s Public Schools: From Common School to ‘No Child Left Behind,’ updated edition (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 91-100; Jobe, White High Schools, 10.

24 Jobe, White High Schools, 4-6.

their children since agricultural schools taught students basic farming in addition to serving a “purely literary function.” In some locations, Mississippians relied on graded, four- and two-year high schools. Municipal high schools educated the children of the elites, who took basic college preparatory courses consisting of algebra, logic, Latin, literature, history, geometry, and civics. Since these schools “exclude[d] many prospective students,” coupled with tuition fees and a classical curriculum designed to train future state leaders, the divisions separating town elites and the rural dirt farmers became more pronounced.25

Vardaman’s reform agenda included a consolidation plan requiring the merger of common schools to form large county elementary and secondary institutions.

Consolidation, proponents argued, allowed education professionals state control over curriculum and pedagogy. As in North Carolina and Virginia, consolidation angered rural whites. Many at the local level considered merging neighborhood schools across the county to be a paternalistic power grab by the state in which local decision-making diminished.26 Mississippians also resented what they perceived as a loss of tradition with the dismantling of the one-room common school. Lifelong professional educator Willard

F. Bond fondly remembered, for example, that “the one-room school had a warm place in my heart…and I would always honor its memory for the fine service it rendered in its day.”27 Despite the lack of standardization and efficiency of the one-room schools,

25 Ibid., 7.

26 William A. Link, A Hard Country, 21-40; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal, 16.

27 Willard F. Bond, I Had a Friend: An Autobiography (Kansas City, MO: E.L. Mendenhall Printers, Inc., 1958), 100. 35

consolidation proceeded only gradually throughout the twentieth century and remains controversial.

As the state consolidated disparate elementary and secondary schools, reformers conceived of a uniform and standard curriculum that relied on textbooks as the basis for each subject. E.R. Jobe insisted that during this early phase of the state’s educational development that, “No single tool of instruction has been of greater importance than the textbook…teachers and school administrators looked upon the list of textbooks as the curriculum.”28 The Vardaman reform agenda consisted of requiring uniform textbooks used in all public schools via establishment of a textbook regulatory agency. Reformers had several reasons for centralizing administration and adoption of textbooks. In the

1890s, news of a scandal had spread throughout Mississippi in which publishing company agents bribed local superintendents for new textbook adoptions thereby requiring patrons to purchase the newer texts. In Holmes County, for instance, residents refused to purchase the new books and the local textbook board rescinded its decision.

Centralizing textbook adoptions at the state level diminished town elites’ control over selection and adoption, Vardaman believed.29

Since schoolbooks determined curriculum, reformers wanted additional administrative control of textbook content.30 In 1904, the legislature passed Vardaman’s proposal that created the Mississippi Textbook Commission to regulate book prices and

28 Jobe, White High Schools, 124. Emphasis added.

29 Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 98.

30 Arthur Woodward and David L. Elliott, “Textbook Use and Teacher Professionalism,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States: Eighty-Ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, eds. David L. Elliott and Arthur Woodward, 178-93 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 178-85. 36

adopt texts with acceptable content. Commission members screened books from each subject area, including orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, civics, and composition. Language in the original 1904 statute demonstrates a major reason for the textbook commission: “no history in relation to the late Civil War between the states shall be used in the schools in this state unless it be fair and impartial.”31 By “fair and impartial” lawmakers who inserted the clause meant that any presentation of historical knowledge about the Civil War had to be fair and impartial regarding Mississippi’s role in that conflict. The language in the law reflects the enduring educational activism of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Since the end of Reconstruction, the UDC coordinated official memory of the Civil War era or what historians refer to as the Lost Cause. Erecting monuments and disseminating histories called The Catechism to schools, clubwomen created a durable mythos about the conflict and leaders of the rebellion in addition to fomenting a distinctive southern identity tied to

Protestantism.32 The textbook commission bill demonstrates how reformers crafted a state regulatory agency that sanctioned official historical knowledge. The prevalent historical ideas overlapped with Protestant Christianity as the UDC considered maintaining its version of the Civil War and Reconstruction in school curriculum as a

31 Textbook and curriculum provisions in state laws were amended repeatedly, especially as high schools developed and matured in the state. Mississippi Legislature. Laws of the State of Mississippi, Passed at a Regular Session, 1904. (Maryville, TN: Press of Brandon Printing Company, 1904), 116; and Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 98.

32 Charles Reagan Wilson developed the civil religion thesis vis-à-vis the Lost Cause. See Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981). More recently, however, Joan Marie Johnson has argued that clubwomen used the Lost Cause structure as a means toward strengthening Jim Crow in Southern Ladies, New Women: Race, Region, and Clubwomen in South Carolina, 1890-1930 (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida), 2-4.

part of both regional and Christian devotion. Publishing companies acquiesced to southern states’ historical standards, producing sympathetic content to mollify southern sensitivity to the Civil War, white supremacy, and Protestantism. When this practice ended in the 1960s, civic club reformers struggled with maintaining control over historical and religious knowledge.33

The Mississippi Textbook Commission was a state-level bureaucracy. According to the 1904 law, two regulatory bodies governed the screening and adoption of schoolbooks used in Mississippi. The governor appointed eight educators to five-year terms to coordinate screening and adoption of all elementary school texts. The high school commission operated differently since the law provided the appointment power of screeners to the state superintendent, the director of high schools, and the manager of rural or common schools. The act enabled commission members to examine textbook content and set contracts with publishing companies for books to be sold to patrons. Once publishing companies agreed upon bids, contractual agreements meant that the adopted texts would be used for a period of five years and eligible for extension if necessary. The law merely stabilized the costs of texts for the five-year contract. The costs of textbooks borne by parents attained additional salience after a second wave of education reform during the first Theodore G. Bilbo administration.34

Bilbo received an excellent secondary education in comparison to many of his peers, and he devoted his political career to equalizing educational opportunities between

33 For an analysis of the role Civil War history played nationally in states’ adoptions of various textbooks, see Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA and other cities: Harvard University Press, 2002), 32-54; and Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 76-83.

34 Laws of the State of Mississippi, 1904 Regular Session, 116-19; and Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 98.

rich and poor. He thus carried on Vardaman’s agenda of equalizing opportunity and maintaining white supremacy. The Man received some college training in education and law. He taught briefly in Poplarville before his entry into state politics, riding the coattails of Vardaman’s success in appealing to the interests of farm families from small, rural communities. Unlike his mentor, however, Bilbo used school reform as a method to garner votes, believing that open access to education would eventually dilute Delta county hegemony in state politics.35 He argued that the funding formula for Mississippi’s public schools perpetuated class inequalities and regional factionalism. In two non- consecutive terms as governor, Bilbo sought to correct school funding imbalance between the more populated Delta counties and their Piney Woods and Red Clay Hill counterparts. He diverged from Vardaman in other ways as well, especially Bilbo’s suspicion of railroad and timber company interests in the state. His first term as governor between 1916 and 1920 is a testament to his record as a progressive politician who favored government action to order society by strengthening social distance between white and black citizens thereby preventing an interracial alliance among the poor.36

During his first term, Bilbo tried to equalize school funding and pass compulsory attendance laws. The latter measure initially passed in 1918 and amended in 1920 required all educable white children to attend school until age fourteen.37 The school system required additional state contributions with mandatory attendance and Bilbo

35 For a detailed analysis of Delta-Hill country factionalism, see Key, Southern Politics, 246-47.

36 Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 26-29; Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 4; Saucier, “Bilbo,” 6-7; Cresswell, Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race, 222-27, 234; and Albert D. Kirwan, Revolt of the Rednecks: Mississippi Politics, 1877-1925 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1965), 252-53, 313-14.

37 Compulsory School Attendance Act, Ch. 156, Laws of the State of Mississippi As Passed at a Regular Session of the Legislature, Jan. 6 to April 3, 1920 (Jackson: Tucker House, 1920), 216-18. In 1930, the legislature amended the law requiring students between ages 7 and 16 to attend school. 39

proved successful in convincing the legislature to boost appropriations to $1.9 million.

The measure actually had the effect of increasing the funding disparity between more populous Delta counties and lesser populated white-majority ones. The state superintendent’s office distributed funds based on the total number of educable children residing in each county, but the equalization law failed to affect the method for counting educable children. Black majority counties in the Delta and in the eastern blackbelt had far more total educable children than those located in the Piney Woods or Red Clay Hills sections. Black schools, however, did not benefit from the increase in appropriation because district education superintendents earmarked state funds only for white schools.

In his study of Bilbo’s political career, historian Larry T. Balsamo provides an example explaining the unequal funding. In one year black majority Bolivar County received

$17,000 for its schools, while white majority Pearl River County received a paltry $1,300 despite having far more white children enrolled. In short, Delta county public officials used the black population to attain a larger cut of education appropriation that benefitted only white patrons. In reaction, Bilbo introduced legislation to equalize the funding distribution and in the process he formed more political enemies from Delta counties. At first the school equalization measure included provisions for mandatory school attendance. When faced with hostility by black majority county representatives and senators who feared a loss of local control and individual freedom, a legislative study committee recommended separating the bills. Compulsory school attendance passed but the equalization law failed and continued to be a major political issue until the 1950s.38

38 Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 21.

Since it required parents to purchase textbooks for their children, the compulsory attendance law had unintended consequences. Larger families bought varying sets of books each year until their children quit attending school or graduation, and handed down texts to younger family members. Coupled with the unequal distribution of school funds, wealthier patrons benefitted because they could easily afford the $30 to $35 annual costs for a set of schoolbooks for one child. For most whites, however, school attendance became increasingly fraught with difficulties. Travel to county schools was a hardship in addition to buying books each year of a child’s education. With many parents working as farm laborers earning on average about $400 to $800 annually, textbook expenses became an obstacle to securing a public school education for their children.39 In addition, in 1918, educatiors faced new challenges in catering to “33,186 white children…who had never been to school before.”40

The Bilbo administration sought additional regulatory controls through the textbook commission by regulating book content and banning instructional materials advocating social equality between the races. In 1916, the legislature amended commission statutes to include the growing system of agricultural high schools. The measure required curriculum uniformity in public high schools that consisted of spelling, reading, arithmetic, geography, English, U.S. and Mississippi history, civil government, elements of agriculture, and finally health and hygiene.41 The amendment attempted to

39 “More About Whitfield’s Two Million Dollar Commission” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Jan. 8, 1925.

40 Mississippi Department of Education, Twenty Years of Progress, 34.

41 Uniform Curriculum Act, Ch. 187, Laws of the State of Mississippi As Passed at a Regular Session of the Legislature, Jan. 4 to April 6, 1916 (Memphis: E.H. Clarke and Bro. Printing, 1916), 277-78.

spare patrons of additional book costs, but proved difficult to enforce. Based on recommendations from Bilbo, the act made publishers provide the textbook commission with sworn statements that the schoolbooks were “the lowest net wholesale price” or “not more than 75 per cent of the price list.”42 A 1920 new law banning social equality, prohibited by penalty of a $500 fine or six months in jail “any person, firm, or corporation who shall be guilty of printing, publishing, or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter, urging or presenting for public acceptation or general information, arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes.”43 The national debates among educational theorists led Mississippi lawmakers to forbid social equality in published materials. Developing out of Chicago and Columbia Universities, new anthropological research questioned the idea of race, and revisionist historians began writing about the effects racial discrimination and slavery had on southern society. Lawmakers hoped to censor such materials.44

Lingering issues related to textbooks became a lasting political controversy as the state inched toward centralization of school administration. Shortly after Bilbo’s first term concluded, his appointee as state superintendent of education, Willard F. Bond, faced a challenged election in which his opponent raised book costs as the major political issue in the campaign.45 In the 1923 campaign, Hattiesburg Separate School District

42 An Act to Amend the Mississippi State Textbook Commission, Ch. 179, Laws of the State of Mississippi As Passed at a Regular Session of the Legislature, Jan. 4 to April 6, 1916 (Memphis: E.H. Clarke and Bro. Printing), 262, 259-60.

43 An Act Prohibiting Instruction in Social Equality, Ch. 156, Laws of the State of Mississippi As Passed at a Regular Session of the Legislature, Jan. 6 to April 3, 1920 (Jackson: Tucker House), 307.

44 Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 137-74; Evans, The Social Studies Wars, 137-38; and Burkholder, Color in the Classroom, 15-64.

Superintendent F.B. Woodley challenged Bond on the fact that schoolbooks could be purchased cheaper in Tennessee. The person responsible for this situation, Woodley insisted, was Bond since he allegedly colluded with publishing company representatives and agents. Woodley circulated a political cartoon in which “Mississippi was represented as a cow being milked by the textbook companies” while Bond reigned in the beast. The education chief shot back that Woodley had served as “a Boston-paid agent” of a major textbook publishing firm, Ginn and Company, but otherwise ignored his challenger’s claims.46 The textbook board received only $1,800 in appropriation annually and meager salaries for commission members rendered them susceptible to accepting gifts from company representatives.47 Nonetheless, Woodley’s challenge fell flat and Bond defeated him in the 1923 election.48

In his gubernatorial runs in 1923 and 1927, Bilbo made textbooks the “keystone” issue in his campaigns. As he exited the governor’s mansion in 1920, he gauged legislative support for a state-owned printing plant as a means of reducing the costs of basic instructional materials.49 Campaign speeches emphasized overbearing expenses

45 State Superintendent of Education was a political office that was usually unchallenged in state elections. See Article 8, Section 202, Mississippi Constitution of 1890 < http://www.mscode.com/msconst/8/8-202.html> accessed Sept. 8, 2013; Willard F. Bond, I Had a Friend, 137; and Reuben W. Griffith, “The Public School, 1890-1970,” in A History of Mississippi, Vol. 2, ed. Richard A. McLemore (Jackson: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), 392.

46 Bond, I Had a Friend, 137-38; and Political Cartoon and W.F. Bond Campaign Advertisement, found in Box 1, Folder 1, W.F. Bond Correspondence, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as Bond Papers.

47 Mississippi Free Lance, “Reaching Conclusions Without Investigation,” Feb. 5, 1925; and Mississippi Legislature, Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at the Regular Session, 1924 (Marysville, TN: Brandon Printing Company, 1925), xx.

48 Bond, I Had a Friend, 138.

49 Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 150. 43

associated with schoolbook purchases every year of a child’s education. He argued that a

state-owned printing press would reduce the costs of books by as much as fifty percent

based on two states, California and Kansas, which operated such presses. State printing of

textbooks, Bilbo argued, was a panacea for various ills that affected Mississippi. A state

press saved taxpayers and school patrons money, streamlined the process for printing

government materials, and “protected” school children from dangerous ideas such as

Darwinian evolution. The point about evolution represented an interesting aside in

Mississippi’s first textbook controversy, and the state was rather unique in its approach.

As news of the Scopes evolution case reached Mississippians, the state government acted

quickly in passing a law outlawing its teaching. During legislative debates on the topic,

few instances of anyone advocating evolution came to light, which reflected lawmakers’

proactive approach in protecting Christian religious myths.50 Upon losing the Democratic

primary runoff to opponent Henry L. Whitfield, in the summer of 1923 Bilbo created the

vehicle to energize his political base in a future gubernatorial bid, the Mississippi Free

Lance.51 The paper routinely exploited textbook politics by advocating the state printing press proposal.

Between election cycles, the state textbook commission ordered adoption of a completely new round of books that fed Bilbo’s appetite in discrediting the Whitfield administration. The headlines in the Free Lance blamed the governor for the costly new book adoptions, especially “Whitfield’s Two Million Dollar Textbook Commission;

50 Laats, Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era, 82-120.

51 Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics, 149-50; and Theodore G. Bilbo to A.B. Schauber, Aug. 6, 1925, Box 9, Folder 18 “Free Lance: General Correspondence,” Bilbo Papers-USM. 44

Taxpayers Forgotten.” The new adoption required parents to purchase new texts instead

of handing down older, used books to their younger children. The decision blasted by the

Bilbo organ claimed the commission cost the state a million dollars to discard the old

editions and another million—passed on to school patrons—for the purchase of the newly

adopted ones.52 In subsequent editorials, Bilbo’s paper reprinted opinions from around

the state denouncing the regulatory agency’s action. The Free Lance connected the

board’s decision to Whitfield and the school-book trust comprised of textbook publishing

company agents who allegedly influenced public officials.53 Tying the textbook issue to political factions and the regional divide, Bilbo insisted that his recrimination was “not political, but a universal demand of an outraged people.”54 The Memphis Commercial

Appeal agreed when its Jackson correspondent wrote that “public schools were not established for benefit of authors and school book publishers, but in order that the poor children of the land may enjoy educational privileges that formerly were reserved for the wealthy alone.”55 The issue boiled down to class resentment very similar to populous

Delta counties receiving higher state financial support for public schools.

Bilbo championed the state printing press as the logical solution to unnecessary new book adoptions, reflecting a consistency in The Man’s political thought. He believed that state government held the responsibility for intervening between the interests of

52 “Whitfield’s Two Million Dollar Text Book Commission, Taxpayers Forgotten,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Dec. 25, 1924, 1.

53 “Whitfield’s Commission” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Jan. 8, 1925, 1.

54 “Leaders of the Southland Astounded,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Jan. 27, 1925, 1.

55 “Mississippi News: Textbook Fiasco,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Dec. 27, 1924, 5.

private corporations and the general public.56 The state printing press, Bilbo argued, provided the vehicle for that intervention. A state-owned press theoretically would reduce the costs of publishing so that school patrons could purchase texts at cost, representing as much as fifty per cent savings. Bilbo relied on the California and Kansas printing press models to make these claims. The Free Lance, moreover, used statements from various officials from those states promoting the idea and they acknowledged their initial skepticism of the plan before its implementation. Later, they said they recognized the savings induced by centralization of textbook production.57 Bilbo’s schoolbook cost reduction plan via the state press reflected his progressive desire to equalize access to education by cutting out the corporate denizens who erected barriers to educational opportunity.

The Bilbo organ hyped the textbook issue throughout the 1927 gubernatorial campaign, listing reasons for high costs as other newspapers challenged these claims. The

Free Lance pointed to author royalties, company profit, advertising costs, agents’ salaries, commissions to retailers and wholesalers, and public officials’ susceptibility to graft while serving on the textbook commission.58 The textbook issue resonated with the general public as well. Even college students at the University of Mississippi debated the proposal, and ironically the children of many Delta and business conservatives believed

Bilbo’s state printing press would provide relief to thousands of white families.59 The

56 Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 2-3; and Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 17. 57 “Printing of School Books in the State of Kansas,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, April 2, 1925, 1.

58 “The School-Book Tax,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Sept. 9, 1926; and “Reaching Conclusions Without Investigation,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Feb. 5, 1925.

59 “Reaching Conclusions Without Investigation,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Feb. 5, 1925. 46

capital city newspapers, the Daily Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Daily News, decried

Bilbo’s proposal as a socialistic idea since a state press theoretically competed with

private business. By the time Bilbo successfully reclaimed the governor’s mansion, the

state’s established newspaper publishers and editors organized opposition to the proposal

since any state press threatened to cut into their printing contract profits.

The Mississippi public education system had yet to modernize and supply the

central curricular vehicle—textbooks—to school patrons and very few political voices

advocated the idea. Complex reasons existed in explaining why Bilbo and others refused

state-supplied schoolbooks. State appropriation for education during Bilbo’s first term

was just shy of $2 million and the Whitfield administration introduced numerous bills to

divert these funds to support higher education, especially the University of Mississippi,

Delta State Teachers College, and Mississippi A&M. The ruling faction from the Delta

counties routinely supported higher education at the expense of elementary and

secondary schools because a dynamic system of colleges and universities helped maintain

the class position of business-oriented conservatives in the state.60 If the state dipped into

its public school funds to purchase textbooks from publishers then all schools in the state

would suffer from the shortfall. Many county schools direly needed more funds for

operation expenses and transportation costs. A free textbook program quite simply would

lead to higher taxation, which both Bilbo and his opponents opposed. Such a measure,

moreover, would benefit the corporate interests responsible for the high costs of books in

60 State appropriations for public elementary and secondary schools increased to $1.7 million in 1916 and $1.9 million in 1918 before falling during the next seven years. See Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 16-18, 151; and Sansing, Making Haste Slowly, 87-90.

the first place—the East Coast publishing houses. A couple of elected leaders advocated state appropriation for state-supplied textbooks to students—Senator Wilbert N. Taylor of

Hinds County and Judge Paul B. Johnson, Sr. of Hattiesburg—but their ideas gained little traction.61 State-provided texts involved black students in addition to the state’s white minority. If the legislature appropriated money for textbook purchases and then supplied students with these books, black patrons would benefit as well. Black educational opportunities had expanded since 1919 and Bilbo and many other printing press proponents rebuffed any notion for equitability in black and white education.62

Bilbo’s political challengers, moreover, advocated free textbooks, especially

Hattiesburg District Judge Paul B. Johnson, Sr. An ally of Louisiana Governor Huey P.

Long, Johnson suggested state appropriation for schoolbooks in the 1923 and 1927 gubernatorial campaigns, to which the Free Lance noted Bilbo’s opposition “to furnish these books to school children gratis.”63 Historian Chester M. Morgan details the animosity between The Man and the Long regime and Bilbo desperately tried to distance his political agenda from his nearby neighbor.64 In the event of state-supplied textbooks, distribution presented yet another costly challenge that would place responsibility on county superintendents and school officials at the local level in cooperation with an

61 “Printing Plant Measure passes in Upper House,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 24, 1928, 1.

62 In his 1967 study of black education, historian Henry Allen Bullock noted that during Bilbo’s second term, per capita expenditures by Mississippi was only $5.94 per black student while whites enjoyed more than $31 per capita support. See A History of Negro Education in the South (New York: Praeger, 1967), 172.

63 “The School-Book Tax,” (Jackson) Mississippi Free Lance, Sept. 9, 1926.

64 Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 104-5.

increasingly bureaucratized department of education. Bilbo knew that his state-printing press plan faced intense opposition from Delta county conservatives who bemoaned such state-local cooperation. Despite Mississippians’ opposition to state-supplied books, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, more states transitioned to a modern and centralized system by supplying its students with core curriculum materials.65

Bilbo’s credentials as a progressive are difficult to pinpoint. As his critics noted at the time, his state-printing press merely indicated a streak of populism. He appealed to lower class voters—the majority voters at the time—by claiming he had the plan to reduce the costs of sending their children to school. Senator Taylor certainly exploited his aversion to advocating free textbooks and his insistence that the state printing press could lower the costs of book purchase. In most instances, as Taylor noted to the Senate, if

Bilbo’s press idea worked at all, it would only lower the cost of a book by fifteen to twenty cents. He attacked the printing press plan and promoted the state purchase plan based the Texas system of public education, which had actually been “tested out in actual experience…no paternalistic, socialistic vagary such as [Bilbo’s] bill before you.” State purchase of books and loaning them to students, Taylor believed, offered real relief “of the genuine kind and not the political variety.” In other words, the senator charged Bilbo with political opportunism in steadfastly promoting the state printing press. Taylor,

65 Caroline Cody, “The Politics of Textbook Publishing, Adoption, and Use,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States: Eighty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, eds. David L. Elliott and Arthur Woodward, 127-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 132.

moreover, served as president of the white teachers’ association, which had advocated state-purchased books for at least a decade.66

In 1925, Bilbo endorsed the state printing press during speeches in Copiah and

Scott Counties, informing a friend that his comments had “hit a home run.”67 By the 1927 campaign, in addresses to audiences of three to four thousand, The Man indicted the school-book trust and conservatives’ support of the current system. His comments took precedence over other issues such as highway construction, boll weevil eradication, levee construction, and decreases in cotton prices. Education reform consisted of solving problems faced by his Red Clay Hills and Piney Woods voters, whereas the other problems flummoxed Delta conservatives, large Planters, and business elites. By the end of the summer when the campaign season reached its climax before the August primary,

Bilbo argued that his plan for reducing the costs of books would equalize educational opportunities between rich and poor. He advocated, in addition, an eight-month standard term for all of the state’s white schools and equalization of school fund distribution between the more populous and smaller counties.68 Bilbo’s rhetoric indicated his populism since he proposed to solve the textbook barrier endured by impoverished farm families. If he advocated the state-purchase plan, such a system would increase state bureaucracy and only serve to benefit the source of the discontent in the first place—East

Coast book publishing firms—or what he called the school-book trust.

66 W.N. Taylor, “Speech of W.N. Taylor Opposing Senate Bill No. 228,” Feb. 23, 1928 to the Mississippi Senate, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

67 Bilbo to Capt. A.B. Schauber Aug. 6, 1925, Box 9, Folder 18 “Free Lance: General Correspondence,” Bilbo Papers-USM.

68 Ernest G. Edrington, “Special to the Mississippi Free Lance,” June 21, 1927, 1.

Opponents of the state printing press found an apt ally in the Mississippi Press

Association (MPA). The MPA released a pamphlet during the campaign season, providing a point-by-point list of reasons of the “impractical and risky” printing press proposal. The MPA argued that rental costs of textbook printing plates from East Coast publishing houses would come at a high price paid for out of state coffers. The MPA noted that publishers would only rent the plates of outdated texts, thus rendering state- printed books obsolete at the time of their publishing. The result would be teachers relying on supplementary texts that would cost patrons additional expenses. Another flaw in The Man’s proposal hyped by the MPA included state appropriation for the construction of the state printing plant—the cost of which would be borne by taxpayers— followed by annual support to pay the printing plant’s operation expenses. The pamphlet summarized that parents would be paying three ways for books: taxes to support the state printing plant, purchases of supplementary texts, and finally at-cost prices for textbooks produced by the state press.69

In his 1928 inaugural address, Bilbo presented the state press as the cornerstone of his more than $60 million in proposals related to social welfare. He regained the governorship by defeating Martin Sennett “Mike” Connor and Johnson in the Democratic primary, and sitting Governor Dennis Murphree by a 10,000-vote margin in the runoff election. Bilbo appealed to efficiency and standardization to sell the wisdom of the printing press plan. In short, a state press could print schoolbooks more cheaply than publishing houses and would generate revenue. After producing textbooks, the press

69 Mississippi Press Association, “The Proposed State Printing Plant,” 1927, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

could then print state government publications at rates competitive with private printing firms, which belonged to some of the more successful and established newspaper publishers. The press, moreover, could produce municipal and county publications in addition to bulletins by the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service, thus disseminating knowledge of scientific agricultural practices to farmers.70

Bilbo’s education reform agenda with the state printing press as its centerpiece addressed overall lack of school uniformity. The Mississippi Educational Advance, the official organ of the state’s white teachers, acknowledged that 885 one-teacher schools still existed along with 347 two-teacher common schools and 146 three-teacher institutions. Nine hundred and fifty seven schools had absorbed nearby rural common schools as part of the gradual consolidation program. In addition, forty-nine agricultural high schools had been established since Bilbo’s first term as governor. Municipal or town schools accounted for 152 educational institutions and these generally had the benefit of both state and local funds at their disposal. Including 3,416 black common schools, these in total served more than 572,000 black and white children and another estimated

200,000 educable children unable to attend school because they lacked schoolbooks. The state, moreover, struggled with enforcing the compulsory attendance law that placed the onus on county superintendents, who had scant funds to scour the countryside looking for scofflaws. Most white schools operated on eight-month terms, but a significant number truncated these for lack of funds. Bilbo wanted legislators to increase and equalize

70 Murphree ascended to office after Governor Henry L. Whitfield died in office. Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,” 165-67; Saucier, “Bilbo,” 65-65; and Morgan, Redneck Liberal, 42.

funding for public schools, raise teacher pay, implement an eight-month minimum term, establish junior colleges, and authorize a state-owned printing press.71

In his inaugural address Bilbo implored lawmakers to pass his proposals, devoting most of his speech to the state printing press. He said costly textbooks were akin to tuition. Emphasizing the school book trust, Bilbo argued that textbooks were “prohibitive in cost,” which detrimentally affected public education because the “schools are no longer free to the people.” Attempting to convince House opponents, Bilbo claimed political capital resulting from more than 147,000 voters, who elected him governor believing that he could fashion a plan to lower the costs of attending school. “Our people have registered their approval of a state printing press,” Bilbo thundered. He directed most of his comments at his political opponents from the conservative Delta faction, which consisted of House Speaker Thomas L. Bailey and representatives, Joe George,

L.T. Kennedy, and Walter Sillers, Jr.72

The state’s influential newspaper publishers joined the four horsemen of the

Mississippi House in rallying opposition to Bilbo’s pet proposal. In 1928, the MPA released another pamphlet entitled “Bilbo’s Catechism” as if the governor’s insistence on the printing press constituted religious or ideological zeal. The MPA again focused on disposing of Bilbo’s efficiency claims by reprinting articles and statements from newspaper editorials, especially by Daily Clarion-Ledger editor Fred Sullens. Insisting that Bilbo’s printing press would operate in the red and taxpayers would be saddled with

71 “School Statistics,” Mississippi Educational Advance 19, No. 4 (January 1928): 111; Theodore G. Bilbo, “Inaugural Address of Governor Theo. G. Bilbo Delivered before the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, Jan. 17, 1928.” Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as “Second Inaugural.”

72 Bilbo, “Second Inaugural”; and Saucier, “Bilbo,” 75-76.

funding its operation, the MPA cited the U.S. government’s printing plant, which “only cost $135,000 at first, but now costs $8 million to run it.” The MPA concluded that

Mississippians “do not want such an expensive plant on their hands. They are getting by much cheaper than that.”73

Bilbo’s MPA critics accused the governor of advocating plans that amounted to socialism and communism. A Daily Clarion-Ledger editorial stated that “Communism and Bolshevism are identical” and that a state-owned business like Bilbo’s planned printing press would be nothing more than “state management” and “all are a species of communism.” Interestingly, the editorial compared Mississippi’s governor to Russia’s

Lenin and Trotsky, and to fascist Italy’s Il Duce.74 An editorial in the Jackson Weekly

Mississippian considered a state monopoly on textbook publishing would be at the very least “autocratic” and an anathema in a democratic state. The Jackson Daily News editorial asked rhetorically why state government did not produce all commodities for its citizens such as chemical fertilizers, clothing, hats, and canned food.75 The reductio ad absurdum arguments aside, linking Bilbo’s printing press with communism proved an apt rhetorical strategy on the part of the MPA. Business conservatives nationally and in

Mississippi remained on guard against subversive elements in American society since the

73 Mississippi Press Association, “Bilbo’s Catechism on the State Printing Press,” 1928. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

74 Ibid. and (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, “Editorial: Adventure in Communism,” Feb. 8, 1928, 9.

75 The MPA compiled editorial statements from the Clarion-Ledger and Jackson Weekly Mississippian, quoted above, in addition to comments from the following publications: Port Gibson Reveille, McComb Semi-Weekly Journal, and the Ashland Advocate. See Mississippi Press Association, “What the Newspapers Say,” 1928, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS; see also, (Jackson) Daily-Clarion Ledger, “How Newspapers of Mississippi Stand on State Printing Press,” Feb. 19, 1928.

rise of the Soviet Union and that nation’s betrayal of the Allies during the First World

War in forging a separate peace with Germany. For decades in American society, fear of communism resonated with average citizens. It was an especially prescient tactic in attempt to sway newer members of the legislature, many of whom had served in World

War I, had lucrative business ventures, and identified with the staunchly anticommunist

American Legion.76 Protection of the capitalist, free enterprise system took precedence over Bilbo’s proposals to centralize state educational services.

MPA President T.L. Turner served as the media’s spokesperson in denouncing the printing plant proposal. Turner cited the total number of educable children at 600,000 and sixty percent were African Americans unable to benefit from any reduction in the costs of schoolbooks. Since it would serve only white patrons, Turner claimed that the production of some 45,000 schoolbooks annually would hardly provide enough work for state employees at the printing press. The printing plant then would be required to compete with existing private print shops in the state owned mostly by newspaper publishers such as Robert and Tom Hederman and Clayton Rand, among others. “The state would lose tax money and employees and [private] presses would go elsewhere,” Turner warned. He criticized Bilbo’s plan in that the state would have to train editors and the resulting books would be of lower quality thereby doing a disservice to school patrons and putting

76 David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1984); Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). For the role of the American Legion in the interwar period, see William Pencak’s unofficial history of the organization in For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1989); and M.J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combatting the Enemy Within, 1830-1970 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 60-78.

Mississippi at an educational disadvantage compared to other states. He summarized by calling Bilbo’s proposal “un-American, un-democratic, and unfair.”77

While The Man gained legislative successes in increasing state appropriation for education, standardizing school terms and strengthening the junior college system, he faced a committed band of representatives who refused to budge on the printing press. On

February 24, the Mississippi Senate passed the Home Printing Act by a 35 to 10 margin shortly after supporters brought in former California Governor Friend W. Richardson to appeal to a joint session of lawmakers.78 Friend delivered a lengthy message trumpeting state savings and the creation of jobs. He used his experiences in California to note the skills required of the state printer, which House members and the newspapers decried as a patronage plum strengthening the Bilbo machine. Richardson likewise noted the savings of more than $400,000 if California had appropriated money for the purchase of schoolbooks instead of creating a state press.79 In news articles and an editorial, the Daily

Clarion-Ledger called Richardson’s speech a “dud.” The paper likewise claimed that he had “disappointed” even Bilbo’s supporters in the legislature, but failed to name these

77 “Statement by MPA President T.L. Turner,” Daily Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 4, 1928; Mississippi Press Association, “Press Release, Jan. 10, 1928, found in MPA pamphlet “What the Newspapers Say”; and Mississippi Press Association, “Catechism.”

78 “Printing Plant Measure passes in Upper House,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 24, 1928, 1; and Balsamo, “Mississippi Politics,”170. The Senate continued to support the proposal, passing it in two extraordinary sessions and in four total regular sessions of the state legislature. In the 1928 session and subsequent quorums, the House repeatedly voted against it by votes of 78 to 52, and later 80 to 50, and stoked the fears of the newspaper publishers that the press would cut into their income.

79 “Text Address to Legislature by Former Governor of California in Support of State Printing Plant,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 15, 1928, 5.

lawmakers.80 Bilbo’s salesmanship of the proposal remained doomed if he continued in failing to win support from the media.

The battle over Bilbo’s proposed printing press continued throughout his second term and generated further animosity between the state’s two major political factions.

Each side accused the other of bending the truth and duping taxpayers. In 1930, for example, Bilbo began a letter to House Speaker Bailey claiming that a House committee report on the state printing press was nothing more than a “circuitous, labyrinthic maze of misrepresentation, misinformation, and sickening insanities.”81 Bilbo’s plan to centralize state services required increased bureaucratization, thus reducing the power held by officials in wealthier counties such as those in the Delta. The Home Printing Act, moreover, provided the governor with appointment power for a printing press director, which House opponents objected because they feared it would strengthen Bilbo’s political base. The issue strained his administration especially as more advocates of the state press jumped ship and sided with the opposition. Superintendent Bond provided an interesting example of a professional educator who sat on the fence, informing the governor that he would not oppose it, but would not support it either. By 1929, the

80 “ Printing Bill Fight Takes Leading Place on Solons’ Program,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion- Ledger, Feb. 15, 1928, 1; and “Editorial: Gov. Richardson’s Speech a ‘Dud,’” (Jackson) Daily Clarion- Ledger, Feb. 15, 1928, 4.

81 Mississippi Press Association, “Catechism.”; and Theodore G. Bilbo to T.L. Bailey, March 11, 1930. Box 1, Folder 3, Theodore G. Bilbo Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

Mississippi Educational Advance, representing the voice of the state’s professional educators, called for defeat of the state press.82

Through four legislative sessions, Bilbo played a zero-sum game to deliver on his main campaign promise to lower the costs of textbooks. The printing press supporters in the legislature cowed to the opposition by revising the bill. Responding to opponents’ charges that the printing plant would render school administrators as book dealers, in

1928 the Senate amended the bill by providing for depositories in each county that also gave a modicum of local control to the measure.83 The 1930 version maintained the current design of the State Textbook Commission instead of merging the elementary and secondary committees because “high school education [was] so widely different and highly specialized.” Newer versions of the bill provided for testing and experimentation of any book manuscript before its publication by the state press. Another change allowed the textbook commission to adopt books “in the open market” so that the state could have the most “modern” books available for its educable white children. Legislators even changed the appointment provisions for state printer so that it fell within the purview of the state superintendent of education, the state supervisor of high schools, and the rural

(common) schools director.84 In 1928, the Senate tried to put the issue to the voters in the form of a referendum, which the House refused to approve.85

82 Bond, I Had a Friend, 140; Mississippi Educational Advance, “President’s Address,” Vol. 20 No. 8 (June 1929): 277-80; and Theodore G. Bilbo, “Press Release,” n.d., Box 111, Folder 6, State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers, USM

83 “Approval Granted Printing Plant and Pension Increase,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 23, 1928, 1.

84 Theodore G. Bilbo, “1930 Address to the Legislature,” Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS; and “Proposed Amendments to the State Printing Plant Bill, Senate Bill 230,” Feb. 3, 1928, Box 111, Folder 6, State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers-USM. 58

Bilbo’s compromise attempts revealed that his House opponents had other motives for blocking the administration’s proposal. With Bolivar County representative

Walter Sillers, Jr. serving as House education committee chair, the Delta faction routinely killed the Home Printing Act in committee. Sillers cited constitutionality issues, claiming that the measure conflicted with Article 7, Section 198 of the Mississippi Constitution that allowed the legislature to “enact laws to prevent all trusts, combinations, contracts, and agreements inimical to the public welfare.”86 Thus, the Delta faction claimed Bilbo’s trust-busting measure codified in the printing press proposal constituted a government trust. Sillers applied a loose interpretation of the state constitution that reveals his alignment with the MPA, which opposed state printing because the measure jeopardized newspaper publisher’s profits through print contracts. In 1929, when the state teachers’ association and Willard F. Bond publicly denounced Bilbo’s proposal, the governor shot back that they had caved to the lobbying pressure applied by the textbook publishing industry.87 Both the Senate and the chief executive routinely noted that schoolbook

85 “A Senate Concurrent Resolution,” Nov. 23, 1928, Box 111, Folder 6 State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers, USM; Mississippi Senate, “An Act Creating A State Printing Plant,” Extraordinary Session, Oct. 4, 1928; Theodore G. Bilbo, “Press Release,” n.d. [1930?]; Mississippi Senate, “An Act Creating a State Printing Plant,” Regular Session, 1931; “General Pledge,” 1931; “Facts Developed by the Bipartisan Legislative Committee for Investigation of the School Textbook Question,” Jan. 30, 1932, “Petitions” Scott, Perry, and Jones Counties, all of which can be found in Box 111, Folder 6 State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers, USM.

86 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, 1928 (Jackson: Hederman Brothers, 1928), 716; and Mississippi Constitution of 1890, Article 7, Section 198, http://www.mscode.com/msconst/7/7-198.html accessed Sept. 9, 2013.

87 Mississippi Educational Advance, “Report of Committees at the Annual Meeting at Biloxi, April 25-27, 1928,” Vol. 19 No. 9 (June 1928), 95; and Mississippi Educational Advance, “President’s Address,” Vol. 20 No. 8 (June 1929), 277-80; and Theodore G. Bilbo, “Press Release,” n.d., Box 111, Folder 6, State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers-USM.

agents packed the House gallery whenever lawmakers debated the measure.88 In short, the governor and his Senate supporters faced intense opposition from conservative- minded lobbyists, representatives, and a powerful state media association to defeat the

Home Printing Act’s many versions.

By 1932, Bilbo’s second term ended in failure heightened by continuing challenges that included an economic collapse and a steady exodus of Mississippi’s black population. Conservative and progressive-minded lawmakers diverted their attention from education issues to maintaining solvent state finances in spite of a $2 million budget shortfall. Paying the bills took center stage rather than extending social welfare provisions. Seeking employment in northern manufacturing centers such as St. Louis,

Chicago, and Detroit and escaping an oppressive social and legal environment, African

Americans fled Mississippi en masse beginning as early 1910. African Americans leaving the state proved problematic for large landowners, who depended on them for agricultural labor—the very bedrock of the state and local economy.89 Historian James D. Anderson explains how at first whites welcomed the migration and later feared its long-term implications. To convince African Americans that remaining in Mississippi served their best interests, white elites began openly backing expanded educational opportunities.90

88 Theodore G. Bilbo, “Press Release,” n.d., Box 111, Folder 6, State Printing Plant/Textbook Issue, Bilbo Papers-USM.

89 As historians demonstrate in a couple of studies, black migration in Mississippi began around 1910 and continued throughout the Great Depression. See James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 116-19.

90 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 155; and Cobb, The Mississippi Delta, 116.

Delta conservatives contemplated centralization if such plans appealed to their labor arrangements.

Mississippi public officials faced a dilemma by extending educational opportunities to African Americans and maintaining the racial caste system. In a state saddled with mounting debt during the height of the Great Depression, officials sought a solution to paltry finances and increasing funds for black schools by managing General

Education Board (GEB) philanthropy.91 Black education presented a problem for public officials such as Superintendent Bond and his directors of black schools, P.H. Easom and

Bura Hilbun. Literacy prepared African Americans for citizenship that conflicted with whites’ dominance of the social, economic, and political structure. They furthermore distrusted the motives of northern-run benevolent organizations and prevented efforts by the Anna T. Jeanes and Julius Rosenwald Funds to expand black schooling opportunities without state oversight.92 Through deals struck between state education officials and philanthropic groups, the Mississippi Department of Education managed GEB funds. As part of limited reform of black schools, the state earmarked GEB funds for construction and personnel, hiring “Jeanes teachers” who operated the one-room institutions with meager financial support.93

91 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 3, 280; and William H. Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865-1954, Fwd. by Robin D.G. Kelley (New York and London: Teachers College Press, 2001), 1.

92 Bond Papers; and Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 137, 156-61; and O’Brien, The Politics of Race and Schooling, xiii.

93 H. Lamar White to S.L. Smith, Julius Rosenwald Fund, Nashville Southern Office, GEB, Sept. 10, 1930 in Box 8011, Series 2342, Record Group 50, “Rosenwald Fund Annual Reports,” Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS; For examinations of the philanthropy in southern states, see Jennifer Nardone, “The Rosenwald School Building Program in Mississippi, 1919- 1931, (PhD diss. University of Mississippi, 2008); and Southern Education Foundation, The Jeanes Story: 61

In the 1930s, Easom and Hilbun surveyed black schools in hopes of codifying a specialized vocational curriculum designed to funnel the state’s black youth toward a life of servitude rather than first-class citizenship.94 The new education chief, Joseph Sloan

Vandiver, released a 1939 report on the condition and state of black education in

Mississippi with its recommendations and curriculum guidelines for Jeanes teachers.

Since textbooks determined curriculum in both white and black schools, the report claimed successful Jeanes teachers would know the texts and have “mastered its contents…that she can teach the class without referring to the book.” The department of education believed that the “Training in these [black] schools should emphasize above everything else health and vocations.” The report recommended that Jeanes teachers and their students examine their communities to “see how many homes need paint, new roofs, new doorsteps, new gates, new fences…Learning to take care of what you have is just as important as learning to acquire additional possessions.” It also advised that “skill in manual activities on all levels” was of paramount importance in “becoming good workers and in earning an honest living.”95

The 1939 bulletin coincided with important developments in black education.

Nationally, African Americans attacked Jim Crow and white supremacy either via out- migration or through legal challenges contesting segregation in higher education. As black educational opportunities expanded, public and state leaders expected further

A Chapter in the History of American Education, 1908-1968 (Atlanta, GA and Jackson, MS: NASC History Writing Committee/Southern Education Foundation, 1979).

94 P.H. Easom and J.A. Travis, Mississippi’s Negro Rural Schools, Bulletin No. 96 (Jackson: State Department of Education, 1939), 1; and Watkins, The White Architects, 12, 181.

95 Easom and Travis, Mississippi’s Negro Rural Schools, 1-4, 9.

control over this developing portion of the school system. In 1939, forty-seven 4-year black high schools applied for state accreditation “with emphasis upon agriculture and home economics” that demonstrates how the state sanctioned only those black schools that focused on vocational training.96

Before Superintendent Bond passed on the reigns of the Mississippi Department of Education to Vandiver, the state’s white schools began curricular reform that highlights the dual purposes of public education in a segregated system. Since lawmakers left textbook costs and availability unaddressed, forging a uniform and standardized curriculum challenged reformers. Bond began a relationship with the Parent-Teacher movement that gained prominence nationally and in the South in hopes of easing changes to white schools’ curricular design.97 In 1934, the PTA and the Mississippi Department of

Education collaborated on the changes in instruction, offering a seminar to prepare parents and teachers for the new pedagogy outlined in a state manual.98 The bulletin explained how developing good citizens formed the thrust of the new curriculum. “The modern school,” the authors stated, “expects the child to learn how to think, not merely what to think,” and chided the recalcitrant “patron that demands the [how to think] type of program as a wrong conception of the purpose of education.” The new curriculum

96 Ibid., 4; and Genna Rae McNeil examines the early legal strategy employed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) tacticians Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1983).

97 Christine Woyshner, Race, Gender, and the Early PTA: Civic Engagement and Public Education, 1897-1924 (New York: Teachers College Record, 2003), 105, 520-544; and Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers, A Parent’s View of Curriculum Improvement in Mississippi, Bulletin No. 3 (Jackson: Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers, 1935), 6.

98 Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers, A Parent’s View, 6.

diminished the role of traditional teaching materials, considering it outdated thinking for

those who “believe that the purpose of the school is to teach a certain amount of subject

matter found in certain textbooks.”99 Unlike the expectation that Jeanes’ teachers in black schools emphasize vocational training for their black charges, instruction for whites focused on “doing” by employing “a broad range of subject matter” that included

“newspapers, magazines, statistical reports, government publications.”100 Thus, the new direction in white schools hoped to steer away from textbook knowledge and instead foster new methods that were in reach of the average child—some of whom remained unable to purchase textbooks.

The state’s curricular changes in the 1930s emphasized moral instruction designed to develop law-abiding and productive white citizens and conscientious black laborers.

The “fundamentals of education” claimed by the state department of education meant that character development provided the way toward crafting a better citizenry101 Education

reformers warned that schools had long been saddled with the old concept of rote

memorization of facts, whereas the new model stressed setting goals that could be

attained by proper conduct of the student. The curriculum bulletin suggested that teachers

“provide experiences that are useful and satisfying in the child’s life in which he has the

opportunity to practice honesty, cooperation, reliability, self-reliance.”102

99 Ibid., 56.

100 Mississippi Department of Education, Procedures for the Production of Curriculum: Mississippi Program for the Improvement of Instruction, Bulletin No. 2 (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Education, 1935), 6.

101 Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers, A Parent’s View, 32.

102 Ibid., 18.

Vandiver finalized curricular reform as the Great Depression continued in the

South and in the nation. The state’s economic situation floundered as cotton prices declined further while federal controls attempted to curtail production. Diminished tax revenues threatened school funding that rendered textbook costs merely one of many problems affecting the state’s education system. U.S. Senator Pat Harrison diverted many federal Works Progress Administration and Federal Emergency Relief Administration funds to bolster Mississippi schools, increasing contributions to education to make mandatory eight-month terms a reality and preventing many districts from closing its schools.103 Increased spending, furthermore, eased the curriculum reorganization program, explained in a 1939 state bulletin. Citing surveys conducted by the department of education, the state discovered that many patrons believed that textbooks “had not been well selected,” and that the state regulatory agency bore responsibility.104 New guidelines emphasizing citizenship training and student loyalty, the state recommended school partnerships with civic organizations operating locally such as PTA groups,

Rotary Clubs, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the American Legion, and both the Sons (SAR) and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

Evaluation guidelines based student success on “show[ing] a greater appreciation, pride,

103 Harrison’s efforts formed part of a growing concern in Congress about federal aid to education that continued through the 1960s. See David Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 101-05.

104 Surveys—Forrest County, Mississippi. Box 8055, Folder “Textbook Commission,” J.S. Vandiver Correspondence, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

and joy in their citizenship.”105 Loyalty could be cultivated, the bulletin explained, in hopes that “the children may learn that Mississippi is beautiful, historical, and resourceful. They may develop greater appreciation of their heritage and an increased feeling of loyalty.”106 Quite simply, sources other than textbooks could command student loyalty to Mississippi and the South.

Despite attempts to command use of other educational materials, between 1936 and 1940 Mississippi’s lawmakers debated the merits of purchasing and providing textbooks to all students. Mississippi and Florida continued to pass textbook costs onto patrons and were the only two states that refused to provide these instructional materials.

During the 1939 gubernatorial campaign, Hattiesburg Circuit Judge Paul B. Johnson, Sr., finally won office based on his advocacy of a free textbook program, a recurring theme in his three previously unsuccessful bids for governor. Acting on advice from a textbook publishing company representative, Johnson coordinated his campaign platform with the state’s education professionals. The strategy worked, receiving full endorsement from the

Mississippi Education Association.107 Like Bilbo before him, Johnson advocated increased teacher pay, additional state appropriation for public schools, and equalization of school funds. Unlike The Man, however, Johnson pushed for state appropriation to buy

105 Mississippi Department of Education, Mississippi Program for the Improvement of Instruction: Curriculum Reorganization in the Elementary School (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Education, 1939), 171.

106 Ibid., 173.

107 J.O. Donaldson to Paul B. Johnson, Sr. Jan. 31, 1936; W.F. Bond to Paul B. Johnson, Sr., April 22, 1936; and Mississippi Education Association President J. Sullivan to Paul B. Johnson, Sr., June 14, 1935, all found in Box 6-7, Folder 2 Campaign Materials/Inaugural Materials, Johnson Family Collection, Series II, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter Referred to as PBJ, Sr.-USM.

schoolbooks in bulk instead of merely lowering the costs via state production of these materials. Johnson claimed in his 1940 inaugural address that free schoolbooks formed part of the “modern” schoolhouse, complete with “good teachers” and wagons to transport students to and from school. In short, he claimed it made little sense to provide students with everything they needed except books.108

Prior to American involvement in World War II, Governor Johnson successfully ushered a free textbook program through the legislature. Beginning in 1936, lawmakers debated several such proposals. Despite failure these measures provided the basic structure for Johnson’s plan.109 House Bill 345, for example, set up a textbook purchasing board composed of members appointed by the governor. The laws also prohibited appointees from “adopting books denying God or seeking to overthrow or condemns [sic] constitutional democratic government.” An alternative idea contained in Senate Bill 300 required the first state supplied textbooks to be in the field of American history,

Mississippi history, civics, and geography.110 By privileging social studies courses in the failed senate proposal, lawmakers acknowledged antipathy toward quickly changing ideas regarding pedagogical methods for social studies education that placed a premium on problem solving rather than rote memorization of various facts, and many solons believed as did educators that students needed to learn undeniable facts about the past in

108 Paul B. Johnson, Sr., “Inaugural Address Delivered Jan. 17, 1940” Box 7, Folder 9 Inaugural Materials, PBJ, Sr.-USM.

109 Senate Bill 71, House Bill 345, and Senate Bill 300, Free Textbooks Subject File, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi; Journal of the Senate of the State of Mississippi, 1936 (Jackson, MS: Hederman Brothers, 1936), 97; and Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, 1938 (Jackson, MS: Hederman Brothers, 1938), 907, 479.

110 House Bill 345 and Senate Bill 300, Free Textbooks Subject File, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

addition to the concept of citizenship. In other words, Legislators advocated for free history and civics texts in hopes of injecting their own preference for these subjects as the bedrock of the social studies curricula.111

In 1940, lawmakers’ consideration of Johnson’s free textbook proposal demonstrates how many believed providing books to all of the state’s students would benefit more African Americans than whites. Unlike Theodore Bilbo’s final term as governor, Johnson had a legislature more amenable to the governor’s proposals. Johnson relied on ally and House Speaker Sam Lumpkin of Tupelo to set committee appointments that made the textbook program more likely for passage despite the best efforts of anti- administration lawmakers from black majority counties who attempted to “emasculate” the textbook bill.112 House Bill 78 borrowed language from its 1938 predecessor, creating a state-run purchasing board that would regulate adoption and provide for distribution of free texts for students in grades 1 through 8. Despite concerns expressed by Jackson

Daily News editor Fred Sullens that the proposal unnecessarily enlarged the power of the chief executive, who “doesn’t know a blessed thing about school books,” it received committee approval.113 Thomas Nicholls, a Canton planter, objected on grounds of race and expense. “There is 60% of our population in this state negroes,” he explained, “with

111 Evans, The Social Studies Wars, 36-65.

112 James B. Gibson, “Harmony Rules as Legislative Session Opens,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion- Ledger, Jan. 2, 1940, 1; Editorial, “Sam Lumpkin’s Election Means Peaceful Session,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 2, 1940, 6; and “House Passes Textbook Bill,” (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 31, 1940, 1;

113 “Editorial: An Unthinkable Proposal,” Jackson Daily News, Jan. 15, 1940, 6. Sullens had long opposed Johnson as governor and unlike the other Hederman-owned newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger, the Daily News routinely objected to the governor’s poor relief initiatives. Johnson became so distraught about the negative press that he caned Sullens in the lobby of a Jackson hotel. Historian John Ray Skates, Jr. provides a detailed account of the fight and a subsequent lawsuit against Sullens in which Johnson won. See “Fred Sullens: Bourbon Out of His Time,” Journal of Mississippi History 49, No. 2 (June 1987): 93-94.

about half of one per cent taxpayers, so you can readily see the negro will profit 60% by

the passage of this Bill…while the white will profit 40% by paying 99.5 % of its

operative cost.” He protested his failure “to see where the money is to come from…it

would cost taxpayers $1.5 million.”114

The cost issue nearly doomed Johnson’s proposal. State Superintendent of

Education Joseph Sloan Vandiver lobbied for an increase of two million dollars in the

budget for common schools. He expected as well an influx of twenty thousand students

and even more should the textbook program become law. The free schoolbook proposal,

moreover, called for a $1.5 million initial appropriation for the first round of purchases,

which would increase when the law was expanded to include the high school grades.115

Bolivar County Representative Walter Sillers, Jr., whose power and influence in the

legislature had grown substantially since Bilbo’s last term as governor, offered a

substitute bill as an efficiency measure that would provide textbooks only to needy

children.116 Sullens asked in an editorial, “Where are they going to get the money?” He

went a step further than Vandiver, predicting an increase of one hundred thousand black

school patrons should free textbooks become law. Sullens moreover explained Deltans’

opposition by showing that some expected black common schools to increase by six

thousand students.117 It represented an enormous problem for lawmakers and public officials in the department of education as Sullens noted that black schools’ “inadequacy

114 Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, 1940 (Jackson: Hederman Brothers, 1940), 96; and (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, “House Passes Textbook Bill,” Jan. 31, 1940, 1-2.

115 “Vandiver to Ask Solons for Free Texts, More Cash,” Jackson Daily News, Jan. 18, 1940, 8.

116 “School Book Gift Limited to Needy by Deltan’s Plan,” Jackson Daily News, Jan. 27, 1940, 5.

117 “Editorial: How About This?” Jackson Daily News, Feb. 1, 1940, 4.

is hardly short of shocking.”118 After spirited debate on the House floor, the bill passed by an overwhelming 118 to 15 vote. House Bill 78 later received Senate approval with an important revision. Instead of the governor appointing members to the textbook board, the version Johnson signed in March provided for a five-member board with the governor, superintendent of education and attorney general making appointments.119

As the law’s passage drew praise from numerous public figures in the state,

Mississippi’s teachers expressed opposition to the way free textbooks would be

sanctioned, purchased, and distributed. Writing in the Mississippi Education

Association’s publication, editor R.L. Hunt advised that the legislature recognize “the

voice of the teacher [as] the final voice in the selection of curriculum materials” rather

than state bureaucrats appointed by politicians.120 Earlier, Hunt acknowledged that schoolbook uniformity mandated by previously unsuccessful textbook proposals contracted the freedom of teachers to decide upon the educational materials used in their classrooms. Teachers resisted uniformity, Hunt argued, because it “drives us toward conformity with an ‘average’ which can only exist in the imagination.”121 Before the

House version of the free textbook law could be delivered to the Senate, lawmakers

allowed teachers to air their disagreements with the proposal. Most objected on grounds

of too much centralization pertaining to the governor’s power to appoint rating committee

118 “Editorial: Our Negro Schools,” Jackson Daily News, Jan. 21, 1940, 4.

119 Mississippi Legislature, Laws of the State of Mississippi Passed at its Regular Session, 1942, Chapter 152 (Jackson: Mississippi Legislature, 1942), 185.

120 R.L. Hunt, “Textbooks,” Mississippi Educational Advance 31, No.4 (Jan. 1940): 95.

121 R.L. Hunt, “Free Textbooks vs. Uniformity,” Mississippi Educational Advance, 29, No. 3 (Dec. 1937): 80-83, 80.

evaluators, who could potentially hold the power to determine what would be taught in

the state’s public schools.122 With the act becoming law in 1940, it quickly erased the semi-autonomous school system that had existed for decades in Mississippi. The state’s governors attained the power to set textbook rating committees and essentially determine how various courses could be taught by virtue of the texts that they approved.

During the 1940 legislative session, state lawmakers agreed with Johnson’s free textbook program for grades 1 through 8. Unlike Bilbo, Johnson enjoyed support from the state’s newspaper publishers and editors. The Jackson Daily Clarion-Ledger, for example, produced a celebratory special edition coinciding with the January 17 inaugural.123 While debate raged over funding the measure after it passed both the House

and Senate in early March, Johnson’s popularity convinced lawmakers to increase overall

school appropriation that overhauled the way the state managed its educational

bureaucracy. The new textbook law replaced the old textbook commission with the

Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board designed to regulate all matters pertaining

to school materials. The governor, the superintendent of education, and the attorney

general appointed members to the Board, which then organized rating and screening

committees to evaluate schoolbooks for state adoption. Screening committee members—

seven for each subject area—required recommendation from the governor’s office. The

122 “Senate Plans Hearing on Textbooks,” Jackson Daily News, Feb. 2, 1940, 1.

123 See the (Jackson) Daily Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 17, 1940.

law allowed for as many as three books to be placed on the state sanctioned list for each subject area, and centralized book distribution in Jackson.124

It is impossible to separate schoolbooks and the political controversies the issue generated in documenting Mississippi’s long struggle toward centralizing state educational services. Mississippi’s reformers experienced manifold difficulties in standardizing school terms, education financing, and textbook and curricular uniformity.

Progressive Era watchwords such as centralization and standardization dominated the debates. Unwilling to compromise during Bilbo’s second term, black-majority conservatives doomed The Man’s reform initiatives. The centralization debate exacerbated class distinctions between Delta and interests and their hill county opponents. Furthering central control over philanthropic donations to black schools fostered some unity between the two classes. Johnson’s stewardship of reform where

Bilbo failed signifies the loosening of class rigidity. White leaders continued to agree that black education was at best a method of controlling the state’s black population.

Modernization of Mississippi’s dual education system, centralized in Jackson, created huge fault lines beginning in the following decade as World War II further altered

Mississippi politics and society. A new set of conservatives would emerge, using a language well worn during the textbook battles of the 1920s—centralization. Yet the differences between eras involved fear of national standards or centralization, threatening the state’s cherished “way of life.” These reformers likewise targeted textbook content as emblematic of national centralization, especially when many advocated social equality.

124 Mississippi Legislature, Laws of the State of Mississippi: Appropriations, General Legislation, and Resolutions, 1940 (Jackson: Mississippi State Legislature, 1940), 368-75. 72

CHAPTER III

“AGAINST ALL THE ‘ISMS”: CIVIC CLUBS AND SEGREGATIONIST IDEOLOGY

FROM THE NEW DEAL TO THE COLD WAR

In 1939, while speaking to the Beppo Arnold Post of the Mississippi American

Legion, Governor Hugh Lawson White endorsed a statewide program called Boys’ State, urging the cooperation of churches, civic clubs, schools, and labor unions. Forrest

Cooper, the commander of the state department, claimed the purpose of the program involved instilling in youth “a working knowledge of the structure of government and an appreciation of its objectives.” Cooper insisted that students would “learn that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our government; that it has not outlived its usefulness; that what it does need is intelligent citizenry.”1 Civic organizations of many types answered the governor’s call, including Rotary and Lions Clubs, the Mississippi

Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the

Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation. The American Legion and its women’s auxiliary, however, were the program’s lead sponsors.2

1 “Local Legion Post Approves Plans of Magnolia Boys,” (Greenwood) Delta Democrat Times, Jan. 28, 1939, 1.

2 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “A History of Magnolia Boys’ State,” Millsaps College and New Capitol, June 11-17, 1939, Jackson, MS (Jackson: American Legion of Mississippi, 1939), title page. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

Formed by the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, the American

Legion spearheaded anticommunist activism in the United States during the interwar period.3 The Mississippi Department organized quickly, forming numerous local units with an initial 1919 membership of one thousand. Among its many goals in fighting the influence of communists, subversives, and fellow travelers, the Legion promoted the concept of Americanism. While the American Legion as a national organization failed to adequately define the concept, Mississippian Arthur C. Short wrote that the commitment to Americanism compelled the organization’s involvement with public education and programs such as Boys’ State. Short claimed that “through the planning, establishment, and conduct of a continuous, constructive educational system designed to combat all anti-

American tendencies, activities, and propaganda,” the concept of Americanism could be transmitted to the state’s elite youth. The Legion’s program, moreover, sought to

“inculcate ideals of Americanism in the citizen population, particularly the basic

American principle that the interest of all the people are above those of any special interest or so-called class of people.” Mississippi’s Legionnaires, therefore, recognized that education offered the vehicle through which the patriotic organization could carry out its goals, encouraging all members to endorse “the movement to secure better salaries for teachers” with “special attention given to the teaching of American History, and Civil

Government.”4 Boys’ State became a lasting activity that developed as conservative civic

3 William C. Pencak, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), xi-xiii, 8-11.

4 Arthur C. Short, History of the American Legion, Department of Mississippi, 1919-1943 (Vicksburg, MS: Mississippi Printing Company, 1943), 5-7, 30. 74

club members reacted to manifold changes in society that reverberated through state departments of education.

During the inaugural Boys’ State program in 1939 at Millsaps College in Jackson, the Legion gathered 217 high school juniors and seniors considered to be the “potential future leaders of the city, state, and nation.” The students divided into four counties, creating a mock government consisting of two political parties called Federalists and

Nationalists. The participants then debated some of the major issues affecting Mississippi as the effects of the Great Depression lingered. A simple pithy statement encapsulated the

Federalists’ platform: “Democratic government consists of government by the best men.”

The Nationalists, however, formed a forward-thinking agenda that underscored students’ belief in an active government applying efficiency standards to solve social problems.

They endorsed tax reform, a farmers’ and industrial convention, paved highways, reforestation, and free textbooks for all of Mississippi’s school children. During the

Nationalists’ victory celebration, a student elected as Chief Justice of the mock Supreme

Court of Mississippi delivered a speech condemning “Totalitarianism, whether of the

Italian, German, or Russian type.” The student speaker, furthermore, argued that any governmental system “destructive of individual liberty, and any form of it…rests to a greater extent on Communism—that curse of present day civilization.”5 The comment bore the imprimatur of the Legion’s anticommunist ideology that shifted in meaning between the latter years of the Great Depression and the origins of the Cold War.

Civic organizations’ involvement in supplementing the civic and historical knowledge of Mississippi’s most politically connected students reveals the extended

5 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Boys’ State,” 7, 9, 15. 75

reach of the state’s most prominent group of education reformers. By mid-century, these clubs became much more involved in public education, advocating expansion of the public schools while coordinating official programs to inculcate conservative ideology in basic curricular materials: textbooks. Mississippi also had modernized and standardized its educational services through the free textbook program; curricular uniformity increased since state-level bureaucrats sanctioned and approved of the basic learning materials available to students. Conservative club members’ intent to shape the content of those basic materials shows how modernization galvanized the forces for retrenchment.

Mississippi’s civic-patriotic clubs’ involvement in shaping curricular materials and textbook content, in addition to their overall interest in education, occurred at a time when Legionnaires and other conservatives nationally opposed new theoretical ideas about schooling called progressive education. Developed mostly by philosopher John

Dewey and other educational theorists at Columbia University and the University of

Chicago, progressive education proponents advocated problem-based social studies as a core piece of elementary and secondary curricula designed to teach critical thinking, problem solving, and basic social skills.6 Civic club leaders, especially American Legion

Commandant Milo J. Warner, miscast progressive education as a new pedagogy designed to subvert students’ patriotism. In a 1941 speech to the National Education Association,

6 John Dewey provides the most direct expression of progressive education in The School and Society, Revised Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Ronald W. Evans has covered the disputes over social studies and history in The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children? (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 46-95; and The Hope for American School Reform: The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning in Social Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 9-34; Zoe Burkholder’s recent monograph examines how mid-twentieth century American educators revised lessons regarding race to emphasize multiculturalism in Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6, 96-136; and Andrew Hartman analyzes the conservative reaction to progressive education in Education and the Cold War: Battle for the American School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 7-28.

Warner stated his organization’s opposition to “textbook authors, under the misused guise of academic freedom, inculcating collectivist theories of state.”7 As Mississippi’s civic organizations expanded and coordinated a statewide education reform agenda, its members joined Warner’s outrage and opposition to progressive education, forming an organizational base energized by a dynamic conservative ideology to challenge the legitimacy of educators.

Clubmen and women of Mississippi helped shape collective understanding about the American and southern pasts through educational advocacy and programmatic activities. In the process, civic clubs had the effect of entrenching old myths while perpetuating newer ones. Before civic organizations had fully mobilized to pressure administrators in the Mississippi Department of Education, their far-right and reactionary worldview took shape in response to the effects New Deal policies had on southern society and its social and legal customs. Mobilization for war, furthermore, upset the tenets and basic function of white supremacy.8 The leadership of several civic-patriotic organizations, including the Legion, Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF) expanded their club’s reach by recruiting new members with an ideology that fused

7 Milo J. Warner, “Praise for Our Teachers,” speech delivered to the National Education Association Conference, Boston, MA, June 20, 1941, American Legion, 1930-1945 Subject File, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

8 Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 7-21; Pete Daniel, “Going Among Strangers: Southern Reactions to World War II,” Journal of American History 77 (December: 1990): 886-912; Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994); Neil R. McMillan, ed., Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World War II on the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997); Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 33-60; and John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 1-40.

common ideas about American and southern history with Protestant religion, and anticommunism in defense of white supremacy. This ideological syncretism occurred in response to the political realities dominant at midcentury as the United States emerged from the Second World War as a superpower.

The Cold War, moreover, signaled a shift in the meaning of southern civic clubs’ anticommunism. Long a lightning rod of oppositional and conservative politics in the

United States, Mississippi’s anticommunists refocused their understanding of communism that evolved into a shorthand to express consternation to the rapidly changing social and political situation. In other words, the segregationist civic club leaders understood rapid social and economic changes as communism. Anticommunism, therefore, represented more than a mere tool used to discredit political opponents, it signified segregationists’ way of understanding social change. Moreover, all that civic and political leaders in Mississippi feared could be expressed by the term communism.9

After all, a centralized government commanded immense power over the personal lives of its citizens and all economic planning flowed from top to bottom in the communist state. Communist society, in addition, praised social equality rather than God and religion, according to Americans’ ideas about life in the Soviet Union and its satellites.

Segregationists argued that such a political and social structure were unnatural since equality trumped individuals’ rights to acquire wealth and property. Many civic

9 Several historians have advanced the tool thesis, explaining that the taint of communism was one of many tools segregationists used to stymie the black freedom struggle. See, for example, Wayne Addison Clark, “An Analysis of the Relationship Between Anti-Communism and Segregationist Thought in the Deep South, 1948-1964,” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1975), 15-21; Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2004), 2-11; George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace (Gainesville and other cities: University of Florida Press, 2004), 2-3; and for the long history and origins of American anticommunism, see M.J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combatting the Enemy Within, 1830-1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 3-95. 78

organization members expanded this view of communism at a time when the Cold War and the black freedom struggle became Americans’ and southerners’ daily political reality. Conservative clubmen and women then pointed to the federal government and other forces opposing segregation as examples of communist subversion.

As civic organizations increased their educational and programmatic activities, they rallied opposition to progressive education by denigrating it as an offshoot of communism and equalitarianism, charging that educators directed the indoctrination of the country’s youth. Initially the American Legion followed by the SAR and the DAR began advocating a triumphalist version of American and southern history and unflinching patriotism. In addition, these politically connected members comprised the social and business elite of their communities that eventually formed the vanguard opposing alleged communists and subversives. As Cold War tension increased, and federal policies targeted Jim Crow, civic club members believed that they had formed the phalanx “against all the ‘isms and promoted Americanism.”10 In short, civic-patriotic clubs opposed communism, the black freedom struggle, federal government policies, and progressive education proponents whom they called “educationists.”

While these clubmen and women had long identified with the American far right, their commitment to shaping public education and textbook content developed as much as a response to the political realities at mid-century as it was reaction to progressive

10 Paul Silvey to Arthur Boswell “Bos” Stevens, Box 1, Folder “Correspondence, 1950,” Boswell Stevens Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as BSP.

education.11 In fact, the Cold War’s effect on American culture has been explored in several historical examinations.12 Many accounts detail the catalyzing effects World War

II had on African Americans and how the nation’s superpower status rendered some branches of the federal government supportive of civil rights reform. Few historical accounts, however, look past the responses made by politicians, journalists and industrialists to acknowledge the roles played by the members of civic-patriotic organizations in defending white supremacy.13 By expanding the analytical lens to focus on the activism and ideology of civic club activists, a more developed picture of the

11 V.O. Key, Jr. characterized Mississippi politics at mid-century as multiple conservative factions vying for high state offices and congressional positions in Southern Politics (New York: Knopf, 1949), 229-51; Justus D. Doenecke has two studies of national conservative factions during the interwar period through the Cold War, including Not to the Swift: The Old Isolationists in the Cold War Era (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979); and Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); and M.J. Heale, American Anticommunism: Combatting the Enemy Within, 1830-1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 3-95.

12 The Cold War altered American culture in myriad ways. See, for example, Richard M. Fried, The Russians are Coming! Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1-66, 99-118, 151-56; Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families During the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 1-38; Laura McEnany, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, NJ and other cities: Princeton University Press, 2000); Hartman, Education and the Cold War, 157-96; and Stuart J. Foster, Red Alert! Educators Confront the Red Scare in American Public Schools, 1947-1954 (New York and other cities: Peter Lang, 2000), 92-105. Several monographs and dissertations explore the educational activism and ideology of civic organizations. See, for example, Joan Marie Johnson, Southern Ladies, New Women (Gainesville and other cities: University of Florida Press, 2004); Margaret Nunnelly Olsen, “One Nation, One World: American Clubwomen and the Politics of Internationalism, 1945-1961,” (PhD diss., Rice University, 2008); Barbara Truesdell, “God, Home, and Country: Folklore, Patriotism, and the Politics of Culture in the Daughters of the American Revolution,” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1996); Morten C. Bach, “None So Consistently Right: The American Legion’s Cold War, 1945-1950,” (PhD diss., Ohio University, 2007); and Pencak, For God and Country, 236-301.

13 One exception is a dissertation by Ann K. Ziker, “Race, Conservative Politics, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Postcolonial World, 1948-1968” (PhD diss., Rice University, 2008), yet her timeline begins after the development of the Cold War; Jason Morgan Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Clark, “Anti-Communism and Segregationist Thought,” 15-21; Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare, 2-11; and Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace, 2-3.; Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); and William P. Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman For Segregation (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

segregationist movement emerges that reveals the linkages between triumphalist history, anticommunism, and white supremacy that clubmen and women defended with near religious devotion.14 The changes that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s revitalized the efforts of organizations such as the American Legion and the DAR that more fully demonstrates the transmission of conservative ideology between high-ranking politicians, the mostly upper-middle class civic club members, and the rank-and-file citizens at ground level. Communism was a convenient expression of understanding change that signified the fears of Mississippi’s white population—the dismantling of white supremacy, segregation, and states’ rights. Civic organizations targeted the schoolhouse for reform, believing that proper instruction in American history, government, and capitalism could stymie the communist and integrationist threat.15

Civic club involvement in education waned during the years of the Great

Depression as did state appropriation for education. Lower tax revenues and an overall drop in incomes rendered Mississippi in need of federal assistance. Between 1934 and

1942, a host of federal alphabet agencies supported the state’s public education system during the nation’s worst economic crisis. Under the leadership of Senators Theodore G.

14 Robert N. Bellah provides the best theoretical work on American civil religion in The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd Edition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992)1-35, 139-63. Two superior works on southern civil religion exist. Charles Reagan Wilson broke the path in analyses of the Lost Cause that emerged in southern society following the Civil War in Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 139-60; Andrew Michael Manis updates Wilson’s work by expanding the civil religion of the Lost Cause thesis to the civil rights era while limiting his examination to Southern and National Baptists in Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Black and White Baptists and Civil Rights, 1947-1957 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987); and Carolyn Renee Dupont’s recent examination of Mississippi’s evangelicals and the black freedom struggle demonstrates real connections between religionists’ theological ideas and post-World War II race politics in Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975 (New York and London: New York University Press, 2013), 4-7.

15 Education historian William J. Reese documents Americans’ insistence that local schools can fix many of society’s ills in History, Education, and the Schools (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 159-71. 81

Bilbo and Pat Harrison, Mississippi benefitted from President Franklin Delano

Roosevelt’s New Deal to correct the economic ills associated with the Great Depression.

Before Mississippi supplied schoolbooks to patrons, the state received just shy of $50

million in federal relief. Of that sum $2.3 million supported teacher salaries and student

transportation costs while also preventing school closures because of lack of funds. Only

with the continued support of the federal government could the state afford the $1.5

million initial appropriation for free textbooks. The state, moreover, received much

assistance benefitting other operations of state government as well as private industry.16

By 1938, the federal government’s relief program expanded and many of

Mississippi’s business elites cited historical precedent and the founding generation when

voicing their frustrations with increased bureaucracy and economic planning by the

Roosevelt administration. Clayton Rand, a newspaper publisher, owner of Gulfport’s

Dixie Press, and a high-ranking Rotary International leader, argued that the New Deal

jeopardized the American free-enterprise system. The author of several books, Rand

applauded government relief in 1933, but demanded “it should have stopped there.”

Offering a history lesson in his rationale, he said that “it was never the purpose of our

forefathers to put the government into private business.” He castigated Washington’s

relief measures for “fear that government may carry the idea of social services so far as to

take property away from a man who has earned it and give it to another who has not.”

Rand believed the government’s role in economic recovery had been styled after the

Soviet command economy. Rotary was Rand’s venue, broadcasting his historical ideas

16 Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 40-41; David Tyack, Robert Lowe, and Elisabeth Hansot, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, MA and other cities: Harvard University Press, 1984), 101-03. 82

and opposition to the New Deal to audiences throughout the South and Midwest, forming connections with civic leaders in the process. Popular demand for Rand’s books and reprints of speeches on the topic numbered near one million, thus demonstrating his reach and influence among conservative southerners, business organizations, and civic clubs.17

White Mississippians’ opposition to the New Deal centered on racial fears expressed mostly through rumors designed to denigrate the Roosevelt administration and the First Lady, Eleanor. Rumors of interracial “Eleanor Clubs”—designed to “put a white woman in every black kitchen”—contributed to whites’ opposition to the New Deal in addition to the manifold social, political, and economic changes that occurred during

World War II. In his classic study of these far-fetched tales, Howard Odum argued that southerners expressed dissatisfaction with national politics by creating and spreading stories accusing blacks of armed rebellion. While hardly any of these rumors contained much truth, Odum explained that the tales “illustrated the fact that there was a problem

[that] demanded their own peculiar and distinctive specifications commensurate with the…particular crisis.” So before the shorthand communism came to represent southerners’ total fears about social transformations, racial rumors such as the Eleanor

Clubs signified that there was a problem, and rumor-mongering provided appropriate expressions of it.18

17 Clayton Rand, “Is the Country Going to Hell?” 2, in Box 19, Folder “Rand Manuscripts,” Clayton Rand Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as CRP.

18 Howard Odum, Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties, Bryant Simon, ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), xxxiv, vii; Daniel, “Going Among Strangers,” 886; and John Ray Skates, Jr. “World War II as Watershed in Mississippi History,” Journal of Mississippi History 27 (June 1975): 131-42. 83

While the seeds of opposition to the New Deal had been sown in the late 1930s, rapid and widespread social and economic changes caused by federal policies during

World War II elicited a stronger reaction by Mississippi’s business and political elites.

As historian John Ray Skates noted, after the war “nothing ever again was quite the same.” The Paul B. Johnson administration pushed the extension of the free textbook program to include high schools at a time when many Mississippi youth crowded armed forces recruitment centers. Dropouts increased as thousands left school to serve the nation in the fight against the Axis. By 1945, 237,000 had joined. Mississippians on the home front endured untold social transformations such as decline in the farm population, increased exodus of Mississippians for northern industrial centers, and the proliferation of manufacturing work in nearby towns. The war challenged cultural mores as whites and blacks from the countryside poured into towns and cities hoping to land factory jobs. The population influx taxed city services and defense workers clamored for easing restrictions such as Sunday blue laws outlawing retail sales. Women sought consumer goods as the male population dwindled for the war effort. Manufacturing work increased per capita annual income among Mississippians from $313 to $627.19

World War II held different meanings for black and white Mississippians.

Historian Pete Daniel explains that southern whites considered the war as a method for preserving conservatism in American politics. African Americans, on the other hand, viewed the war as an opportunity to attain economic freedom and full citizenship rights.

As Roosevelt’s policies threatened segregation, blacks nationwide lashed out against white supremacy. In her study of the radical origins of the black freedom struggle of the

19 Skates, “Watershed,” 135-41; and Daniel, “Going Among Strangers,” 886-91. 84

post-war era, scholar Glenda Gilmore shows that the exigencies of the conflict led

national organizations committed to civil rights reform to mute their approach by

downplaying Jim Crow oppression in favor of calls for integration. Simultaneously, white

political and business elites in Mississippi struggled with the war’s effect on labor

relations—manufacturing opportunities outside of the state caused a mass exodus of

workers that gutted the black sharecropping pool. Many expressed their dissatisfaction

with these wartime realities by lashing out at the Roosevelt administration and accusing

high-level politicians of crafting communistic policies.20

The state’s political leaders reexamined their traditional affiliation with the

national Democratic Party, denouncing as communistic federal prerogatives designed to

reform southern labor practices. Mississippi’s congressional delegation initially fought

for boom industries related to the war effort, and later attacked the Roosevelt

administration after the exigencies of war conflicted with local sensibilities and practices.

In May 1943, when the administration strengthened the Fair Employment Practices

Commission (FEPC) that investigated instances of racial discrimination in defense work,

Congressman John R. Rankin lashed out, calling the measure unconstitutional, dictatorial,

and communistic. Governor Thomas L. Bailey, who defeated Dennis Murphree in 1943,

cast his disdain for Roosevelt’s policies in the language of states’ rights.21 A state

representative from Bolivar County, Walter Sillers, Jr., who in 1944 began a twenty-two

year reign as Speaker of the Mississippi House, and arguably the most powerful man in

20 Daniel, “Going Among Strangers,” 886-92; and Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 346-48.

21 John Ray Skates, “World War II and Its Effects,” in Richard Aubrey McLemore, ed. A History of Mississippi, Vol. 2, 120-139 (Jackson: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), 123-24, 133- 39. 85

the state, consistently leveled the most bombastic rebukes directed at the president and the Democratic Party. As a protector of tradition and conservatism, as one historian has portrayed him, Sillers opposed the 1944 Democratic platform as one “coddling union labor, bureaucracy.” Sillers blamed the Roosevelt and later the Harry S. Truman administrations for foisting “socialistic and communistic policies on the South.” He even proclaimed that the Democratic Party had put “the South on a cross of social equality and non-segregation among the races…destroying everything we Southerners cherish and hold most dearly.”22

Black activists’ affiliation with communist organizations during the Great

Depression took on additional importance in the months and years following the Second

World War. Advocates of civil rights reform critiqued capitalism as an obstacle to racial justice in America. Freedom struggle proponents such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul

Robeson, among many others, openly acknowledged their pro-communist sympathies.

The Scottsboro, Alabama case involving nine black youths and the alleged rape of two white transients generated Communist Party support for the accused. African American activists, moreover, blamed capitalism for colonization of Africa and other underdeveloped regions. Du Bois’s articulation of racial apartheid in America, delivered to the United Nations entitled “An Appeal to the World” characterized white supremacy and racial oppression as human rights abuses. The close connections between communist organizations and proponents of the black freedom struggle tempered much activism and split these reformers with their white liberal allies. The schism produced obstacles that the next generation of activists contended with. Yet for segregationists, blacks’ affiliation

22 Thomas R. Melton, “Walter Sillers and National Politics,” Journal of Mississippi History 39 (August 1977): 216; and Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt, 11-12, 69-72. 86

with communist organizations preceding World War II conveniently fit within their anticommunist paradigm.23

As World War II concluded, supplanted by the Cold War rivalry between the

United States and the Soviet Union, southern conservatives in civic-patriotic organizations drew upon Sillers’s rhetoric to oppose changes in federal policies.

Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, embarked upon a course to mitigate global condemnation of Jim Crow as the U.S. government sought international allies to oppose

Soviet power and expansion. In other words, the struggle against communism served as the administration’s rationale for achieving racial justice in the United States. Truman revitalized the FEPC and issued Executive Order 9808, establishing the President’s

Committee on Civil Rights. The 1947 report issued by the Truman administration sought an end to lynching and the poll tax, specifically targeting segregation in schools, housing, the military, and employment. Coupled with the legal challenges to segregation in higher education and a federal judiciary that ended the all-white primary in the Smith v.

Allwrigth (1944) decision, southerners increasingly considered such changes as historically significant.24

Mississippi Rotary International member Clayton Rand broadcasted what he considered to be seismic shifts in the historical development of the nation and the South

23 Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 8; Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3-4; Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 2-4; and Gerald Horne, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 5, 76-77.

24 Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 79-114; 85-89, Robert Shogan, Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013),135-36. 87

as the federal government targeted Jim Crow for dismantling. Publishing several books and printing numerous pamphlets denigrating the New Deal and federal policies during

World War II, Rand’s work connected southern politicos’ disdain for the federal government with an active, energetic, and growing base of civic club members and leaders. The American Legion, SAR, DAR, and Farm Bureau increasingly used the term communism to represent the significant shifts in the political relationship between the federal government and the states, in addition to casting integrationists as subversive.

Thus, anticommunism became a formative glue in the ideological development of many of these civic club operatives who believed that education reform—especially in the area of history and social studies instruction—could abate what they perceived as the nation’s slide toward communism. These conservative patriots considered it their civic duty to promote and protect the U.S. Constitution. By promoting curricular reform in these areas and thereby using public education as the vehicle, they believed that the study of history and the Constitution could provide the impetus to protect Mississippians from an expansive federal government.

Mississippi clubmen and women held extensive business and political connections. The American Legion, for example, enjoyed a vibrant membership composed of elected leaders in addition to high profile business executives in the state.

The membership of the Legion, along with the SAR, DAR, Rotary, and Farm Bureau, represented only a small portion of Mississippi’s white population, locking out poorer whites and African Americans. Professional and civic organizations existed among the black population, yet these had small memberships limited only to the black middle class.

Civic participation among blacks declined further between 1930 and 1950 as a significant

portion of African Americans fled the state. The Regional Council of Negro Leadership

led by activist T.R.M. Howard was among the most prolific of these reform

organizations, but it held little power beyond rallying middle class blacks to support

school desegregation. Black organizations, moreover, held different conceptions of the

past and historical interpretations that opposed the ideas held by white civic-patriotic

organization members.25

Since its inception in the 1890s, the National Society, Daughters of the American

Revolution remained an organization committed to the promotion of American history,

education, and genealogical research. The commitment resonated with many of the

members that comprised the Mississippi Society, which formed on May 5, 1897. The

Mississippi Daughters gradually expanded in each subsequent decade, emerging as an

influential lobbying organization due in part to politically connected and dynamic

leaders. The year 1897 also marked the birth of one of the state DAR’s most energetic

and successful members, Florence Sillers. She was born in the Mississippi Delta, where

she grew up on her father’s expansive cotton plantation until she married cotton broker

Harry Clint Ogden. In the 1920s as brother Walter began a lasting political career in the

statehouse, Ogden rose through the ranks of the DAR. While males ran the business of

the state, their wives, sisters, and daughters formed alternative routes to wield power. As

one historian explains, Ogden used “the duties of a public mother to build her own

political reputation and to secure the Jim Crow order.” The DAR, moreover, tried to

preserve their upper middle class culture for future generations of members, forming

25 Dittmer, Local People, 25-36, 365; James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); For ideas about how black southerners thought about American principles, democracy, and Protestant religion, see Manis, Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, 41-50, 73-77. 89

youth divisions to mentor rising stars. During her tenure as DAR youth director, Ogden eventually met Edna Whitfield, who became a lifelong friend and colleague as both women ascended to the top positions in the state organization by midcentury.26

By the mid 1940s, the Daughters outpaced the United Daughters of the

Confederacy (UDC) in becoming the preeminent history club in the state. While membership in both women’s clubs overlapped, the DAR had a longer, more successful record in commemorating historical sites and preserving historical records. The

Daughters, likewise, commanded larger coffers that paid off in 1937 when the club purchased an aging Natchez mansion called Rosalie. After restoration of the historic site, the building became the organization’s headquarters, serving as the appropriate venue for meetings, activities, and soirees. Ogden played a crucial role in the purchase of the plantation home that forever solidified her position as a club leader that she parlayed into a syndicated newspaper column. From the latter years of the Great Depression through the Cold War and civil rights movement crises, Ogden’s opinion pieces garnered the attention of the state’s political and business elites while also reaching the rank-and-file.

Her topics included advocacy of records preservation, essay contests, and memorialization efforts. During the war years, Ogden’s subjects became much more politically potent by vehemently denouncing immigration, labor unions, communism, and integration.27

26 Anne Hughes Porter, ed., The History of the Mississippi State Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 1896-1996 (Kosciusko, MS: Professional Publishing, 1996), 9, 22, 27; and McRae, “White Womanhood,” 182.

27 Porter, The History of the Mississippi DAR, 38-39; and McRae, “White Womanhood,” 182-83.

By the middle of the 1940s, the Mississippi DAR began what could be considered

as a golden age for civic organizations, expanding to twenty-three hundred active

members across the state. Regarding its political lobbying activities, the Daughters

coordinated campaigns during its routine weekly meetings and luncheons. Chapters

throughout the state competed with each other on production and placement of press

releases, and securing local weekly and daily newspaper space to broadcast their

programmatic activities. By 1945, the DAR used its growing financial resources to

purchase nineteen radio stations broadcasting music, community news, and political

commentary.28 The war effort also gained the attention of the Daughters. Based on

National Society directives, each community chapter formed committees called “National

Defense Through Patriotic Education.” Ogden and Edna Whitfield Alexander used their positions on their respective chapters’ National Defense Committees to rise through the ranks of the organization. Committee members’ duties included advocacy of the war effort, sale of war bonds, and stockpiling of essential goods. National Defense operatives also gathered information on subversive elements in society and reported their findings to

Congress’s Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities led by Texas

Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. Even DAR mission statements spelled out the instructions for spying on their neighbors, calling on members “to cherish, maintain, and extend the institutions of American freedom, to foster true patriotism, and love of country, and to aid in securing for all mankind the blessings of liberty.”29 Thus, the Mississippi DAR’s

28 Porter, The History of the Mississippi DAR, 43.

29 Mrs. William H. Schlosser, “What do the Daughters Do?” DAR Pamphlet, Sept. 1941, 1, emphasis in original, in Box 3, Folder 5, John Rolfe Chapter, Mississippi Society, Daughters of the 91

expansion in membership came at a time when national political leaders looked to civic club members as part-time spies and full-time political pundits determined to thwart social change.

Ogden’s political opinions reveal the links between her conservatism, her sense of history, and her belief in southern supremacy. During the war, Ogden’s influence transcended state lines, preparing reports and conducting research for state and national leaders. She believed the expansion of federal power threatened basic American principles as well as racial and ethnic integrity, lobbying Congress for tougher immigration laws. “True Americans,” she wrote, “are sick of…peoples of Europe pouring into our country, disseminating their poisonous theories of government, abusing our hospitality, stirring up strife and class hatreds.” She warned Senator Walter F. George of

Georgia of “no compromise that could be satisfactory” regarding legislation easing immigration restrictions.30 In a similar appeal to the Chairman of the Ways and Means

Committee, Ogden acknowledged Robert L. Doughton’s status as a southerner: “I am writing to you as a man who must feel as I do, having the same heritage…please do something…Other countries are not suspending their immigration laws.”31 Through

Mississippi Representatives William Whittington and John E. Rankin, Odgen’s worldview became part of congressional debates. On September 6, 1943, Whittington read Ogden’s syndicated newspaper column, “Dis An’ Dat,” outlining her fear of “the

American Revolution, W.D. McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter referred to as JRC.

30 Florence Sillers Ogden to Walter F. George, GA-D, Nov. 29, 1942, Box 1, Folder 14, Florence Sillers Ogden Papers, Special Collections, Charles W. Capps Library and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS. Hereafter referred to as FSO.

31 Florence Sillers Ogden to Robert L. Doughton, NC-D, Nov. 29, 1942, Box 1, Folder 14, FSO.

philosophies of other lands, other people,” that was more pressing than the evils of Hitler or “the crash of bombs.”32 Southern sensibilities formed the basis of Ogden’s rhetoric since she believed the South possessed superior social relationships, customs, and labor.

Following the war, Ogden targeted the federal government’s expansion of power in her many letters, speeches, and editorials. Congressman Rankin delivered a lengthy speech on the topic in Congress, opposing extension of the FEPC. “It is the most dangerous piece of communistic legislation,” Rankin informed Illinois Republican

Everett Dirksen during floor debate, “with which this country has ever been threatened in all its history.” Rankin then recounted a story about a New York landlord who claimed he had to lease an apartment to an African American despite his reticence to do so. He explained that “the communists in New York are demanding” the federal government to deny property owners of their natural rights.33 His views came directly from Ogden, and the congressman sent her a copy of the Congressional Record as gesture of gratitude for unearthing the story about the New York property owner and other research materials related to the debate. Rankin informed Ogden that the FEPC would continue since

“members of both Houses…are so deathly afraid of racial issues” because “the President

[Harry S. Truman] brings in crazy recommendations to wipe out all segregation in our schools, colleges, hotels, etc.”34 Ogden’s political opinions had extensive reach, ending

32 William M Whittington, Congressional Record, United States House of Representatives, 77th Congress, Sept. 6, 1943, 1, Box 1, Folder 14, FSO.

33 John E. Rankin, “The FEPC in New York—White Americans Betrayed,” Congressional Record, United States House of Represenatives, 80th Congress, Feb. 13, 1947, 1, Box 1, Folder 14, FSO.

34 John E. Rankin, MS-D, to Florence Sillers Ogden, Dec. 15, 1947, Box 1, Folder 19, FSO.

up as fodder for state representatives to cast integration as one and the same with

communism.

The war and the federal government’s commitment to civil rights exacerbated

southern political leaders’ resentment directed at the national Democratic Party. In 1948,

southern delegates attending the Democratic National Convention stormed out, forming

the States’ Rights Democratic Party, or commonly known as the “Dixiecrats.” Ogden and

other politically minded southerners increasingly threw their support to Republican

candidates in subsequent campaigns. In 1952, for example, Ogden formed a local chapter

called Democrats for Eisenhower, hoping to rally voters to the Republican cause. Her

efforts ultimately failed as Mississippians overwhelmingly voted for Democrat Adlai

Stevenson in the campaign, but racial issues further divided southerners from the party of

their fathers. Through the DAR’s National Defense committees, activists like Ogden and

Edna Alexander tried to convince Mississippians that the Democratic Party had

abandoned the positions southerners held as sacrosanct. The DAR had long been

composed of far-right, conservative members, but the work of politically active members

in Mississippi demonstrates the organization’s entreaties to rank-and-file voters.35

Like Ogden, Edna Whitfield Alexander used her political connections and

organizing talents to further develop the DAR into a powerful pressure group involved in

multiple areas of Mississippi and national politics. Born Edna Earle Elizabeth Whitfield

in Houston, Mississippi, she matured in a family with extensive connections to

Mississippi politics and civic leadership. Her mother had been one of the charter

35 Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt, 5-6, 136-37, 168-72, 238; Florence Sillers Ogden to E.C. Spencer, Democrats for Eisenhower, Box 2, Folder 25, FSO; McRae, “White Womanhood,” 183-86; and Melton, “Walter Sillers,” 218-22. 94

members of the state DAR, and uncle Henry Whitfield served as superintendent of

education and governor before his death in 1925. After Edna’s family relocated to the

Mississippi Gulf Coast, she attended Gulfport High School and distinguished herself by

being energetic, talented, intelligent, and opinionated. As a high school student, she

founded the school’s Spanish Club, Hi-Y Club (a YMCA and YWCA youth program),

and the Ku Klux Klan youth auxiliary. Edna organized the inaugural yearbook

committee, serving as the first editor-in-chief of Gulfport High’s The White Cap. The

future DAR leader had a less active junior college career, however; her years at Gulf

Coast Junior College could be characterized as disappearing into the crowd rather than

rallying her peers. Edna’s early development represented a youth destined for leadership

in one of the few professional avenues available to women—civic organizations. After

her marriage to Harry Artz Alexander, Edna followed her mother by becoming a full-

fledged member of the DAR, rising through the ranks through her commitment to

National Defense work during World War II. From the chair of the state’s defense

program, she ascended to vice-regent, followed by regent in 1950. During her tenure,

Edna and Ogden both directed the 1952 visit to Mississippi by General Douglas

MacArthur. The retiring five-star U.S. Army general joined the Daughters for a gala held

at Rosalie in Natchez that was complete with a pageant featuring hoop-skirted women

and men in blackface portraying slaves on an idyllic Mississippi plantation scene during

the antebellum era. As her regency concluded in 1953, Edna became a long-time

coordinator for the Mississippi Society’s National Defense Committee.36 Edna Alexander

36 Obituary, “Edna Whitfield Alexander,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, March 17, 1995, 9C; Gulfport High School, The White Cap, 26, Box 1, and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “Adolescents and the War,” Box 2, Edna Whitfield Alexander Collection, Special Collections, Rubenstein Library, Duke 95

considered the DAR as a vehicle through which elites like herself and Ogden could command ordinary Mississippians to defend the nation and Mississippi against all threats real and perceived whether those originated overseas or in America.

The DAR had outpaced its sibling organization, the Sons of the American

Revolution, in terms of membership and organizational activity.37 Both civic clubs maintained similar goals and commitments, devoting their efforts “to perpetuate the memory and spirit of the men and women who achieved American Independence by acquisition and protection of historical sites, and the erection of monuments.”38 The DAR and SAR, in addition, coordinated recognition of Constitution Week in public schools.

The clubmen and women placed particular importance on promoting Constitution Week, arguing that the ideals and principles of the American Republic had originated in southern states. Defense of the Constitution and club versions of history merged during the Cold War, taking on added significance for what many viewed as an overreaching federal government. History became infused with civic club members’ conservative ideology that undergirded their defense of fundamental American principles from people they considered communists and integrationists, or their fellow travelers. The DAR and

SAR commitment to patriotic education centered on the Constitution and history, which

University, Durham, N.C., Hereafter referred to as EWA; and Porter, The History of the Mississippi DAR, 54-69.

37 Cyril Cain to Edna Alexander, March 15, 1952, Box 6, Folder 130, Cain Family Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as Cain Papers.

38 Schlosser, “What do the Daughters Do?” Box 3, Folder 5, JRC; and Cyril Cain, “The Mississippi Sons of the American Revolution, Directory 1909-1956,” x, Box 6, Folder 127, Cain Papers.

many members referred to as a divinely inspired “heritage” extended to present-day elites.39

Civic clubs’ national defense initiatives required a version of history that could beat back opponents of white supremacy. Cyril Cain, an SAR leader and the official

Mississippi DAR historian, provided much of the historical ideology that the DAR drew from in their defense of the status quo during the Cold War and the black freedom struggle. Cain was born in Jackson County in 1883 and was graduated from Mississippi

A&M College in 1923. Cain completed his graduate training at Cornell University, attaining a master’s in psychology. He then returned to Mississippi, teaching in the Clay

County Public School District before becoming an education professor at his alma mater.40 Despite the many education courses he taught at Mississippi State, Cain’s true love was southern history that he approached with almost religious devotion. He and his wife routinely traveled to visit “hallowed historic grounds.” On one trip the couple stopped at all Civil War battlefield sites between Mississippi and Kentucky. While in

Jamestown, Virginia on another vacation, Cain and wife Sallie watched numerous programs before walking the extensive landscape of Fredericksburg National Battlefield.

In his diary, Cain commemorated his visit to the Civil War site, writing that he “could feel the valor of our Southern patriots as I stood by the stonewall.”41

Cain also worked on increasing SAR membership at a time when interest in the national club waned. The Daughters, however, experienced untold growth in members

39 Cain, “The Mississippi Sons,” x.

40 “Cyril E. Cain,” SAR Magazine, Jan. 1952.

41 Cyril Cain, “Trip Reports, Starkville to Jamestown,” 1957, Box 6, Folder 128, and May 16-26, 1963 “Trip Report, Starkville to Lexington,” Box 6, Folder 128, Cain Papers.

during the same time period. Cain lamented rivalries within the SAR between “Old

Guard” and “New Guard” members that devolved into partisanship over organizational

activities. The Old Guard, which Cain identified with, established the Patriotic Education

Committee with the intent of strengthening history education in public schools in addition

to writing reports about subversive content. The SAR named Cain as the state director of

Patriotic Education in Mississippi. With a languishing list of SAR people to call upon,

Cain reached out to Alexander and Ogden.

The SAR and DAR collaborated on whipping up opposition to the United

Nations. Nationally and in Mississippi, many clubmen and women considered the U.N. as

a potential world government body jeopardizing American sovereignty. The two patriotic

societies opposed the 1948 U.N. General Assembly’s Declaration of Human Rights,

arguing that the statement represented the world body’s rampant anti-American

tendencies. Civic club members believed the U.N. enabled “infiltration of Communistic

ideas.” The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) was determined to the “overthrow of our way of life,” according to critics.42

The SAR circulated satirical information denigrating the UNESCO program. One item

included a U.N.-revised Pledge of Allegiance that schoolchildren recited daily. The

changed verses of the pledge read: “I pledge allegiance to the United Nations and the

world government, for which it stands, one income equally divided, liberty and justice

within proper bounds at the discretion of judges and not juries.”43 The final line was an overt expression of indignation for the federal judiciary, which actively worked to

42 “Greenwood Man is New SAR President,” Jackson Daily News, April 5, 1954, 2.

43 Unauthored, “UNESCO,” n.d. [1953?], Box 6, Folder 134, Cain Papers.

dismantle segregation through its decisions in multiple discrimination cases such as

Sipuel v. Board of Regents University of Oklahoma (1948). The rhetoric in this imaginary

U.N.-authored Pledge foreshadowed segregationists’ attacks on the Brown v. Board of

Education (1954) decision that struck down the “separate but equal” principle rendering segregation legal.44

The SAR’s anticommunist agenda targeted educational theories encoded into textbook content. The SAR, along with the American Legion, nationally opposed the tenets of progressive education as expounded by theorists John Dewey and George S.

Counts. The chief complaints included charges of brainwashing and anti-American sympathies, especially regarding social studies curricula. Conservatives opposed various historiographical ideas championed by University of Chicago professor, Charles Beard, in addition to controversial educational theories emanating from the Teachers College at

Columbia University. Beard, with help from his wife Mary, revised the history of the

U.S. Constitution, emphasizing class conflict, which civic club members considered communistic at worse, but at the very least unpatriotic.45 Progressive education, according to one historian, “was to teach critical thinking through an open intellectual climate,” forming a national reform movement among education scholars.46 In 1957,

National Society SAR member Augustin Rudd published a polemic entitled Bending the

Twig, attacking progressive education as the harbinger of the downfall of the United

44 For an examination of the legal strategy used to dismantle Jim Crow through the federal judiciary, see Mark V. Tushnet, Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 99-149.

45 Evans, The Hope for American School Reform, 3-34; Evans, The Social Studies Wars, 42-66; and Zimmerman, Whose America?, 41-42.

46 Burkholder, Color in the Classroom, 85. 99

States in favor of a communist dictatorship. Mississippi’s conservative clubmen and women likewise stood on guard against new, innovative ideas as the bedrock of their education reform agenda.47

Through the SAR’s Patriotic Education Committee, Cain worked to inculcate

Americanism instruction in Mississippi schools by rallying the members of his own organization in addition to other civic-minded education reformers. While difficult to define even among Legionnaires, Mississippi’s civic-patriotic club members maintained that Americanism meant that the United States represented a divinely ordained and perfected form of republican government rather than a democracy, and placed special emphasis on the Constitution and the free enterprise system. Cain received inspiration from the California Society SAR activities in 1949 when the patriotic organization spent

$6,000 to remove a textbook series influenced by progressive education theorists. The objectionable material contained in the progressive education-influenced Building

America series of schoolbooks adhered to a problems-based model of pedagogy for U.S. history, geography, politics, and economics. Cain alerted the Mississippi SAR about the book, which the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board failed to sanction; the book was never used in public schools in the state. Regardless, Cain drafted and distributed a pamphlet entitled “Bill of Grievances” that analyzed the “propaganda” contained in the readers.48 The pamphlet had extensive reach and sounded the siren call

47 Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and its Effects on Our Children (Chicago: The Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1957), 25-32; and Mrs. Ben G. Kohrs to Boswell Stevens, June 19, 1961, Box 26, Folder “MFBF Women’s Activities,” BSP.

48 Cyril Cain to Dewitt Burney, Feb. 25, 1949, and “Trustees’ Meeting,” Nov. 3-4, 1951, Box 6, Folder 129 and Cyril Cain to Mr. Huxford, April 14, 1954, Box 6, Folder 130, Cain Papers; and Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 44-45.

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to other civic organizations that alien ideologies ran rampant in the children’s classroom lessons.

Despite the efforts of the SAR, DAR, the American Legion, and other civic club education reformers, the state’s social studies curriculum had undergone only a few changes. Mississippi Teacher Association President Mary Hutchinson penned an article in the official publication of the professional association—the Mississippi Educational

Advance. In the piece calling for widespread reform of public schooling in the state, she prefaced her opinions by citing various historical myths as if an accurate portrayal of the state’s past. By calling the Civil War the “War Between the States,” and claiming that antebellum white Mississippians “had built a culture and had created traditions unsurpassed by other southern states” indicated that teachers adhered to an antiquated version of history.49 In other words, progressive education theorists’ debates about historiographical changes and pedagogical approaches in teaching history and social studies failed to make an impact among the state’s teachers. The Mississippi textbook regulatory agency, moreover, refused to sanction books targeted by civic clubs in other states such as the history texts written by Harold Rugg—a veteran of the Chicago and

Columbia schools of thought—in addition to the Building America series.50

Chicago and Columbia Universities produced many education theorists who debated the best approach to instruction. An increasing number of progressive education

49 Mary Hutchinson, “Mississippi’s Challenge to Education: Will We Meet It?” Mississippi Educational Advance 30, No. 1 (Oct. 1938): 10-11.

50 Ronald Evans has completed the best biography about the Columbia University professor, Harold Rugg, and the conservative backlash against his pedagogical ideas. See, This Happened in America: Harold Rugg and the Censure of Social Studies (Greenwood, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2007); and Moreau covers the Legion’s campaign against Rugg in Schoolbook Nation, 219-53.

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proponents believed social studies should replace history, while an older group of

theorists considered history as the bedrock of the social studies. Regardless of these

debates and the innovations developed by these scholars, Mississippi handed the arduous

task of curriculum and instruction to its textbook regulatory agency. The content of state

sanctioned texts determined what teachers taught in the classroom, and through the 1950s

the state approved only those books produced by southern authors. While Charles and

Mary Beard represented a revisionist approach to the study of past societies that focused

on economics, Mississippians Mable and John Fant produced a Mississippi history text

complete with a pro-South version of past events that undergirded white supremacy.

Their reader became a staple in public school history courses through the 1930s when

DAR member Pearl Guyton penned a newer Mississippi history text. Guyton’s book, The

History of Mississippi From Indian Times to the Present Day, initially received state

sanction during the Great Depression and became the most used text in elementary and

high school grades until publication of the second edition.51

In 1952, Guyton changed publishers and produced a second edition of her reader,

Our Mississippi, which reflected the political tensions affecting segregationists during the

New Deal and World War II. Changes between Guyton’s two editions demonstrate how

the DAR member and Natchez High history teacher concealed information about the

Great Depression and the federal response. While her first edition contained a chapter

about the New Deal with emphasis on the Works Progress Administration (WPA),

Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC),

51 Affidavit of Jan Hillegas, “Legislative History of Mississippi Textbook Laws,” Loewen v. Turnipseed, Federal Court of the Northern District Mississippi, Acc. 21870027 Box 2, Folder 2, National Archives and Records Administration, Morrow, GA.

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Guyton excised this material in her 1952 book. The newer version, in addition, lumped the two global conflicts together in a single chapter. Each subsequent section covered

Mississippi society, politics, economy, and culture at the time, reading much like a tourism guide, highlighting the remaining antebellum mansions in the state. Her second edition could be dismissed as a public relations vehicle designed to improve the state’s national image. Adopted by the state in 1953, Guyton’s text became the standard-bearer in state history courses taught in public schools through two decades.52

Through Guyton’s work students likely learned inaccurate, inconsistent, and mythical information about antebellum Mississippi, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. In the material preceding the twentieth century, which remained identical to its 1935 edition, the DAR member and history teacher explained that wealthier Mississippians holding political power attempted to establish social welfare type programs for the state’s majority impoverished population. She failed to support the claim, hoping instead to give the impression that wealthy antebellum elites maintained some semblance of civic responsibility. On slavery, Guyton emphasized that it was a national phenomenon intended “to die out quietly and gradually,” implying that the end of forced labor in the

United States was inevitable. With Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency, Guyton wrote that “the people of the South felt that they were about to be robbed of their slaves and cheated of their liberty…the time had come for stronger measures” to oppose the

“abolitionist” president-elect. The author connected the idea of liberty to ownership of

52 Pearl Guyton, The History of Mississippi From Indian Times to the Present Day (Syracuse, N.Y.: Iroquois Publishing Company, 1935), vii; and Pearl Guyton, Our Mississippi (Austin, TX: Steck Company, 1952), 311-12. Interestingly, Steck published the other Mississippi history standard-bearer written historian Dr. John K. Bettersworth. Beginning in 1958, Bettersworth and Steck began an enduring contract that lasted through the early 1980s and the books produced greatly resembled Guyton’s in content. 103

persons, or slavery. “The South only wanted to be left alone to establish and develop a country of their own,” Guyton explained regarding the state’s secession ordinance. The work revealed her present-day biases since many at the time opposed federal policies begun by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration; conservative Mississippians claimed they merely wanted to be left alone.53

Guyton’s chapters on “The War Between the States” and Reconstruction contained some of the author’s most racially offensive statements consistent with the Lost

Cause version of history.54 During the war, Guyton contended that slaves “were loyal to their masters’ families,” but after the conflict the state legislature enacted Black Codes restricting the freedmen’s liberty “for their own good.” She also claimed that these statutes provided “the negroes with many rights that they never had before.”55 Consistent with Dunning School historical interpretations that developed as segregated post-bellum society took shape, Guyton claimed that freed people “had no idea of their responsibilities, and few of them knew anything about how to make a living for themselves.” She charged the state’s Reconstruction era government consisting of a large number of African American officeholders with condoning “lawlessness and violence,” depicting the period in which “neither the life nor the property of any white man was safe.” Similar to many southern writers, Guyton applauded the Ku Klux Klan’s goal of

53 Guyton, Our Mississippi, 148-50, 155-57. Lincoln opposed the expansion of slavery to the territories acquired by the United States from Mexico. No historical evidence exists indicating that Lincoln was an abolitionist—an antebellum fringe group. See Orville Vernon Burton, The Age of Lincoln (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007), 113-14.

54 For the best account to date of the Lost Cause and its effects on history instruction that preceded the 1950s, see Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 100-06; and Manis argues that the Lost Cause revived in the era following Brown in Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, 78-82.

55 Guyton, Our Mississippi, 163, 174, 183. 104

“protection of the weak, innocent, and defenseless” white population cowering under the yoke of black domination.56

Instead of history, the author’s claims closely resembled a cultural belief system about the past. Commonly called heritage, this belief system dominated the content of her book, which was published devoid of any citations by reputable academic historians.

Guyton, moreover, failed to include any additional reading suggestions with the exception of pro-Mississippi authors such as the Fants, Cain, and professors R.A.

McLemore and John K. Bettersworth.57 Clearly, Guyton’s textbook reveals her love of

Mississippi as the guiding element in her writing. The sentiment remained consistent with the state society’s affinity for the state. At its 1948 state convention when Edna

Alexander served as vice-regent of the state DAR, the press relations section of the handbook reprinted a poem written by Louise Montgomery entitled “I Like Mississippi

Because…” Its first few lines read: “Magnolias blooming by pilgrimage walls/Indians lurking in history’s halls/Southern ideals still flourishing here/Skies intermittently murkey and clear.” The poem closed with “it’s just Mississippi—the state we adore.”58

For the Daughters to continue to adore Mississippi, the organization of genealogists and

56 A pair of articles about William A. Dunning’s influence on Reconstruction historiography and how textbooks presented it include: Bernard A. Weisberger, “The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography,” Journal of Southern History 25 (Nov. 1959): 428-32; Mark M. Krug, “On Rewriting the Story of Reconstruction in the U.S. History Textbooks,” The Journal of Negro History 46 (April 1961): 134-37; and Guyton, Our Mississippi, 192-95.

57 Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past, 128-30; Johnson, Southern Ladies, 1-6; and Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 160-61.

58 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Resolutions Committee,” Feb. 23-25, 1948, Columbus, MS, 167, Box 2, EWA.

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public historians had to whitewash the state’s history, conceal its past, and promote beliefs rather than a more accurate portrayal.

During the 1940s, the Mississippi Daughters worked to realize an anticommunist education reform agenda, using the schools as the bulwark against subversives, communists, and fellow travelers. At its 1948 meeting, twenty-three out of thirty-four local DAR chapters had appointed an Americanism chairperson. In the local chapters’ reports, members sponsored essay contests on “Communism in America To-Day,” and ten other chapters had teachers as members. They “endeavor[ed] to instill the principles of True Democracy, and the love of Country, in the minds of their pupils.” Other chapter reports listed programs designed to compare America “with that of Russia.” Through local DAR national defense committees, the organization awarded students with medals for good citizenship and excellence in history. Several months later the north Mississippi chapters convened in Oxford for a National Defense Clinic, which was a seven-point plan to instruct members about “developing a national defense consciousness” that would extend beyond the local DAR chapter to alert citizens about the threat of communism in communities, churches, and schools.59

During annual meetings the Mississippi Society outlined their conservative beliefs and how these merged with traditional religion and anticommunism. The Daughters condemned subversive organizations working “through our time-honored institutions” of school and church. Resolutions proclaimed “a critical period of [national] history,” offering the doomsday forecast that the United States was “being led by subversives

59 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Annual Meeting,” Feb. 24-26, 1949, Gulfport, MS, 36, 81, 102, Box 2, EWA.

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down the road all great nations of the past have taken in their decline and fall.” In this

regard, the DAR condemned federal aid to education, socialized medicine, the United

Nations, which they called “world government,” organized labor, socialized agriculture,

and Social Security. The state society advocated further accountability of public school

teachers, requiring a statement of allegiance mandated by state law. They likewise

targeted the Social Gospel movement as “a definite trend toward socialism.”60 The Social

Gospel, embraced by northeastern and western evangelicals during the early decades of the twentieth century, was a religious and intellectual movement that attempted to employ Christian ethics to ameliorate social problems, especially inadequate education.61

By the 1950s, the Social Gospel’s influence on labor unions particularly offended the

Mississippi DAR, which conflated the secular and religious in development of its post-

war conservatism. During her first state meeting as regent, Edna Alexander approved of

member Dera Parkinson’s Lowndes County Plan, created to “remind our citizens of the

religious basis of our freedom” during July Fourth celebrations in local communities. The

DAR used its radio stations to broadcast sermons by ministers incorporating information

about “our American heritage.” The Lowndes County Plan likewise called upon

“knowledge of what Communism really is” in addition to the need for the Daughters to

help restore “faith in God and faith in our country.” Parkinson’s plan similarly served as a

“warning…against all schemes that tend to destroy the freedom of the individual and

60 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Annual Meeting,” 45th State Meeting, Feb. 22-24, 1950-1951, Jackson, MS, 20-24, Box 2, EWA.

61 Ronald Cedric White and Charles Howard Hopkins, The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1976), xi-xiii.

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substitute…a socialistic, atheistic, totalitarian government.”62 The Daughters linked God, patriotism, and history as their ideology evolved during the early years of the Cold War.

As state regent Edna Alexander issued directives in hopes of expanding the

Daughters’ influence in education, society, and politics. At the 1952 meeting in Jackson,

Alexander ordered the reading of Ralph Bradford’s poem “Heritage.” The lengthy paean to America and Christianity followed with “a pageant showing our goodly heritage and what our Society is doing to protect and preserve that heritage.” The following year,

Alexander heard reports about implementation of the Lowndes County Plan, consisting of eighteen radio broadcasts of speeches on national defense topics. In addition, two thousand Daughters wrote letters to legislators and congressmen on “vital subjects of national legislation.” Alexander encouraged more radio broadcasts “for widespread dissemination of knowledge of socialistic tendencies existing in our churches, school, and government.” One local chapter had already fulfilled the regent’s wishes by broadcasting

“a young mother’s talk on ‘Communism in Education.’” She informed audiences of “how widely her eyes had been opened to the creeping menace” of communism.63

The DAR fused its anticommunist, patriotic, and historically inspired civil religion with a defense of white supremacy, connecting with likeminded business leaders for defense of the southern way of life. Allowing its labor force to disappear before their eyes caused consternation among many Daughters. In 1949, the DAR condemned the

“outgoing of the negro from the plantations and the siphoning off of native Mississippi

62 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Annual Meeting,” 46th State Meeting, Feb. 24-26, 1950-1951, Jackson, MS, 106, Box 2, EWA.

63 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Annual Meeting,” 46th State Meeting, Feb. 24-26, 1950-1951, Jackson, MS, 20-24, Box 2, EWA; and Mississippi DAR, “Program of the 47th State Meeting,” March 3-5, Biloxi, MS, 118-40, Box 2, EWA.

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youth by Northern and Eastern centers” by offering higher wages. Certainly Florence

Sillers Ogden held special interest and knowledge about planters’ labor needs since she managed her brother Walter’s cotton plantation. By 1953, the Daughters at several chapters opened up lines of communication with the National Cotton Council, which “are affiliated in our thoughts and purposes.” By that late date, the nascent Farm Bureau movement in Mississippi had stabilized and had joined the DAR and American Legion in spearheading anticommunist activism directed mostly at preserving segregated education.64

Among the coterie of education reform and anticommunist organizations, the

Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation developed much later in comparison to the

American Legion, SAR, and DAR. Similar to politicians’ disenchantment with the New

Deal, the MFBF support had turned to outright opposition following the rejection of the

Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA) by the U.S. Supreme Court. The state

Farm Bureau like many other states’ farm organizations controlled the federal funds disseminated through the AAA and its successor, the Soil Conservation Service. As long as the MFBF controlled federal funds, the organization stood in alignment with polices set by both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Yet changes in the leadership at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) turned the government agency toward breaking up the organizational cross-breeding between the private Farm Bureau and the public Cooperative Extension Service (CES) operated by state land-grant

64 Mississippi DAR, “Report of the Annual Meeting,” Feb. 23-25, 1949, Gulfport, MS, 40, Box 2, EWA; Mississippi DAR, “Program of the 47th State Meeting,” March 3-5, Biloxi, MS, 119, Box 2, EWA; George Robson, Jr. “The Mississippi Farm Bureau Through Depression and War: The Formative Years, 1919-1949,” Ph.D. diss. Mississippi State University, 1973, 262-64; and Boswell Stevens to Mrs. H.A. Alexander (Edna), Aug. 1 and Alexander to Stevens, Aug. 8, 1952, Box 1, Folder 18, BSP.

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colleges. In Mississippi, the state land-grant at Starkville commanded the distribution of federal monies and the Farm Bureau controlled the CES. The USDA policy on minimum wage extension further antagonized the Farm Bureau, which opposed farm laborers, sharecroppers, and tenants from benefitting from federal policies. During the last few years of the Great Depression, Mississippi Farm Bureau pioneer Ransom Aldrich championed the USDA position and even advocated full membership for African

Americans. National Cotton Council founder Oscar Johnston, representing a bloc within the membership opposing Aldrich and competing for the organization’s presidency, led a campaign for the promotion of a conservative and anti-labor MFBF leader.65

The DAR worked closely with Johnston in helping craft a conservative-minded farm organization complete with adequate anticommunist credentials. Florence Sillers

Ogden publicized the Farm Bureau’s membership campaign in a 1940 “Dis ‘an Dat” column, noting that the national organization opposed a food stamp program endorsed by an undersecretary of the USDA named Milo Perkins. “And Ed O’Neal, President of the

American Farm Bureau Federation,” Ogden wrote, “became a bitter Perkins opponent.”

Ogden believed that the Farm Bureau needed strong conservative leaders to maintain their identity that existed for “good, stout Americans.” She broadcasted the MFBF’s anticommunism to Mississippians, claiming “not an ‘ism in a carload…not a Communist in the lot.”66 Thus, the Farm Bureau shared ideological kinship with other civic-patriotic

65 Edward L. Blake, The Farm Bureau in Mississippi: A History of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation (Jackson: Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, 1971), 120-22, 132-33; Daniel, “Going Among Strangers,” 887-89; and Robson, “The Mississippi Farm Bureau,” 259-71.

66 Florence Sillers Ogden, “Dis ‘an Dat,” n.d. [1940?], Box 1, Folder 13, FSO.

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organizations, advocating strong conservative and anticommunist positions that underwent further development once Aldrich had been relieved of his presidency.

Unlike the SAR and DAR, the MFBF embarked on a course following World War

II conducive to building a strong lobbying organization to represent big business. In the late 1940s with Aldrich’s health failing, the Farm Bureau’s board reorganized, providing for a full-time president assisted by a staff of lobbyists. Through Johnston’s influence in

1949, the board elevated Noxubee County leader Arthur Boswell “Bos” Stevens as the chief of the state’s general farm organization. Stevens was the first MFBF president to receive a handsome salary of $50,000 annually. Thus, Stevens’s most prominent duties included lobbying and advocating for the economic interests of agribusiness and large landowners while he merely spoke about representing farm families living out a version of Jeffersonian agrarianism. For twenty-two years, Stevens geared his organization toward conservative positions that included hardline anticommunism, segregation, and

Americanism. “We believe…that our farm organization is the last bulwark against

Communism,” he told a joint meeting of the Alabama and Mississippi Farm Bureaus. He implored members to “band ourselves together to protect our American heritage.”

Heritage for Stevens represented a way of life that required protection. Similar to the views of other civic organizations, education provided the means toward defending white supremacy.67

Stevens, born in Noxubee County in 1897, relied on extensive connections with

Mississippi’s business and political elites to develop the state Farm Bureau. Before

67 Blake, The Farm Bureau in Mississippi, 155-56; “Boswell Stevens Biographical Article,” Box 36, Folder 132, BSP; and Boswell Stevens, “Address to the 29th Annual Meeting of the Alabama and Mississippi Farm Bureau Federations, Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 1950, Biloxi, MS, Box 1, Folder 4, BSP.

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serving briefly with the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War, he attended Mississippi A&M College. In the 1920s, Stevens returned to Noxubee County to help manage the family farm and business consisting of a cotton plantation and several hundred head of dairy cattle. He proved an able farm manager, and broadened his role in community affairs by forming the Noxubee County Farm Bureau and joining the

American Legion. By promoting cotton farming, Stevens aligned with Oscar Johnston and established connections with the newly formed Delta Council. He also met the powerful Speaker of the Mississippi House, Walter Sillers, Jr. Upon ascendancy to the presidency of the Mississippi Farm Bureau, he coordinated efforts to expand membership, envisioning an extensive statewide organization committed to protecting business interests and offering vital services such as insurance coverage to members.

Among many lobbying campaigns, Stevens and the MFBF devoted its energy and resources to school programs such as 4-H, Future Farmers of America (FFA), and scientific agriculture.68

Like its national organization, the MFBF focused on protecting the social, economic, and educational conditions of farm families through non-partisan lobbying at all levels of government. The Farm Bureau grew exponentially during Stevens’s presidency, reaching 50,000 white and black members statewide.69 In terms of its educational activism, the MFBF sought school curricula consistent with Americanism,

68 Blake, The Farm Bureau in Mississippi, 155-56; “Boswell Stevens Biographical Article,” Box 36, Folder 132, BSP; and Samuel Berger, Dollar Harvest: An Expose of the Farm Bureau (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath Books, 1971), 43, 114.

69 American Farm Bureau Federation, “Monthly Membership Report,” Jan. 8, 1958, Box 3, Folder “Jan-March 1958 Correspondence,” BSP. The report noted that on Nov. 30, 1957, the MFBF had 52, 522 white and black members; and Blake, The Farm Bureau in Mississippi, 155-56.

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which stressed constitutional governance, free enterprise, and unflinching patriotism.

Stevens considered Supreme Court decisions undermining segregation as anathema to the

Mississippi and southern way of life. Especially Sweatt v. Painter (1950), these court cases signaled a gradual transition to communism, or worse, a betrayal of American principles of local self government, according to Stevens.70 The American Farm Bureau

Federation, moreover, advocated widespread education reform along the lines of strict anticommunism and Americanism instruction. By the time that the Supreme Court debated the series of cases challenging segregation in education, Stevens and the national

Farm Bureau argued that federal involvement in public schools eroded state sovereignty.

While the DAR’s National Society avoided the integration question, the AFBF remained a states’ rights and segregationist organization.71 “We believe in segregation of the races,” Stevens began a 1955 letter to a Wisconsin clergyman, “because we believe it would be better spiritually, economically, and socially for all concerned.” His letter, moreover, referenced Mississippi’s school equalization campaign designed to obstruct implementation of any federal desegregation order by constructing stately and modern black school buildings. Stevens said it was evidence of “bleeding ourselves white to improve [black] school facilities.”72

70 Boswell Stevens to General Membership, Feb. 5, 1951, Box 1, Folder 5, BSP.

71 In 1956, the DAR’s National Society issued directives to state chapters to avoid defending segregation. See, Marie Smith, “DAR Opens, Shuts Off Segregation as an Issue,” Washington Post, April 14, 1956, 12. In contrast, the Farm Bureau organization remained committed to segregation, especially in public education. See, American Farm Bureau Federation, “Report of the Resolutions Committee,” Annual Meeting, Dec. 10-12, 1957, Chicago, IL, 1-7, Box 16, Folder “AFBF Resolutions,” BSP; and Berger, Dollar Harvest, 140-43.

72 Boswell Stevens to Rev. Richard E. Prichard, June 17, 1955, Box 2, Folder “Jan.-Feb. 1955 Correspondence,” BSP.

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During the first few years of the Cold War, the state’s white schools achieved some reform while considerable challenges faced African Americans seeking a viable education. While white institutions continued a gradual consolidation program, black schools remained widely dispersed throughout the countryside. Totalling 3,355 common and high schools in 1947, the state had an educable black population of 263,350. Of that number 221,000 attended classes daily on average. The state supplied public transportation for only 213 black municipal separate school districts, which mostly existed in cities such as Jackson, Meridian, and Gulf Coast communities. White school districts maintained enough funds to either purchase school busses or to contract with private transportation companies for bussing services. White common and high schools, furthermore, had a standard eight-month term while the average black institution operated for only 130 days of the year. In 1942, shortly after Governor Paul B. Johnson, Sr. successfully expanded the free textbook program to include high schools, the legislature passed a law that equalized the distribution of county school funds for white institutions.

By the 1946 legislative session, Mississippi expended a total of $5.7 million on schools in the Red Clay Hills and Piney Woods geographic regions that leveled the playing field in terms of educational financing with its Delta and black majority county counterparts.

Neshoba County in the central portion of the state and Itawamba County in the northeastern section received the most equalizing funds with $198,000 and $170,000 respectively. Earmarked solely for white schools, Mississippi’s educable black population benefitted from free textbooks and only in those counties and communities that offered educational opportunities to African Americans.73

73 G.J. Cain, “Public Schools For Negro Children, 1945-1946,” Division of Administration and 114

The state’s education system had achieved many reforms due in part to energetic state superintendents, including Joseph Sloan Vandiver. His death in 1946 while in office led Governor Thomas L. Bailey to appoint a new education chief who would eventually serve in that position for twenty-two years. Born in Hatley, East Mississippi Junior

College President Jackson McWhirter “Jack” Tubb fulfilled Vandiver’s unexpired term upon Bailey’s appointment; he subsequently won reelection. Tubb had all of the reformer credentials that elected leaders sought in a superintendent. He had worked as a teacher, a school principal, and county superintendent of education. Unlike his predecessors, Tubb wanted to correct many problems affecting both black and white schools. During his tenure as well, Tubb advocated moderation among segregationist organizations and full compliance with state and national laws in addition to the evolving federal interest in elementary and secondary education.74 The new superintendent identified with the interests of teachers and supported platforms advanced by the Mississippi Education

Association in addition to developing relationships with the PTA. In 1946, unsatisfied with the governor’s supreme power of appointment to the Mississippi State Textbook

Purchasing Board, Tubb successfully lobbied the legislature for amending state law to give the superintendent’s office control of the textbook regulatory agency’s constituent screening committees that evaluated book content. From 1946 until 1962, the state superintendent made appointments to the Board and its seven textbook screening committees that recommended approval of all books used by students. Realizing the need

Finance, Mississippi Department of Education, Feb. 1947, 1-2; and “Report of the Joint Legislative Education Committee on the Public School System of the State, 1946,” Mississippi Legislature, 13-17, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

74 J.M. Tubb, “Biographical Data,” Box 1240, Folder 14, JMT. 115

for broad based support on any school reform initiative, Tubb reached out to civic- patriotic societies and business leaders for cooperation of mutually beneficial goals in shaping and modernizing public education.75

The leadership of several of Mississippi’s civic clubs saw education and anticommunism as areas in which they commanded particular expertise. In October 1950, the American Legion cooperated with Tubb’s office and the Mississippi PTA in organizing a major school reform initiative that also coincided with the political realities of the Cold War. Legionnaires Robert Morrow and Boyd Campbell joined forces with

Tubb to establish the Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education (MCCE), “authorizing a study and survey of education needs.” While most civic-patriotic societies set a reform agenda on their own, the MCCE invited participation of civic and business leaders in addition to cooperation from the Mississippi Association of Colored Teachers. The

MCCE’s roster, moreover, read like a who’s who among the state’s civic elites, including

DAR member Mrs. Ralph Hester, SAR official Knox Walker, and state PTA President

Lucy Alston.76 The Mississippi Farm Bureau contributed $5,000 in startup funds.77 At its inaugural meeting on October 9, 1950, the MCCE resolved that “our school system needs

75 Reuben W. Griffith, “The Public School, 1890-1970,” in Richard Aubrey McLemore, ed. A History of Mississippi, 392-414 (Jackson: University and College Press of Mississippi, 1973), 403.

76 The Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education (MCCE) should not be confused with the white supremacist organization, the Citizens’ Councils, that Robert “Tut” Patterson and William J. Simmons founded in Sunflower County, MS following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education, “A Report on the Organizational Meeting,” Oct. 9, 1953, 1-3, Box 3, Folder “MCCE Reports,” Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as ACCMP. The state archives likely filed the MCCE material alongside Citizens’ Councils ephemera in error. Aside from some overlap in membership, the two organizations were entirely different.

77 Jack Tubb, Duke Thornton, Mrs. Ralph Hester, and Boyd Campbell to Boswell Stevens, Jan. 18, 1951, and Stevens to Boyd Campbell, et al., Jan. 12, 1951, Box 1, Folder 5, BSP.

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overhauling” to meet the demands of the postwar world. Mississippi Education

Association President Minnie Chesteen commented that the MCCE represented “our opportunity to develop education in Mississippi…to present a sound, practical and up-to- the-minute school program to the 1952 Legislature.” MCCE goals included reorganizing the school system’s structure and revitalizing the curriculum. Alston added that “our foremost problem are what children should be taught and how they should be taught.”78

Both public officials and business leaders attended the MCCE’s 1950 organizational meeting where the reformers devised a plan to bring the state’s schools into the modern era. “This may be a historic day in Mississippi,” Tubb declared before listing the major problems affecting education. Among the challenges, Mississippi’s schools needed improved teacher training, compulsory education enforcement, efficient transportation, physical education programs, and college preparation. Historians have since emphasized the MCCE’s other major goal of “providing proper classrooms for both white and colored children.”79 The MCCE is most well known for advocating equalization between black and white schools and using increased appropriations earmarked for a massive construction campaign to make it a reality. The reform organization therefore hoped by building up black schools the state could circumvent any projected federal judicial requirements for desegregation. Certainly all of the MCCE’s members strictly adhered to segregation, but they also believed strong civic participation

78 Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education, “A Report on the Organizational Meeting,” Oct. 9, 1950, 2, Box 3, Folder “MCCE Reports,” ACCMP. Emphasis added.

79 Ibid., 2. 117

in the state’s education system provided the vehicle for modernizing educational services consistent with the political realities of the era.80

During the MCCE’s initial meeting, Mississippi’s anticommunists had finally consolidated their efforts in rallying around the schoolhouse as the avenue for reform of both education and society. By sounding “a warning [bell] of the need to combat

Communism,” civic-patriotic clubs believed Americanism instruction in schools with emphasis on history and civics courses could prevent any student from the beguiling influence of foreign ideologies.81 Ripley attorney Fred Smith attended the MCCE meeting, informing newspaper reporters that education reform could be “an antidote to

Communism.”82 Morrow and Boyd, the ringleaders, promoted modernized educational services in hopes that it could help attract industrial development. As for their specific curricular interests, they believed as did Boswell Stevens that instruction on the

American free enterprise system held the keys to promoting anticommunist and conservative principles to the state’s high school students.83 In this way, the MCCE augmented the Boys’ State program developed by the American Legion. Instead of

80 Charles C. Bolton, for example, analyzes the MCCE as merely a public-private organ for promoting a school construction campaign designed to mitigate any desegregation ruling or order from the federal judiciary. The campaign strove to make education in Mississippi racially separate and indeed equal through building black schools. See, Hardest Deal of All, 52-54. Similarly, historian Jason Morgan Ward reiterates Bolton’s analysis and adds complexity to the relationship that existed between varieties of segregationists and black accommodationists. Both authors avoided comment on the MCCE’s anticommunist agenda and the links to the state’s civic organizations. See, Defending White Democracy, 132-33.

81 “Morrow to Head New Education Council; High Aims Set,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 10, 1950, 1; and Charles H. Hills, “Affairs of State,” Jackson Daily News, Oct. 9, 1950, 6.

82 Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education, “A Report on the Organizational Meeting,” Oct. 9, 1950, 2, Box 3, Folder “MCCE Reports,” ACCMP.

83 Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education, “A Report on the Organizational Meeting,” Oct. 9, 1950, 1-4, Box 3, Folder “MCCE Reports,” ACCMP.

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merely inviting the most well-connected high school students to Jackson, curricular

reform emphasizing history, civics, and economics would reach all students. A renewed

commitment to educational quality, whether in the form of modern school buildings or

curricular reform, served as a testament to the transformations in Mississippi society

between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. MCCE reformers had survived a severe

depression, global conflict, and heightened Cold War anxieties. They, moreover, faced

continued opposition from the federal government in the form of an expansion of

executive branch power increasingly at odds with white supremacy and segregation.

The MCCE survey campaign represented an unprecedented attempt by the state’s

conservative civic club members and public officials alike to gauge the conditions of

black education. Few other reform initiatives during the twentieth century asked African

Americans for their opinions, but a quarter of the MCCE’s twenty thousand

questionnaires reached black business leaders, civic leaders, and educators. The

reformers targeted an especially vulnerable population in terms of education. Mississippi

spent a meager $6 per black pupil daily while contributing $50 on average for the typical

white patron. Their attempt to correct this imbalance represented “a last gasp to maintain

a segregated system” in the words of historian Charles C. Bolton.84 This interpretation of the MCCE’s effort and influence highlights the goal of bringing black schools up to a level playing field with white institutions, thereby thwarting any federal judiciary decisions dismantling segregation. The MCCE reform agenda coincided with numerous anti-segregation cases in the court system. The cases that bothered segregationists the

84 Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 33-60; and Charles C. Bolton, “Mississippi’s School Equalization Program, 1945-1954: A Last Gasp to Try to Maintain a Segregated Education System,” Journal of Southern History 66, (Nov. 2000): 781-814.

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most included: Alston v. School Board of the City of Norfolk (1940), which attempted to equalize teacher pay between blacks and whites, Smith v. Allwright (1944); which outlawed the white primary, and Patton v. Mississippi (1948); which allowed blacks to serve on juries, and all signaled a federal judiciary hostile to Jim Crow.85 In other words, segregationists realized the dual school system needed a practical defense.

The MCCE reform effort can be interpreted differently. Certainly the citizen group consisted of both staunch and moderate segregationists who tried to develop a convoluted scheme to thwart any hostile court decisions. Another interpretation relies on the actual survey questions and responses. By asking respondents if they wanted teachers to encourage “pupils to think clearly, logically, and independently” demonstrated the reformers’ goal of improving instruction. Other survey questions corresponded to the acceleration of social and cultural change, asking respondents to list their opinions about whether high school students should learn about “political parties, such as Democratic and Republican; Economic theories, such as capitalism, socialism and communism;

Religions such as Christianity, Buddhism and Mohammedanism.” In the fraction of surveys that survived, responses show overwhelmingly approval of political education in schools, yet many objected to religious instruction. Many people, moreover, used open- ended sections on the questionnaires to castigate the state’s textbook regulatory agency, declaring many adopted texts as outdated and of poor academic quality even upon

85 Bolton, “Mississippi’s School Equalization Program,” 809. Higher education cases consist of Murray v. Pearson (1935), Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma (1948), McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950), and Sweatt v. Painter (1950). See Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987).

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adoption.86 Coupled with equalization surveys, the MCCE questionnaires on curriculum indicated civic leaders’ multifaceted approach to educational and social problems and their concern over the political realities affecting both state and nation. Many of the school reformers working with the MCCE, especially the civic-patriotic society members, conflated social change with communism. Civic leaders particularly cast integration as communistic or inspired by communists.

Despite the best efforts of these citizen reformers and regardless of what

Mississippians noted on the questionnaires, the MCCE failed to convince the legislature to fully fund its reform recommendations. In 1952, Mississippi implemented a Minimum

Foundation Program to fund white education in addition to an enormous construction campaign to bring black schools up to par with white institutions. The citizens’ group failed to gain legislative approval of teacher training programs and reorganization of the

Mississippi Board of Education. The state, moreover, refused to implement any of the curricular reform recommendations. Similar to other twentieth century legislatures, the state’s elected representatives and senators passed on debating meaningful education reform. Solons instead conducted their own study of the education system, duplicating the efforts of the MCCE, and then initiated a course to equalize black and white school facilities in hopes of staving off any Supreme Court decision jeopardizing segregation.87

Mississippi’s segregationists, which represented virtually all of the state’s white population, received their biggest blow in 1954 when the Supreme Court rendered the principle of “separate but equal” established in the 1896 Plessy decision that legalized

86 Mississippi Citizens’ Council on Education, “Survey Questionnaire,” n.d., Box 3, Folder “Hinds County,” ACCMP.

87 Bolton, “Mississippi’s School Equalization Program,” 806. 121

segregation as unconstitutional. The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling galvanized state political and civic leaders. House Speaker Walter Sillers, Jr. defiantly stated his opposition. “I firmly contend,” he wrote to a friend in New York, “that the several states shall exercise all the powers reserved to them under the Constitution…free from interference by the Congress, the Executive, or Judicial Branches of the Federal

Government.” He proclaimed a state right to require segregation, connecting his political ideas about federalism to his own historical understanding that developed from his study of Thomas Jefferson. Sillers considered states’ rights, free enterprise, and private initiative as sacrosanct principles contained in the U.S. Constitution and vowed to fight

“Socialism, Communism and all the ‘isms directed toward Totalitarianism.”88 Civic- patriotic society leaders borrowed an identical type of rhetoric and used their social clubs’ position in society to advance their ideas to their members

The first Brown decision in 1954, followed by the implementation requirement issued by the Supreme Court in Brown II, Mississippians joined other southerners in a program and policy of massive resistance. The phrase referred to white southerners’ pledge to exhaust all legal avenues preventing school desegregation.89 Mississippi’s

88 Walter Sillers, Jr. to Joe W. Hopkins, Jan. 31, 1952, Box 17, Folder 25, Walter Sillers, Jr. Collection, Special Collections, Charles W. Capps Library and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS. Hereafter referred to as WSJR.

89 Historian George Lewis reveals the ambiguity of the term “massive resistance,” coined by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. Lewis explains that a reporter who printed the term in his subsequent newspaper reports might have misheard Byrd’s comments during a press conference in response to federal judicial requirements mandating school desegregation. The senator could have uttered “passive resistance.” Regardless, massive resistance denotes more than southern whites’ opposition to school integration, but represents a total program of white resistance to the black freedom struggle. See, Lewis, Massive Resistance, 1. Jason Morgan Ward argues that a much broader and longer segregationist movement preceded the Brown decisions in Defending White Democracy, 2; Similarly, Elizabeth Gillespie McRae shows that white women supported segregation long before the Brown decision in “White Womanhood,” 181-84; Joseph Crespino argues that segregationist defenses merged with religious thought in fashioning a 122

legislators and congressional delegation reacted to Brown in quick succession. Judge

Thomas P. Brady, for example, wrote a pamphlet describing the Court’s ruling as “Black

Monday,” and Mississippi’s representatives and senators in Washington signed the

Southern Manifesto that charged the judiciary with usurpation of state sovereignty. The legislature issued various decrees, resolutions, and laws such as Sillers’s “last resort” school closure amendment. It supposedly provided the state with the power to close school districts in the event of desegregation and convert them into private organizations to maintain separation of the races in the educational setting.90 Southern political leaders, in addition, revived a murky constitutional theory called interposition. The idea in theory allowed the governor of a state to defy the orders from the federal government when a state thought constitutional procedures had been violated. Lawmakers quickly created the

Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission designed to “implement interposition,” in addition to harassing activists and integrationists.91

In 1958, a rather innocuous and seemingly insignificant piece of legislation demonstrating how the state attempted to control history education attained Governor J.P.

Coleman’s signature. Lawmakers unanimously passed an amendment to state law requiring ninth graders rather than fifth grade students to complete a course on

national conservative movement in In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007).

90 Mississippi Legal Advisory Committee (LEAC), “Meeting Transcript,” Aug. 12, 1954, 3-4, Box 60, Folder 12, WSJR; and Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 71-73.

91 Joseph L. Thorndike, “The Sometimes Sordid Level of Race and Segregation: James J. Kilpatrick and the Virginia Campaign Against Brown,” in The Moderates Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, Matthew Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, eds., 51-71 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 56-62; Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 100-01; and Yasuhiro Katagiri, The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States’ Rights (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007). 123

Mississippi history. Since the James K. Vardaman administration, legislators only rarely

considered specific curriculum issues with the exception of numerous textbook laws. By

mandating high school level courses on the state’s past demonstrates the importance of

history in segregationist ideology. Civic clubs, especially the DAR, had long promoted

history education through commemoration and advocacy of the U.S. Constitution. The

DAR even played a role in children’s fifth grade Mississippi history lessons, developing a

curriculum that promoted a belief system—heritage—in the guise of history. The DAR

developed this view of history with the goal of fomenting student loyalty to the state.

With southern social and legal customs under concerted attack by the federal

government, legislators reacted by moving state history to the high school level, giving it

much more prominence and importance in children’s education. By doing so

segregationists attempted to reaffirm student loyalty to Mississippi and weaken outside

challenges to the state’s way of life.92

Mississippi’s conservatives involved with civic-patriotic societies formed an

important ideology by merging their ideas of history, anticommunism, Protestant

Christianity, in their defense of white supremacy. Their worldview developed gradually

from the Great Depression to the first decade of the Cold War, which played an important

role in their educational activism during the 1950s. History for figures such as Florence

Sillers Ogden, Cyril Cain, Edna Whitfield Alexander, and Boswell Steven provided the

basis from which they tried to reject the manifold changes wrenching Mississippi society.

Their ideas about history, however, could more accurately be described as a belief system

92 Mississippi Legislature, “An Act to Require the Teaching of Mississippi History in High Schools of This State,” House Bill 99, Laws of the State of Mississippi: Appropriations, General Legislation, and Resolutions, 1958 (Jackson: Mississippi Legislature, 1958), 484; See also, Pearl Guyton, Our Mississippi. 124

oftentimes called heritage. Scholar David Lowenthal writes that heritage needs few facts for its support, but requires a defense from society’s elites. Mississippi’s clubmen and women came from the state’s upper middle class ranks who maintained and developed relationships with the state’s business and political elite.93

The Cold War increased southerners’ anxieties that further invigorated challenges to Jim Crow while simultaneously increasing southern whites’ resolve to cast the black freedom struggle as communist inspired. Civic leaders rallied to the cause of defending their heritage as their contribution to massive resistance and they considered the public school system as the appropriate incubator to preserve their belief system. Moreover, politically connected people in the civic-patriotic societies used their respective organizations to establish their credibility on educational issues. Mississippi’s elected and public officials welcomed civic club participation in school reform initiatives, considering people like Alexander, Cain, Ogden, and Stevens as experts on history, economics, and civics. As the 1950s continued to present political challenges to these civic club leaders they found that guarding against textbook content contrary to their ideology provided the means.

93 Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past, 128-30. 125

CHAPTER IV

“PREJUDICE WAS AN INDIVIDUAL’S RIGHT”: CIVIC ORGANIZATION

ALLIANCES, MASSIVE RESISTANCE TO BROWN, AND

TEXTBOOK POLITICS, 1950-1964

In 1958, as Mississippi Superintendent of Education Jackson McWhirter “Jack”

Tubb prepared for a contested reelection campaign, an evaluation of schoolbooks by the

National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution reached his desk.1 The

Daughters condemned the vast majority of texts used in forty-eight states, including

Mississippi. “Of the books,” the National Society’s report stated, “only one in five promotes pride, confidence and trust in our Country, its traditions and principles.”

Moreover, the offensive content contained in so many texts led the civic-patriotic club members to believe that “some central source within the education apparatus directs and dictates what textbooks must emphasize, especially in history, geography, literary anthologies…where the same subjects are stressed.” The DAR evaluators hoped that

Tubb would accept their goals of inculcating a triumphalist and static version of the

American past, believing that a proper history education, steeped in patriotic and

1 As explained in the previous two chapters, the office of Mississippi Superintendent of Education was an elected position until the legislature amended state law in 1981 that reorganized the Mississippi Department of Education, requiring an appointed, nine-member State Board. The National Society of the DAR had state chapters, of which the Mississippi Society had numerous county chapters. For the purposes of this paper, DAR refers to the Mississippi Society unless otherwise noted.

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Christian values, served as a bulwark to communism. The Daughters’ entreaty, moreover, expressed concern that too many state approved texts contained lessons promoting racial egalitarianism and tolerance, thus undermining students’ faith in the South, Mississippi, and the nation.2

The DAR’s “Textbook Study” moreover included denunciations of textbook authors and publishing companies for a broad mistreatment of various topics. The

Daughters objected to use of terms such as “democracy” in describing the United States while authors referred to Soviet-bloc states as “republics.” In civics texts, the DAR complained of emphasis on the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution rather than the Tenth, “which guarantees the several states against Federal encroachment.” The

“Textbook Study” furthermore castigated textbook authors for including little information “about the threat of internal Communist subversion and misuses of [the First and Fifth] amendments for the protection of spies and traitors.”3 In short, the Daughters hoped to insulate the state’s education system from national changes in social studies pedagogy reflected in newer texts that, “made racial tolerance a defining feature of classroom practice,” according to historian Zoe Burkholder. These changes in textbook content developed in response to global fascism and the egalitarian fervor of World War

2 National Defense Committee, “Textbook Study, 1958,” National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR), RG 50, Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board—DAR and American Legion, 1959;” Alexander to Tubb, Oct. 2, 1958 and Alexander to Tubb, Aug. 21, 1959, Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, 1959,” J.M. Tubb Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as “Textbook Study” when referring to the DAR report about textbooks, or JMT in reference to information found in the Tubb collection. All MDAH materials in this chapter are housed in Record Group (RG) 50 unless otherwise indicated.

3 DAR, “Textbook Study, 1958-1959,” Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, DAR and American Legion, 1959” JMT.

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II.4 Since some of these textbooks had received sanction by the official state schoolbook clearinghouse, the Daughters wanted Superintendent Tubb to remove them from the schools.

A concerned citizen joined the DAR in condemnation of textbook content, issuing a stern warning to the superintendent. “We plan to watch you very closely,” John Connor wrote in a letter signed by three hundred individuals. “As we see it,” he explained, “you appoint the study group that selects the books, so the people of Mississippi have one man to look to for in the selection of school books. Every book selected will be read. If any contained communistic or race-mixing material, the name of the book and the name of the person accepting it will be published. This will be done even if we have to buy space in the newspapers.”5 As Tubb campaigned for reelection in 1959, former state society regent and the current national defense chairperson for Mississippi DAR, Edna Whitfield

Alexander, impressed upon Tubb that “youth must be taught Americanism in its purest form if this Republic is to survive.”6 Alexander objected to state sanctioned texts, claiming that they promoted socialism, communism, and economic determinism in addition to racial egalitarianism. The two textbook critics, Connor and Alexander, contacted Tubb at a time in which segregation came under concerted attack by two

4 Zoe Burkholder, Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900-1954 (Oxford, New York, and other cities: Oxford University Press, 2011), 137. Burkholder essentially argues that social studies pedagogy changed between the Second World War and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in that the curriculum stressed racial tolerance in lessons.

5 John A. Connor to J.M. Tubb, Oct. 9, 1959, Box 8108, Folder “unlabeled,” JMT.

6 Edna Whitfield Alexander to J.M. Tubb, July 30, 1959, Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, DAR and American Legion, 1959,” JMT.

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branches of the federal government in addition to an intensification of the black freedom

struggle.

For Superintendent Tubb, the year 1958 marked the beginning of an onslaught of

challenges to his leadership of the Mississippi Department of Education. The following

year, he fended off challenger G.L. Tutor, who hyped the textbook issue in attempt to

defeat the long-standing education chief. In 1960, the state legislature considered

changing state law as a result of the textbook controversy, and Tubb enlisted education

professionals to combat charges made by the DAR and its allies that included the

American Legion and the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF). The conservative

civic-patriotic alliance believed that Tubb’s office had failed in adequately selecting

social studies texts. They demanded that lay persons, rather than educators, serve on the

states’ eleven textbook screening committees. They therefore sought additional control

over education policy through which the civic clubs could foster a state social studies

curriculum that inculcated students toward an archconservative view of history, civics,

and citizenship.

During the initial 1958 and 1959 accusations about textbook policy, Tubb briefly

forged a counterattack directed at the DAR and its allies. In campaign advertisements

during the summer of 1959, Tubb asserted that he had appointed “the finest school

people—teachers and superintendents” to screen school materials.7 By the 1960 session, the all-white Mississippi Education Association (MEA) and the Mississippi Association of School Administrators (MASA) defended Tubb and the present policy regarding textbook screening and adoption. While few disagreed with Mississippians’ desire to

7 J.M. Tubb, “Political Advertisement,” Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 9.

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perpetuate segregation in education in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions, the MASA charged the conservatives with attempts to “inculcate its propaganda…through curricula and textbooks.”8 Despite allies in the education system and the news media, Tubb eventually lost appointment power over the screening committees by virtue of an amended state law signed by segregationist Governor Ross

Barnett on May 11, 1960.9

Between 1958 and 1964, the state became embroiled in the most intense flashpoint of textbook politics since the 1928 debate over the state-owned printing press.

The DAR represented a new round of school reformers backed by an alliance of civic- patriotic organizations. Similar to earlier controversies regarding school books, the later flashpoint hinged on increasing centralization of education services and authority. The main difference, however, involved reformers’ advocacy of state control rather than national control. They characterized the latter as “federal encroachment,” which formed a convenient rhetorical leap to cast Washington’s policies as socialistic or communistic.

Maintenance of Jim Crow, however, proved to be the real issue, which explains why the reformers vociferously opposed federal aid to education and the Supreme Court’s 1954

Brown v. Board of Education decision. While the DAR and their allies in the American

Legion and Farm Bureau might have loudly proclaimed changes in education as

“creeping socialism,” the prospect of integrated public schools shocked them into action.

8 Mississippi Association of School Administrators, “Resolution,” (passed in state convention, Oct. 11, 1959), Mississippi Educational Advance, Nov. 1959, 19.

9 Mississippi Senate, “An Act to Amend Section 2 of Chapter 444, Laws of Mississippi 1946,” Journal of the Mississippi Senate, Jan. 5 to May 11, 1960 (Jackson: Hederman Brothers, 1961), 346, 1031.

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In the event that integration occurred, the archconservatives stated that such a change would represent the culmination of a communist takeover of the national government.

History likewise played an important role in defending Jim Crow, and through their criticism of social studies textbooks Mississippi’s education reformers challenged progressive education theorists who held influence and power within government and organizations such as the National Education Association (NEA).10 The DAR, American

Legion, and Farm Bureau promoted American triumphalism—or Americanism for short—and wanted it reflected in history instruction. For Mississippi’s clubmen and women, Americanism held three interlocking meanings: an uncritical view of the U.S.

Constitution, adoration of free-enterprise capitalism, and love of God and country. To be capable of citizenship, according to civic leaders, one must be trained toward the principles of Americanism and to accept a worldview consistent with clubmen and women’s arch-conservatism. Segregation in public education for Mississippians required protection because most whites considered African Americans as incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship. Similarly, the nation’s past as interpreted by the DAR had little utility in an integrated setting. Thus for civic-patriotic organizations, white supremacy required strident defense because it served as the very basis of their archconservative ideology.11

10 For a brief look at John Dewey’s educational philosophy, see his Experience and Education, Reprint Edition (New York: The Free Press, 1997); A recent monograph details the end of the educators’ experiments with progressive education, see Roy Lowe, The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom (London: Routledge, 2007).

11 Unlike Lisa McGirr, this study contends that Mississippi’s education reformers represented archconservative, even reactionary viewpoints, rather than the more mainstream conservatism she documents in Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 3-6, 53-63.

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Textbook politics played out much differently in Mississippi than in other states and communities across the nation, flaring up between 1958 and 1964 and occurring in the context of the Second Red Scare and the black freedom struggle. The anticommunist crusade of the 1950s occurred differently throughout the country that included red-baiting by both national and local figures designed to denigrate political opponents and cast liberals as subversive.12 Too many works on resistance to Brown and southern anticommunism, in addition, focus on political elites, such as James O. Eastland, Strom

Thurmond, George Wallace and other high priests of segregation.13 The interpretive model constructed by scholars of textbook controversies has offered a binary approach

12 Perhaps the best monographs on the Second Red Scare include two by Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999) and No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). The latter book covers the effects of anticommunism on academia; See also, Kenneth O’Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983), which traces the anticommunist agenda of conservatives such as Richard M. Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover and their circumvention of Americans’ civil rights as the means of thwarting political enemies. O’Reilly also covers the effects the Red Scare had on African Americans in Racial Matters: The Secret FBI File on Black America, 1960-1972 (New York: Basic Books, 1991). All of these monographs counter the Mary L. Dudziak’s contention in Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), arguing that segregation presented the government with an image problem, and federal agencies therefore aided the black freedom struggle to cultivate global allies in the international fight against communism.

13 Jason Morgan Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations: The Use and Abuse of An American Dilemma, 1944-1969 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 155-83; Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969); and George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement, (London and New York: Hodder- Arnold, 2006). In studies of the Cold War and the black freedom struggle, too many scholars maintain the idea that anticommunism served as a tool to discredit civil rights activists and political opponents. See George Lewis, The White South and the Red Menace: Segregationists, Anticommunists, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965 (Gainesville and other cities: University of Florida Press, 2004), 2-3; and Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948-1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 2-11. Kari Frederickson’s new monograph about the Cold War in the southern states relies on evidence culled from national figures and organizations in addition to local ones in Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2013).

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contained in titles indicating “social studies wars” or “culture wars.” In these analyses two camps align on each side to air disagreements about how and why past events occurred as interpreted in competing history texts. Citizens and civic clubs purporting traditional values, triumphalist history, and Protestant Christianity, combat liberals, scholars, and ethnic pressure groups. Such analytical models separate religious, historical, and conservative ideology very similar to content-based interpretations.14 Yet the

Mississippi example disintegrates these convenient binaries because all sides in the

1960s-era textbook controversy generally agreed that a triumphalist version of history proved remarkably important for the education of children in the Cold War environment.

People like Tubb and Alexander, likewise, agreed that segregation provided a truly beneficial model of public education. The Mississippi case, therefore, represents a

14 Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose Culture? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 1-8, 213-15. His account of the Mississippi case provides merely a few details culled from national publications rather than archival research, see 104-06. Moreover, several scholarly approaches to textbook controversies crafted in terms of competing camps does not apply to a one-party state dominated by conservatives. See, Ronald W. Evans, The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), xx, 3-7; and Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, First Vintage Books Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), 3-14. For the perspective of a state dominated by the conservative political party, see Keith A. Erekson, ed., Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Many more authors have examined history textbook content, see for example, Frances Fitzgerald. America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the 20th Century (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1979), 3-35; Joseph Moreau, Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts Over American History Textbooks From the Civil War to the Present. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 3-13. Extending from these studies include additional ones that investigate book content in terms of historical memory. See, for example, Rebecca Miller Davis’s article that argues that white supremacy and triumphalist history dominated the larger historiography in “The Three R’s—Reading, ’Riting, and Race: The Evolution of Race in Mississippi History Textbooks, 1900- 1995,” Journal of Mississippi History (Spring 2011): 1-45. Davis’s interpretation highlights the Citizens’ Council role in textbook politics instead of civic-patriotic organizations. Adam Dean connects Virginia’s textbook battles to the state’s Civil War Centennial celebrations and Virginians’ campaign to resist the civil rights movement. See “Who Controls the Past Controls the Future': The Virginia History Textbook Controversy,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 117 (Winter 2009): 318-355.

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struggle between practical and hardline segregationists in addition to disagreements aired among moderates and their archconservative colleagues.15

The Mississippi case provides another examination of southerners’ defense of segregation. An egregious void in massive resistance scholarship is the role played by civic-patriotic organizations.16 Existing literature stresses the activism of the Citizens’

Council movement or state investigating committees and agencies.17 By examining the roles played by figures such as DAR operatives Edna Alexander and Florence Sillers

Ogden, or Mississippi Farm Bureau president Boswell Stevens—in addition to the civic organizations that they represented—broadens the resistance movement by revealing how middle class social elites leading the civic clubs interacted with high level segregationists in addition to ordinary, rank-and-file citizens. By concentrating on clubmen and club women’s activism related to textbook content and opposition to Brown revises historical understanding of the Citizens’ Councils movement since the DAR, American Legion, and

Farm Bureau proved far more influential in shaping education policy through the political

15 Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 10-13, 56-57.

16 Jack Nelson and Gene Roberts, Jr., The Censors and the Schools (Boston: Brown and Little, 1963). For the most part, the authors chronicle the role played by civic organizations in manufacturing textbook controversies in Connecticut, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. They relied mostly on newspaper accounts and interviews with participants. Their work provides a starting point for the current study of the same topic since their treatment of the Mississippi textbook imbroglio had been culled mostly from journalistic sources. A handful historical works do account for the roles played by civic organizations in defense of segregation. See Elizabeth Gillespie McRae. “White Womanhood, White Supremacy and the Rise of Massive Resistance” in Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction. Edited by Clive Webb (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 181-202; Ann K. Ziker, “Race, Conservative Politics, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Postcolonial World,” Ph.D. diss, Rice University, 2008; and June Melby Benowitz, “Reading, Writing and Radicalism: Right-Wing Women and Education in the Post-War Years,” History of Education Quarterly 49 (February, 2009): 89-111.

17 Neil McMillen, The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971); and Yasuhiro Katagiri, The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States’ Rights (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007).

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process. Civic club interest in education policies represented more than mere censorship of school materials. Alexander and the DAR coordinated with other organizations both within and outside of the state. Their objections to textbook content uncover a reactionary form of conservatism typical of many long-standing organizations that resonated with ordinary people who feared that federal involvement in public education undermined southern identity and local control.

Existing sources about State Superintendent of Education Jack Tubb describe a savvy political operator who tried to deflect criticism and avoid controversy. As John

Connor’s letter indicated, Tubb served as a figurehead for complaints about what students learned through state approved textbooks as well as problems with Mississippi’s system of public education. His twenty-two year tenure as superintendent coincided with monumental changes to public schooling. Shortly after taking office, Tubb acknowledged the dearth of state spending for black schools and the challenges of operating a public education system that mostly served impoverished patrons both white and black. In the early 1950s, he helped sponsor and coordinate a widespread education reform initiative by interested citizens and civic organizations in the state. The Mississippi Citizens’

Council on Education (MCCE) attempted several things, including strengthening the state’s curriculum in addition to providing modern school facilities to black pupils. “We propose,” Tubb wrote about equalization, “to work out our problems of equalizing educational opportunities between the races within the established pattern of a segregated

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dual system.”18 The state legislature rebuffed MCCE recommendations for the $178 million needed to reformulate black schools to bring them up to part with white schools.19

The Brown decision reached by the Supreme Court in 1954 generated a statewide crisis, and citizens and state leaders alike directed their concerns for defending segregation to the education superintendent. Yet Tubb adequately mollified critics and quietly advocated controversial issues such as federal aid to education.20 After the Brown decision, the superintendent faced the difficult choices of maintaining a hardline approach to segregation or joining a small camp of public officials in the state clamoring for a more practical defense of “the Mississippi way of life.”21

The MCCE initiative for broad educational reforms introduced the state education chief to likeminded interested citizens. Tubb coordinated Council activities with Robert

Morrow—a member of the American Legion—in addition to the Mississippi Farm

Bureau Federation president Boswell Stevens. In 1950, Tubb asked him for “active participation on the part of all” to improve the state’s education system. Stevens considered it an honor to receive the invitation to participate in the MCCE and planned to attend with several Farm Bureau staffers since the organization “has been very interested

18 J.M. Tubb, “The State Department of Education,” Nov. 1, 1951, Box 50, Folder “Correspondence—Fielding Wright,” JMT.

19 In a monograph about the state’s path to integration, historian Charles C. Bolton chronicles the process from establishment of the education system to the dismantling of Jim Crow. His treatment of the MCCE focuses merely on its relationship to the legislature’s equalization program of the early 1950s. He ignored curriculum reform efforts of the citizen group. See chapter two of this dissertation and Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 52-54.

20 J.M. Tubb to Governor Fielding Wright, Jan. 15, 1948, Box 50, Folder “Correspondence— Fielding Wright,” JMT.

21 Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 11. Crespino calls “practical segregation” a “strategic accommodation” whereby political players could retain power.

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in the field of education and…the part that [the] Farm Bureau might play in it.”22 In 1955,

Tubb again sought Stevens’ expertise, inviting the lobbyist to serve on the state committee for the White House Conference on Education. Stevens declined, but he believed he knew the state superintendent well enough to pass along some friendly advice. He hoped that the committee “would not be stacked with those people who believe in Federal Aid to Education” whereby the government would compel “integration of the schools.”23

While existing evidence is unclear about Tubb’s relationship with other education reformers, he held ideas about the role of history instruction in common with figures such as Edna Alexander and Florence Sillers Ogden. In numerous speeches during his career,

Tubb lauded the Pilgrims’ role in establishing the concept of American religious freedom. He furthermore made reference to Mississippi’s wealth before the “War

Between the States,” and considered the Declaration of Independence and the U.S.

Constitution as primary examples of American achievements and exceptionalism—the

Pilgrims had truly erected a “city upon a hill.” In the nation’s rivalry with the Soviet

Union, Tubb believed that superior education in the United States would lead the nation to victory, arguing that “knowledge and appreciation of American history” could inspire

22 Jack Tubb, Lucy Alston, and Minnie Chesteen to Boswell Stevens, Sept. 9, 1950, Stevens to Jack Tubb, Sept. 12, 1950, and Jack Tubb to Stevens, Nov. 16, 1950, Acc. 132, Box 1, Folder 2, Boswell Stevens Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as BSP.

23 Boswell Stevens to Jack Tubb, April 30, 1955, Box 2, Folder “March-June 1955 Correspondence,” BSP.

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and motivate students. He also agreed with clubmen and women that love of God and country were paramount aspects to history instruction in Mississippi schools.24

Edna Alexander and the DAR claimed similar viewpoints about the past. Part of the Daughters’ national defense initiative emphasized the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as crowning achievements of the American nation. National defense, according to DAR literature, required members to act as watchdogs by reporting suspected subversives and fifth-columnists to either the Dies Committee or its successors, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Senate Subcommittee on

Internal Security (SISS), and state authorities.25 During the height of the DAR’s textbook fight with Mississippi’s educators, Alexander wrote a newspaper column about the

Pilgrims’ desire for religious freedom that led them to American shores. She quickly transitioned from settlement to “an unshakable spiritual” faith that inspired the colonists to challenge the tyranny and excesses of King George III during the American

Revolution. Alexander wrote in her hometown newspaper that through “Divine guidance…a young struggling nation was given a leader [George Washington] to see it through.”26 Alexander’s interpretation of American history closely adhered to the concept of a civil religion first offered by scholar Robert N. Bellah. He proposed that while the

United States requires no religious tests for political office or commands a certain religious view, culturally speaking Americans have constructed a Christian founding

24 J.M. Tubb, “Teaching About Communism,” and “The Mississippi Plan,” Box 1, Folder 15, JMT.

25 Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, “Report of the Annual Meeting, Mississippi Society, DAR,” 22, Feb. 24-26, 1951, Jackson, MS, Box 2, EWA.

26 Mrs. Grady Green and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “The D.A.R. Speaks,” Jan. 19, 1959, (Grenada) Sentinel-Star, and Box 1, “Scrapbook,” EWA.

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myth that has guided the nation with spiritual sustenance since the Puritans, sanctified

through the American Revolution and Civil War.27

During state meetings Alexander encouraged more work from the Daughters by

demonstrating that social studies textbook content required guarding. In 1953, for

example, only eighteen of forty chapters filed reports on national defense that

disappointed the state regent. In her keynote address, she reminded them that the

organization owned nineteen radio stations all over the state from which they could

broadcast daily messages about Americanism, warn citizens about centralization of

government, and “socialistic tendencies existing in our churches, schools, and

government.” She advised them as well to write senators, congressmen, and state officials

about important issues. Alexander followed the joint cooperation of the Hattiesburg

Rotary Club and the DAR’s John Rolfe Chapter in exposing objectionable textbook

content in state approved texts. On September 7, 1953, Leroy Morris with the Mississippi

Economic Council addressed a luncheon attended by more than one hundred members

and their wives. A schoolbook entitled Economics For Our Times drew Morris’s ire

based on a critique of the book’s historical interpretations made by Kosciusko factory

manager Dwayne Shields.28 Morris repeated Shields’s claims that the authors’ discussion of the federal regulations on industry during World War II left “the student with the impression that our government could control this country’s production efficiently.”29

27 Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd Edition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

28 “State-adopted Economics Text Denounced as ‘Pure Socialism,’” Hattiesburg American, Sept. 8, 1953, 1.

29 Letters, Hattiesburg American, Sept. 14, 1953, 8.

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Morris declared that the book promoted “socialism, pure and simple.” Chapter Regent

Lucille Keen noted the book’s adoption by the state and informed members that

“education is the first line of defense” against communism, stressing that “knowledge of

American history was essential” to safeguarding the American way of life.30 In turn,

Keen’s fellow Daughters passed a resolution imploring the textbook purchasing board to

“adopt an economics textbook…which most nearly reflects the principles of free enterprise.”31

Keen’s work on the issue of textbooks allegedly promoting “alien ideologies” of communism and socialism, which many in Mississippi considered synonymous, both alerted and inspired Alexander. The Daughters had long been aware of questionable textbook content based on the work of Mississippi State College professor Cyril E. Cain’s

Patriotic Education Committee. He informed the Daughters of objectionable school materials by disseminating a Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) pamphlet entitled

“Bill of Grievances.” Yet Keen went a step further by contacting the Mississippi

Department of Education directly to demand the removal of Economics for Our Times from the state sanctioned list. Thus the DAR could affect the state’s education policy by being politically active and informing elected officials about problems.

Alexander used her regency to connect with likeminded civic organization leaders, including the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation’s Boswell Stevens. In August

1952, Alexander invited Stevens to speak about his organization’s anticommunist

30 John Rolfe Chapter, DAR, Regular Meeting Minutes, Feb. 4, 1955-April 5, 1963, Box 1, Folder 3 “Minutes, 1954-1971,” John Rolfe Chapter, DAR Collection, W.D. McCain Library and Archives, Special Collections, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter referred to as JRC.

31 Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, “Program of the 47th State Conference,” March 3-5, 1953, Biloxi, MS, Box 2, EWA.

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activities at the DAR’s Oxford chapter, which hosted a National Defense Institute meeting of Daughters living in North Mississippi. She stated that the Institute’s goal included “educat[ing]…the public about the many dangers threatening American freedoms…contributing to a departure from Constitutional Government.” While Stevens declined, he referred her to Oscar Johnston with the National Cotton Council whom he suggested had more knowledge about subversion.32 By contacting the Farm Bureau president, Alexander sent out feelers for an organizational alliance. By Stevens passing on the names of other possible speakers, he naturally looked toward business owners as steadfast anticommunists.

Alexander and Stevens led civic-patriotic organizations whose members proved vigilant in guarding against what they perceived as dangerous alterations in the nation’s economic system. Simultaneously both club leaders stressed reform of the state’s education system to improve society. Their concerns coincided with multiple changes in the wake of the Second World War. President Harry S. Truman’s Fair Deal included legislation designed to provide universal health insurance, federal aid to education, and repeal of anti-labor legislation such as the Taft-Hartley Act. Extension of the Fair

Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) likewise rankled the civic club leaders. The

DAR especially interpreted these ideas as a departure from constitutional governance and a federal government overstepping its bounds. The federal judiciary’s assault on segregation further alarmed the civic clubs.

On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued its most important decision of the twentieth century. In the Brown ruling, the High Court struck down

32 Edna Whitfield Alexander to Boswell Stevens and Boswell Stevens to Edna Whitfield Alexander, Aug. 1, and Aug. 8, 1952, Box 1, Folder 18, BSP. 141

decades of legalized, state-authorized dual school systems. Built on sociological and psychological data, the Court unanimously agreed that segregation deprived African

Americans and others with viable educational facilities, creating a system that was

“inherently unequal.” The decision also asserted that dual education systems detrimentally affected “the ability of any child to succeed in life.” In Earl Warren’s majority opinion the Court ordered “where the state has undertaken to provide

[education], is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”33 In response

Stevens lashed out at the High Court and the federal government that he believed had forsaken the South. The Brown decision and the implementation decree handed down by the Court in 1955 drew harsh rebukes from those who believed that segregated education provided quality schooling and racial integrity. Nationally, the Farm Bureau Federation issued strong resolutions supporting segregation and condemning the Supreme Court.34

The national DAR, however, made little comment on the matter until 1956 when

President General Gertrude S. Carraway ordered “a hands-off policy on the segregation issue.”35 Before and after Carraway’s edict, however, the Mississippi DAR plunged headlong into the issue, denouncing the ruling as evidence of a communist takeover.

Opposition to federally mandated desegregation dominated the rhetoric of civic organizations for a decade. DAR member Florence Sillers Ogden, for example, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Court in her syndicated “Dis ‘an Dat” newspaper column that

33 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), accessed on-line on Oct. 23, 2013.

34 American Farm Bureau Federation, “Report of the Resolutions Committee, American Farm Bureau Federation,” 1-7, Box 16, Folder “AFBF Resolutions, 1957-1961,” BSP.

35 Marie Smith, “DAR Opens, Shuts Off Segregation as an Issue,” Washington Post, April 14, 1956, 9A.

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reached white conservatives. Her fan mail provides some of the best evidence of Ogden’s influence among business elites. “The Communists,” a Greenville cotton broker wrote,

“certainly gained a master stroke when our Supreme Court became so confused as to outlaw segregation.”36 Attorney Hugh Wall of Brookhaven congratulated Ogden for her column “Battle of the Races Waged by Fanatics,” claiming that if blacks could vote “he will get into our schools and…blood will be mixed which means an end to the white race.” Odgen replied by suggesting that integration undermined her own religious beliefs since she had lost “faith in the public school system, and I have not gone to church with proper grace for many years.”37 A fellow Daughter informed Ogden that “we are kindred spirits.” Frances Barrett Lucas of California noted southerners’ “apprehension and consternation” after the Brown decision and provided Ogden with literature that supported the contention that “integration brings about intermarriage.” Yet she also conveyed a warning about including the DAR’s national officers’ names to anti- integration literature since the civic club had “previously been smeared as…anti-

Negro.”38

The Mississippi Daughters casted the Brown decision as a departure from constitutional governance. In 1958, four years after segregation in education had been struck down, and as the Little Rock, Arkansas desegregation battle remained front-page

36 A.G. Paxton to Florence Sillers Ogden, June 9, 1954, Box 2, Folder 26, Florence Sillers Ogden Papers, Charles W. Capps, Jr. Archives and Museum, Special Collections, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS. Hereafter referred to as FSO.

37 Hugh V. Wall to Florence Sillers Ogden, Oct. 24, 1955, and Ogden to Wall, Nov. 21, 1955, Box 2, Folder 29, FSO.

38 Frances Barrett Lucas to Florence Sillers Ogden, Sept. 7, 1959, Box 4, Folder 40, FSO. Emphasis in original.

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news, Edna Alexander stated in a newspaper column that the DAR hoped to get

“Congress to curb the Supreme Court’s unconstitutional and illegal activities and force it to stick to judicial activities as laid down in the Constitution.” She further condemned the activities of the racially liberal National Council of Churches as “communistic,” and opposed miscegenation. Otherwise, Alexander somewhat followed the national society’s directives and avoided explicit condemnation of integration. As an oblique attack on integration, she eventually targeted textbooks that promoted “racial amalgamation” that she believed constituted advocacy of communism.39 Alexander cultivated expressions invoking communism as a method of explaining the rapid changes she and other white southerners experienced during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

In other words, the label “communism” reflected a dichotomous worldview for people like Alexander. Segregation represented something uniquely American for Alexander and she understood its opposite only terms of the dichotomy between communism and

Americanism.

Since the American Farm Bureau Federation supported segregated schools,

Stevens used his unfettered ability to promote segregation as historically basic, divinely ordained, and completely natural. He informed T.W. Graham of Blue Springs that “no doubt, you already know that the Mississippi Farm Bureau is not for integration in any shape, form or fashion.”40 The same year Stevens wrote to a Wisconsin clergyman that segregation “would be better spiritually, economically, and socially for all concerned.”

39 Mrs. Grady Green and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “The D.A.R. Speaks,” Dec. 16, 1958, (Grenada) Sentinel-Star, and in Box 1, Folder “Scrapbook,” EWA.

40 Boswell Stevens to T.W. Graham, Jan. 26, 1955, Box 2, Folder “Nov.-Feb. 1955/56 Correspondence,” BSP.

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He referred to the school equalization effort in Mississippi, claiming “we are bleeding ourselves white to improve [black] school facilities.”41 At the 1957 state Farm Bureau annual meeting in Jackson, the resolutions committee issued strong statements about segregation and the Supreme Court’s denial of its legality. “Racial purity,” the Farm

Bureau resolved, “is a law of nature, divinely ordained.” It assured that any idea contrary was “sinful,” imploring the state of Mississippi to use “all honorable and legal means” to prevent implementation of the Court’s decree.42 The civil religion accepted by clubmen and women in Mississippi merged ideas about divine inspiration for the nation’s founding with Jim Crow. People like Stevens and Alexander deemed any attack at this conception of American society as expressions of communism.

Stevens, Alexander, and Odgen held similar ideas about the way in which the

Supreme Court functioned under the U.S. Constitution. Alexander wrote in one of her columns for her hometown newspaper that the High Court had engaged in

“unconstitutional and illegal activities” by issuing the Brown decision and several other cases involving segregation.43 Similarly, Ogden wrote to a Mississippi attorney that the

1954 action by the Supreme Court “disregarded the constitutional rights of the people,” which she interpreted as an egregious “seizure of power.” She added that the Court

41 Boswell Stevens to Rev. Richard E. Prichard, Jan. 17, 1955, Box 2, Folder “Nov.-Feb. 1955/56 Correspondence,” BSP.

42 Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, “Program of the Annual Convention of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation,” Annual Meeting held in Jackson, MS, Nov.18-20, 1957, Box 27, Folder “MFBF Annual Meeting 8/17,” BSP.

43 Mrs. Grady Green and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “The D.A.R. Speaks,” Dec. 16, 1958, (Grenada) Sentinel-Star, and Box 1, “Scrapbook,” EWA.

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“might as well endorse Hitler’s seizure of dictatorial powers or…Stalin’s.”44 She conflated Hitler with his Soviet contemporary revealing that communism and fascism had few distinguishing characteristics in her worldview—both were political ideas contrary to

Americanism. At the Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in Jackson in 1957, the general farm organization denounced the Supreme Court using harsh language, claiming “such rulings ignored the intent of the Constitution, usurped rights belonging to the sovereign states based on reasons from psychology and false sociology from communist sources.”45

The High Court’s decision likewise galvanized segregationist forces in the South and in Mississippi. As Stevens remained committed to education reform in the state in both the secondary schools and colleges and universities, he realized that higher education would be the most likely place to find pro-integrationist ideas. In the interest of guarding racial egalitarian messages from college students, in 1955 Stevens informed his friend and founder of the MCCE, President of the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL), and State Treasurer Robert Morrow that a University of Mississippi education professor assigned Theodore Brameld’s Patterns of Educational Philosophy. The book contained information “which we true Americans do not approve of,” Stevens wrote.46 The Brameld book, moreover, promoted a society in which “no racial barriers of any kind existed.”

Since the IHL served as the governing board for Mississippi’s colleges and universities,

Morrow alerted House Speaker Walter Sillers, Jr. of the matter. Three years later in 1958,

44 Florence Sillers Ogden to Hugh V. Wall, Nov. 7, 1955, Box 2, Folder 29, FSO.

45 Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, “Program of the Annual Convention of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation,” Annual Meeting held in Jackson, MS, Nov.18-20, 1957, Box 27, Folder “MFBF Annual Meeting 8/17,” BSP; and Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations, 43-67.

46 Stevens to Morrow, July 8, 1955, Box 2, Folder “July-Nov. 1954 Correspondence,” BSP.

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after the legislature created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to investigate

African Americans who tried to register their children in white schools, whistleblowers planted in Harvey F. Garrett’s education classes reported that the professor claimed

Mississippi “was fighting a losing battle with segregation.”47 In charge of faculty placement at the University’s School of Education, Garrett’s statements directly violated both university policy and state law regarding dissemination of integrationist material.

The Garrett affair coincided with several attempts by the IHL and other public officials to purge both the University of Mississippi and Mississippi State University of “subversive” or politically liberal professors, including historian James Silver and theologian Will D.

Campbell.48

While Stevens served as a foot soldier in defending segregation in Mississippi, the

Farm Bureau president developed a lukewarm relationship with an upstart white supremacist organization. In the fall before the Supreme Court issued its unanimous

Brown decision, former Mississippi State College football star, Robert “Tut” Patterson began appealing to likeminded citizens for an organized defense of any ruling against Jim

Crow. By 1954 Patterson and William J. Simmons had formed several local white

Citizens’ Council organizations with ideological direction provided by Mississippi Judge

47 Morrow to Stevens, July 25, 1955, Box 2, Folder “July-Nov. 1954 Correspondence,” BSP; IHL Board to Walter Sillers, Jr., Feb. 28, 1959, Box 53, Folder 7, Walter Sillers, Jr. Papers, Charles W. Capps Archives and Museum, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS. Hereafter referred to as WSJR; and “Reply to Allegations Concerning Certain Members of the Faculty and Staff of the University of Mississippi,” 3-9- 1-8-47-1-1, page 47, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as MSSC.

48 Zack VanLandingham to Governor J.P. Coleman, Nov. 11, 1958, 3-9-1-1-1-1-1, and J.P. Coleman to Zack VanLandingham, Feb. 7, 1959, 1-33-0-4-1-1-1 MSSC; Douglass Starr, “College Board Hears Charges Against Profs,” Jackson Daily News, Aug. 27, 1959, 1; and Charles W. Eagles produced a solid account of academic purging in “The Closing of Mississippi Society: Will Campbell, ‘The $64,000 Question,’ and Religious Emphasis Week at the University of Mississippi,” Journal of Southern History 67 (May 2001): 331-72.

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Thomas P. Brady—the author of the anti-integration “Black Monday” treatise—and his local Brookhaven chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). The Citizens’

Councils recruited civic leaders and modeled itself as a “respectable” alternative to the

Klan, and solicited financial contributions to thwart integration in Mississippi and the

South.49 In 1955, Stevens responded to entreaties from Citizens’ Council treasurer J.B.

Cunningham by sending a $50 contribution and apologizing that “the check can not be larger.”50 The Citizens’ Councils felt pressure, trying to survive as an organization that mixed with increased tension following the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High.

Additional instances of direct action protests by activists involved with the black freedom struggle caused many segregationists to seek out alternative methods in defending Jim

Crow, questioning the viability of the organization. While Stevens remained a committed segregationist, by 1961 he contributed only nominal amounts of money to the movement.

He refused Ellett Lawrence’s requests for funds devoted to a WLBT-Jackson television program designed to disseminate segregationist viewpoints, stating simply that “I sent my

$15 contribution last year and I don’t think I’m in a position to give any more.”51

Stevens’s response to the white supremacist organization is puzzling given his

$50,000 annual salary, demonstrating that he likely believed the Citizens’ Council encroached on the Farm Bureau’s turf. The latter civic organization had long promoted education reform along the lines of strict segregation whereas the Citizens’ Councils

49 Neil R. McMillen provides one of the best accounts of the Citizens’ Council movement in The Citizens’ Council, 15-23.

50 J.B. Cunningham to Boswell Stevens, June 29, 1955 and Boswell Stevens to J.B. Cunningham, July 8, 1955, Box 2, Folder “July-Nov. 1955 Correspondence,” BSP.

51 Boswell Stevens to Ellett Lawrence, Jan. 13, 1961, Box 3, Folder “Jan-Feb. 1961 Correspondence,” BSP.

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hyped its influence by exaggerating its membership and holding numerous fundraising drives each year. The Farm Bureau, likewise, pressured local chapters to increase its membership. The Citizens’ Council movement, however, gained an important entrée into

Mississippi politics through the 1959 campaign for Ross Barnett, and his administration represented the height of its political influence. Following the desegregation of the

University of Mississippi, the Citizens’ Council placed much of its energies in private school formation, but ultimately failed to affect state laws to shape education policy. In this regard, the Mississippi Farm Bureau joined with other long-standing segregationist civic organizations to guard against “alien ideologies” in textbook content.52

The Citizens’ Council movement merely duplicated efforts of civic clubs, which held a better position in the state to change education policy through the political process.

Membership between the white supremacist organization and the traditional civic- patriotic societies certainly overlapped, but Stevens, Alexander, Ogden, and her brother

Walter Sillers, Jr. never joined the Citizens’ Council. The MFBF membership exceeded

50,000 statewide by 1960 and a portion of the roughly 3,500 DAR members affiliated with the Citizens’ Council Women’s Division led by Sara McCorkle. During the 1960 legislative session, Citizens’ Council representation in the legislature included twenty-six state senators and representatives, yet fifty-six solons, however, claimed membership in the Farm Bureau, and many legislators’ wives belonged to the DAR. The political connections the civic organizations held contributed to their eventual successes in

52 Hodding Carter III, “Citadel of the Citizens Council,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 12, 1961, 23-24; Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 19-23, 29, 50-51; McMillen, The Citizens’ Council, 15-40, 20. For an account of the Citizens’ Council role in private school formation, see Michael W. Fuquay, “Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in Mississippi, 1964-1971” History of Education Quarterly 42, No. 2 (Summer 2002): 160-71; and Samuel Berger, Dollar Harvest: An Expose of the Farm Bureau (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1971), 89-112.

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shaping state education policy while the upstart councilors raised money and loudly promoted the wonders of segregated society.53 In other words, the DAR and Farm Bureau held much more influence over lawmakers’ decisions, and proved quite savvy in transforming their racial rhetoric to incorporate historical ideas that most southern whites cherished.

While complete certainty about overlapping membership remains, a short-lived club connected the state’s major textbook crusaders and education reformers. A Jackson activist, pharmacist, and attorney named Archibald Coody created the Magnolia Heritage

Society (MHS). He recruited Alexander, Ogden, Sillers, and Stevens for membership.

They joined a small group of hardline segregationists that included newspaper editor

Mary “Hacksaw” Cain and Mississippi College history professor William W. Caskey, who served on one of the state’s textbook screening committees. Stevens told Coody that he hoped to “make a contribution to the progress of this society.”54 A month later, Coody organized the first meeting held at the Robert E. Lee Hotel in Jackson where the participants designated officers followed by an address from the controversial white supremacist and John F. Kennedy critic General Edwin Walker.55 According to pamphlets disseminated by the MHS, the organization sought to “unite all Patriots in

53 Edward L. Blake, Farm Bureau in Mississippi: A History of the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation (Jackson: Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, 1971), 76; Anne Hughes Porter, ed., The History of the Mississippi State Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1896-1996 (Kosciusko, MS: Professional Publishing, 1996), 69, 43; and Roman Kelly compiled membership data on each state senator and representative. See Senate Journal 1960, 1150-54; and House Journal 1960, 1007-17.

54 Ledger, Box 24, Folder “MHS Minutes, 1961-62,” A.S. Coody Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS; and Boswell Stevens to Archibald Coody, Nov. 22, 1961, Box 4, Folder “Nov. 1961 Correspondence,” BSP.

55 Ledger, Box 24, Folder “MHS Minutes, 1961-62,” A.S. Coody Collection; and for a recent monograph about archconservatives, including figures such as Walker, see Clive Webb, Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 134-52.

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loyal support of the United States as a Republic and not a democracy.” The history club’s mission was “To teach unquestioned allegiance to the Constitution as adopted and interpreted for the first seventy years of our national life.”56

The Magnolia Heritage Society embodied the reactionary views of its leader,

Coody, and the core group of club members he recruited. The MHS promoted an historical worldview that rendered all Supreme Court decisions since Dred Scot moot. In other words, members agreed with Chief Justice Roger Taney’s contention that African

Americans were incapable of citizenship and had no rights a white man was bound to respect. Along with the worldviews expressed by Stevens, Alexander, and Ogden, the nucleus of education reformers in Mississippi held reactionary ideas about the nation’s past. Coody, moreover, sought out figures like Ogden because the DAR member and syndicated newspaper columnist unapologetically advocated an austere form of segregation. To concede to integrationists in Ogden’s opinion was to invite defeat. “After our blood is mixed with the Negro,” Ogden wrote to Coody in 1960s, “I wouldn’t want to fight to save an America of miscegenation. Better off to let it die.”57 The MHS membership played a zero-sum game of racial politics typical of hardliners. During the textbook controversy between 1958 and 1964, Alexander, Ogden, Stevens, and later certain members of the American Legion employed this strategy in an effort to guard what they considered to be sacrosanct historical knowledge that bolstered Jim Crow.

56 “Constitution,” Magnolia Heritage Society Pamphlet, Box 4, Folder “Correspondence, Oct. 1961,” Stevens Papers; See also, Stevens to A.S. Coody, Nov. 22, 1961, Box 4, Folder “Nov. 1961- Correspondence,” Stevens Papers. The MHS faded into oblivion by 1964.

57 Florence Sillers Ogden to A.S. Coody, Oct. 30, 1960, Box 4, Folder 43, FSO.

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In the summer of 1958, Jack Tubb received the DAR’s “Textbook Study” that listed an extensive evaluation of 232 textbooks used in American public schools. Shortly after the DAR critique became public in the form of a pamphlet, many Americans wondered who wrote the scathing critique aimed at textbook content and American educators, and likewise Tubb could only speculate.58 Florence Sillers Ogden, however, revealed her authorship in a 1959 letter, claiming that she and two other DAR members organized the extensive analysis of textbooks and wrote the first draft of the pamphlet.

She included a narrative of events to her friend identified only as Margaret, and counseled her on the methods for screening a textbook. Ogden explained that in 1958 two

Daughters joined her on National Society’s defense committee, and the trio then began collecting approved books from forty-eight states. Because of the unwieldy sample size, the women requested lists of schoolbooks from each state and decided upon 232 of the most common ones approved by the states. The Daughters received funds from the

National Society and from outside sources. With assistance from other defense committee members, the three women sent out the books they purchased for analysis, spending

$16,000 in the process. The evaluators used DAR resolutions “as a yard-stick” to determine a text’s acceptability. Any book failing to depict the American Republic and

U.S. Constitution in a favorable light received negative reviews.59 E. Merrill Root’s book

Brainwashing in the High Schools guided the critics.60 An archconservative

58 Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 78-79.

59 Florence Sillers Ogden to Margaret [surname unidentified], Sept. 7, 1959, Box 4, Folder 40, FSO.

60 Florence Sillers Ogden to Margaret Peaster, Sept. 21, 1959, Box 4, Folder 40, FSO.

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Mississippian and a committed segregationist penned the DAR’s “Textbook Study” condemning the texts as unacceptable for students.

Ogden’s work gained Jack Tubb’s immediate attention since the study specifically listed forty-four texts approved by the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board. The report’s language indicting the teachers who had used and had approved of the

Mississippi-sanctioned texts especially bothered Tubb. The DAR report stated that “the teacher is directed to distort any text by slanting it toward international socialism” and

“the teacher has the final power to distort a good text or to promote a slanted one.” The study further claimed that publishing companies printed teachers’ guides to objectionable textbooks that provided additional “hints for the successful carrying out of her propaganda mission.”61 Tubb’s routine duties as education chief consisted of appointing and directing the members of the state’s eleven subject-area rating committees. More than 250 teachers helped screen books pending adoption by the state every four years.62

When an organization condemned the work of the teachers, Tubb took it as a coordinated effort to sully Mississippi’s cadre of poorly paid and overworked educators.63 Moreover,

Tubb had an elected position in state government and he likely hoped to minimize any controversy, especially as racial tension in Mississippi flared in the wake of the Brown decisions and the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School.

61 National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, “Textbook Study, 1958,” Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board,” JMT.

62 Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, “A Narrative Report on Mississippi’s Plan of Textbook Selection,” Oct. 1959, Box 2, Folder 21, JMT; and J.M. Tubb, “Broader Program Long Sought Goal,” Southern School News, April 1959, v. 6 no. 11, 9.

63 Alexander to Tubb, July 30, 1959, Box 8176, Folder “State Textbook Purchasing Board-DAR & American Legion, 1959,” JMT. Alexander said the DAR’s activism to banish textbooks was “not designed as criticism of any individual or group of individuals.”

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The superintendent’s office and the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board took the DAR analysis of state approved textbooks very seriously. The report coincided with adoption of Mississippi history texts for the high school grades. Earlier that spring, the legislature passed a measure requiring all ninth grade students to take Mississippi history and textbook publishing companies had submitted several titles pending approval.64 At a November 1958 meeting, the five-person Board, prepared an advisability study for the adoption of Mississippi history textbooks and responded to the textbook critics: “Discuss activities of various groups in regard to textbooks on the DAR list.”65

Tubb then went on the offensive in a regional paper, Southern School News, created for the purpose of publicizing the desegregation issue in the South, insisting that the books were “carefully screened by teachers for the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing

Board.” Tubb argued that the Mississippi system “gives us the most careful screening of textbooks perhaps of any state.”66 In 1958, before statewide elections set for the following year, Tubb further enlisted the aid of Governor J.P. Coleman, who said the state’s teachers eliminated textbook content of “anything that smacked of intentional efforts to propagandize the integration effort.” Coleman’s thinly-veiled reference to the

DAR succinctly stated that “Those who prefer to utilize the books will find mighty little to complain about in those we have adopted.”67

64 Journal of the House of Representatives, 1958, Jan.7 to May 10, 1958, (Jackson: Hederman Brothers, 1958), 294.

65 “Minutes of a Meeting of the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board,” Nov. 17-19, 1958, Jackson, MS, Box 8176, Folder “State Textbook Purchasing Board, 1958,” JMT.

66 Tubb, “Broader Program Long Sought Goal,” Southern School News, Oct. 10, 1958, 9.

67 “Governor Urges ‘Clear Heads, Calm Minds’ on Schools,” Southern School News, Dec. 1958, 3. 3. 154

Florence Sillers Ogden had a relationship with the “lame-duck,” term-limited governor, that ended as Coleman locked horns with House Speaker Walter Sillers regarding a proposed new state constitution. Following Brown, Coleman advocated drafting a new state constitution that would include stronger language mandating segregation in education, and that Mississippi had complete authority over its school system. Sillers believed the scheme would fail to pass judicial review and would only waste time and money. The House Speaker spent much effort to defeat Coleman’s proposal, proposing instead a “scheme” to convert the state’s public schools to private ones to preserve Jim Crow.68 The sparring between the House Speaker and Governor

Coleman involved the competing strategies for preserving segregation, with Sillers representing the zero-sum approach and the governor offering a more practical defense.69

After Coleman defended Jack Tubb’s office and teachers serving on textbook rating committees, the relationship Ogden had with the governor further soured. “I am alarmed,” she challenged the governor in a 1959 letter, “at what I have found out about the books which you said had been ‘carefully screened for racial propaganda.’” In

Ogden’s assessment, the state sanctioned forty-four books containing “subversive and integration promoting” content. Many of the texts’ additional reading lists included “the original founders of the N.A.A.C.P.” History books consisted of the most egregious

68 Governor James P. Coleman to Florence Sillers Ogden, June 14, 1957, Box 3, Folder 32, FSO; Committee of 25, “Our State Constitution,” Box 54, Folder 38, WSJR; LEAC, “Transcript of Meeting of Mississippi Legal Educational Advisory Committee (LEAC) and School Officials,” Aug. 12, 1954, 3-4, Box 60, Folder 12, WSJR; Sillers to Breland May 26, 1954, Box 60, Folder 2 WSJR; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 71-73.

69 For scholarly debate outlining the respective positions of practical and hardline segregationist strategy, see Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 19-26; and Walker, The Ghost of Jim Crow, 5-6.

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misstatements in Ogden’s view, arguing that these texts constituted “a continual concerted attack on our form of Government, our social standards, on capitalism and our

Constitution.” She challenged Coleman to remain true to his campaign promises about keeping Mississippi segregated. “A concentrated communistic integration program,”

Ogden complained, “has been carried on in our school books.”70

As the decade ended Superintendent Tubb faced pressure on many fronts involving several different educational issues, juggling a failing equalization program and resistance to the National Defense Education Act of 1958 that earmarked millions of dollars in federal aid to the states’ school systems. Mississippi’s schools, moreover, experienced numerous challenges such as slow transition toward consolidation. In 1954, for example, Memphis Commercial Appeal reporter Kenneth Toler informed an audience that 840 white school districts existed “for an average of more than ten to the county.” A total of 1, 239 black school districts continued to dot the state’s landscape whereas the average southern state only had a total of two hundred school districts. The duplication of educational services, Toler charged, wasted an annual average of $5 million, which the legislature repeatedly ignored. Tubb’s office lacked ability to secure adequate funding

70 Florence Sillers Ogden to Governor James P. Coleman, June 24, 1959, Box 4, Folder 39, FSO. The original “Textbook Study” indicated that forty-four textbooks approved by the state failed to pass DAR standards. In Ogden’s letter she stated it was forty-nine, which could have been a typographical error. However, other civic organizations stated that they found seventeen objectionable texts on the state’s approved list. At other times civic club members listed thirty-two unacceptable books. E. Merrill Root, a college instructor from Indiana, testified before Mississippi lawmakers, indicating only twelve books that failed to pass his own patriotism and anticommunism standards. See, Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 56-57.

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from the legislature.71 In addition to solving these gross disparities, Tubb campaigned for reelection against political challenger G.L. Tutor.

During the late summer of 1959, Tubb and Tutor squared off in a campaign that exploited the textbook issue instead of focusing on the manifold problems facing the department of education. In campaign advertisements, Tutor noted his involvement in the

Lions Club, the Masons, and the Citizens’ Councils—in addition to his membership in the American Legion. “Be a Rooter for Tutor,” his ads read, emphasizing that as education chief he would “carefully screen Mississippi textbooks before adoption.” He chastised Tubb’s office, charging that “Under the present administration, 17 subversive textbooks have been adopted.”72 Fellow Legionnaire Stokes Sanders wrote in the

Kosciusko Star-Herald, which was reprinted in the Jackson Daily News the day before the August primary election, that Mississippi used “44 subversive textbooks and another

17 are an anathema to Mississippi’s way of life.”73 The Magee Courier charged Tubb with “undignified” behavior since his office attempted to cover up the “revelations made by the DAR and the American Legion that 17 textbooks used in Mississippi are deemed

‘subversive.’”74

Similar to his response to the DAR in 1958, Tubb tried to manage the controversy. In campaign ads, he reprinted the instructions to the textbook rating

71 Kenneth Toler, “Eighth Annual Education Conference,” June 9, 1954, Jackson, MS. Education Subject File, Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi, University, MS.

72 G.L. Tutor, Political Advertisement, Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 7.

73 Stokes Sanders, “Legion Says Textbook Issue Not Partisan Politics,” Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 1.

74 G.O. Parker, “A Bit Dog Will Always Holler,” Magee Courier, July 30, 1959.

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committees imploring the screeners to “please carefully look for any alien ideologies that might creep into a textbook.”75 He released a pamphlet that further acknowledged that textbook screeners “sign[ed] an oath that attests that they were not a ‘subversive person,’” attempting to overthrow either the government of Mississippi or the United

States.76 Other ads claimed textbook adoption had been “administered strictly according to law.” By emphasizing that the Mississippi textbook adoption process was the

“strongest in the nation,” Tubb’s ads asked “why has there not been any criticism of this program prior to this political campaign?”77 He ignored the DAR’s “Textbook Study,” which he had received a year before campaign season. Other campaign documents attested to Tubb’s defense of the teachers who served on the rating committees, stressing that the educators “showed a complete loyalty and devotion to Mississippi customs and traditions.” His ads likewise noted “100% success” regarding maintenance of segregated schools, which suggested that the attacks made by Tutor, the DAR, and joined by the

American Legion were all part of the campaign process.78

A month before the 1959 August primary elections, the American Legion voted at its state convention to launch “an investigation of certain textbooks being used in the schools.” Issuing support statements for the DAR and Farm Bureau, the American Legion designated a three-man committee composed of Clyde McGehee, Henry Eason, and

75 J.M. Tubb, Political Advertisement, Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 9.

76 Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, “A Narrative Report on Mississippi’s Plan of Textbook Adoption,” Box 2, Folder 21, JMT.

77 J.M. Tubb, Political Advertisement, Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 9.

78 J.M. Tubb, “Campaign Bulletin,” July 22, 1959, Box 3, Folder “Scrapbooks, 1943-1974,” JMT; and J.M. Tubb, Political Advertisement, Jackson Daily News, Aug. 2, 1959, 9.

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Dwight Maddox to study suspect textbooks.79 After asking for cooperation from Tubb’s office, the study committee reported its findings to the Mississippi Department

Commander. Unlike the confidence exerted by the DAR’s textbook critics, McGehee acknowledged that he was a farmer rather than an educator, suggesting the impromptu nature to the Legion’s efforts in joining the civic alliance to oppose Tubb.80 After the study committee concluded its investigation, the Legion condemned textbooks on the state approved list since many contained “slanted” content, which “contributed to the startling opinions among our high school students…particularly in the SOCIAL

STUDIES field.”81 Based on unidentified national surveys, the American Legion resolution claimed most American high school students supported antipoverty programs, government control of major industries such as transportation, steel, and media, suggesting that the clubmen’s role was critical in saving the country from communism.

The Legion appealed to the Legislature, asking lawmakers to undermine Tubb’s authority to appoint screeners and raters through an amended state law. Since 1946, Tubb’s office controlled positions on the state’s eleven rating committees, appointing four educators to each while the governor’s office appointed three screeners—all of whom were professional educators. The Legion joined the DAR and Farm Bureau stressing that lay

79 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Resolution,” July 11, 1959, Reached in convention in Jackson, MS, Box 8176, Folder “DAR & American Legion, 1959,” JMT.

80 McGehee to Tubb, Sept. 30, 1959 and McGehee to Tubb, Oct. 21, 1959, Box 8176, Folder “DAR & American Legion, 1959,” JMT.

81 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Resolution,” July 11, 1959, Reached in convention in Jackson, MS, Box 8176, Folder “DAR & American Legion, 1959,” JMT.

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persons rather than educators receive appointments and hoped for a new law giving the governor the power to make four appointments to the seven-person committees.82

Farm Bureau President Boswell Stevens condemned objectionable textbooks at the organization’s 1959 annual meeting. MFBF resolutions targeted books that presented positive treatment of integration and social equality. The Farm Bureau resolved to

“determine whether [textbooks] contain material contrary to Mississippi’s way of life.”

Similar to the actions of the DAR and American Legion, Stevens coordinated a study group composed of “intelligent, educated and loyal southern laymen” to investigate content. The MFBF believed that teachers “in the name of academic freedom” would

“substitute indoctrination for information.” By the time the legislative session began, the civic-patriotic organizations had mobilized its conservative members to pressure lawmakers to change the textbook screening and adoption process—a key education policy that in many ways determined the state’s curriculum. By transferring appointment power to the governor, the Farm Bureau believed its members’ historical viewpoints would be reflected in social studies textbooks.83

Regardless of the brouhaha caused by the textbook imbroglio, Tubb easily defeated Tutor in the primary elections as the schoolbook controversy merely revived with the 1960s legislative session. Citizens’ Council candidate Ross Barnett won primary and runoff elections that fall, placing an arch-segregationist in the governor’s office.

82 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Resolution,” July 11, 1959, Reached in convention in Jackson, MS, Box 8176, Folder “DAR & American Legion, 1959,” JMT; and Douglass Starr, “Legion Will Take Textbook Action,” Jackson Daily News, Sept. 6, 1959, 1.

83 “Opinion Split on Rights Advisory Group Choices,” Southern School News, Dec. 1959, v. 6 no. 6, 5; and David Elliott, “Textbooks and the Curriculum in the Postwar Era, 1950-1980,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States, eds. David L. Elliott and Arthur Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 43-44.

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After the general election, the DAR began exhibiting forty-four objectionable textbooks in the lobby of the King Edward Hotel where many lawmakers lodged while in Jackson.

Once they convened in January, the DAR moved the spectacle to the first floor of the state capitol thereby gaining and holding the attention of legislators before the session began. The Daughters wanted immediate legislative action since the textbook board had a new adoption slated for summer.84 The alliance with the Legion proved fruitful in terms of lobbying success since forty-eight representatives and nineteen senators belonged to the organization.85

Lawmakers opted to conduct their own investigation of state-sanctioned schoolbooks. The General Legislative Investigating Committee (GLIC), created in 1958 to keep track of “subversive groups” and integrationists, brought in an out-of-state

“expert” witness to comment on the charges made by the DAR and the conservative alliance. They paid Earlham College professor E. Merrill Root $400 for his two-week service to the state. A professional textbook critic and author of two books on communism and American education informed Mississippi’s lawmakers that twelve textbooks “softened” readers’ spirituality.86 He claimed most textbook authors were liberals rather than diehard communists as indicated by the DAR study. As journalists pointed out, Root sidestepped the segregation and race issues in his report and merely tried to show that certain books inspired communism, liberal sentiment, or both.

84 Star, “Legion Will Take Textbook Action”; and John Herbers, “Citizens Councils Helping Barnett to get Control of Book Board,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 10, 1960, 1.

85 Roman Kelly compiled membership data on each state senator and representative. See Senate Journal, 1150-54; and House Journal, 1007-17.

86 Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 56-57; and Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 72, 91.

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Journalists Jack Nelson and Gene Roberts, Jr. suggested that Root merely appeared before the Mississippi Legislature as he did other state bodies in hopes of improving the sales of his two books. In each of his books, Root expressed beliefs that the United States waged a losing effort in the Cold War since textbook authors’ interpretations of recent

American history failed to conform to his own archconservative worldview. In short,

Root like the conservative civic organization members believed history held a power to compel allegiance to the nation, state, and God.87

Archival evidence strongly suggests that Root gained his “expert” witness status on textbook content based on recommendations from the DAR and Farm Bureau. In a

1963 monograph on the subject, the authors claimed Root “was confidentially recommended…by an unimpeachable source.”88 Alexander, Stevens, or Ogden likely convinced legislators to invite Root to speak before the GLIC. The Earlham College professor had a routine speaking schedule that included archconservative and anticommunist groups such as the American Legion, DAR, Farm Bureau in addition to the National Association of Manufacturers and the John Birch Society.89 He carved out a market for his speeches based on the arguments in his two books, especially

87 Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 70-72.

88 Ibid., 91.

89 John C. Satterfield to Boswell Stevens and Kenneth W. Ingwalson, Special Education Activities Director, American Farm Bureau Federation, April 7, 1959, Box 3, Folder “April 1959-Correspondence,” BSP. Satterfield wrote about his interest in Root’s presentation entitled “The Battle for Men’s Minds” during the AFBF’s training institute for state Farm Bureau presidents and employees. Moreover, Florence Sillers Ogden claimed she considered one of Root’s monographs as an adequate guide to conducting textbook evaluations. Florence Sillers Ogden to Margaret Peaster, Sept. 21, 1959, Box 4, Folder 40, FSO. Similarly, Edna Whitfield Alexander wrote in her newspaper column that Root was a true American hero similar to George Washington, Daniel Webster, and Thomas Jefferson because the author insisted on divine inspiration as the cause of the founding of the American Republic. See Mrs. Grady Green and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “The D.A.R. Speaks,” Jan. 19, 1959, (Grenada) Sentinel-Star, and Box 1, “Scrapbook,” EWA.

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Brainwashing in the High Schools. In that work he charged textbook authors with treason for foisting collectivist theories onto students, and like SAR member Augustin Rudd’s

Bending the Twig, attacked progressive education as the harbinger of the downfall of the

United States in favor of a communist dictatorship.90 During his testimony before

Mississippi lawmakers, Root objected to twelve books, but the legislators had complained about twenty-seven books on the DAR’s list of forty-four.91 Shortly after

Root’s appearance, legislators in both houses drafted bills designed to transfer appointment power over the rating committees from Tubb to the recently elected

Barnett.92

While the legislature debated amending state law, Tubb tried to sway public opinion on textbook politics by marshaling his many allies. The Mississippi Association of School Administrators (MASA) passed a November 1959 resolution condemning the

DAR and the American Legion. While it asserted that “the DAR criticisms are so vague and general as to be unanswerable,” the organization indeed responded to the Daughters with its resolution. It further charged that the DAR and Legion “would substitute a regimented brain-washed type of education in the place of the type of education that has existed in the public schools of our nation.” It resolved, moreover, that only “professional educators and curriculum and subject-matter experts should select textbooks free of

90 E. Merrill Root, Brainwashing in the High Schools (New York: Devin-Adair, 1959), 9-11; Augustin G. Rudd, Bending the Twig: The Revolution in Education and its Effects on Our Children (Chicago: The Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1957), 25-32; and Mrs. Ben G. Kohrs to Boswell Stevens, June 19, 1961, Box 26, Folder “MFBF Women’s Activities,” BSP.

91 Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 91; and “Ross Barnett Becomes Governor; Speech Considered ‘Temperate,’” Southern School News, v. 6 no. 8 (Feb. 1960): 7.

92 Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 91.

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political interference.”93 The Mississippi Education Association (MEA) made up of white teachers across the state commented on the issue during its March meeting. “The

Association is opposed to investigations of our textbooks made by irresponsible parties,” the statement charged. The MEA claimed that textbook evaluations by the civic organizations “are in effect, expressions of a lack of confidence in the integrity, loyalty, and good judgment of the teachers of Mississippi.” The MEA statement appeared more tempered than the administrators’ when the teachers claimed it “welcomes investigations by the Legislature.”94 The Mississippi PTA likewise made similar statements supporting the educators.95 Tubb coordinated damage control as would any politician, and he tried to appeal directly to the public with rational statements indicating educator supremacy of matters related to school materials.

The efforts of the civic organizations in publicizing the textbook issue served its purpose well in reaching average Mississippians. In response to the MEA resolution condemning the DAR as “irresponsible parties,” Janice Colquitt Neill wrote to Ogden that “only a hit dog howls.” Neill said she read the “Textbook Study” and decided to pick up a textbook used in the Leland Separate School District. “Not a mention of states’ rights!” she found in the text’s section on the Civil War. Colquitt offered Ogden and the

DAR any assistance that she could provide. “I THINK YOU ARE SO RIGHT in the

93 “Administrators Met Last Month, Passed Resolutions,” Mississippi Educational Advance, Nov. 1959, 18-22.

94 Mississippi Education Association, “Resolution,” March 23-25, Jackson, MS, found in Mississippi Educational Advance, April 1960, 32; and Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 94.

95 Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers, “Press Release,” February 21,1960, Box 8176, Folder “Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, DAR and American Legion, 1959,” JMT.

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position you and the DAR have taken on approved textbooks,” another Ogden fan wrote.

Several years later as the textbook issue continued, a woman believed that “every book has a chapter or more that carries the same theme of integration.” She introduced as a novel idea “Mississippi printing text books; written by and for Mississippians.”

Otherwise, Beatrice expected book publishers to print “history books that write of

Africans actually being the first settlers of this Country” or worse, “promotion of the

Welfare State.” She notified Ogden that she had already written to the State Department of Archives and History about preserving older texts that contained “true stories of the history of this United States” so that children of the future could read books “to counteract Communistic and Political brain washing.”96

Some media outlets defended the state’s educators. The Newton County Record, for example, wrote an editorial that warned Mississippians to avoid making the state “a cocoon” because “if so, we out-Hitler, Hitler.”97 The fiercely independent Lexington

Advertiser editor Hazel Brannon Smith likewise likened textbook politics to the Third

Reich. She claimed it was puzzling that Mississippians fought against Hitler “in one decade and in the next supinely emulate[d] him.”98 Memphis Commercial Appeal reporter Kenneth Toler called the DAR and its goals to purge objectionable textbooks a

“witch-hunt” and their tactics “resemble[d] brainwashing attempts reminiscent of Hitler,

Mussolini and Stalin.” In another editorial, the Memphis newspaper declared that “dire

96 Janice Colquitt Neill to Florence Sillers Ogden, Oct. 18, 1959 and J.O. Day to Florence Sillers Ogden, Oct. 2, 1959, Box 4, Folder 41, FSO; and Beatrice [surname unidentified] to Florence Sillers Ogden, Feb. 29, 1964, Box 6, Folder 55, FSO.

97 “Textbook Control,” Newton (Miss.) Record, May 5, 1960, 5.

98 Hazel Brannon Smith, “Editorial,” Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser, Oct. 29, 1959.

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danger attends the banning of books.”99 A Jackson State-Times columnist, Robert Webb, stuck to substance, believing that “transferring rating committee control from teachers to lay persons would be dangerous because it would cause people to question the entire public school system.”100

Several voices in the media supported the civic-patriotic alliance. Jackson

Clarion-Ledger columnist Tom Ethridge, a staunch segregationist and Barnett supporter, claimed the DAR’s interest in textbooks was “healthy.” He further wrote that the MEA’s

March resolution amounted to a “not-guilty verdict” that had been reached “by the defendants.”101 Florence Sillers Ogden used her statewide column to provide support for the DAR, the American Legion, and MFBF. She wrote that if left to the textbook authors and education professionals then “Heroes are debunked.” Recounting how she had learned in school that George Washington was America’s greatest hero, she denigrated textbook authors who interpreted the American Revolution in terms of “class warfare”— a reference to Charles and Mary Beard. She cited former Ole Miss Professor Alfred

Hume’s warning that academic freedom goes only so far, quoting him directly:

“Academic freedom is sometimes academic nonsense.”102 In deflecting charges of

99 Toler, “School Leaders Hit DAR, Legion,”; and “Editorial,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, April 28, 1960.

100 Robert Webb, “Outlook Column,” (Jackson) State-Times, May 3, 1960.

101 Tom Ethridge, “Mississippi Notebook,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 1, 1960.

102 Florence Sillers Ogden, “Time to Re-Evaluate this ‘Academic Freedom’ Code,” Jackson Daily News, Aug. 9, 1959.

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censorship, Ogden responded that it worked both ways, claiming that liberals’ attempted to change Biblical messages and lyrics in the Star-Spangled Banner.103

In the spring of 1960 as the legislature debated changes to textbook statutes, Tubb gained unlikely allies. Two American Legion members, Thompson Nolan Touchstone and Fred Young, opposed the civic-patriotic alliance. Touchstone was an interesting supporter of Tubb since he had earlier lost a campaign for state superintendent.104 A former assistant superintendent in the state department of education, Touchstone appealed to Clyde McGehee on the Legion’s study committee. He inquired about review criteria applied to textbooks and advised McGehee to remember that “the Mississippi system for the selection of textbooks is…superior to any used in any other states of the region.”105 Once the McGehee study committee reported to the legislature, Touchstone appealed for support from the Mississippi Bookmen’s Club, which considered the Legion analysis “as viscous as those turned in by the D.A.R. or Root.” He further reiterated that the entire controversy had been concocted during the campaign season. Yet this analysis missed the mark somewhat since the DAR stepped up its public pressure during the legislative session long after the elections had been decided. As the DAR textbook exhibit greeted political leaders at the state capitol, Touchstone had the Bookmen

“counteract any work of the D.A.R. with our friends in the legislature.”106

103 Florence Sillers Ogden, “Bookburning Not Just One-Sided; Frost on All Sides,” Jackson Daily News, Nov. 15, 1959.

104 Thompson Nolan Touchstone, “Campaign Brochure,” 1951, Subject File “Thompson N. Touchstone, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS.

105 Touchstone to McGehee, Oct. 19, 1959, Subject File, Thompson N. Touchstone, MDAH.

106 Touchstone to Elkin Jack/Members of the Mississippi Bookmen’s Club, Feb. 23, 1960, Subject File, Thompson N. Touchstone, MDAH. 167

Touchstone and Young worked in tandem to change the American Legion’s

position on the matter. In his letter to the Bookmen, Touchstone wrote that he wanted to

continue “working over Clyde McGehee” while Young would “work closely with the

superintendents and principals in the home towns of members of the Legion Executive

Committee.” In other words, Touchstone believed Young could “educate the Legion

boys.”107 Further, Young was the man to speak with the press since Touchstone’s

position as a publishing company representative denoted a conflict of interests. Young

skillfully carried out his duties, informing reporter Kenneth Toler that the American

Legion joined the DAR by virtue of a blind vote “without an understanding of its

implications.”108 Young tried to sully the reputation of the DAR thereby absolving the

Legion of responsibility in the matter. The Commercial Appeal quoted his assertion that the Legion study was “a witch-hunt, a farce and a threat to freedom,” using the term

“witch” to denigrate the all-female DAR.109

Touchstone implored the Legion to reconsider its position. He argued that

Legionnaires “live the closest to our schools. The MEA and PTA are organizations that

the American Legion rely on for the implementation of its great Americanism programs

such as Boys’ State, School Awards, Oratorical Contests, Education Week, and Junior

Baseball.” Touchstone claimed “had it not been for Root working through the D.A.R., the

107 Ibid.

108 Toler, “School Leaders Hit DAR, Legion”; and “Educators Deny School Book Charge; Film Shelved,” Southern School News, v. 6 no. 5, 8.

109 “Mid-South News in Brief,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, April 27, 1960.

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Legion would not be involved” in textbook politics.110 His ally Fred Young lobbied the organization as well, stating Mississippi “school teachers…are dedicated” and warned the

Legion that “when the people of our state lose confidence in the thousands of teachers who instruct their children, then the sun has set on the progress of education.”111 Thus, textbook politics proved so contentious that it split the American Legion.

Legislative debate about textbook screening proved as contentious as public consideration. By February 1960, the senate proposed two bills to amend state laws sponsored by the DAR and its conservative alliance. Ranking education subcommittee member Senator George Yarbrough, a Legionnaire and Farm Bureau member, sponsored

Senate Bill 1979. The proposal transferred appointment power from the state superintendent’s office to the governor, requiring the executive branch to appoint four lay members rather than professional educators to the textbook rating committees.112 Three representatives sponsored the House version and two of the lawmakers claimed membership in the Farm Bureau, American Legion, and Citizens’ Councils.113 To get the

House version to sync with SB 1979, Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr.

110 Touchstone to Clyde McGehee/American Legion Textbook Committee, Oct. 19, 1959; and Touchstone to Members of the Department Executive Committee, The American Legion of Mississippi, Feb. 15, 1960, both found in Thompson N. Touchstone Subject File, MDAH.

111 Fred Young to Members of the Department Executive Committee of the American Legion, Feb. 20, 1960, Thompson N. Touchstone Subject File, MDAH.

112 Journal of the Senate, 1960, 346, 439, 714, 1,031; “Legislature Ends Session; Adopts Textbook Measure,” Southern School News, June, 1960, Vol. 6, No. 12; and John Herbers, “Editorial,” (Jackson) Daily News, April 10, 1960.

113 Journal of the House, 1960, 243.

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orchestrated a compromise whereby the governor’s office would receive appointment power in 1962 rather than immediately.114

Newspaper reporters misconstrued the genesis of the proposed legislation, attributing the action to the Citizens’ Councils. Councilors Britt Hughey and William

Dickerson sponsored HB 846 and media reports asserted that the white supremacist organization “backed” the measure, thus ignoring the months-long work of the civic organizations, especially the DAR.115 Joe Franko of the Greenwood Delta Democrat

Times wrote that the Citizens’ Councils “endorsed both bills in the Legislature.”116 State-

Times columnist Robert Webb pointed to Citizens’ Councils Women’s Division chief

Sara McCorkle’s leadership on the proposed measures.117 Yet Florence Sillers Ogden actually advised McCorkle’s auxiliary about the issue.118 The Citizens’ Councils, in other words, followed the lead of the DAR, the American Legion, and the MFBF, all of which had more members in both the senate and house. The media’s analyses even failed to account for some councilors’ objections to the proposed laws. Hayden Campbell, for example, a Hinds County senator and high-ranking member of the Jackson Citizens’

Council, told a reporter that the “friends of the [Barnett] administration that are urging

114 Kenneth Toler, “Barnett Seeks Control Over School Materials,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, April 30, 1960; Charles M. Hills, “Textbook Board Change is Voted,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 29, 1960; “Legislature Ends Session’ Adopts Textbook Measure,” Southern School News, June 1960, v. 6 no. 12, 14; and Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 95-97.

115 Herbers, “Citizens Councils Helping Barnett to Get Control of Book Board,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 20, 1959, 1.

116 Joe Franko, “Koonce Says Teachers are Best Qualified to Pick Textbooks,” (Greenwood) Delta Democrat Times, April 14, 1960, 1.

117 Webb, “Outlook Column.”

118 McRae, “White Womanhood,” 191.

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the passage of these bills are carrying the administration down the road to ruin.”119 He believed the governor’s office controlling educational matters would be “contributing to a great…scandal.”120

Other lawmakers in addition to Campbell opposed the transfer of screening committee appointment power. Senator Earl Evans from Canton said the governor’s three appointments to the rating committees proved sufficient to “remove integration material” from schoolbooks.121 In the House, Meridian’s Bill Caraway called HB 846 “a direct slap at the teaching profession” and said he would rather trust teachers “than some of the people I have seen hanging around the governor’s office looking for jobs.” Only two elected officials commented publicly in support of the legislation— SB 1979 sponsor

Yarbrough, and Governor Ross Barnett.122 Barnett requested copies of objectionable books so he could review them himself, and addressed a special message to a joint session of the legislature to change the textbook law.123 Regardless of the debates and political maneuvering, the DAR, American Legion, and MFBF proved too strong to overcome. On May 11, 1960, after the House concurred, Barnett signed SB 1979 into law. Thus, the civic-patriotic alliance succeeded where the Citizens’ Council had failed to even attempt to shape state policy on education. While Tubb’s office lost appointment

119 Hills, “Textbook Board Change is Voted.”

120 “Governor Signs New Bill Extending Closing Authorization to Local Trustees,” Southern School News, May 1960, v. 6 no. 11, 4.

121 Hills, “Textbook Board Change is Voted.”

122 Jackson State-Times, “Teachers are Best Qualified,” April 13, 1960.

123 Edna Whitfield Alexander, “Socialist and Pro-Communist Propaganda in Textbooks,” Speech delivered to the Christian Crusade’s National Anti-communist Leadership School, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oct. 1962, Box 1, EWA.

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power over the state’s eleven rating committees, Barnett waited two years to actually make appointments by virtue of Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson’s compromise.

Ogden and the DAR only hoped for a stronger measure.124

Tubb’s savvy political thinking turned defeat into victory as he co-opted the civic organizations’ language and rhetoric. He rewrote screening committee instruction booklets, advising the raters “to look more carefully for any material that might advocate a departure from the true and tried American way.”125 The raters likewise followed their instructions in that their evaluations revealed a defense of segregation and the Lost

Cause. Mississippi College history professor William W. Caskey found a Laidlaw book unacceptable because “Lincoln has been glorified too much” in addition to too little information on the “War Between the States.” Frank Hough, who received appointment based on the Ogden’s recommendation to Barnett, claimed that the Laidlaw book contained “blatant integrationist material.” Caskey said an Allyn and Bacon textbook contained passages about Ralph Bunche, the first African American Nobel Prize winner.

The history professor declared that Bunche “had Communist connections!” Similarly,

Leroy Roberson evaluated the same book and noted “the publishers assured me they would leave out Bunche’s biography.” Hilda Lott Neill refused approval of a Rand

McNally book because it contained “blatant integration propaganda.”126

124 Florence Sillers Ogden to Governor Ross Barnett, May 9, 1960, Box 4, Folder 42, FSO.

125 J.M. Tubb, “The State Superintendent’s Address to the Mississippi Textbook Rating Committees,” Sept. 21, 1960, Box 8176, Folder “Textbook Adoption Speech and Others, 1960,” JMT.

126 Dr. W.W. Caskey to Jack Tubb, n.d. [1960?], Box 8176, Folder “1960 Rating,” JMT; Florence Sillers Ogden to Governor Ross Barnett, May 9, 1960, and Governor Ross Barnett to Florence Sillers Ogden, June 13, 1960, Box 4, Folder 42, FSO. Hough was a replacement on the high school social studies rating committee, which is why Barnett appointed him before the 1962 adoption. Frank Hough to Jack 172

Until Barnett appointed lay persons to each of the eleven rating committees, Tubb adopted the position of his detractors. He spoke on the radio, to civic organizations, and during school commencement exercises to appropriate defense issues from the DAR, the

American Legion, and the MFBF. In a 1962 speech entitled “Teaching About

Communism,” Tubb reported that the State Department of Education and the American

Legion jointly designed “a resource unit to be placed in American history [classes] at the eleventh grade level.” He assured his audiences that the “classroom as an arena of the cold war has been assigned high priority.” Yet while Tubb’s comments reflected the pressure of the civic-patriotic coalition, he reiterated “the greatest contribution our teachers can make in the classroom is to inspire the students to study the history of our country.” Tubb’s office furthermore coordinated efforts with the American Legion to develop an anticommunist teacher training workshop held at Mississippi Southern

College.127

Barnett publicly supported the additional power given him by the legislature, but when it came time to appoint textbook screeners, the segregationist governor opted for educators rather than lay persons. He appointed only two DAR members; Boswell

Stevens received a post on an economics screening committee. Reporter John Herbers concluded that Barnett used the appointment power as political “patronage.” The screeners, moreover, reapproved all of the books on the DAR, the American Legion, and

Root’s objectionable list with the exception of English in Action. Herbers called it “a

Tubb, n.d. [1960?], Box 8176, Folder “1960 Rating,” JMT; Leroy Roberson and Hilda Lott Neill, to Jack Tubb, n.d. [1960?], Box 8176, Folder “1960 Rating,” JMT.

127 J.M. Tubb, “The Mississippi Plan” and “Teaching About Communism,” n.d. [1962?] Box 1, Folder 15 “Speeches,” JMT; and Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Resolution,” n.d. [1963?] Box 53, Folder 752, JMT.

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quiet victory for the professional” teachers in Mississippi.128 Tubb expected Barnett to take a stronger interest in the actions of the textbook regulatory board, yet the governor acted disinterested. John Arledge, Barnett’s assistant, reported that the governor “doesn’t plan to come to the State Textbook Purchasing Board meetings.” Tubb lamented the governor’s disinterest in the business of the Department of Education.129 Despite these developments, Edna Alexander seemed unbothered. She told Herbers that Barnett “called on [the DAR] for advice” and noted the two Daughters he had assigned to the rating committees. In a 1962 speech delivered in Tulsa, Oklahoma to the Christian Crusade’s

National Anti-communist Leadership School, Alexander said that a few of Barnett’s appointments requested DAR assistance in making recommendations to the State

Textbook Purchasing Board.130

Alexander and Ogden continued battling for the removal of objectionable textbooks. In the fall of 1962, they sent Walter Sillers the DAR evaluations of forty-four state approved texts. Most analyses focused on race or integration in addition to pro-

South historical interpretations. A book entitled United States History, for example, contained “Laconic treatment of the South” and “Did not mention Fielding Wright as

Vice-presidential nominee of the States Right party…Praise Federal aid to education

[sic],” according to the DAR critic. She further stated, “Booker T. Washington picture is

128 John Herbers, “DAR Textbook Ideas Explored,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 1, 1962.

129 J.M. Tubb, “Telephone Transcript,” Thursday, March 24, 1960, Box 1, Folder “Correspondenc, June 1943-Nov. 1968,” JMT.

130 Herbers, “DAR Textbook Ideas Explored.” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 1, 1962; and Edna Whitfield Alexander, “Socialist and Pro-Communist Propaganda in Textbooks,” Oct. 1962, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Box 1, EWA.

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much larger than Thomas Jefferson [sic].”131 The appraiser of The Record of Mankind objected to the passage “Man was first a savage” until “human beings learned to live together in groups.” In her interpretation, the line was “a natural consequence, since the

Supreme Court has discarded our constitution in their effort to force Negroes and whites to live together.”132 In The Making of Modern America, the DAR disagreed with its treatment of the Civil War in which the South hoped that Northern enthusiasm for war would wane and accept foreign intervention. “This slanted-against-the-South book makes no mention of the fact that Russia offered to help the North,” the DAR critic wrote.133

The DAR preferred social studies books consistent with the patriotic society’s version of history along with its racial ideology. An evaluator claimed that the geography text Your Country and the World “records a good bit of history—some of which we are not too proud, and conspicuously omits some which we are very proud.” The reviewer referred mostly to the authors’ omission of “religious freedom” as the rationale for the founding of the United States.134 The psychology book Learning About Children failed

DAR standards because, as the critic wrote: “For those who would promote complete integration of the races through Communist propaganda taught through school text books,

131 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJR. Fremont P. Wirth wrote United States History, which was published by American Book Company, which was reprinted in 1951, 1952, and 1955.

132 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJR. A. Wesley Roehm, Morris R. Buske, Hutton Webster, and Edgar B. Wesley each authored The Record of Mankind, published by D.C. Heath in 1956.

133 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17 Folder 32, WSJR. Leon H. Canfield and Howard B. Wilder wrote The Making of Modern America, 3rd Edition, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1953.

134 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJR. Robert M. Glendinning, Earnest W. Tiegs, and Fay Adams wrote Your Country and the World, which Ginn and Company published in 1955.

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it would be hard to find a better book…for that purpose.”135 The economics reader

Economic Problems of Today, the commentator stated, “advocates the creation of a state of social equality.”136 The DAR, furthermore, deemed any book “unsatisfactory” that listed the authors Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida Tarbell, Earnest Hemingway, and

Mississippians William Faulkner and Hodding Carter, Jr. Moreover, the DAR hoped to shield students from interest in the scholarly works of John Hersey, Arthur Schlesinger,

Charles Beard, Allen Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, Gunnar Myrdal, and Howard

Odum.137

During the 1962 legislative session, the House briefly debated a stronger anti- textbook bill, targeting thirty-five books and seeking a complete ban. Despite the measure dying quickly in committee, the press again claimed backing by both the Citizens’

Councils and DAR.138 One reason for its failure involved the disintegration of the conservative civic-patriotic alliance. The earlier counteroffensive by Touchstone and

Young had paid dividends, and by the American Legion’s 1962 state convention, the civic organization reversed its previous position on the issue. Legionnaires passed a

135 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJR. Rebekah M. Shuey, Elizabeth L. Woods, and Esther Mason Young wrote the 1957 textbook Learning About Children, which J.B. Lippincott & Co. published.

136 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJR. Written by Jacob Klein and Woolf Colvin, Economic Problems of Today was published by Lyons and Carnahan in 1936, but went through a dozen editions.

137 Walter G. Johnson to Sillers, Sept. 5, 1962, Box 17, Folder 32, WSJ. Enclosures in this correspondence contain more than 74 pages of DAR book analyses. Most of these include objections to the books’ further reading sections.

138 Herbers, “DAR Textbook Ideas Explored,”; “35 Textbooks Given Rap Under Proposal,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, March 9, 1962; “Senate Body Kills Textbook Ban Bill,” (Memphis) Press- Scimitar, April 5, 1962; and John Herbers (UPI), “Long Smoldering Textbook Fight Due for Another Round in Legislature,” (Greenwood) Delta Democrat Times, March 18, 1962.

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resolution discrediting Root “as an authority on textbooks.” The Legion document pointed to the organization’s work with the National Education Association to implement anticommunism programs in public school curricula, and claimed that it was working with the Mississippi Department of Education to develop teacher training workshops.

While it avoided mentioning the DAR by name, it alluded to the society by requesting

“all patriotic organizations…join bands in a united effort.”139

When the next round of textbook politics ensued, Touchstone appealed to the

Senate Education Subcommittee. He reiterated that Root was a charlatan, who had earned neither a master’s degree nor a doctorate. Touchstone further questioned Root’s patriotism since he had attained conscientious objector status during the First World War.

He played on legislators’ racial fears by acknowledging that Earlham College where Root worked offered integrated classes. Touchstone concluded that “all of us here in

Mississippi are in thorough agreement” that the most important issues included “an all- out fight against communism, and keeping our schools segregated.” He closed his appeal with the assertion that “None of our teachers are communist. They are doing a good job in teaching Americanism, and therefore, deserve our support.”140 A unanimous vote by the education committee killed the legislation, which indicated the influence the

American Legion had on legislators.

While the Citizens’ Council and governor’s office battled James Meredith’s attempts to desegregate the University of Mississippi, only the DAR and MFBF stood

139 Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Resolution,” July 14-15, Jackson, MS, Thompson N. Touchstone Subject File, MDAH.

140 Touchstone to Members of the Education Committee, Mississippi State Senate, n.d., and Touchstone, “More Information on E. Merrill Root – The Professional Paid Textbook Witch Hunter,” n.d., both found in Thompson N. Touchstone Subject File, MDAH.

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united in an effort to guard against subversion in school materials. In November, Boswell

Stevens and the MFBF adopted a stronger resolution, stating textbooks “do not teach states’ rights, racial integrity, free enterprise and Americanism.”141 Stevens told the

Memphis Press-Scimitar that he wanted Barnett “to appoint informed patriots” to the textbook rating committees.142 He believed teachers were the problem, and the MFBF recommended “screening of teachers” for “Communistic and atheistic beliefs.”143 By

January, Edna Alexander appealed to parents’ and legislators’ emotions by deriding a first-grade text as socialistic. She cited a story in the book in which a squirrel, unprepared for the winter, received nuts from a kind bird that prevented the squirrel from starving.

Alexander concluded that the story advocated “a collectivist welfare state.”144 Newspaper editor Hazel Brannon Smith asked who decides what children should read “the people in charge of our schools or…groups applying pressure here or there to bring about conformity…with their own beliefs.” Their theory, Smith wrote, “seems to be that if our children see no evil, hear no evil, read no evil, they will emerge from their education pure, wholesome and very good examples of citizenship in the nineteenth century.”145

Smith arrived at the substance of the Alexander’s wishes—a school curriculum that mimicked the lessons she learned as a child. At a book exhibit in Greenwood, Alexander

141 Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, “Resolution, 1963,” Nov. 12-14, 1962, Jackson, MS, Folder “Annual Meeting, 1962, 12/17,” Box 23, Stevens Papers; and Memphis Press-Scimitar, “Textbook Body is Criticized,” Nov. 16, 1962.

142 “Textbook Body is Criticized,” (Memphis) Press-Scimitar, Nov. 16, 1962.

143 Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation, “Resolution, 1963,” Nov. 12-14, 1962, Jackson, MS, Box 23, Folder “Annual Meeting, 1962, 12/17,” Stevens Papers.

144 “DAR Says First Grade Book is Socialistic,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 1, 1963, 3.

145 Hazel Brannon Smith, “Editorial,” Madison (Miss.) County Herald, Jan. 31, 1963. Emphasis added.

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informed an audience of that very sentiment: “I was always taught that prejudice was an

individual’s right yet today if you object to race, religion you are prejudiced and you are

wrong.”146 Alexander’s affinity was for a static version of history she had learned long

ago, and in the decade after Brown, she lamented the changes in historical knowledge as

leading to a departure from white supremacy, segregation, patriotism, and Christianity.

In 1963, the DAR attempted to court additional allies while taking their concerns

directly to the public. Alexander affiliated with a group called the Citizens Education

Association (CEA), which DAR member Mrs. Orley M. Hood of Vicksburg formed.

Hood claimed CEA membership remained open to men whom the DAR lacked after the

American Legion repudiated textbook politics. In a press release, Hood wrote that

Mississippi teachers, and the textbooks they used, taught children “socialism, race

amalgamation and one-worldism.” The CEA’s main activity consisted of day long

textbook exhibits in each of the state’s congressional districts.147 During a December

1963 seminar in Greenwood, Alexander offered diplomatic comments regarding teachers,

claiming to have the “deepest sympathy” because classroom instructors had to “follow

orders from the ‘top.’” She sympathized with educators who refused to use objectionable

texts and were “afraid of speaking out for fear they would lose their jobs.”148 Politicians, however, largely ignored the resumption of the textbook controversy since the University of Mississippi experienced a calamitous desegregation event, and segregationists put

146 “Handful Stirs Textbook, Guidance Controversy,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 13, 1963, 3.

147 “Textbooks Under Fire from CEA,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 3, 1963, 3.

148 “Handful Stirs Textbook, Guidance Controversy,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 13, 1963, 3.

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much of their energy in thwarting passage of the proposed Civil Rights Act by the John

F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations.

Alexander perhaps gained the most from textbook politics, parlaying her lobbying abilities into paid speaking engagements. She routinely appeared in Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming addressing anticommunist organizations and offering advice about how citizens could use the political process to control school materials. In Texas and

Oklahoma, elected leaders debated and passed additional laws designed to purge offensive textbooks. Moreover, Alexander’s speeches likely inspired the already extensive efforts of Texans Mel and Norma Gabler, who ascended to national prominence as conservative-minded textbook critics.149

Mississippi’s textbook controversy of the late 1950s and early 1960s reveals the ability through which highly organized individuals can change education policy. Built on a reactionary ideology that merged history, white supremacy, Protestant religion, and anticommunism, the state’s civic-patriotic alliance used their political connections to strengthen the state’s adoption procedures to prevent mostly pro-integrationist school material from reaching students. They intended as well to use the state’s education system, centralized in Jackson, to inculcate a reactionary ideology and a religious and patriotic worldview among students. The lobbying effort led by DAR operatives

Alexander and Ogden reveal the power of elite women in coordinating alliances with male-led civic clubs and disseminating a reactionary ideology to the general public. It is

149 Nelson and Roberts, The Censors and the Schools, 97, 151; and “As Texas Goes, So Goes the Nation: Conservatism and Culture Wars in the Lone Star State,” in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle Over Standards in Texas and the Nation, 19-40, ed. Keith A. Erekson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 25-31.

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important to note as well that civic-patriotic societies in Mississippi represented the vanguard opposing integration following the 1954 Brown decision by demonstrating how

DAR, Farm Bureau, and American Legion members succeeded where the Citizens’

Councils dared to try. By changing education policy regarding textbook adoptions, the civic clubs showed how public pressure and political connections affected state policy.

Moreover, textbook politics reveals how newer historical scholarship based on empirical research ran headlong into numerous obstacles erected by pressure groups and lawmakers alike. If coalitions of pressure groups can guard against this flow of knowledge, then the scholars’ revelations remain accessible only to limited audiences.

The roles played by civic-patriotic societies in the state’s most intense flashpoint of textbook politics indicate inescapable ironies. Organizations such as the DAR considered itself experts on American history and constitutionalism. Yet their rhetoric reveals how civic-patriotic members remained locked in their own understanding of the past and how they resisted newer approaches and knowledge based on the political realities of the time. In the 1950s, Edna Alexander and Florence Sillers Ogden denounced suspected scores of fifth-columnists taking control of the country, which prevented them from fuller consideration of new information. Instead of accepting different approaches to education and newer historical scholarship, they reacted based on their worldview and the educational lessons that determined what they had learned when they were students.

Thus, the DAR especially demanded that historical knowledge remain unchanged or else society itself would require transformation. After the Brown decision, they mostly agreed that collectivism and communism had subverted traditional American institutions. In other words, a communist takeover of the nation was nearly complete in their view. Yet

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simultaneously, Alexander, Ogden, and Boswell Stevens claimed the U.S. Constitution represented the best possible system devised by humankind. They believed as well that history instruction offered the solution to the nation’s slide toward communism. If only youth studied history—a static, unchanging, and triumphalist version—could the nation be protected against the communist threat.

Ogden sometimes questioned her own historical interpretations. Before the state’s

Civil War Centennial, she explained her apprehension in the presence of scholars, charging that history professors “are bad at public speaking and sometimes too hard to listen to.”150 On a deep level, she likely realized that her idea of the past failed to pass muster as history. As president of the Mississippi Historical Society, Ogden invited scholars to speak at the organization’s functions. In 1953, Duke University historian

Charles S. Sydnor addressed the Mississippi Historical Society cognizant of the Red

“hysteria” sweeping the nation. Without mentioning patriotic organizations by name,

Sydnor pointed out collective failure to understand constitutional history, informing his audience that the ratification of the U.S. Constitution represented “a large increase in federal power,” noting that “knowledge of the Constitution…is at low ebb.”151 Thus one award-winning history professor, if for only a moment, likely reached Ogden, who certainly was present to hear Sydnor’s talk. It must have been a humbling experience since she had commanded so much influence, but as the black freedom struggle

150 Florence Sillers Ogden to General U.S. Grant, III, Oct. 15, 1959, Box 4, Folder 41, FSO.

151 Charles S. Sydnor, “Historical Comments on American Democracy,” Box 10, Folder “Historical Comments on American Democracy,” Charles S. Sydnor Papers, Rubenstein Library and Special Collections, Duke University, Durham, NC. 182

progressed her worldview became more associated with the American fringe rather than the mainstream.

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CHAPTER V

“THE TYRANTS IN WASHINGTON”: FEDERAL AID TO EDUCATION IN THE

ERA OF BLACK ACTIVISM AND RAPID INTEGRATION, 1947-1972

In 1965, Mississippi Superintendent of Education Jackson McWhirter “Jack”

Tubb received letters from angry constituents protesting a congressional act that initially had passed seven years earlier. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (NDEA), sold to lawmakers as an anticommunist measure, gave unprecedented federal assistance to states’ school systems for the improvement of science, math, and foreign language instruction in addition to construction projects, guidance counseling, and standardized testing. Containing few provisions supporting the humanities or history education, in

1964 the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) convinced Congress to underwrite the improvement of history, civics, and economics instruction through its

NDEA reauthorization. Larry Crothers informed Tubb that along with government’s increased commitment to dismantling white supremacy via the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

“all curricula and textbooks will be controlled by the Office of Health, Education, and

Welfare; and that history and economics will be taught with an aim toward establishing a national outlook.” His letter contained many similar concerns expressed by other constituents, who mostly feared loss of state control to determine its own educational policies and approval of the content of curricular materials such as textbooks. Crothers,

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moreover, warned that white Mississippians’ would eventually embrace private schools because so many had dedicated themselves “to the proposition that our children shall grow in the knowledge of freedom as we have attained it through the slow, painstaking process of our Christian heritage and culture.”1

Crothers’ protest and many other letters sent to Tubb in 1965 captured the 1960s- era milieu for many white Mississippians. In a nation inching toward hot war with the

Soviet Union, and experiencing domestic turmoil in the form of black activism and race riots, segregationists feared an end to their society as they knew it. The specter of federal control of state schools exacerbated segregationist concerns because civic organization activists realized their ability to shape curriculum and inculcate a conservative vision of history education diminished with federal oversight. Coupled with the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that offered far more federal funds to the states, and Supreme Court decisions limiting religious expression in schools, white

Mississippians considered public schools as the incubator of new national values evoking liberalism and racial tolerance. Many viewed these developments as a well-formed and organized attack on the South’s racial customs and its religious identity. Echoing rhetoric deployed by civic club activists and other hardline segregationists, white Mississippians understood the social changes their state experienced as nothing short of communism.2

1 Larry Crothers to Jack Tubb, Dec. 3, 1965, Record Group 50, Box 39, Folder 552, J.M. Tubb Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi. Hereafter referred to as JMT. All MDAH education files cited in this chapter come from Record Group (RG) 50 unless otherwise indicated.

2 Engel v. Vitale 370 U.S. 421 (1962) specifically forbade school sanction of public prayer, and Abington School District v. Schempp 374 U.S. 203 (1963) determined that official Bible classes as a requirement for graduation was unconstitutional.

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The most vocal critics of federal aid to education included some of the leaders of

Mississippi’s patriotic societies, who increasingly revised their commitment to education reform since upstart private schools provided the vehicle for transmitting the conservative values. As DAR and Farm Bureau members divested themselves of public education, other school reformers advocated a repudiation of massive resistance to Brown following the state’s disastrous desegregation of the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Mississippians for Public Education (MPE) and the League of Women Voters recommended broad-based reforms, calling for improved educational quality, compliance with federal desegregation orders, and administrative restructuring of the school system.

At first, MPE members countered defenses of segregation by conservatives, who pushed for resistance to the several incarnations of the NDEA in addition to the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. Conservatives likewise rebuffed the Freedom Summer campaign coordinated by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which called on scores of black and white college students from around the nation to encourage black

Mississippians to participate in the political process. The Freedom Summer project included an innovative experiment in black education that directly challenged dreadful school conditions Mississippi provided to black patrons. Emphasizing civics instruction and history education as the means, the activists’ approach resembled what civic club members had stressed all along. While conservative reformers placed a premium on individual freedom, property rights, and limited government, their opponents pursued black inclusion into the social, political, and economic institutions that activists argued

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expanded freedom for all Americans. Thus, the story of education reform in Mississippi during the 1960s represents dual freedom struggles.3

White Mississippians experienced round after round of assaults on Jim Crow during the 1960s. White conservatives’ freedom struggle began with several congressional reauthorizations of the NDEA that provided millions in government aid for the operation of the state’s dual school system. Regardless of the act’s emphasis on science, math, and foreign language instruction in addition to provisions related to higher education, many believed the NDEA gave federal officials control of curriculum and the entire educational process, bringing Mississippi a step closer toward fully integrated public schools. Phrasing their arguments in terms of states’ rights, individual freedom, local control, and fervent anticommunism, civic organization leaders whipped up a frenzy of opposition. Hardline segregationists reacted to federal aid to education as

Washington’s method for destroying the segregated school system that they believed provided educational quality. Many segregationists from the rank-and-file citizen to civic club members and business leaders believed that, in the words of historian Charles C.

Bolton, “‘racial integrity’ had always stood as a synonym for educational quality.”4

Instead of reforming public education, conservatives who once championed Americanism instruction—emphasis on triumphalist history, capitalism, and the Constitution as a bulwark against communism and integration—merely espoused the private school alternative.

3 Perhaps the best work on competing visions of freedom during the black freedom struggle is Chris Myers Asch, The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (New York and London: The New Press, 2008), 1-5. 4 Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 169.

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Freedom School activists developed a curricular model based on social studies, black history, and critical thinking. The experiment, however, succeeded in demonstrating the lack of a viable public education for blacks and spurring a national discussion about the lack of black history in the nation’s schools and colleges. COFO’s oversight, beginning in 1964, of fifty Freedom Schools exposed the deficiencies in state provided black education. While considered as a secondary cause of the activists’ summer project, Freedom School organizers saw education as the vehicle through which the state’s African American population could successfully participate in the political process and foment social change. National condemnation of the state’s dual school system and the inadequacies of black education in Mississippi and the South followed

Freedom summer. Years passed before its curricular design became codified in the form of black history and African American studies programs at many universities, colleges, and secondary schools—albeit outside of the state of Mississippi.5 Similarly, during the integration crisis of the early 1970s, the Jackson Public Schools (JPS) system sought implementation of innovative educational programs that in many ways mimicked the

Freedom School approach.

With all of the experiments, studies, and innovation through the 1960s,

Mississippians for Public Education maintained organizational acumen and financial wherewithal to promote a viable and comprehensive reform agenda. Their steadfast

5 For a recent monograph on the development of black studies programs in higher education, see Ibram H. Rogers, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and James P. Marshall documents the tension within the activists’ ranks regarding strategy and tactics, and fashioned a successful Freedom School campaign despite disagreements and a lack of resources. See, Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), especially Chapter 8.

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advocacy of public education became mired in a hackneyed debate about educational

quality as they brushed up against commonplace white attitudes insistent that integration

ruined public schooling. MPE members acknowledged the need for curricular

improvement, but opted instead for a more practical approach by emphasizing structural

reform of the system’s administration. Fixing the structure, the MPE argued, would lead

to better school quality in the future. Regardless of the type of reform advocated during

the 1960s, Mississippi’s education professionals, elected officials, and rank-and-file

citizens alike scurried about in a near panic as the Supreme Court ordered rapid

integration in its Alexander v. Holmes (1969) decision. The MPE failed in dominating the

quality debate while private academies expanded in black majority districts and counties.

In their dedication to public schools, the MPE’s voice became lost to a vocal minority

preferring all-white private schools despite the lack of quality of those makeshift

institutions.6

Each of the three reform initiatives in 1960s Mississippi failed at improving

education in the state, but contributed to long-range educational developments. Historical

accounts of the black freedom struggle and the South’s transition to unitary schools fail to

connect these disparate reform agendas into an analytical framework. Too often scholarly

treatment revolves around court cases and political gamesmanship in the halls of congress

or state legislatures, while monographs of Freedom Summer emphasize divisions within

the major civil rights organizations—especially between the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership

6 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 171-81; and David Nevin and Robert E. Bills offer an examination of private school quality in the aftermath of the Alexander decision in The Schools that Fear Built, Introduction by Terry Sanford (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976).

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Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in addition to the limits of the COFO campaign.7 Historian Charles C. Bolton offers the most comprehensive monograph on Mississippi school integration, claiming that it

“occurred on white terms.” He shows that white education professionals, state, and local leaders determined the path the state took toward integration, leading to a unitary system preserving the most segregation possible. A study of massive resistance, Bolton provides only passing reference to Freedom Schools.8 Other studies of the demise of segregated education in the South emphasize white flight and a new suburban identity that merged with conservative ethos stressing a “race-neutral” discourse promulgated via grassroots education reform organizations. Studies of the private school movement likewise analyze the rise of “segregation academies” as incubators of conservative and Christian ideology.9

7 Overviews include Gary Orfield’s The Reconstruction of Southern Education: The Schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1969) and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and the Black Struggle for Equality, First Vintage Books Edition (New York: Vintage, 2004); George R. Metcalf, From Little Rock to Boston: The History of School Desegregation (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1983); Case studies of school integration include, Jeffrey A. Raffel, The Politics of School Desegregation: The Metropolitan Remedy in Delaware (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1980); Liva Baker, The Second Battle of New Orleans: The Hundred-Year Struggle to Integrate the Schools (New York: Harper Collins, 1996); Davison M. Douglas, Reading, Writing, and Race: The Desegregation of Charlotte Schools (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Hugh Graham Davis examines the post-World War II federal role in education in The Uncertain Triumph: Federal Education Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Peter Irons, Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision (New York: Viking Press, 2002). The best analyses of Freedom Summer include John Dittmer, who ultimately concluded that “freedom schools stand out as a major achievement of the summer project.” See, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 257-61. Charles Payne, however, reached different conclusions, arguing that the freedom school experiment “got lost in the desire to do something bigger” and was “emblematic of a larger impatience” among black freedom struggle activists. See, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 301-07; and Jon N. Hale provides an examination of Freedom Schools themselves, along with white recalcitrance, in his dissertation entitled “A History of Mississippi Freedom Schools, 1954-1965,” (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006).

8 Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 192.

9 Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 30, 37, 41, 243-48; Michael W. Fuquay claims that segregated schools 190

Lastly, few histories of massive resistance or school integration examine the varied avenues of reform in which the segregationists, citing the threat of federal control of education, fled the public system for the advantages of local control in a private one.10

This study attempts to show the difficult transition to a unitary system in Mississippi, complicated by the varieties of reformers and contesting agendas. Competing ideas of what constituted quality education slowed the state’s integration process and transition to unitary schools, and reformers advocated their solutions by jettisoning curricular reform in favor of a revamped educational structure designed to repudiate massive resistance in education policy and thereby improving Mississippi’s national image.

The federal government’s role in education developed at the time of the nation’s founding and has continued throughout the twentieth century. Federal laws and programs, including federal aid, benefitted Mississippi’s dual schools. The Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, which the federal government expanded in 1887, devoted lands for establishing land-grant agricultural and mechanical arts schools in addition to agricultural experiment had long bee utilized “to promote [white] racial ideology” and were part of inculcating conservative sunbelt values. See “Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in Mississippi, 1964-1971,” History of Education Quarterly 42 (Summer 2002): 160-65; and Joseph Crespino argues that school desegregation and the private school movement developed out of the changing nature of religious defenses of segregation and played a part in the conservative countermovement to turn back the liberal reforms of the 1960s in In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 12-13, 237-58.

10 Two exemplary books on federal aid to education include Barbara Barksdale Clowse, Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981); and Wayne J. Urban, More than Science and Sputnik: The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010). Crowse examines the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and how the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union led to legislative successes of the federal aid to education law. Urban, on the other hand, traces a much longer history of federal aid to education by analyzing the personal beliefs of the law’s major sponsors, Carl Elliott and Lister Hill. Other published work on federal aid to education include: Ronald Steel, ed. Federal Aid to Education, The Reference Shelf 33 (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1961); Sidney C. Sufrin, Issues in Federal Aid to Education, The Economics and Politics of Public Education 4 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1962); and Gibert E. Smith, The Limits of Reform: Politics and Federal Aid to Education, 1937-1950 (New York: Garland, 1982).

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stations. Through this act Mississippi founded Alcorn A&M for African Americans and

Mississippi A&M for whites. The 1914 Smith-Lever Act created the cooperative extension service to provide agricultural research to individual farmers and their families, and the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act provided funds for secondary vocational programs. In the 1930s a host of New Deal programs prevented some of the states’ schools from closing during the economic collapse. By the late 1940s, federal assistance had widened to include additional aid to elementary and secondary schools through the school lunch program. Conservatives in Mississippi had long opposed general federal aid, which refers to unrestricted funds for the general operation of an education system. Yet more

Mississippians accepted categorical aid, or money earmarked for construction or other specific purposes, since lawmakers and public officials determined how to spend the funds. General and categorical aid hold important implications, especially the former since it implies federal oversight. Yet the Cold War context and the nascent black freedom struggle meant that the state’s education reformers closely guarded the expansion of federal contributions for the states’ public schools.11

As the Cold War intensified following World War II, civic-patriotic organizations leaders opposed general aid and stated their suspicions about categorical aid, decrying both as subversive and evidence of the government’s slide toward socialism and communism.12 The Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) feared a growing federal role in elementary and secondary education, resolving in 1948 to

11 Gilbert, The Limits of Reform, 23-36; Lee Anderson, Congress and the Classroom: From the Cold War to ‘No Child Left Behind’ (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 29-36, 8; and Jim B. Pearson and Edgar Fuller, Education in the States: Historical Development and Outlook (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association of the United States, 1969), 655-56.

12 Sufrin, Issues in Federal Aid to Education, xii.

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oppose federal aid because it “would [lead] toward further regimentation and centralization of government.” The DAR set up a dichotomy between the “doctrine of centralized government as opposed to local self government.” The DAR resolution targeted national leaders “who believe in an ideology foreign to the doctrine of

Americanism.”13 During its 1951 state convention, the DAR condemned “Federal Aid to

Education as a definite threat to freedom” and a harbinger of the transition to “world government.”14 Under the leadership of education chief Jack Tubb, Mississippi received millions of dollars in categorical aid, particularly its vocational education system, agricultural extension work, and the federal school lunch program. In 1947, for example,

Mississippi received $6.5 million for the school lunch program alone, and Tubb urged the governor and legislature to match those funds. Hoping for matching funds from the legislature, he informed Governor Fielding Wright that “aid could be disbursed to the states without federal control other than a simple accounting of the manner by which the funds were spent.”15 The legislature, moreover, acknowledged the prospect of federal oversight via aid. A joint legislative committee studying the topic understood that federal oversight possibly jeopardized segregated schools, recommending that legislators approve federal funds earmarked for “building or repairing of public schools” and reject

13 Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, “1947-1948 Report of the Resolutions Committee,” 36, Feb. 23-25, 1948, Columbus, MS, Box 2, Edna Whitfield Alexander Papers, Special Collections, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, Durham, NC. Hereafter referred to as EWA, which is a small and unprocessed collection consisting of four boxes.

14 Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, “1950-1951 Report of the Resolutions Committee,” 36, Feb. 22-24, 1951, Jackson, MS, Box 2, EWA.

15 Jack Tubb to Governor Fielding Wright, Jan 15. 1948 and Jack Tubb to Governor Fielding Wright, Aug. 8, 1947 Box 50, Folder 745, Record Group 50, Jackson McWhirter Tubb Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as JMT and all records from refer to RG 50 unless otherwise noted.

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any funds “for the general operation of our public school system.”16 School administrators and the legislature had fewer concerns with categorical aid, but general aid suggested federal control of the expenditures.

Historians have attributed the growing federal role in education during the 1950s to both the Cold War and to the demise of white supremacy. Mary Dudziak, for example, argues that the Supreme Court justices carefully weighed the 9-0 decision in the 1954

Brown case based on the nation’s struggle to secure global allies to counter the Soviet

Union’s expansion. While Mississippi’s civic leaders and other segregationists saw

Brown as evidence of the nation’s slide toward communism, the Supreme Court justices realized that segregation was a significant image problem in a free society.17 The 1950s also presented opportunities for the scientific community to use concern about national defense to bolster education spending and reform initiatives. The National Science

Foundation and congressional leaders learned through a jointly conducted survey that state education funding lacked necessary resources. Panic and consternation gripped the nation’s cold warriors after learning that the Soviet satellite Sputnik had careened into earth’s orbit. Historian Barbara Barksdale Clowse shows how proponents for federal aid on Capitol Hill exploited the Soviet’s successes in space as a way to nudge congressional leaders toward a massive categorical aid initiative to improve science and math instruction. Wayne J. Urban, however, examines the ideology of federal aid boosters in

Congress who believed equalizing educational opportunity provided the best means to

16 Mississippi Legislature, “Report of the Joint Legislative Education Committee on Public School System of the State, 1946,” Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

17 Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), especially Chapter 3.

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improve American education and counter the Soviet threat.18 At the time, the 1958

NDEA was the most important and sweeping piece of federal support for states’ schools, colleges, and universities. The law provided millions of dollars in federal assistance for training the next generation of experts for defense work. Other provisions applied to secondary education, granting funds to the states for science, math, and modern foreign languages instruction in addition to money for implementation of standardized testing and guidance counseling to identify the talented.19

Organized opposition to federal aid developed gradually that coincided with civic club members’ attempts to guard the content of the Mississippi’s approved social studies textbooks. During the first four years following passage of the NDEA of 1958,

Mississippi received a total of $10 million in federal funds earmarked for secondary education, or $2.5 million each year.20 Before passage of the act, however, National

Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) director Merrill F. Hartshorn pleaded with the congressional leaders to include provisions for the improvement of social studies,

American history, and English proficiency.21 Archibald S. Coody, a Jackson pharmacist,

18 Clowse, Brainpower, 6-14, 112; Paul E. Marsh and Ross A. Gortner, Federal Aid to Science Education: Two Programs, The Economics and Politics of Public Education 6 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963), 15, 31-38; Urban, More than Science, 203.

19 Urban, More than Science, 2-4.

20 Jackson McWhirter Tubb, “Progress of Education, 1959,” Box 42, Folder 604, JMT. In this speech manuscript, Tubb notes that total monies received by the federal government for elementary and secondary education amounted to more than $6 million with a total of $1.1 million requested through the NDEA. See also Mississippi Department of Education, Title III of the NDEA, Bulletin No. 150 (Jackson: Division of Instruction, 1961), 9.

21 Ronald W. Evans, The Hope for American School Reform: The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning in the Social Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 61-62; and Ronald W. Evans, The Social Studies Wars: What Shall We Teach the Children? (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004), 104, 114-15.

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attorney, and ultraconservative pundit who founded a history club called the Magnolia

Heritage Society, followed these debates, and protested to Superintendent Tubb that he

“was disappointed that you are in favor of Federal Aid to ‘education.’ It is merely another means of regimenting our thinking, bribing us into silence, and seducing us into surrender to an all powerful centralized government. Federal Aid means Federal Control, over books, teachers, subjects, and associates.”22 In subsequent years, however, when

Congress debated extending the NDEA, Boswell Stevens made sure Mississippi’s congressional delegation knew where the state’s segregationists stood. “We are bitterly opposed to Federal Aid to Education,” he told Congressman William M. Colmer, “for we feel that such aid would be one step toward integration in the schools.” The Farm Bureau president implored Colmer to “bottle this bill up indefinitely,” calling the extension measure another congressional edict “aimed directly at the South.”23

Conservative education reformers set their sites on federal aid to education after successfully orchestrating an amendment to state law governing the textbook screening process. They vehemently protested an altered federal-state relationship vis-à-vis education. In 1961, congress debated extending the amount of aid provided through the

NDEA in addition to hearing arguments from advocates of English and social studies education. Congress eventually approved of extending aid to secondary schools for improvement in English language skills and composition. Civic club leaders whipped up opposition to the anticommunist measure by encouraging members to write protest letters

22 Archibald S. Coody to Jack Tubb, Sept. 25, 1958, Box 8108, Folder “unlabeled,” JMT.

23 Colmer responded that he too opposed extending the aid provisions of the NDEA. Boswell Stevens to William M. Colmer, May 26, 1959, and William M. Colmer to Boswell Stevens, May 29, 1959, Box 17, Folder “Colmer, William M. 3/5,” Boswell Stevens Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as BSP.

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to elected officials, especially Jack Tubb. Chapter president of the Bolivar County Farm

Bureau, for example, noted that the federal government’s “greatest control available” involved “the power to allocate funds.” He connected the issue to textbook content by informing Tubb that “with federal aid to education, we will certainly lose control of our books, teachers and administration.”24 The Mississippi DAR’s national defense chairperson—Edna Alexander’s successor—Mrs. E.C. Brewer, likewise, declared that extending the NDEA would be a “foot in the door…toward a federally-controlled system of education” that aided the creation of “a Socialist-Communist world government.” It bothered Brewer that “the materials used in our high schools include un-American

Socialistic philosophies,” and federal aid allowed the government to continue that trend.25

In other words, expansion of the federal commitment to states’ education systems jeopardized the successes conservative reformers achieved when Mississippi strengthened the procedures for sanctioning textbooks regardless of Congress’s reluctance to earmark funds for social studies education.

Tubb invited opponents’ indignation in the spring of 1961 when he spoke favorably of federal aid through the NDEA. At the state’s teachers annual meeting, he explained the long history of the federal government’s role in education, referring to the

Land Ordinance of 1787, the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, and the federal school lunch program. He further cited the expense associated with operation of a dual school

24 Ben A. Bogy to Jack Tubb, March 3, 1961, Box 30, Folder 423, JMT.

25 Mrs. E.C. Brewer to Jack Tubb, March 11, 1961, Box 30, Folder 424, JMT.

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system while insisting that the state could receive federal aid without oversight.26 The

Warren County School Board, for example, demanded the education chief “oppose this program.” The school board claimed federal aid “would accomplish no material good,” imploring Tubb to “remember Clinton, Tennessee, Little Rock, New Orleans, Athens,

Georgia and other cities and towns where federal marshals and federal soldiers have enforced Earl Warren’s commandments under the threat of bayonets, bullets, and blood.”27 In Mississippi where educational funding lagged behind every other state, the

Warren County School Board believed it better to forgo assistance and do without needed funds. Other protest letters claimed that the federal government was merely a compact made by sovereign states “and never intended to be an all powerful Centralized government.”28 The rhetoric indicated that segregationists realized white supremacy hung by a thread, gasping for life while a hostile federal government attempted to dismantle the oppressive social system.

Other letters reaching Jack Tubb in the spring of 1961 demonstrated how white

Mississippians refused to compromise in defense of white supremacy. One constituent asked Tubb “How far are you willing to go to keep from integrating?” demanding that the

Mississippi Department of Education should reject federal aid.29 Archibald Coody considered Tubb’s speech to the MEA as a “white flag to the enemy and will be taken

26 Jackson McWhirter Tubb, “National Defense and Education,” reprint of speech delivered at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Education Association, Feb. 21-24, 1961, Biloxi, MS, Mississippi Educational Advance (March, 1961): 10-11.

27 W.M. Alexander to Jack Tubb, March 11, 1961, Box 30, Folder 423, JMT.

28 Lee H. Burford to Jack Tubb, March 14, 1961, Box 30, Folder 423, JMT.

29 C.S. Bennett to Jack Tubb, March 21, 1961, Box 43, Folder 627, JMT.

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that you prefer mixed schools to closed schools or a fight.”30 Similarly, another angry constituent informed Tubb that his speech inspired organizations committed to civil rights reform, especially the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP). “Why wake a lion?” he asked, suggesting that the superintendent’s comments aided the black freedom struggle.31 Another writer personalized the issue when she asked “would you like to see your grandchildren in school with burr head negroes?

Would you care to have a negro marry your grand daughter?” Like many other constituents who wrote Tubb, Lay West considered his support for aid “an open invitation to the race mixers and agitators to move in.”32 G.L. Tutor, a school superintendent and unsuccessful candidate for state superintendent, told a newspaper reporter that accepting federal funds for education jeopardized all that white

Mississippians held dear. “The money sounds good, but we cannot forsake our precious heritage, our social obligation to our children, our obligation to the colored race and to our God,” he said.33 His comments revealed strong cultural proclivities in Mississippi that connected ideas about the past with whiteness and Protestant Christianity. Indeed, many whites defended segregation as if it were religious duty.34

30 Archibald S. Coody to Jack Tubb, April 3, 1961, Box 43, Folder 627, JMT.

31 Robert Hays to Jack Tubb, March 19, 1961, Box 43, Folder 627, JMT.

32 Lay W. West to Jack Tubb, March 18, 1961, Box 43, Folder 627, JMT.

33 “Tubb’s Idea on Schools is Assailed,” (West Point) Daily Times Leader, March 29, 1961, 1.

34 Scholarly debate over the role religion played in massive resistance can be gleaned from existing scholarship. Jane Dailey argues that white Protestants robustly defended white supremacy in “The Theology of Massive Resistance,” in Clive Webb, ed., Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, June 2005): 151-80; David L. Chappell takes an opposite view, claiming that most southern whites either sat on the fence or aided the black freedom struggle. See, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Andrew Michael Manis shows that both white and black Protestants maintained 199

Superintendent Tubb justified the use of the millions in aid from Washington as practical measures for the operation of a dual school system. By calling the NDEA

“critical and essential to the defense of our nation,” he tried to couch the debate in terms that segregationists could understand. Similar to civic leaders’ ideological goals, especially for the DAR’s Edna Alexander and Farm Bureau President Boswell Stevens,

Tubb emphasized that the federal government was an ally in the struggle against communism. He also released a 1961 bulletin demonstrating how Mississippi spent federal money by hiring guidance counselors and implementing modern foreign language instruction in one hundred schools. In 1962, the state received $2 million of federal money used for construction projects and the purchase of materials and equipment. The bulletin, moreover, claimed that “practically all of the 151 [school] districts are participating in some phase of the program.” More than one half of the school districts surveyed conducted standardized tests, while many white and black school districts hired guidance counselors.35 Tubb, moreover, presented the opposition with reasoned responses to their concerns. He calmly informed detractors that federal aid to education supported many programs that Mississippians depended upon. “Is [the Mississippi Farm Bureau

Federation] in favor of continuing Federal Aid to Education such as vocational agriculture, home economics, trades and industrial education, diversified education, and

competing conceptions of civil religion during the black freedom struggle in Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Black and White Baptists and Civil Rights, 1947-1957 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1987); Carolyn Renee Dupont has recently argued that Mississippi’s white Protestants provided both moral and religious inspiration in combating the black freedom struggle in Praying Mississippi: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2013).

35 Mississippi Department of Education, Title III of the NDEA, 3, 8-9.

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also for land grant colleges and extension work?” Tubb asked. He likewise pointed out the necessity of funds for operation of a dual school system.36

The DAR pointed to particular titles of the NDEA as evidence that the law constituted a federal overreach in the field of education tantamount to a communist plan for a takeover of the nation. Just three weeks after the 1962 riot at the University of

Mississippi involving James Meredith’s enrollment, Edna Alexander spoke about the dangers associated with federal control of education, citing the NDEA as a clear example.

Such federal programs, in her view, held “as its ultimate objective the addition of psychologists and psychiatrists to the teaching staff,” which was a thinly-veiled reference to the Supreme Court’s citation of Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll experiment.

Alexander charged the government with compiling information from school counselors to invade familial privacy. She, moreover, likened guidance counseling to brainwashing.

Since World War II and especially after the Korean Conflict, American anticommunists opposed psychiatry, believing that the medical practice could control people’s minds and influence their beliefs. They argued that communists had become experts in the practice based largely on the fiction of Richard Condon, who penned a novel about brainwashing that turned into a 1959 film adaptation, The Manchurian Candidate, providing the best example of the cultural force for such ideas.37

36 Jack Tubb to Ben A. Bogy, April 4, 1961, Box 30, Folder 423, JMT.

37 Edna Whitfield Alexander, “Socialist and Pro-Communist Propaganda in Textbooks,” Speech delivered to the Christian Crusade’s National Anti-communist Leadership School, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Oct. 1962, Box 1, EWA. For contemporary accounts of the brainwashing scare, see books by Edward Hunter, especially Brainwashing in Red-China: The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds, Enlarged Edition (New York: Vanguard Press, 1953); and Brainwashing: The Story of the Men Who Defied It (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Cudahy, 1956). Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate (New York: McGraw Hill, 1959). For secondary sources, see Timothy Melley, The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), 46-51; and Stephen J. Whitfield, The 201

Since the American Legion ceased working with the DAR on purging state approved textbooks in 1962, Alexander and her fellow activists sought male participation by forming a new organization. With Mrs. Orley M. Hood, the Daughters created the

Citizens Education Association (CEA), holding public meetings in each of Mississippi’s congressional districts to organize conservative-minded male allies. The CEA appointed a Jackson physician, Curtis Caine, as its press spokesperson. By incorporating males in their activism, the DAR hoped to counter the media’s contention that textbook critics were “busy bodies” and “bored housewives.” They likewise shifted the discussion toward other educational issues. At a public meeting held at a Greenwood high school, for example, Hood and Alexander exhibited objectionable textbooks while condemning the guidance counseling provisions of the NDEA. “The Federal Government would like to see a psychiatrist in every school,” Hood informed her audience, in addition to her claims that mental health professionals would use standardized testing as a means to determine a child’s future occupation. Guidance counseling and standardized testing, in the CEA’s view, reflected a loss of individual freedom and constituted “an invasion into our homes.”38

Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 45-56. For the medical history perspective of brainwashing, see Allen M. Hornblum, Judith L. Newman, and Gregory J. Dober, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 171-84.

38 “Textbooks Under Fire from CEA” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec 3, 1963, 3; “DAR Says First Grade Book is Socialistic,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 1, 1963, 7; and “Handful Stirs Textbook, Guidance Controversy,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 13, 1963. For press accounts regarding textbook critics as “busy bodies,” see: United Press International, “Women in Jackson Hearing Want Some Books Banned,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Nov. 28, 1963, 12B; United Press International, “Educators Take a Stand on Textbook Selection,” (Memphis) Press-Scimitar, Oct. 23, 1963, 5A; and G.K. Holdenfield, “Arrows of Textbook Censors Stick Robin Hood—and Taft,” (Memphis) Commercial Appeal, Feb. 25, 1963, 1B.

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Alexander played a role in the DAR spawn called Women for Constitutional

Government (WCG), which allowed the Daughters to extend their network of conservative activists. Alexander, Florence Sillers Ogden, and Margaret Peaster—the

Mississippi Society’s core leadership, in addition to newspaper editor Mary Cain— comprised its charter members. The WCG sought patriotic women to “resist efforts by legislative, judicial, and popular forces to break down segregation.”39 The WCG held a

1963 rally of one thousand at a Jackson hotel. Speakers included the Mississippi First

Lady Mary Pearl Crawford Barnett and the wife of Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson,

Jr.—both of whom garnered standing ovations for their husbands’ roles in resisting

Meredith’s enrollment at the state’s flagship university. The WCG issued a list of grievances sent to President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices. The WCG meeting was one of the first instances in which conservatives attempted to rewrite the version of events that occurred at Oxford on the night of September 30. In Ogden’s recounting of the riot, federal marshals and soldiers bullied “innocent children” with bayonets and tear gas, which had been fired into the dormitories of both male and female students.40

39 Women for Constitutional Government developed independently of the states’ rights organization called Federation for Constitutional Government. See, “Dear Member of Women for Constitutional Governance,” form letter, n.d. [1963?], Box 1, EWA; and Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 76-78.

40 Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, “White Womanhood, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Massive Resistance,” in Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction. Edited by Clive Webb (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 195-96; Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 77-83; and “Women Protest U.S. Role in Ole Miss Mixing Case,” 7-0-6-27-1-1-1, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Online, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as MSSC.

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The WCG, moreover, relied on alarmist rhetoric to cast the prospect of integration in terms so that Mississippians could understand—a communist plot to overthrow national and state governments and the southern way of life, threatening the state’s very social, economic, and spiritual foundations. Using the U.S. Constitution as its benchmark, the WCG claimed that white supremacy had long been a national ideal developed by the founding generation. Any threat to the basic principle, especially through certain federal policies such as assistance to education, constituted a communist threat. Historian Joseph

Crespino demonstrates that over time the WCG dropped overt racial appeals in favor of rhetoric that couched defense of white supremacy in terms of freedom, conservatism, and core American values.41 To ascertain that public school students realized the dangers facing the state via the federal role in education in addition to civil rights activism, the

WCG subsumed a Citizens’ Council student organization called Patriotic American

Youth (PAY). Sara McCorkle developed the organization in 1958 through her work in the Citizens’ Council women’s auxiliary, crafting the PAY movement as grassroots organizing by both high school and college students. By the early 1960s, instead of making overt racist statements in support of white supremacy, the PAY incorporated a platform mimicking the DAR and WCG arguments about constitutional supremacy and reverence for the founding generation. Program materials from the PAY, undoubtedly written by Ogden and University of Southern Mississippi President William D. McCain, claimed as its goal “maintaining the form of government as conceived by our forefathers

41 Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 78.

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and set forth in the Constitution.” The student club stressed “the free enterprise system and its contributions to the American people.”42

Development of the PAY club reflects the rivalry between civic clubs and education professionals. For fifteen years, the Mississippi DAR had sought control of anticommunist instruction in the state’s schools and the Patriotic American Youth clubs provided the more appropriate vehicle to impress the dangers of communism upon students. In 1961, following the textbook content imbroglio, the American Legion, the

State Department of Education, and the National Education Association (NEA) had developed—independent of assistance from the DAR or Farm Bureau—an anticommunism unit for social studies courses.43 In 1964, lawmakers required successful completion of the unit for high school graduation. Reflecting the rhetoric of the state’s civic organizations, the law specifically stated that the unit emphasized “the State and

Federal Constitutions and the nature and threat of Communism.” In social studies courses students compared American democracy with the Soviet dictatorship, underscoring the economic philosophy of the communist bloc and its designs on world domination.44 In contrast, the PAY clubs’ anticommunism promoted the U.S. Constitution and founding generation as divinely ordained. Any idea unmentioned in the Constitution and acted

42 “Says Pupils Should Study Ideologies,” (Jackson) State Times, March 30, 1958, 1; “Apathy Seen as Threat to U.S.,” (Jackson) State Times, Feb. 25, 1958, 3; “Mrs. McCorkle to Talk to Council in Mathiston,” (Jackson) State Times, Dec. 11, 1958; McRae, “White Womanhood,” 191; “Patriotic American Youth Purposes and Policies,” undated [1964?], and “I am Your Flag,” Subject File—Patriotic American Youth, Special Collections, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.

43 Jackson McWhirter Tubb, “Teaching About Communism,” n.d. [1964?], 4-5; Box 1, Folder 15, JMT; Mississippi Department, American Legion, “Press Release,” n.d. [1964?], Box 53, 752.

44 Joe T. Patterson to R.W. Griffith, Mississippi Department of Education, Jan. 18, 1965, 99-49- 03-1-1-1, MSSC.

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upon by any government entity demonstrated the nation’s slide toward collectivism, the

DAR argued through the PAY.45 The student group, moreover, carried official sanction of the DAR and Citizens’ Councils through numerous statewide events held in Jackson and at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, calling on McCain to coordinate activities and speakers. While the ideological intent of both approaches proved more or less identical, DAR activists had hoped for more control of anticommunism instruction.

As the segregationist position lost further credibility while more Americans supported government-imposed mandates for racial equality, the Coordinating

Committee for Fundamental American Freedom (CCFAF) likewise shifted its segregationist rhetoric toward a race-neutral discourse. By invoking freedom, individualism, and the U.S. Constitution, segregationist rhetoric evolved to reflect the changing racial values that even affected President John F. Kennedy—a politician who was previously lukewarm on civil rights. After the famous 1963 March on Washington demonstration and the bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four black children, the Kennedy administration openly backed a sweeping civil rights law. A wealthy East

Coast white supremacist and proponent of scientific racism named Wickliffe Draper donated $100,000 to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission for segregationists’ battle against the Kennedy proposal. Mississippi Farm Bureau President Boswell Stevens coordinated a massive fundraising drive for the CCFAF that increased its war chest. By the spring of 1964, the lobbying organization had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars

45 “Patriotic American Youth Purposes and Policies,” undated [1964?], and “I am Your Flag,” Subject File—Patriotic American Youth, Special Collections, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.

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in attempts to block the measure, publicizing condemnation of the civil rights law through full-page newspaper advertisements. John C. Satterfield, a white supremacist and anticommunist Yazoo City attorney and the director of the Mississippi Association of

Methodist Ministers and Laymen (MAMML)—a religious organization committed to defending segregation—helped the CCFAF rationalize its campaign as a defense of the

Constitution. Literature disseminated by the group claimed the proposed civil rights law constituted “total federal control” and “the greatest grasp for executive power conceived in the twentieth century.” Once the CCFAF’s lobbying failed and the Kennedy proposal passed after the president’s untimely death, public schooling and the debate about segregated education changed forever.46

Congressional appropriations to bolster states’ education systems had important ramifications for Mississippi’s segregationists who reacted to the laws with a renewed opposition to federal aid to education. In the mid-1960s, Mississippi’s education reformers in the DAR and Farm Bureau coordinated opposition to federal aid through the newer resistance groups like the CEA, WCG, and CCFAF. In the landmark Civil Rights

Act of 1964, Title VI specifically outlawed racial segregation “under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In other words, the law rendered state schools ineligible for federal aid, and required a pledge of compliance from individual

46 A couple of scholars have contributed to historical understanding of scientific racism. See, for example, John P. Jackson, Jr., Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 114-15; William H. Tucker, The Science and Politics of Racial Research (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 172-74; Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 92-94, 168-70; William P. Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 123-26; Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 73; Boswell Stevens wrote to CCFAF contributor Tommy Wright that he believed “that the defense of our Constitution is one of the most important things we face today.” See Stevens to Wright, Jan. 21, 1964, and form letters attest to the Farm Bureau’s fundraising campaign, all in Box 22, Folder “Mississippi CCFAF 20/22,” BSP; and CCFAF Advertisement, “$100 Million Blackjack,” Box 22, Folder “Mississippi CCFAF 20/22,” BSP.

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school districts before state authorities could disburse federal funds.47 The same year, lawmakers finally appeased social studies advocates in the reauthorization of the NDEA, including support for the humanities at the secondary and elementary level. In 1965, lawmakers debated an omnibus federal aid package called the Elementary and Secondary

Education Act (ESEA), which formed part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty initiative. The ESEA differed from its NDEA predecessor in that the new law was a general aid package designed for complete operation of whole school systems provided that states complied with federal law on desegregation. Most of the 151 school districts in the state signed the required compliance pledge as did the Mississippi State

Board of Education headed by Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr., Attorney General Joe T.

Patterson, and Superintendent of Education Jack Tubb—all of whom steadfastly supported dual schools. Mississippi stood to lose $26 million in federal aid through the provisions of the NDEA if local districts refused to sign a compliance pledge. Moreover,

Mississippi schools stood to reap an addition $31 million annually in aid. The money, in short, made it much easier for school districts to issue a compliance pledge.48

Once again, Superintendent Tubb faced the arduous task of consoling angry constituents fearful that desegregation pledges nearly completed the national

47 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Section 2000d, database online http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/cor/coord/titlevistat.php accessed Nov. 30, 2013.

48 Evans, The Hope for American School Reform, 62; Graham, The Uncertain Triumph, 121-34; “Tubb Declares Aid Question ‘Local Issue,’” Jackson Daily News, Jan. 12, 1965, 1; William L. Chaze, “Welfare Department Studies Government Aid Position,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 9, 1965, 1; “Challenge Planned for School Pledge,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, March 6, 1965, 1; William Steif, “Mississippi’s Vow to Obey Accepted,” (Memphis) Press-Scimitar, May 17, 1965, 1; Charles M. Hills, “Affairs of State: Big Dose,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 7, 1965; U.S. Commissioner of Education Harold Howe II to Jack Tubb, Aug. 24, 1966, Box 55, Folder 761, JMT; and Mississippians for Public Education, “News Release,” Feb. 7, 1965, Box 39, Folder 552, JMT.

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government’s slide toward communism and integration. A Jackson physician, Dr. E.A.

Copeland, called the 1964 Civil Rights Act a “communistic ultimatum” delivered by “the tyrants in Washington.” He likewise believed that integration of state schools would only invite “rapes and murders” in addition to violating whites’ civil rights.49 A DAR member informed Tubb that acceptance of federal funds and signing the compliance pledge was an example of “taking the easy road to slavery.”50 Judge Ben Guider argued that the state’s white children were entitled to the funds, which Congress threatened to cut off unless schools integrated. He further argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 undermined the Tenth Amendment.51 Another angry constituent claimed the “state faced another unconstitutional problem.” She believed that the law was “attempting to blackmail us into accepting the bribe of Federal funds in order that the Federal Government can more fully take over ‘educating’ our children according to their socialistic doctrines and beliefs.”52

Similarly, a DAR member stated that segregation formed part of “God’s plan for purity for the races” and implored the superintendent to refuse “a dollar of federal money.”53

The Mississippi dual school system endured despite federal aid to education and laws ordering compliance with desegregation orders. Indeed, federal funds disbursed to

Mississippi actually “bolstered segregation,” according to historian Charles C. Bolton, since white school administrators and school boards spent much of the money on

49 E.A. Copeland to Jack Tubb, Jan. 2, 1965, Box 1, Folder 12, JMT.

50 Mrs. Earl Calleder to Jack Tubb, Jan. 14, 1965, Box 1, Folder 13, JMT.

51 Ben Guider to Jack Tubb, Jan. 14, 1965, Box 1, Folder 13, JMT.

52 Mrs. Loomis C. Giles to Jack Tubb and Ben Guider, Jan. 20, 1965, Box 1, Folder 13, JMT.

53 Mrs. Steve Coley to Jack Tubb, Jan. 3, 1965, Box 1, Folder 12, JMT.

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repairing white schools and constructing science labs while ignoring most black high

schools.54 Few of the conservative education reformers believed that black schools should receive adequate funding, and state public and elected officials similarly agreed. Yet federal funds, especially those earmarked for construction projects, played an important role in continuing segregated education. The state continued, albeit reluctantly, to improve black schools’ physical structures even building state-of-the-art facilities in a few communities. Regardless of national prerogatives, judicial decisions, and federal laws, Mississippi retained a dual school system. Only token desegregation had occurred by the middle of the decade with about seven percent of the state’s total number of educable black children attending previously all-white schools.55 By the mid-1960s, however, the black freedom struggle fully tested segregationists’ mettle through Freedom

Summer organizing, Freedom Schools, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.56

The laws requiring federal oversight spelled certain defeat of the conservatives’ vision for

public education. Many began actively supporting the Citizens’ Councils push for the

formation of racially segregated private schools unfettered by federal regulations. Joined

by proponents of Christian education, the private school movement grew slowly and

gradually between 1964 and 1969.57

While conservative education reformers merged in organizations such as the

WCG and CCFAF, black Mississippians and their national allies involved in civil rights

54 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 136.

55 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 139-40.

56 John Dittmer, Local People, 87-115.

57 Fuquay, “Private School Movement in Mississippi,” 160-64; and Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 237-52.

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organizations planned a summer of sustained activism. In 1964, COFO, an umbrella organ designed to coordinate Mississippi’s freedom struggle, linked up with the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Council of Churches

(NCC) to develop Freedom Schools. In the process, the activists exposed the inadequacies of black education in Mississippi while training African Americans for citizenship. The Freedom School experiment revealed deplorable conditions, cyclical poverty, lack of jobs and capital, and inadequate education that plagued black

Mississippians.58 African Americans had little access to secondary education in Alcorn,

Hancock, Tunica, Issaquena, and Quitman Counties. Statewide, whites had 333 high schools while only 188 existed for blacks. The black patrons in the Delta complained of the most dreadful school conditions, including “gaps in the [civics and history] curriculum.” In 1964, the state reported that 119 black schools lacked accreditation, which meant that African Americans hardly benefitted from graduation. One activist publication claimed “the primary reason” for unschooled blacks “is that the public schools do not provide an adequate education to keep students in school.”59 Teacher training disparities also existed between whites and African Americans. The state

58 Henry A. McCanna to Hal DeCell, June 2, 1964, Series I, Box 2, Folder 5, Allen Eugene Cox Papers, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as AEC; Dittmer, Local People, 118-19, 258-61; Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 62, 130-31, 302- 05, 329; and Hale, “Freedom Schools,” 58-99, 120.

59 “Needed: Adequate Education,” Mississippi Free Press, Dec. 7, 1963, 1; W.S. Griffin, Biennial Report and Recommendations of the State Superintendent of Public Education, 1963-1965, Division of Administration and Finance, Mississippi Department of Education (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Education, 1965), 149, 152; Hale, “Freedom Schools,” 61-63, 108-11. In his 2002 monograph, historian Jonathan Zimmerman includes the misleading statement that “all black schools in Mississippi” taught courses on black history and racial pride. Yet he failed to note that this was only true for black schools in Jackson since secondary education for blacks existed unevenly throughout the state. See Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 46; and Dittmer, Local People, 258.

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reported in 1964 that white schools employed 2,684 teachers holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees while only 730 such teachers served black schools.60 Figures on state per pupil expenditures represented improvement from previous decades, but Mississippi continued to spend on average $82 per white student and only $22 for their black counterparts.61

The Freedom School idea developed out of plans for a widespread voter registration drive in the Magnolia State. The Freedom Summer campaign attempted to secure voting rights for African Americans while many activists considered education as part of women’s work, and as part of a secondary mission to the activists’ overall goals and objectives of the civil rights coalition. Regardless of the limited priority of the

Freedom Schools, its developers fashioned an innovative educational program that focused on social studies education and black history. Organizers wanted to cultivate black Mississippians’ leadership abilities in hope that most would remain in the state, forming an indigenous coterie of committed activists dedicated to realizing social change.

Black history and courses on racial pride formed part of the curriculum for some blacks schooled in the state’s dual system, especially in larger cities and towns such as Jackson.

In most rural areas, however, white school administrators forbade such courses in

60 Griffin, Biennial Report, 1963-1965, 169-171.

61 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 87. Bolton attained 1962 numbers from the American Friends Service Committee files listing per pupil expenditures by race. Counties spent widely different amounts. Tunica, for example, spent $173 per white pupil, but only $6 for educating black patrons. Jackson and Meridian Separate School Districts spent the most on black education with $106 and $63, respectively. Curiously, the Department of Education did not compile per pupil expenditures in its Biennial Reports.

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addition to teaching civics, American history, or modern foreign languages. In short, the black school curriculum prepared students for a life of limited skills and citizenship.62

COFO organizers recognized the gross disparities between the education of whites and blacks in Mississippi and curriculum issues topped their list of grievances. A

McComb activist reported that the “books we have are not up to date at all,” noting that hand-me-down texts used previously by white students were usually damaged when issued to African Americans. The report also complained of “need[ing] more subjects in high school like Negro history, latin, and citizenship (sic).” Another report indicated a severe lack of the basics for any school. “In our negro schools the buildings are inferior,” the report stated, noting that “children…must attend school in tenant houses, church buildings and whatever is available. There are not nearly enough textbooks, and those used are of poor quality.” The same activist claimed “we are kept from thinking and learning the truth because our children are given the wrong information in textbooks and other sources of information.” He specifically cited the way American history classes highlighted Reconstruction, informing black students that “this was a terrible and disgraceful time…we are told a lie.” These kinds of complaints prompted thirty-five hundred black students in Canton to boycott classes for two days in 1964, listing deficient textbooks as emblematic of whites’ neglect of black education.63

The NCC designed guidelines that most Freedom Summer volunteers followed while the actual Freedom School curriculum differed from school to school depending on

62 Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 305-06; Hale, “Freedom Schools,” 96-98, 61-63. Bolivar County, for instance, outlawed the teaching of civics and history at the county’s several black schools.

63 Unauthored, “The Illegal School System of McComb, Mississippi,” undated [1964?], Series VIII, 129, Reel 20, and Untitled, undated [1964?], “List of Grievances,” 4-5, Series VIII, 122, Reel 20, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 109-10. 213

the location and teacher. In other words, the NCC allowed each individual instructor to determine what should be emphasized based on local conditions. The Freedom Schools presented an alternative form of education designed as “informal and un’schoolish” as possible, using Socratic method in generating student-led discussions. The NCC recognized that history instruction “has been most seriously neglected” by the state.64

Called simply “Citizenship Curriculum,” the Freedom Schools developed a broad unit on

American history that began with an exploration of poverty in the United States and the

South with comparison to conditions for northern African Americans. Another component uncovered “Myths about the Negro” and analyzed the state’s power structure dominated by segregationists.65 The organizers even declared that the main objective included deconstructing myths prevalent in segregated society: “The purpose of the

Freedom schools is to provide an educational experience for students which will make it possible for them to challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more clearly its realities, and to find alternatives, and ultimately, new directions for action.”66 Moreover, teachers used real-life case studies with “relevant political, economic, and social issues” to help students become “future leaders in Mississippi” because such lessons would give them the knowledge required to solve problems.67

64 Summer Project Staff, “COFO Form Letter,” n.d. [1964], Box 6, Folder 15, AEC; and Dittmer, Local People, 258.

65 Veteran activists have since compiled an extensive website of Freedom School files. See Education and Democracy, http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/A_01_Preface.htm accessed Nov. 23-26, 2013.

66 Memorandum to Freedom School Teachers, May 5, 1964, http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/B_08_MemoToFSTeachers.htm accessed Dec. 4, 2013.

67 “Curriculum Conference Subgroup Report,” March 21-22, 1964, www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/B_06_CurrConfSubgrReport.htm accessed Nov. 24, 2013.

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The portion on myths directly confronted the substandard curriculum of

Mississippi’s public schools. Teachers received sample questions, such as “What do people learn in school beside reading, writing, and arithmetic?” Another question asked if

“there are any other things that the schools teach us that are untrue—myths?” The guidelines expected teachers to share their own experiences and to point out myths that they once accepted uncritically. The NCC curriculum listed typical myths about blacks, including ideas about black inferiority, black quiescence of Jim Crow, black laziness, and blacks’ incapability of participating in government.68 Part of the innovative teaching methods and instructional materials included plays staged by Freedom School students.

One such play recounted 1870s-era congressional hearings about the activities of the Ku

Klux Klan. Clearly, the guidelines developed by the NCC, with expert help from scholars such as Howard Zinn and Staughton Lynd, introduced black students “to political problems and possibilities for the future in light of knowledge of the past.”69

Unlike the state’s black and white schools, the Freedom Schools encouraged the academic freedom of the volunteer instructors. Organizers meant it in an extreme form, however. COFO expected teachers to furnish their own school materials, including books, pencils, chalkboards, and visual aids. The Freedom School teachers oftentimes shared materials with one another, especially books. More organized areas, such as

Jackson, Indianola, Greenwood, McComb, and Hattiesburg had community centers staffed by civil rights workers complete with libraries. Common books used included The

68 Unit III—Examining the Apparent Reality (The “Better Life” That Whites Have), n.d. [1964], www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC1_Units1to6.htm#Unit3 accessed Nov. 24, 2013.

69 Martin B. Duberman, In White America: A Documentary Play, n.d. [1964, http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC3b_InWhiteAmericaExpt.htm accessed Nov. 25, 2013.

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Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, A Pictorial History of the Negro in the United

States, The People that Walk in Darkness, and a document reader edited by historian

Herbert Aptheker. Despite the availability of materials in some areas, most Freedom

School teachers operated on shoestring budgets and paid for materials out of their own pockets. In addition to the freedom of each teacher to supply their own books, NCC guidelines crafted the curriculum to encourage student-led discussions; any topic was acceptable. Consequently, most Freedom Schools incorporated song, dance, plays, and art in instruction.70

Some white Mississippians reacted to the Freedom Summer “invasion” by lamenting the damage done to the state’s national reputation.71 A legislative special session rendered new statutes allowing municipalities to set curfews, outlaw demonstrations, and prohibit leafleting. The state’s reaction to Freedom Summer also caused further damage to Mississippi’s national image, which remained extremely important in attracting economic development. Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. advocated an improved state image to bolster economic development, which formed one of his signature initiatives while in office.72 With this goal in mind, some segregationists appealed for acquiescence on desegregation mandates. In his speech delivered to the

North Mississippi Industrial Development Association, for example, William B. Barrett

70 “Guide to Negro History,” n.d. [1964], http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC3a_GuideNegroHistory.htm accessed Nov. 25, 2013; and Hale, “Freedom Schools,” 150-55.

71 Historian Joseph Crespino shows that divisions between segregationists developed long before Freedom Summer demonstrations, see In Search of Another Country, 11; and southern newspapers, especially those in Mississippi, referred to the activism as an “invasion.” See “New Invasion of Dixie,” Jackson Daily News, Sept. 11, 1964, 10.

72 Paul B. Johnson Subject File, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS.

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warned his audience about the “vanity” in hoping that the 1964 Civil Rights Act would

be repealed. He suggested Mississippians should solve their own problems. “We don’t

need outsiders,” Barrett thundered, “trespassers stay away, because it has been clearly

proven that Pinks, Stinks, Quinks, and Rinkydinks who invaded our State last

summer…have created problems where none existed.” Use of “Pinks” referred to

Freedom Summer activists since most whites believed them to be communist

sympathizers. Barrett furthermore called for citizens to respect federal laws so

Mississippians could “continue selling ourselves to outsiders on Mississippi sites” for

economic development. For Barrett, the state needed outsiders with money and willing to

invest in the state, but rejected “agitators.” Whites’ rhetoric condemning the Civil Rights

Act of 1964 revealed recalcitrance in the face of measures passed by Congress and signed

into law by the president.73 Despite the hardline segregationists’ paeans to the U.S.

Constitution, they actually opposed the constitutional process governing federal

lawmaking when it failed to suit their positions. Voices such as Barrett’s eventually

superseded those representing a more extreme view, such as the broadsides disseminated

by an unnamed civic club in the Delta. In its fourth issue of “A Delta Discussion,” the

segregationist authors declared “Our present so-called civil rights movement is a brain

child of the Communist Conspiracy.”74

The Freedom Summer project had been designed to nudge the federal government

toward intervention and an end to Jim Crow. Part of that campaign included the Freedom

73 William B. Barrett, “The Community and Title VII,” 2-9, April 6, 1965, West Point, MS, Series I, Box 6, Folder 11, AEC.

74 “A Delta Discussion,” n.d. [1964], Series I, Box 11, Folder 8, AEC.

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Schools, which developed as a way to supplement what many activists considered the

real work of the summer project: voter registration.75 Overall, Freedom Summer activists expected white reprisals and violence. At the beginning of the Freedom Summer project, three activists, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman disappeared; most realized that they had been murdered. With white violence directed at the civil rights workers, COFO and other activist organizations expected protective legislation from Congress.76 Leaders in Washington certainly debated offering federal protection. In

one speech, Wisconsin Congressman Henry S. Reuss called for new civil rights

legislation since his son had been jailed on trumped up charges while working at a Clay

County Freedom School. Reuss travelled to Mississippi and later reported to Congress

that “education in Clay County…is hopelessly inferior to the education of white children

there, but is….totally inadequate and unfit for American citizens anywhere.” Reuss

visited the all-black Beasley School in nearby Pheba township and found that students

had “no schoolbooks and the ones they have were hand-me-downs from the white school,

antiquated and with many pages missing.” His report listed demands made by black

parents to the Clay County School Board. “New and modern books for each child in

school” was the first demand, illustrating that blacks had hardly benefitted from the

state’s free textbook program.77

The problem of securing new and modern books for Mississippi’s black and white

public school students plagued educators. Mississippi’s free textbook program failed to

75 Hale, “Freedom Schools,” 97-100; Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 305.

76 Dittmer, Local People, 247-50.

77 Representative Henry S. Reuss (WI), “Civil Rights,” Aug. 10, 1965, Congressional Record 11, 19175, Series I, Box 6, Folder 15, AEC.

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achieve necessary annual appropriation, and the state generally failed to approve newer texts while re-adopted older ones as cost-cutting measures. In several reports issued by the University of Southern Mississippi, surveyors noted that “textbooks are the most important aid to instruction available,” suggesting that school administrators revise procedures for purchasing schoolbooks from the state depository in Jackson. It furthermore revealed that “funds allocated by the state are not sufficient to keep all textbooks up to date,” recommending that districts use funds to supplement those provided by the state.78 Other reports showed teachers’ reliance on textbooks “rather than the course of study and the expert knowledge of the teacher.” The report indicated that most school district books supplied by the state were seven years or older since the publication date. It cited as an example a twelve-year old history book commonly used.79

District use of a twelve-year old history book in 1964 meant that teachers likely ignored discussion of recent historical topics that further shortchanged students. In surveys on the district’s courses, students listed history along with Spanish as “the most useless course” required for graduation.80 School district surveys furthermore uncovered numerous educational problems that garnered legislators’ attention.

In 1965, the legislature commissioned an independent study of the state school system that further documented Mississippi’s lack of quality education. The Mississippi

Research and Development Council convinced legislators to employ the Chicago-based

78 Department of School Administration, Community Description Laurel Public Schools, Part I, (Hattiesburg: University of Southern Mississippi, 1964), 67. Laurel represented one of the better-funded municipal separate school districts in Mississippi during the 1960s.

79 Department of School Administration, Community Description Laurel Public Schools, Part III, (Hattiesburg: University of Southern Mississippi, 1964), 69-70.

80 Ibid., 52.

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consulting firm Booz, Allen and Hamilton for a statewide study of the education system.

Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. read the nine-chapter, one-thousand page report, and stated succinctly that “our children are not receiving as effective an education as they need, if they are going to compete successfully in the world.” Linked with the first major finding, the study demonstrated that the state’s “economic development goals cannot be achieved unless we greatly strengthen our total education system.”81 The consulting firm condemned many aspects of the Mississippi education system, citing lowest per pupil expenditures in the nation in addition to the highest dropout rate. It faulted the structure of the Mississippi Department of Education, noting that the state superintendent spent much of his time disbursing education funds instead of coordinating necessary statewide departments such as one devoted to curriculum and instruction. Courses based on textbook content rather than expert knowledge dominated the curriculum. The report recommended abolishing the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board since local districts duplicated its screening duties; local school boards appointed committees to screen books that the state had already rated and sanctioned. Lastly, the study demonstrated the expenses involved with maintaining a central, textbook clearinghouse that detracted from the educational mission of the state.82 Similar to other education studies and surveys conducted in previous decades the legislature failed to act on the

Booz, Allen and Hamilton recommendations, reaching conclusions that an indigenous group of reformers had long acknowledged.

81 Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. to Mississippi Research and Development Council, March 10, 1967, Box 132, Folder 3, Johnson Family Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter referred to as JFP.

82 Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, “State-wide Education Study, Phase I,” iii-iv, 132-35, December 1966, Box 132, Folder 4, JFP; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 108. 220

Years before the legislature commissioned the extensive education study, a significant reform organization formed in response to the extremes associated with the state’s noted policy of massive resistance. At an initial meeting in Jackson in 1963, more than 150 women met to discuss the tragedy that occurred with James Meredith’s enrollment at the state’s flagship university. Mississippians for Public Education (MPE) advocated a complete restructuring of the Mississippi education system, demanding that the legislature repeal massive resistance legislation and reenact compulsory attendance laws. The MPE likewise sought an expanded and appointed state school board of education instead of popularly elected officials. The reformers challenged the private school movement that gained in prominence and activity between 1964 and 1970. The

MPE protested white flight for fear that lawmakers might renounce public education or leave it unfunded. Other more extreme measures loomed, including closure of the school system in the event of federal desegregation orders. Such scenarios actually played out in

Prince Edward County, Virginia, and in Little Rock, Arkansas. MPE reformers recoiled at the Prince Edward County example where schools closed between 1958 and 1964— and reopened only when faced with a Supreme Court order.83 Kindergarten and early childhood education programs formed the core demands by the MPE consistent with their overall call for improving the quality of public schools.84

83 Jill Ogline Titus, Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County, Virginia (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

84 Several Mississippi scholars determined that the basic goal of the MPE included rolling back “segregationist hysteria.” See, Andrew P. Mullins, Building Consensus: A History of the Passage of the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 1982 (Waynesboro, MS: Mississippi Humanities Council, 1992), vii, 13-14; Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 129-49. Pat Waters, “A Door Opens in Mississippi,” The Progressive (Dec. 1964): 30; Kay Pittman, “Mothers Fight Private Schools—And Win,” (Memphis) Press- Scimitar, Oct. 21, 1964, 1; and Bolton claims that the MPE organized in response to Governor Paul B. 221

In contrast to the more outspoken activism among segregationist reformers such as the DAR, MPE outreach and advocacy called for a two-pronged strategy that included advertising and personal, face-to-face meetings with individuals. Teaming up with allied members of the Mississippi League of Women Voters, reformers held coffees, or informal meetings in living rooms. They recruited from church groups, alumnae clubs, friends, neighbors, and garden clubs. The meetings lasted for a little over one hour that included discussion of “prearranged topics” led by one MPE member, who avoided overly controversial topics such as “discussion of moral rights and wrongs” or “personal feelings beyond the school issue.”85 At the end of the coffees, discussion leaders requested $2 donations to pay for newspaper and billboard advertising. Fourteen billboards arose in the Jackson area in 1963 that summed up MPE’s position: “Their tomorrow depends on you today. Send your children to public school.”86 The group’s early goals aimed at preserving the public education system, and to allay segregationists’ fears about integration.

The mostly white and liberal females who founded the MPE deftly negotiated an atmosphere hostile to racial moderation. The reformers instructed members to avoid the main issue that flummoxed the average Mississippi parent: school desegregation.

President Mary Ann Henderson of Jackson claimed that the MPE was “not a forum for debating the pros and cons of desegregation, or states’ rights, or any political question.”

Johnson’s plan to allow tuition grants to students unable to afford private school tuition in The Hardest Deal of All, 96, 114-15.

85 “Arrangements for Coffees,” n.d. Box 18, Folder 201, Patricia Derian Murphy Collection, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as PMD.

86 Waters, “A Door Opens in Mississippi,” 30.

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Instead, the MPE wanted to “protect, preserve, and promote our school system.”87

Despite these instructions, members routinely disseminated integrationist material during its meetings and recruitment drives. They used a pamphlet produced by the Atlanta-based

Southern Regional Council (SRC) that included a basic civics and history lesson, contradicting much of the rhetoric prevalent among segregationists. The SRC pamphlet reprinted primary source documents, including text of the Brown decisions. It informed its readers that the U.S. Supreme Court had “ultimate authority to declare what the law is and to interpret the Constitution.” Coupled with a detailed examination of the significance of the Fourteenth Amendment, the pamphlet covered the history of “separate but equal” and countered commonplace assumptions about states’ rights.88 While most of the MPE reformers were indeed integrationists, the organization included some practical segregationists. Their commitment to dual education, however, ended if the federal government required integration. One member from Oxford told a newspaper reporter that “a lot of people like me…are not for integration. But we rather see schools stay open and our children get an education.”89

In a state where advocacy of school integration could invite violent reprisals, the

MPE used their mostly female membership as an advantage by highlighting members’ maternal instincts. A sympathetic journalist, for instance, called the group a “fortress of feminine achievement.” MPE President Mary Ann Henderson said that the reform group

“figured it would be hard for anyone to try to put down mothers who just wanted schools

87 Waters, “A Door Opens in Mississippi,” 29; and Pittman, “Mothers Fight Private Schools,” 1.

88 Southern Regional Council Pamphlet, “The Questions,” n.d. [1968?], Box 10, Folder 201, PMD.

89 Pittman, “Mothers Fight Private Schools,” 1.

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for their children.” When a reporter asked for his opinion of the group, Citizens’ Council founder W.J. Simmons quipped “what can you say about a bunch of women?” His response indicated either a male-centric worldview, or his inability to counter the claims made by respectable women in his society. The influence of Citizens’ Councils had waned by the mid-1960s, yet the white supremacist organization proved to be the MPE’s most formidable opponent in the arena of popular opinion. The Citizens’ Council publicized the private school movement, offering fundraising acumen and logistical expertise for any community wishing to establish an academy.90

In the late 1960s, black and white Mississippians had several choices to consider when enrolling their children in school. Whites could attend the local county schools, the municipal schools, or all-black schools; none opted for the latter choice. African

Americans likewise could do the same under the state’s “freedom of choice” desegregation plan. Yet violence and economic reprisals prevented many blacks from enrolling their children in all-white institutions. White parents had additional options, such as enrolling children in private, segregated academies. If tuition costs proved to be an obstacle, the state legislature enacted statutes providing tuition grants in the amount of

$185 per child.91 The subsidies drew the ire of MPE reformers like Winifred Falls,

Patricia Derian, and Marge Curet—the organization’s spokespersons. Curet took aim at the practice, stating “we must conclude that private education…means inadequate

90 Waters, “A Door Opens in Mississippi,” 29; Pittman, “Mothers Fight Private Schools,” 1; For an explanation of the Citizens’ Councils waning influence and power, see Neil R. McMillen, The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 232-57; and Fuquay, “Private School Movement,” 163-66.

91 Fuquay, “Private School Movement,” 174-76, 164; Bolton provides a comprehensive analysis of the ambiguities of the freedom-of-choice desegregation plans in The Hardest Deal of All, 117-66.

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education for children at a high cost to the taxpayer.”92 She designed her remarks to counter the central reason that many parents had turned to private academies believing that segregated schools comprised the sum total of a quality education.

Following federal orders to integrate in 1969, the private school movement in

Mississippi expanded as integrationist reformers struggled to gain headway in the school quality debate. In October 1969, the Supreme Court ended years of delay and obstruction in Mississippi with its decision in the Alexander v. Holmes (1969) case, repudiating “all deliberate speed” and requiring thirty-three of the state’s school districts to transition to a unitary school system. Those initial thirty-three districts had a February 1970 deadline while subsequent court decrees in December 1969 required that all remaining districts in the state desegregate by August 1970. The mandate sent segregationists scrambling to establish private schools in many Mississippi communities. As Winifred Falls commented: “the segregation academy movement is growing so fast that no one can keep up with it.”93 Academies mushroomed from thirty-five to one hundred between 1969 and

1970.94 Black majority areas such as the Delta counties were particularly vulnerable to white flight. Falls claimed that in 1970 recalcitrant whites in Holmes County began referring to its public school as the “nigger school” since it became an all-black institution with rapid integration.95 In other areas, due in part to MPE outreach,

92 Marge Curet, Untitled Speech, undated, Box 10, Folder 202, PMD.

93 Winifred Green to Mississippi Council on Human Relations, Feb. 2, 1970, Box 9, Folder 169, PMD.

94 Green to Mississippi Council on Human Relations, Feb. 2, 1970, Box 9, Folder 169, PMD; Fuquay, “Private School Movement,” 176; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 173.

95 Winifred Falls Green to Mississippi Council on Human Relations, Feb. 2, 1970, Box 9, Folder 169, PMD. 225

integration plans transpired smoothly, but rapid private school growth affected public school advocates. Segregationists had always argued that black inferiority required segregated education, and school quality suffered by mixing black and white children in schools. They believed that teachers would dumb down lessons and curriculum so that

African Americans could succeed in the integrated classroom.96

Public school advocates had to counter the endorsement of the private school movement by the state’s leaders. In a 1970 speech, Governor John Bell Williams, who coined the term “Black Monday” in response to the initial Brown decision, remarked that

“the private schools in Mississippi have not been organized to avoid court order, but rather to insure that the children in our state are given quality education in a healthy, wholesome environment.”97 A State Senator from Jackson, Hayden Campbell, believed

“that if it were not for the private schools of Mississippi, we would be having bedlam down here.”98 Canton Public School Superintendent Lamar Fortenberry, moreover, claimed that “people were just simply not able to cope with” integration. He like many others believed that the mass exodus of whites from public schools rendered them inhospitable, unsafe, and defective. “This is one of the big factors in the private schools,”

Fortenberry began, “parents feel like it’s better quality.”99 Canton Academy principal

96 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 131-32.

97 Winifred [Falls] Green to Mississippi Council on Human Relations, Feb. 2, 1970, Box 9, Folder 169, PMD. Emphasis added.

98 Hayden Campbell, interview by John Marshall Alexander, June 10, 1976, transcript, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS and in possession of the author.

99 Lamar Fortenberry, interview by M.G. Trend, May 6, 1982, transcript, Madison-Canton Public Library, Canton, MS and in possession of the author.

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Charlotte Brown saw parents’ determination “and they felt that the quality of education could not be the same for it to be integrated.”100

Fortenberry and Brown both emphasized private school quality despite the lack of resources in many of these hastily organized institutions. Canton Academy teachers, for example, earned on average $5,000 less than the educators at public Canton High. Yet she and others argued that private school teachers were more dedicated than public school teachers, whom she believed “are not really as well qualified as some teachers…when they came out of school, speaking particularly of some of the black colleges.”101 Even white education professionals exploited the quality debate during the era of rapid integration. Long afterwards, however, their real reasons for abandoning the public system were revealed to a newspaper reporter. After serving for twenty-two years as Canton Public Schools Superintendent, Fortenberry admitted sending his children to nearby Canton Academy. “I don’t think it’s a question of quality of instruction,” he began. “Most people…would rather have their children in a school [with] a substantial number of (their) own race.” Another public school official in Tunica County likewise attested to the more favorable “emotional or psychological” conditions for students at private schools. “It’s more their mental health I was concerned with than their

100 A famous example of the lack of quality private schools involves the origins of Canton Academy in which 1,200 white students who fled the public schools attended classes at a nearby tent factory organized by Hermit Jones and Bobby Yandell. See, Charlotte Brown, interview by M.G. Trend, May 24, 1982, transcript, Madison-Canton Public Library, Canton, MS and in possession of the author. Bolton discusses lack of private school quality in Hardest Deal of All, 174-75; Nevin and Bills, The Schools That Fear Built, 73-82; and Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country, 244, 248-50.

101 Charlotte Brown, interview by M.G. Trend, May 24, 1982, transcript, Madison-Canton Public Library, Canton, MS and in possession of the author.

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education,” explained Tunica Public School Superintendent Bobby Papasan, defending his choice to send his children to the private Tunica Institute.102

Unlike their segregationist opponents, MPE reformers had a different way of measuring school quality. Patricia Murphy Derian explained in 1972 that public schools in Mississippi had lacked quality for decades, pointing to the state’s massive resistance policies and teacher pay scales that lagged behind all other states. She claimed the state’s lack of early childhood education programs and publicly funded kindergartens left students behind as they began the first grade. Derian took aim at the black inferiority myth, pointing out that state neglect of black education meant they would have trouble matching the skills of their white counterparts.103 In other words, an achievement gap between black and white students did not exist, but an instruction gap certainly did. With many whites hoodwinked by the quality debate, and perhaps many more acting out of racism as Fortenberry and Papasan admitted, the MPE hoped to forestall the misperception and white flight to private schools in black majority districts such as

Jackson, Canton, Indianola, and many Delta counties. The Jackson Public Schools, one reformer lamented, represented the ultimate failure of rapid integration. “We were so enthusiastic about making [integration] work and about the public schools succeeding,”

102 Hayes Johnson, “School Employees Defend Sending Own Children to Academies,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 15, 1986, 1B; and Margaret McKee, “Two Brothers on Opposite Sides Play Leading Role in Public-Private Schools Struggle at Canton, Miss.,” (Memphis) Press-Scimitar, Jan. 26, 1970, 2, 13.

103 Patricia Murphy Derian, “Inequality in Education,” March 1, 1972, Box 9, Folder 191, PMD; and Winifred [Falls] Green to Mississippi Council on Human Relations, Feb. 2, 1970, Box 9, Folder 169, PMD.

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MPE member Charles Sallis began, “and now Jackson Public Schools are about 4 percent white, 4 percent. And that to me is a real loss and I hate that.”104

Despite the disappointing results in transitioning to a unitary system in Jackson and other areas, MPE reformers proved successful in Tupelo, Biloxi, Greenville,

Meridian, and Hattiesburg. These white majority districts became models for which the

MPE attempted to apply elsewhere. MPE visibility in the schools failed to stem the peer pressure and ostracism that presented huge obstacles for parents to continue sending their children to public schools.

The resonance of whites’ concern about educational quality and safety compelled some to champion improved curriculum to meet the challenges associated with rapid integration. Derian acknowledged that integration caused parents to worry about whether their children would be prepared for college. In the 1970s, however, most public school districts merely pointed to the state’s adopted textbook for each subject as the curriculum.

Only a few education professionals addressed curriculum revision for the integrated setting, such as Jackson Public Schools Director of Curriculum and Communication R.B.

Layton. He held a dual position, however, and the duties associated with public relations overburdened him as he tried to assuage whites’ fears about the integration process. He attributed the decline in the quality of the public schools and whites’ disinvestment in public education to a steadily growing private school population. While only roughly ten to twelve percent of white public school students enrolled permanently in segregation

104 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012. 229

academies between 1969 and 1972, in black majority districts the rate of white flight could be higher than forty percent.105

In the state’s flagship school district, the Jackson Public Schools Superintendent

John S. Martin sought federal assistance for the transition to unitary schools. The Jackson

School Board brought Martin, a veteran of Atlanta schools’ integration crisis, for the task of carrying out rapid integration. In August 1970, eight months after federal orders requiring immediate integration, school administrators prepared for the unitary schools’ first full academic year as white flight from the public system threatened the entire city.106 Martin applied for emergency funds from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to ease the transition. Borrowing dire language from President

Richard M. Nixon to describe the school situation in the South, he wrote: “These are not theoretical problems, but actual problems. And when whites flee the central city in pursuit of all- or predominantly white-schools in the suburbs, it is not only the central city schools that become racially isolated, but the central city itself.” He further warned that

“unless rapid and dramatic improvement in the quality of education can be demonstrated to the general public the city will suffer economically and socially.” Federal funds,

105 Patricia Murphy Derian, “Inequality in Education,” March 1, 1972, Box 9, Folder 191, PMD; Winifred Green, interview by Charles C. Bolton, Nov. 12, 1997, transcript, v. 704, MOHP, Hattiesburg, MS; and R.B. Layton, interviewed by Thomas Healy, Nov. 1, 1977, transcript v. 538, Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS; Bolton, Hardest Deal of All, 179; and Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 151.

106 Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 169.

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Martin believed, could “redevelop the public school” system in Jackson that would

inevitably “attract the confidence and support of all citizens.”107

The HEW application contained innovative approaches in which curricular and

pedagogical changes paved the way for improving educational quality to allow successful

transition to unitary schools. Martin argued for newer methods to augment basic

education. Rather than “a typical lecture, ‘say-and-do,’” he proposed instead “self-

evaluation, flexible courses, mini-courses…discovery, and peer-to-peer” as the best

means to alleviate any instructional gap between black and white students. For decades,

Martin surely realized, African Americans had been denied a viable education. He and

many other education professionals understood that dual approaches to black and white

education could hamper teachers’ ability to instruct students of varying skill levels in the

integrated setting. Martin’s application insisted that teachers “introduce new techniques,

materials, methods of accomplishment.” Under the guidelines of the proposal, students

would learn through “programmed instruction, visuals, short-texts, individual syllabi”

instead of educators’ reliance on textbooks as the determinant of curriculum and

instruction.108 The statements Martin included on the HEW application represented the

most forward-thinking program of leadership in dealing with the rapid integration crisis

of the early 1970s, but too many school superintendents lacked the resolve and

commitment to integration.

107 Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare, “Application for Emergency School Assistance,” 9, Box 9, Folder 191, PMD.

108 Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare, “Application for Emergency Assistance,” 4-6, Box 9, Folder 191, PMD.

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Martin wanted to comply with desegregation orders while mollifying whites’ belief that integration meant a loss of educational quality. He believed this could be done best “through biracial involvement in curriculum planning” that would allow students to participate equally in the classroom regardless of the instructional gap. To make the plan successful, administrators needed to first address in-service staff training and form a plan for biracial team teaching. Jackson Public Schools, in addition, required improvements in the physical structures of the schools themselves. Through the $1.3 million federal grant,

Martin believed his staff could implement these changes to the city schools that in turn could temper white flight to the suburbs, and in the long term change the racial attitudes of the students, teachers, and the community. To oversee the emergency funds, Martin hired curriculum and instruction specialist Brandon Sparkman, who implemented similar curricular reforms in Florence, Alabama after its schools desegregated.109

Despite Martin’s commitment to transitioning the JPS system to unitary schools, public and professional pressure forced his resignation. Several months after Sparkman accepted the job, Martin unexpectedly resigned and checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. For one year, the JPS system looked to a retired, segregationist, and interim superintendent named Kirby Walker as the school board conducted a search for his replacement. During the interregnum, JPS administrators worked against rapid integration by rezoning students, mandating conflicting bussing patterns, and encouraging white flight to private schools. As one MPE reformer recalled, the principal of all-black Bailey Junior High School convinced white parents to enroll their children elsewhere for the 1971-1972 academic year. Sparkman, moreover, felt the hostility of his

109 Department of Housing, Education, and Welfare, “Application for Emergency Assistance,” 4-6, Box 9, Folder 191, PMD; and Brandon Sparkman, in discussion with the author, July 2012. 232

colleagues as they jockeyed to gain control of the federal grant the district received. He remembered that his fellow administrators “were not going to let [integration] work, and so they could then tell the Court that integration just won’t work…and have to find a new plan.” Sparkman, however, claimed the upper hand when the school board promoted him to superintendent shortly before the beginning of the 1971 school year. He dedicated his three-year tenure to the transition to a unitary school system.110

Sparkman developed innovative plans to improve school quality that could combat the crisis caused by rapid integration and massive white flight from the Jackson

Public Schools. The grant provided federal funds designed for retraining educators for the integrated classroom, yet Sparkman recoiled at the proposition of requiring overworked teachers stay after school for curriculum and instruction development. He then devised a plan that could simultaneously train existing teachers in new pedagogical methods to counter the instructional gap, and develop positive public relations in the process. The plan involved using community volunteers to monitor classrooms while teachers attended two-hour training sessions during the middle of the school day. Once the volunteers, trained in general classroom management, completed their role, they returned to their communities and informed people that integration could work and that bedlam had not occurred. The JPS superintendent even had teachers visit northern schools to sit in on integrated classrooms. The MPE answered the young superintendent’s call and filled the schools with volunteer classroom monitors. Harrylyn Sallis, an adult education instructor

110 Harrylyn Sallis, in conversation with the author, February 11, 2012; and Brandon Sparkman, in conversation with the author, July 7, 2012; The former JPS superintendent has since written a memoir, Called to Jackson, Mississippi: The Last Bastion of Segregation (Muscle Shoals, AL: iUniverse, 2012). In the account, Sparkman changed the names of key figures to because of threats of lawsuits from surviving JPS administrators.

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at nearby Millsaps College, worked as one volunteer in the JPS schools. She pointed to a

broad array of duties that included tutoring students and chaperoning school events. “We

went to all the assembly programs…I mean we supported the schools by being visible, by

being a visible presence,” she later recalled.111

Another innovative approach to improving public school quality advocated by

Sparkman included the plaza building or school without walls. Using a small increase in

local taxes and funds from the federal grant the district received, the Jackson School

Board considered establishing several plazas in neighborhoods bordering black and white

communities. On paper, the plan fit the desegregation criteria demanded by the High

Court. Plaza schools operated with open indoor spaces. A brochure circulating at the time

explained that these new school buildings offered “an educational process unbound by

barriers built into conventional schoolhouses.” Moreover, plazas were ideal for students

of similar ages, but at varying skill levels. For many African Americans attending what

had once been all-white public schools, they had to catch up quickly and the plaza ideal

meant a “less rigid pattern of teaching and learning” that involved interracial team-

teaching. In short, schools without walls allowed students to move from group to group

as they learned new material. The brochure explained that there would be “no need for

adjusting to a new teacher, new classmates, [and] a different room.”112 Sparkman later

explained, however, that the innovative type of elementary school failed to achieve

widespread public support due in part to Jackson segregationists who had formed an

111 Harrylyn Sallis, in conversation with the author, February 11, 2012; Brandon Sparkman, in conversation with the author, July 7, 2012; and “Jacksonians for Public Education to Meet Monday,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Aug. 22, 1971, 6.

112 Educational Facilities Laboratories, Inc., Schools Without Walls: Profiles in Significant Schools,” (New York: Educational Facilities Laboratories, 1968), 3-5.

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organization, called Freedom of Choice in the United States (FOCUS), protesting rapid

integration. The group vehemently opposed tax increases for carrying out federal court

orders.113

Despite innovative approaches designed to ease the transition to a unitary system,

Mississippians for Public Education became bogged down in the quality debate. Its

reform agenda, by the early 1970s, jettisoned curricular reform in favor of structural

problems associated with the larger, statewide educational system. As a more practical

position, the MPE promoted overall restructuring that included an expanded and

appointed state board of education. In conjunction with the Mississippi League of

Women Voters, the MPE pushed for reenactment of compulsory attendance laws. The

reformers further supported adequate financing, vocational and technical programs,

standardized testing, educational television, increased teachers’ salaries, and kindergarten

programs. On a point-by-point basis, the organization’s reform agenda mimicked the

Booz, Allen and Hamilton recommendations. Yet Mississippi’s public officials and

elected leaders balked at implementing any widespread changes as the rapid integration

controversy continued with public rancor over busing in addition to widespread and

unsubstantiated rumors of racial violence in the schools.

In his retirement speech to the state school boards association, Mississippi

Superintendent of Education Jack Tubb informed his audience of the successes of the

state’s public schools. He pointed to equalization of school funds, increase of school

terms, freedom of choice desegregation plans, and consolidation of school districts. His

speech issued a call for increased vigilance in an uncertain age, reprimanding those

113 Brandon Sparkman, in conversation with the author, July 7, 2012; and “FOCUS Chief Blasts Desegregation Plan,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Aug. 16. 1971, 9. 235

administrators whom Tubb believed had buried their heads in the sand instead of offering leadership in the state’s acute racial crisis. Through leadership, Tubb argued, local school administrators could exact control over their schools, which formed a better reaction to the federal role in education than merely complaining about assistance and oversight.

Tubb then quoted extensively from a treatise by Harvard University education professor

Herold Hunt who speculated on the changes of public education in fifty years’ time.

“National assessment to determine how much is being learned by students in different age groups in different parts of the country will be taken for granted. The Federal government, supplying much more of the cost to education, will require quality control and will continue to move toward equalizing educational opportunity throughout the country. The curriculum will be richer, and innovation will be the way of life. No longer will there be a single basic course in subjects such as physics, economics, anthropology, or social psychology, but multiple courses, dealing with specialized aspects to the subject.” He then demanded that school administrators “support broad educational opportunities for all boys and girls.”114

After issuing the challenge to school administrators, Jack Tubb realized that his chances for reelection in the 1967 campaign were slim to none. His challenger, Garvin

Johnston, exploited racial issues in education and Tubb’s full compliance with Title VI desegregation pledges mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Rather than running another campaign, Tubb retired after twenty-two years in office. Johnston indeed won the election and the state’s slow, bumpy road toward a unitary system suddenly got longer.

114 Jackson McWhirter Tubb, Untitled speech, delivered to Mississippi Association of School Boards, May 9, 1967, Box 39, Folder 552, JMT.

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Johnston brought his segregationist ideology to the Mississippi Department of Education, working with the Mississippi Attorney General Joe Patterson on delaying federal desegregation mandates. During Johnston’s tenure, moreover, the federal courts initiated rapid integration. Instead of offering leadership, the new education chief like so many other white education professionals obfuscated and obstinately refused compliance. One assistant attorney general working for the state in blocking federal desegregation requirements remembered the raison d’etre cited by people like Johnston for refusal to lead the state through the rapid integration crisis. “Nobody wanted to be that person to tell white parents that their children suddenly had to go to school with the blacks,” Ed

Davis Noble, Jr. declared. With such dreadful state leadership in education, all elements of school reform, whether structural or curricular, became obscured in the integration crisis of the early 1970s.115

The education reform initiatives, originating from three disparate movements, had some long-term successes. Segregationists could claim the most as private school development soared following the 1969 Alexander decision. During the rapid integration crisis of the early 1970s, segregationists succeeded in dominating the quality debate, arguing that racially mixed schools lacked educational quality. Through their rhetoric emphasizing individual freedom, limited government, and constitutional supremacy, many whites followed the private school promoters, and some received financial assistance from the state. Unable to receive an education comparable to whites, African

Americans used the Freedom School experiment to broadcast their calls for viable

115 Biographical data—Garvin H. Johnston, Box 8014, Folder 1, Garvin H. Johnston’s Correspondence Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS; and Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in conversation with the author, March 2012. 237

educational opportunity. The Freedom School model showed that social studies education could work to break down racial barriers and that freedom of thought could be attained in

Mississippi. Thus, blacks temporarily abandoned the vastly inferior public schools. White liberals and integrationists tried to counter white flight from the system, and a pair from

Jackson tried to reformulate curriculum and instruction in the midst of the integration crisis. Mississippians for Public Education failed to make much headway in the quality debate since whites had accepted the black inferiority myth for decades. In response, the

MPE championed a revamped structure of the school system, arguing that retooling the

State Department of Education was the first step toward better educational opportunities for all.

The Freedom Schools experiment likewise highlighted the lack of black history in

American schools writ large. By the time the integration crisis gripped Mississippi communities, activists from around the country challenged the nation’s colleges and universities to correct these disparities in history content. Building off of the successes of teaching African Americans black history, and realizing the sad state of affairs in

Mississippi, the MPE included two scholars among their ranks, James W. Loewen and

Charles Sallis, who in 1970 devised a direct confrontation of the state’s deplorable history standards. Out of disparate reform attempts in the 1960s, the seeds to the state’s next flashpoint in textbook politics had been sewn.

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CHAPTER VI

“A SYMBOL TO THE RESISTANCE TO INTEGRATION”: THE LOEWEN CASE

AND GUARDING HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE IN MISSISSIPPI, 1963-1981

In 1974, seven teachers on the Mississippi history textbook rating and screening

committee received two books pending official state sanction for use in public and

private schools. One book, first published in 1959, had been adopted and reapproved

regularly for fifteen years since. With a new title, the Steck-Vaughn Publishing Company

rushed copies of John K. Bettersworth’s Your Mississippi to the members of the rating

committee.1 The other text the educators evaluated had developed from a joint Tougaloo-

Millsaps College research project in 1971. Entitled Mississippi: Conflict and Change, the

editor-authors including Harvard-trained sociologist James W. Loewen and historian

Charles Sallis, who had studied under Bettersworth at Mississippi State, designed the

book to counter the white supremacist and triumphalist tone presented by the various

Bettersworth texts. The rating committee voted 5 to 2 along racial lines to reject the

Loewen and Sallis reader, thus denying them a market for the controversial text. They

quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court against the state.2

1 Jason Berry, “Teaching Mississippi History,” New York Times, Oct. 10, 1975, 4M.

2 John Anthony Scott, “Loewen v. Turnipseed: A Landmark Case,” Teaching History Today, the American Historical Association Newsletter (Oct. 1980): 7-8. 239

In late October 1976, the members of the Mississippi history rating committee appeared for depositions with Melvyn Levanthal, a civil rights attorney, and Peter M.

Stockett, an assistant state attorney general. John Turnipseed, one of the teachers and the chairperson for the history textbook screening committee, sat nervously, fidgeting, and stammering as he tried to explain his decision in rejecting Mississippi: Conflict and

Change. He objected to how the authors presented the state’s Jim Crow past, reasoning that such portrayals “didn’t offer any value as far as history is concerned, and I would think that that would cause…harsh feelings in the classroom between black and white students.” Toward the end of the deposition Turnipseed summarized that the text in question was “inflammatory,” lamenting that “the book…just…dwells on the black versus the white.”3

Veteran Hattiesburg math teacher and textbook screener Virginia McElhaney’s deposition testimony reveals how educators approached history education in the era of rapid integration. “I don’t think that [Mississippi: Conflict and Change] presents a true picture of the history of the state of Mississippi as we would like to present it to junior high school students,” she said confidently. She explained her opinion that the book’s content would lead to resentments in mixed-race classrooms that would thereby jeopardize school integration. Similar to Turnipseed, she became defensive during the course of the questioning, explaining that the authors missed certain opportunities to

“help develop pride in our state and in our cultural background.” In response to repeated

3 Deposition of John Turnipseed, Oct. 28, 1976, Clarksdale, MS, transcript, 9-13, James W. Loewen, et al. v. John Turnipseed, et al., Civil Action No. GC 75-147-S, United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Greenville Division, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Southeast Division, Morrow, GA. Hereafter referred to as Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

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questions by Levanthal about omitting unfavorable historical information in social studies classes, a frustrated McElhaney responded that the attorney failed “to understand what we’re trying to do. We are…trying to make our junior high school students take pride in our state’s history.”4

Rating committee member James Wash, a teacher from Forest and a product of the state’s all-black schools before rapid integration, largely agreed with Turnipseed and

McElhaney. While he ultimately voted against rejecting the text, he worried that much of the content of the book would offend black students in the integrated classroom. “How would this help the black?” he asked, explaining that by recounting past instances of white-on-black violence such as lynching, African Americans “might could develop a complex from it, an inferior (sic) complex.” Despite his approving vote on the committee,

Wash stated that even his wife, also an educator in Forest, objected to the content presented in Mississippi: Conflict and Change. “She asked, ‘how in the world can you get up before a mixed class and teach something like this?’” Levanthal asked Wash if he preferred distorting history when explaining it to his students, and the educator responded: “well, what point is it…[students] knowing about it.” Moments later,

Levanthal asked if he preferred distorting history, and Wash replied “The students come first,” indicating that he believed the material presented in Conflict and Change was damaging and had no place in the classroom. He further explained that black women in

Forest worked in whites’ homes and many black children played with their white friends,

4 Deposition of Virginia McElhaney, Oct. 27, 1976, Hattiesburg, MS, transcript, 5-7, 28-30, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, NARA. Emphasis added. McElhaney answered specific questions requiring her to compare Bettersworth’s coverage of the Ku Klux Klan with that of Loewen and Sallis. She responded that the KKK and other information should be completely excised from the curriculum because of its controversial nature. Levanthal asked her if the Civil War was controversial and if it too should be omitted. McElhaney then said educators should avoid “belaboring” violent episodes of the American past. 241

and stated his opposition to the book because it might jeopardize these kinds of relationships. “I mean,” he implored, “we even had one of the doctors in Union tutoring one of our black football players.” In other words, Wash painted a picture of racial progress that he thought would be disrupted by using a controversial history textbook.5

Deposition testimony by these educators exposes the goals of history education in

Mississippi’s schools in the post-Jim Crow context. Educators wanted history courses to instill loyalty and pride in addition to social order and racial harmony in Mississippi among their white and black students, but the state’s past got in the way. Loewen and

Sallis fully documented Mississippi’s record of racial discrimination and oppression in their revolutionary new state history text. The 1969 Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Holmes, moreover, led to a statewide crisis, increasing racial tension as school administrators struggled implementing rapid integration while whites begrudgingly accepted it. As the school districts transitioned to a unitary system, Mississippi educators and state officials developed policies that attempted to conceal rather than deal with the state’s role in resisting the black freedom struggle. In this context, some black and white teachers thought it best to avoid discussion of controversial topics or else violence would ensue, thus demonstrating that the crisis of rapid integration remained years after the

Alexander ruling. The Loewen v. Turnipseed case reveals the lengths to which state leaders would protect Mississippi’s image and stubbornly resist adoption of a textbook

5 Deposition of James Earl Wash, Oct. 26, 1976, Jackson, MS, transcript, 10, 18, 21-24, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, NARA. Wash mentioned several black and white teachers by name who expressed fear of using the Loewen text in integrated classrooms.

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that documented an “ugly” past.6 In short, the rating committee members deemed the book dangerous for use in post-Jim Crow Mississippi. According to these history teachers, the past had to be concealed or distorted to protect the present, demonstrating cultural sensitivity among Mississippians regarding the state’s long record of racial discrimination and oppression.

By producing the history textbook in question, scholars James W. Loewen and

Charles Sallis directly confronted long-standing problems with the state’s history education standards. In many respects, the state system had substandard instructional guidelines in addition to teachers using textbooks to present inaccurate and distorted historical lessons to their students. As Loewen determined at the time, the Mississippi

State Textbook Purchasing Board sanctioned social studies texts that were mere “didactic chronologies” and “public relations tracts.”7 By forming a research team, securing outside funding, and conducting original research for Conflict and Change, the editor- authors attempted to reform the state’s curricular and instructional standards. After the textbook agency rejected the book, the authors sued in federal court, demonstrating two different avenues and approaches for guarding historical knowledge. Unlike Mississippi’s previous guardians, however, Loewen and Sallis acted out of professional duty intertwined with their support for integration and social change. The Mississippi Attorney

General’s office operated on the bases of their own historical understanding in continuing

6 Bob Casey, “Tougaloo, Millsaps Profs Pen New History of Mississippi,” (Jackson) Clarion- Ledger, Oct. 10, 1974, F1.

7 James W. Loewen to Sidney Cooper/Houghton-Mifflin Publishers, May 11, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55, James W. Loewen Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as Loewen Papers; and Deposition of James W. Loewen, June 12, 1978, transcript, Box 3, Folder 3, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

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a futile defense of the lawsuit that illuminates how inaccurate ideas about the past were transferred from one generation to the next. In short, once Mississippi determined its history education standards and made it part of policy, the Loewen case shows the difficulty involved in reforming those standards.

Scholarly work on textbook controversies generally concentrates on content analysis and pressures by citizen groups or the free market.8 In studies of Loewen, the compulsion to assign considerable weight to the court-ordered adoption of the book precludes in-depth treatment of the cultural and social context in which Loewen and

Sallis produced the text.9 In books and articles written about Mississippi: Conflict and

Change, several authors argue that the outcome of the case enabled historians to write more freely about controversial topics and issues.10 Yet many of these accounts avoid

8 Joseph Moreau argues that citizen pressure groups battled publishing companies about how to present United States history to readers and in the process he reveals how this created versions of national identity that remain contested. See Schoolbook Nation: Conflicts Over American History Textbooks from the Civil War to the Present (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), 22-23; Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 29-35. Jonathan Zimmerman shows how pressure groups fought for “positive” multicultural lessons in the nation’s history texts in Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 128-29, 107-29; Similarly, in an unfinished book manuscript, Fred Bailey claims textbook content corresponded to aristocratic ideals. See “How Heritage became Hate: Mississippi's Quest for a Suitable Past, 1890 to the Present,” The Walter M. and Evalynn Burress Lecture Series, Howard Payne University, Brownwood, Texas, October 2005, 2, 23-26; Robert B. Moore compares the historical interpretations in Mississippi: Conflict and Change with John K. Bettersworth’s text, Your Mississippi in Two History Texts: A Study in Contrast (New York: The Racism and Sexism Resource Center for Educators, 1976), 3-12. Harriet Tyson-Bernstein’s polemic argues that the sad state of textbook content resulted from the good intentions of educators and publishing companies that subverts basic education or the proverbial three R’s in A Conspiracy of Good Intentions: America’s Textbook Fiasco (Washington, D.C.: Council for Basic Education, 1988); and James W. Loewen blames the market-driven quest for profits in the textbook publishing industry for the bad history books in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (New York: New Press, 1995), 6, 160, 274.

9 Rebecca Miller Davis, “The Three R’s—Readin’, ’Ritin’, and Race: The Evolution of Race in Mississippi History Textbooks, 1900-1995,” Journal of Mississippi History 73 (Spring 2011): 3-5, 11, 20-26, 27-38, 42. Davis merely restates Moore’s argument in Two History Texts, 3-12.

10 Stephen E. Gottlieb, “In the Name of Patriotism: The Constitutionality of ‘Bending’ History in Public Secondary Schools,” The History Teacher 22 (Aug., 1989): 411-95, 430-32; Scott, “Loewen v. Turnipseed: 7-8; and Charles Sallis, “A Textbook Case,” Bill of Rights Journal 14 (Dec., 1981): 7-10. 244

analysis of the reformers’ goals and the state’s hackneyed defense of the federal lawsuit,

thereby ignoring Mississippians’ cultural sensitivity to the past. In recent studies of

historical memory in Mississippi, authors focus on racial reconciliation committees and

the contentious debate regarding proposals for a new state flag rather than the Loewen

case. While Mississippians certainly entered a new era in the 1970s, massive resistance

held a staying power that compelled educators to distort history lessons, thereby

preventing their students from a full and accurate appraisal of the state’s segregated and

oppressive past.11 This chapter demonstrates how the old Mississippi operated in a new

era—through state history standards and official textbook content used in public schools.

After school integration in 1970, Mississippi society slowly entered a new era in

which massive resistance policies largely became muted as the state’s population dealt

with the quickened pace of social change. After segregationist governor John Bell

Williams left office in 1972, the more progressive William Waller bested more

reactionary challengers in his ascension to the state’s highest political office. Yet the

Mississippi Department of Education struggled transitioning to unitary schools as many

black majority districts experienced enormous white flight for private schools. The school

system, moreover, needed manifold reforms as indicated by the positions advocated by

Mississippians for Public Education (MPE), the League of Women Voters, and the Booz,

Allen, and Hamilton report commissioned by the legislature. Lawmakers and elected

officials avoided making changes to the state’s overall educational structure, including

11 Emilye Crosby, The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 224-40; Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 248-67; and Steven A. King, I’m Feeling the Blues Right Now: Blues Tourism and the Mississippi Delta (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 140-44.

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financing, mandatory attendance laws, and the state textbook regulatory board. Much of the rhetoric about education during the 1970s revolved around quality and safety in the public school system. The MPE championed structural reforms as the method by which the state’s education system could be improved, shorn of the massive resistance policies of the past two decades. Yet out of the MPE ranks came the two scholars, Loewen and

Sallis, who believed that history curriculum signified a continuance of massive resistance in the aftermath of Jim Crow.12

During the upheavals associated with freedom struggle activism in the 1960s followed by the rapid integration crisis of the early 1970s, few education professionals sought changes to social studies instruction. The Mississippi Department of Education required public school students to take four main history and social studies classes.

During the ninth grade year, students alternated semesters between Mississippi history and Mississippi government courses. Most tenth grade students took World History followed by American History in the eleventh grade. Mississippi Division of Instruction bulletins indicate how the state designed history and social studies classes to emphasize

American exceptionalism; the structure also contained racial bias. The goal for educators teaching American history, according to the bulletin, included crafting information so that students would “see America as a result of a great movement in the history of mankind.” Guidelines stressed “America’s altruistic relationship with other nations.” The intent involved inculcating patriotism that would insulate students against the communist

12 Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, “State-wide Education Study, Phase I,” iii-iv, 132-35, December 1966, Box 132, Folder 4, Johnson Family Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS. Hereafter referred to as JFP; and League of Women Voters, “State Program,” 1970-1971 Yearbook, 7; and Mississippians for Public Education, “A Time to Speak,” Box 9, Folder 191, Patricia Murphy Derian Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Memorial Library, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS. Hereafter referred to as PMD.

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threat. Most high school social studies courses developed according to state laws, especially a 1964 statute requiring completion of a unit on communism.13

Many of the state guidelines for history courses retained outdated historical interpretations of slavery, sectionalism, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The history instruction bulletin first used the term “slavery” in Unit 4 on “Nationalism and

Sectionalism,” yet the three-week section made no connection between slavery and sectionalism. The unit called “Division and Reunion, 1850-1876” reiterated historical myths prevalent in the South and instructed teachers to emphasize that the southern military defeat in the Civil War was a result of the North’s superior numbers. The bulletin claimed students should develop an “understanding how the manufacturing North replaced the agricultural South as the dominant element in our economic and political life” following the conflict. The bulletin suggested that students “debate the right of secession” as if the Civil War failed to fully settle the issue.14

Since the late 1950s, the state required students to complete a ninth-grade course on Mississippi history that exposed more mature students to the study of the past in addition to the state’s place in the federal Union. Curriculum designers reinforced historical contributions from white culture by emphasizing the leadership of white supremacist state leaders. Activities called for student reports on “great Mississippi

13 Division of Instruction, American History Mississippi School Bulletin, No. 167. (Jackson: Division of Instruction, State Department of Education, April, 1969), 9-10, 12; and Joe T. Patterson to R.W. Griffith, Mississippi Department of Education, Jan. 18, 1965, 99-49-03-1-1-1, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as MSSC.

14 Division of Instruction, American History, 9-12, 23-25, 27-28; and Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 3, 69-70.

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leaders” such as Jefferson Davis, James K. Vardaman, Theodore G. Bilbo, James O.

Eastland, and Ross Barnett—all of whom were some of the most offensive racists from the state’s past. The 1969 Mississippi History bulletin proposed an “antebellum fashion show” in which female students paraded around in hoop skirts as their male counterparts judged the contestants.15 A 1967 curriculum publication revealed that Mississippi history was a perfect opportunity for students to realize “a rich inheritance from the past” and “a vital need for participation in the present.” Yet the texts the state adopted for the ninth- grade course over several decades ignored more recent history while presenting the basis for segregation in society. Both bulletins listed as suggested reading outdated histories, especially books by R.A. McLemore, John K. Bettersworth, and Pearl Guyton—all of which previously had received state sanction.16

By determining the content of what students learned in history classes, the rating committees evaluating history texts for state approval held significant power. In 1960, lawmakers amended a textbook screening statute, allowing non-educators to receive appointment by the governor’s office and providing the chief executive with four selections of the seven members to these committees. Governor Ross Barnett attained the power to select people to serve on the state’s rating committees, choosing former

15 Division of Instruction, Mississippi History, Mississippi School Bulletin, No. 169, (Jackson: State Department of Education, April, 1969), 101-02, 128-29.

16 Division of Instruction, Social Studies in the Junior High School, Mississippi School Bulletin, No. 161, (Jackson: State Department of Education, April, 1967), 106, 108, 113, 117, 121, 126, 130. Guyton’s first book received state approval in 1936, followed by sanction of a new edition in 1952. The state approved of R.A. McLemore’s The Mississippi Story for sixth-grade Mississippi history. Bettersworth’s books differed in titles, but not in content. The state adopted Mississippi: A History in 1959 followed by a retitled version in 1962. Adopted two years later, Mississippi: Yesterday and Today became the standard-bearer for the course until the mid 1990s. See Affidavit of Jan Hillegas, “Legislative History of Mississippi Textbook Laws,” Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027 Box 2, Folder 2, NARA.

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Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) state regents Margaret Peaster and Mrs.

E.C. Brewer to serve on a history committee along with segregationist history professor

William M. Caskey.17 In 1964, Governor Paul B. Johnson made appointments based on recommendations from a “distinguished group of lay civic and patriotic leaders,” who suggested that the governor appoint math teacher Virginia McElhaney to evaluate history texts. From the Johnson to Waller administrations, many history screening committee appointments taught other courses, such as math and English, and several more evaluated high school books while serving as elementary school teachers.18 While these textbook screeners could determine materials used in history courses through book evaluations, their power remained limited. As a state-commissioned study of the Department of

Education revealed, Mississippi’s financing of education curtailed how often the state could purchase new books. By state law, new adoptions occurred every six years, but inadequate state appropriation for textbook purchases oftentimes meant that the Textbook

Board renewed contracts for older books regardless of favorable or unfavorable evaluations reached by rating committees. The problematic setup rendered most state history texts seriously outdated by as many as twelve years since publication.19 In the

17 “Textbook Rating Committees,” § 37-43-21, Mississippi Code Annotated 1972, vol. 10A (Charlottesville, VA: State of Mississippi/Matthew Bender & Company, Inc., 2007), 47; In 1960, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1979, that amended § 37-43-21transferring appointment power from the state superintendent to the governor. See § 37-43-21, General Laws of Mississippi, 1960, Ch. 310. (Jackson, MS: Legislature of the State of Mississippi, 1961); Affidavit of Jan Hillegas, “Legislative History of Mississippi Textbook Laws,” 4, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027 Box 2, Folder 2, NARA; Phil Stroupe, “Teachers Top Barnett List,” (Jackson) State Times, Sept. 15, 1960, 1.

18 Mississippi Department of Education, “Press Release,” Sept. 22, 1964, Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. “Press Release,” Nov. 13, 1964, Paul B. Johnson, Jr. to Minnie B. Ford, Oct. 22, 1964, Box 80, Folder 13, JFP.

19 Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, “State-wide Education Study, Phase I,”132-35, December 1966, Box 132, Folder 4, JFP.

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context of post-Jim Crow society, the state was complicit in shielding students from access to recent history.

Many of the state’s history teachers carried double duty as educators and athletic coaches that further affected the quality of instruction. According to a pair of surveys conducted in Laurel, history teachers generally relied on textbooks as the course curriculum. Surveys of students demonstrated that history classes were among the least favorite of all subjects, and that teachers only reluctantly deviated from textbook content.20 Lea Anne Hester, a former Laurel student, said her social studies teachers provided “very, very sketchy instruction…taught by the football coaches,” and “on the high school and junior high level, it was the weakest I had.” Shortly before the

Mississippi history rating committee rejected the Loewen and Sallis text, Hester enrolled at the University of Mississippi, quickly realizing that her high school history classes left her ill-prepared for the rigors of college-level coursework.21 Hester also remembered a unique teacher who stepped outside of approved curricular materials. Thomas Tucker

Buchanan, who worked at night on his law degree, taught Hester’s ninth-grade

Mississippi history class. “He was excellent,” she said. “He had a passion for Mississippi politics and I remember he did get in trouble a little bit because he talked in detail about the Klan…one who really explained to me what the Klan was about. He did get chastised;

I remember him telling us that because they were afraid he would stir up ill will because

20 Department of School Administration, Community Description Laurel Public Schools, Part I, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, 1964, 67; Garvin H. Johnston, Mississippi Teacher’s Directory, 1968-1969 (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Education, 1969); and William A. Matthews, “Suggested Criteria for the Selection of Textbooks: Social Studies, Career, and Humanities, 1974 Adoption,” Jackson, MS, 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027 Box 3, Folder P-7, NARA.

21 Lea Anne Hester Brandon, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

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it was a black-white classroom.” After the conclusion of the academic year, the school district refused to renew Buchanan’s contract.22

Mississippi history teacher Bennie G. Thompson, who taught in the Madison

County system during the High Court’s rapid integration orders, likewise faced retaliation for presenting “negative” historical information to students. Unlike Buchanan, however,

Thompson and a pair of fellow teachers sued. The plaintiffs lost their initial claims in state court, but won on appeal. In the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the majority opinion stated that Thompson, along with teachers Evelyn K. Thomas and Wade E.

Sutton, had been dismissed by the Madison County School Board without cause and denied the teachers administrative review and a hearing. The tactics employed by

Madison County occurred throughout Mississippi in the 1970-1971 school year as the state’s public schools transitioned to the unitary system; many black teachers lost their jobs while whites received new contracts. Following the initial complaint filed by

Thompson, Thomas, and Sutton, the school board then provided the plaintiffs with reasons for termination emphasizing the educators’ teaching performance. Thompson’s history lessons focused too much on the civil rights movement, and the Board hoped to blanch the recent past in social studies classes. Thompson and his fellow teachers’ treatment by Madison County school officials closely resembled the tactics employed by the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board when it rejected the controversial book edited by James Loewen and Charles Sallis.23

22 Ibid.

23 Thompson, et al. v. Madison County Board of Education, 476 F.2d 676; 1973 U.S. App.; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 211-15; and Evans, The Social Studies Wars, 140-41. 251

As newly hired college professors teaching at two of Jackson’s private liberal arts colleges, Loewen and Sallis sought extensive reform of the state’s history curriculum.

Both Tougaloo and Millsaps Colleges represented the apex of black youth activism in the state and liberal moderation, respectively. The two scholars met in the early 1970s, connecting through shared interests in social history or the new turn in historical scholarship that examined the roles of women, blacks, and Indians.24 The authors developed their scholarly ideas at a time when numerous protests calling for black history courses and black studies programs in higher education became important goals for activist organizations.25 Promoting a merger with the “traditional” American history narrative, in 1969, Sallis completed an intensive summer study program in black history at Columbia University. Sallis, in addition, tried to correct false assumptions about southern history, deeming much of state-sanctioned social studies courses as myth perpetuation. After taking a faculty position at Jackson’s Millsaps College, he attacked the “sacred cows” of southern history in public forums, speaking, for example, to a large gathering at Jackson’s St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. In that speech, the historian corrected various myths, such as the overemphasized military occupation of the state following the Civil War. Sallis, moreover, noted that Mississippi’s Reconstruction government, dominated by black political leaders, had been the most forward-thinking and active of all administrations and legislatures. He compared the record of the state’s

24 Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley and other cities: University of California Press, 1989), 1-2.

25 Two excellent recent histories document the path toward black studies and African American Studies Departments in higher education. See Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); and Ibram H. Rogers, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Radical Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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Reconstruction government to its successor, a Redeemer regime dominated by oppressive

and corrupt white supremacists. Sallis, moreover, introduced a course on southern

mythology at Millsaps.26

Despite being a Mississippian, Sallis rejected many of the historical myths that

prevailed in the state’s culture after graduate training in history in addition to his

experiences as a U.S. Army officer. His ideas about race changed gradually after growing

up in the Delta city of Greenville. Upon graduation from Mississippi State University,

Sallis began working on a master’s degree in history. His professors encouraged him to

examine race politics during Reconstruction despite implied agreements among the

faculty to avoid discussion of racial topics. Sallis remembered the oblique manner in

which professor Glover Moore spurred students’ interest in radically new historical

interpretations regarding American slavery. Without discussing the merits of the book,

one day Moore directed his students to read Kenneth Stampp’s new monograph about

slavery entitled The Peculiar Institution. In the context of 1950s Mississippi,

segregationists in state government and on the Institutes of Higher Learning closely

monitored college environments for any speech or lessons jeopardizing the basis and

principles of segregation and expressing sympathy for communism. Moore risked

inviting disciplinary measures against him for promoting Stampp’s book and encouraging

Sallis’s scholarly interests. Sallis eventually finished his scholarly training at the

University of Kentucky where he and his wife Harrylyn both experienced a different

social atmosphere. In the upper South, they noticed a relatively relaxed color-line when

compared to their native Mississippi. After graduate school and during his stint as an

26 “Millsaps Prof Questions Truth of Southern History,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 12, 1971, 6A; and Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012. 253

army officer, Sallis saw first-hand African Americans’ superior intellectual skills, thus leading to his racial de-programming. He later remarked, “I think in a gradual way…I just sort of evolved into being open.”27

Growing up in Decatur, Illinois, James Loewen developed a racial education considerably different than did his coeditor. In a town that Loewen considered hardly segregated since a very small black population resided there, he gained his first experiences with a strict racial code in 1963 as a visiting student at Mississippi State.28

Customary at the time, undergraduates at Carleton College—Loewen’s alma mater— generally did a semester or two of study abroad. Loewen said he wanted to conduct his study abroad in Mississippi—which was very much like a foreign country compared to

Midwestern states such as Illinois and Minnesota. On his initial trip to the state in early

1963 before the spring semester began, Loewen chose to wait for a connecting train in the colored waiting room at a Jackson train station, remembering it to be the “longest twenty minute wait in my life.” In other words, Loewen was an integrationist and advocate for

African Americans’ full citizenship. At Mississippi State, he audited history and government classes while learning about the views of his peers. Unlike most college campuses, Loewen noticed, Mississippi State was hardly an “intellectual environment”

27 Charles W. Eagles examines the culture of higher education in relation to Mississippi’s strict defense of segregation in The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 117-38, 160-89. See also, Frances Stewart to Zack Van Landingham, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Feb. 2, 1959; Van Landingham to Stewart, Feb. 12, 1959; and J.P. Coleman to Van Landingham, Feb. 7, 1959, 1-33-01-1-1-1, 1-33-02-1-1-1, and 1- 33-0-4-1-1-1 MSSC; and Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

28 A pair or recent studies negate Loewen’s claims about the supposedly homogenous racial environment in Decatur, Illinois. Recreational facilities were racially segregated and lynchings occurred. See, for example, Sundiata K Cha-Jua, “The Cry of the Negro Should Not Be Remember the Maine, But Remember the Hanging of Bush”: African American Responses to Lynching in Decatur,” in Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South, ed., Michael J. Pfeiffer, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); and Virginia W. Wolcott, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 38-42. 254

based on his own informal survey of the number of books students owned. He concluded that the lack of intellectualism at one of the state’s largest universities was a symptom of

Jim Crow. Regardless of the vast gulf in racial knowledge between Loewen and his white student peers in Mississippi, he remembered making friends easily among segregationist students who vehemently defended the state’s racial customs and laws.29

Much like Sallis had done earlier, in the spring of 1963 Loewen received an introduction to the historical ideology of Mississippi State’s history department faculty.

He audited Moore’s class, believing that much of the professor’s lecture material had indeed been accurate. “I don’t think he taught white supremacist history,” Loewen later remembered. Unlike Sallis, however, Loewen never met historian John K. Bettersworth, who became a university administrator in the late 1950s. The author of Confederate

Mississippi and state history textbooks, Loewen said he quickly lost respect for the

Mississippi State historian and dean. Bettersworth reviewed three books on

Reconstruction for the New York Times that affirmed the scholar’s accuracy on nineteenth century history. In other words, Bettersworth maintained two scholarly personas: one that acceded to historical consensus within the academic discipline and another that penned politically acceptable textbooks for the state’s schools. Because Bettersworth’s interpretations vacillated depending on readership, Loewen believed the Mississippi State historian obstructed historical knowledge, thus evading his professional duty.30

Later upon his return to Mississippi in the late 1960s, Loewen developed a deeper understanding of how myth functioned as history in the state, taking on an activist-like

29 James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013.

30 Ibid.

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commitment to correct false history while demanding social change.31 In 1967, he worked out of the Delta college town of Cleveland, Mississippi while conducting research for his doctoral dissertation that explored the life of a small but significant

Chinese population. His dissertation entitled “Between Black and White” demonstrates

Loewen’s training and commitment in social history by assigning agency to marginalized groups. His faculty position at Tougaloo College, however, revealed that the state’s public school history courses inculcated false historical ideas and long debunked interpretations to students. While teaching a course on modern American history, Loewen remembered an “oh no moment.”32 As he recounted in his book, Lies My Teacher Told

Me, Loewen’s history students that semester accepted many of the myths about

Reconstruction that Charles Sallis attacked at his 1971 St. Andrew’s speech. The school’s black students had learned a distorted history, Loewen concluded, repeating the racialized version of history prevalent in the South. Reconstruction, they had been taught, represented a failed government policy because freed slaves attained positions of power despite widespread illiteracy and being ill-prepared to hold elected office. The result was a corrupt and disastrous state government dominated by freed people.33 Teaching that class compelled Loewen to correct inaccurate history and how it was taught in

Mississippi. “I tried for eighteen months,” Loewen recalled, “to get history teachers to take this on.” Without making much headway with public secondary school history

31 Just a small sampling of Loewen’s books demonstrates his deep concern for getting history “right.” See especially Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York and other cities: Simon & Schuster, 1999) and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” About the “Lost Cause”(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010).

32 James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013.

33 Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 3-10.

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teachers, Loewen decided that a new state history textbook would confront the state’s deplorable history curriculum.34

Despite similarities in their scholarly training and employment at Jackson private colleges, Loewen and Sallis each had different methods for guarding historical knowledge. Sallis was soft-spoken and reserved while Loewen had a bombastic and confrontational style. “We were kind of the odd couple,” Sallis later remarked. His wife

Harrylyn characterized Loewen’s motivation as “some sort of missionary zeal for helping bring change to the South and to Mississippi.”35 Yet the two held in common membership in Mississippians for Public Education, advocating true integration of schools in addition to education reform. Sallis, moreover, formed part of a Jackson committee called the Alliance Against Racism that attempted to integrate civic institutions, youth clubs, and swimming pools.36

In early 1970, Loewen secured a grant from the Atlanta-based Southern Education

Foundation—an amalgamation of the Phelps Stokes, Southern Education, and the Julius

Rosenwald Funds—for the production of a state history text. A mutual friend, South

Carolinian Mary Frances Durfner, had written a paper about inaccurate historical content in textbooks widely used in southern states. Most southern states’ textbook commissions mandated that publishers provide “mint julep” editions of history texts, which remained

34 James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013.

35 Charles and Harrylyn Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

36 Alliance Against Racism, “Newsletter No. 2,” July 11, 1970, 1-115-0-18-1-1-1 through 1-115- 0-18-2-1-1, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

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free of integrationist content.37 Once Sallis read the paper, he met Loewen shortly thereafter and the two “hit it off.” As Sallis helped Loewen write a proposal for the textbook, the two scholars turned to some of their standout students for the research phase of the manuscript. Called the Mississippi History Project (MHP), the group of writers and researchers had specific areas of expertise that ranged from language and reading skills to sociological and historical methods of inquiry.38 Unlike most textbook authors, the MHP focused on uncovering primary sources because existing publications held biased interpretations that, as Sallis put it, derived from “an elitist historical perspective in which emphasis is placed on the upper classes.”39

By producing the book, securing its publication, and submitting it for adoption, the MHP directly challenged Mississippi’s role in textbook screening and approval, along with the state’s history curriculum and standards. Because of his intense commitment for social change, Loewen took the leadership role in getting the book manuscript published.40 His correspondence, moreover, documents a confrontation between scholars and the state’s history guardians on the textbook rating committees. Loewen wrote to a potential publisher that most of the texts sanctioned by Mississippi “distort[ed] the true role of blacks, Choctaws, and other groups.” He targeted the content of John K.

Bettersworth’s Mississippi: Yesterday and Today that emphasized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and left readers guessing about twentieth century developments. He

37 James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 20132; and Zimmerman, Whose America? 127.

38 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Sallis, “A Textbook Case,” 7.

39 Sallis, “A Textbook Case,” 8.

40Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

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informed a potential publisher that Bettersworth “almost totally ignored” events that occurred in the twentieth century, namely the civil rights movement.41

Various obstacles stood in the way before Mississippi: Conflict and Change could be published, including market pressures. Textbook publishing companies oftentimes acquiesced to the biases of state textbook boards.42 Publishers wanted manuscripts conducive to state approval before awarding a contract to writers, and in the South, most state adoption boards rejected books that challenged prevalent historical myths.43 In many state sanctioned history books, especially those adopted by the Mississippi State

Textbook Purchasing Board, the Civil War was referred to as the “War Between the

States.” Acceptable texts depicted slaves as contented servants, and most eschewed mention of recent racial tension.44 Loewen tried to convince publishing firms that their product would be a profit-making enterprise for the publisher (the MHP authors and researchers donated any royalties to scholarship funds). In his estimation, Loewen contended that Mississippi: Conflict and Change could corner between twenty to thirty percent of the ninth grade market and even more “if the Bettersworth book is withdrawn.”45 Thus, Loewen knew that his fundamentally different textbook would challenge the state’s sanction of historical standards and knowledge. Despite statements

41 James W. Loewen to Sidney Cooper/Houghton-Mifflin Publishers, May 11, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55, Loewen Papers.

42 Scott, “Loewen v. Turnipseed,” 7; and Zimmerman, Whose America?, 127.

43 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 307; Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 3-10.

44 Moreau, Schoolbook Nation, 315-18; and Davis, “The Three R’s,” 7-9.

45 Loewen to John A. Griffin, Oct. 18, 1971, Box1, Folder 57; and Loewen to Cooper, May 11, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55; and Loewen to Jerry Matthews/Steck-Vaughn Publishers, Oct. 27, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55, Loewen Papers.

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made by the editors hoping that their text would receive approval alongside Your

Mississippi, Loewen and Sallis expected Bettersworth’s history to be tossed to the dustbin.46

The MHP offered the manuscript for use in pilot programs that foreshadowed whites’ reactions to the radically new content. Loewen and Sallis believed that positive market tests of the manuscript would generate publishing company interest. In 1971, as

Mississippi’s largest school district in Jackson struggled with implementing rapid integration orders by the federal judiciary and mollifying whites’ negative reactions,

Loewen met with Superintendent Brandon Sparkman. They discussed the possibility of testing the manuscript in a few classes, but Sparkman and members of his staff expressed reservations that the book “was biased black’” and that Bettersworth’s Mississippi:

Yesterday and Today “was biased ‘white.’”47 Ten days later, Loewen commented to

Steck-Vaughn representative Jerry Matthews that “there will be ‘political’ problems in getting [Mississippi: Conflict and Change] adopted by the state” because it “gives a full[er] balanced treatment of Mississippi history than does Bettersworth’s book.”48

White Mississippians generally thought of any historical knowledge as unorthodox in terms of prevalent racial beliefs. Black history, for many white southerners, represented a challenge to official “white” history—or the triumphalist historical interpretations that

46 Loewen to John A. Griffin, Oct. 18, 1971, Box1, Folder 57; and Loewen to Cooper, May 11, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55; and Loewen to Jerry Matthews/Steck-Vaughn Publishers, Oct. 27, 1971, Box 1, Folder 55, Loewen Papers; James W. Loewen in discussion with the author, July 2013; and Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012.

47 James W. Loewen to John A. Griffin, Executive Director, Southern Education Foundation, Oct. 18, 1971, Box1, Folder 57, Loewen Papers.

48 Loewen to Jerry Matthews, Oct. 27, 1971, Box 1, Folder 57, Loewen Papers.

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buttressed white supremacy. By phrasing interpretations as either black or white history, many whites negated the legitimacy of the former; history became tainted once the term

“black” preceded it. Loewen understood the likely chance of the Mississippi State

Textbook Purchasing Board passing on the manuscript as an example of illegitimate history.49

Before attending to the “political problems” of textbook adoption, the MHP received “a stroke of luck” in getting the book published.50 Brown University student

Peter Bernstein, who studied for a semester at Tougaloo, shared the manuscript with his father Robert, a Random House executive, who read the work and concluded that it should be in print. He then coordinated with Random House subsidiary Pantheon to publish Mississippi: Conflict and Change as its first-ever and only textbook.51 The MHP entered its next phase—securing state approval and adoption. The two lead editor-authors remained optimistic, noting the book’s originality and the nature of the content. The

MHP received positive feedback from both teachers and students once they field-tested the book at Greenville’s St. Joseph Catholic School. According to an informal survey, thirty out of thirty-two St. Joseph students recommended the book over Bettersworth’s

Mississippi: Yesterday and Today. Unlike allegations that came later, the content of the

49 The loaded term “revisionist” could be used to describe the Loewen-Sallis reader, but for the purposes of this analysis of the operations of the textbook regulatory agency, most of its members likely equated revisionism with illegitimacy or “black” history.

50 James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013.

51 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Loewen to John Griffin, Southern Education Foundation, Aug. 8, 1972, Box 1, Folder 57, Loewen Papers.

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book failed to spawn violence or racial tension in the mixed-race classroom.52 Moreover, the authors later tested the manuscript among mostly black students at Jackson’s Bailey

Junior High School, where one of Sallis’s children attended. Loewen and Sallis, moreover, sent the manuscript to historian Lawrence Goodwyn at Duke University and

University of Virginia historian Paul Gaston, who offered the prophecy that the text’s

“perspective is so fresh that it would be so startling that it cannot escape a future of controversy.”53

Every six years when the Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board ordered appointed committees to screen history books for content, the regulatory agency became an essential guardian of historical knowledge. In 1974, Pantheon submitted the Loewen and Sallis book to the Board that, in accordance with state law, formed screening and rating committees that evaluated textbook content in each subject area taught in

Mississippi schools. Rating committees, appointed by the governor and the state superintendent of education, determined state adoptions or approval. By the law’s most recent amendment in 1966, the rating committees could sanction up to five total books in each subject area and local school districts would then decide which ones to use.54 Since

52 The other two students said they preferred both textbooks. Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Loewen to John Griffin, June 14, 1972, Box 1, Folder 57, Loewen Papers.

53 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Sallis, “A Textbook Case,” 8.

54 Before the 1966 amendment to the screening law, three titles received approval in each subject area. See, § 37-43-1 “Textbooks, Distribution, and Adoption,” Mississippi Code Annotated 1972, vol. 10A (Charlottesville, VA: State of Mississippi/Matthew Bender & Company, Inc., 2007), 41; § 37-43-21 Textbook rating committees,” Mississippi Code Annotated 1972, vol. 10A (Charlottesville, VA: State of Mississippi/Matthew Bender & Company, Inc., 2007), 47; In 1960, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1979, that amended § 37-43-21transferring appointment power from the state superintendent to the governor. See § 37-43-21 General Laws of Mississippi, 1960, Ch. 310. (Jackson, MS: Legislature of the State of Mississippi, 1961); and Affidavit of Jan Hillegas, “Legislative History of Mississippi Textbook Laws,” Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027 Box 2, Folder 2, NARA.

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the increase in the number of titles, each subject area received sanction of multiple texts except Mississippi history, a required course for ninth-graders, Mississippi government, another required class, and senior-level humanities, an elective. Since 1959, the state approved only the many versions of the same text by John K. Bettersworth for

Mississippi history; since 1964, Mississippi: Yesterday and Today held a monopoly.55 In

1971, Loewen and Sallis approached Bettersworth’s publisher, Steck-Vaughn, about their manuscript, but the Houston-based company declined.56 Their editors in turn approached

Bettersworth about a new edition of his textbook, and the Mississippi State administrator then made minimal changes before submitting the updated Your Mississippi for state approval.57 Similar to texts that Loewen considered “didactic chronologies,”

Bettersworth’s revised edition offered the orthodox view of Mississippi history that state bureaucrats on the textbook purchasing board tried to preserve.

While Sallis was optimistic that the textbook board would approve Mississippi:

Conflict and Change, Loewen expected rejection. He thought that the screening committee would recommend the book, but believed the seven-member purchasing board would overrule that decision.58 In October 1974, the screeners voted 5 to 2 to reject the book. The two members voting for approval, James Wash and Ben Burney, were African

55 Deposition of William A. Matthews, Oct. 26, 1976, transcript, Acc. 21870027, Box 3, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

56 Loewen to Jerry Matthews, Steck-Vaughn Publishers, Oct. 27, 1971, Box1, Folder 55, Loewen Papers.

57 Deposition of John K. Bettersworth, Aug. 4, 1977, transcript provided by Charles Sallis and in possession of the author; and Jason Berry, “Teaching Mississippi History,” New York Times, Oct. 10, 1975, 4M.

58 Loewen to John Griffin, Southern Education Foundation, Sept. 6, 1974, Box 1, Folder 57, Loewen Papers.

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American, while the five who rejected it were white. The same screening committee members voted unanimously to approve the new version of Bettersworth’s textbook.59

The State Textbook Purchasing Board, after receiving the rating committee’s report about the Loewen-Sallis book, issued a new policy, stipulating refusal of any title “including things which would create a disturbance in mixed classes, such as one book which had a full page about lynching and the Ku Klux Klan.”60 The statement, released to the press, carried the implication that the Loewen-Sallis reader promoted lynching and Klan ideology.61

Following the book’s rejection the authors sought an explanation of the Board’s decision, hoping positive reviews of the text might garner a reevaluation by the state.

Loewen informed Board executive secretary William A. Matthews “we are surprised to learn of this decision, particularly since our book has received support from educators and historians from across Mississippi.”62 A subsequent press release issued by the MHP stated that rejection of Conflict and Change denied “black children and white children a means of understanding their true heritage” since the textbook agency sanctioned “an

59 Melvyn Levanthal and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Original Complaint, Nov. 5, 1975, U.S. District Court for the Northern District, Greenville, MS, 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA; and Barbara Mueth, “Textbook Authors Sue,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Nov. 6, 1975, 3A.

60 Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, “Minutes,” Oct. 4, 1974, Box 3, Folder 9, Textbook Board Minutes, Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi, University, MS.

61 Barbara Mueth, “Few State Complaints,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 14, 1975, G1.

62 Loewen to W.A. Matthews, Nov. 8, 1974, Box 4, Folder 6, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

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older book originally published in 1959.”63 In support of the editors in addition to their cause, several Mississippians wrote letters to Matthews about the text’s rejection, including Millsaps President Edward Collins, and Catholic Archdiocese Education

Director Paul V. Canonici.64 The text, moreover, received positive reviews in the media, including a morning television program hosted by Judy Denson on Jackson’s WLBT called “Coffee with Judy.”65

Media accounts and letters to Matthews failed to generate a response, and the editors then paid a personal visit to the executive secretary. “He said that the book would have been adopted if we had submitted it under black history,” Sallis remembered, “and we said, ‘but it’s not a black history textbook.’” One photo of a lynching particularly troubled Matthews, who told the authors “if the teacher was a white female, there’d be real [long pause], in other words, well, she wouldn’t be able to handle that class,” Sallis recalled.66 By characterizing the text as a black history book, Matthews diverted attention away from the racial reasons for the screening committee and Board’s rejection.

Following that meeting in early 1975, the MHP issued another press release that contained stronger language compared to its first. “To be sure,” the release stated, “our

63 Mississippi History Project, “Press Release,” Nov. 17, 1974, Box 6, Folder “Loewen Correspondence, 1969-1975,” Ernst Borinski Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS. Hereafter referred to as EBC.

64 Edward M. Collins to William A. Matthews, Oct. 7, 1974, and Paul V. Canonici to Matthews, Nov. 14, 1974, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, NARA.

65 Ernst Borinski to James Loewen, Feb. 2, 1976, Box 6, Folder “Loewen Correspondence, 1969- 1975, EBC. Other positive press on the text includes: Bob Casey, “Tougaloo, Millsaps Profs Pen New History of Mississippi,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 20, 1974, F1; Victor Wilson, “Mississippi Whites, Blacks Write Textbook,” The Mobile Register, Sept. 18, 1974, B1; and Jason Berry, “Teaching Mississippi History,” New York Times, Oct. 10, 1975, 4M.

66 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

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book is not traditional in its approach, and we understand how this might raise some

difficulty with those whose own [historical] training was in the traditional school.”67 In other words, Loewen and Sallis recognized that the members of the screening committee and members of the Textbook Board learned another version of history, which represented the truth for them. Anything else was black history—dangerous, and illegitimate.

Matthews and the members of the screening committee repeatedly expressed reservations about the text’s coverage of lynching, revealing the intent to excise such material from the history curriculum. An accurate portrayal of lynching in a textbook alarmed many whites, including Matthews and the educators who voted to reject the text, fearing that student exposure to past racial violence might lead to present-day retaliation by a different generation of African Americans. Matthews and others stated that such controversial historical knowledge jeopardized student and teacher safety in the era of integrated schools. The decision and rationale for it at the very least implied that Loewen and Sallis had produced a dangerous book containing content that merited state efforts to guard students’ exposure to it. These ideas that blacks would react violently to the content of the text underscored racial attitudes prevalent among white Mississippians, who generally asserted the propensity for violence among African Americans while ignoring the oppression and violence blacks endured under whites’ control.

Governor William Waller likewise stonewalled the two scholars. Sallis remembered Waller as “very cordial…very open to our being there, but he said, ‘I really can’t do anything to help you.’ He said, ‘I cannot interfere with that textbook rating

67 Mississippi History Project, “Press Release,” Feb. 11, 1975, Box 6, Folder “Loewen Correspondence, 1969-1975,” EBC. 266

board.’ While we were there, he picked up the telephone and called [State Superintendent of Education] Garvin Johnston, and said, ‘Look there’s these two authors here talking about [the textbook board].’ He said, ‘see what you can do,’ well nothing came of it, of course.”68 Waller served as ex-officio head of the Board, and made appointments to screening committees during his term. Prior to the 1974 adoption and evaluations conducted by the eleven subject area screening committees, Waller issued the statement:

“You were not selected to speak for a tradition of twenty years ago,” inviting the educators to share in “a new era of progressivism.”69 The governor likely wanted to avoid controversy by refusing to intervene on the authors’ behalf. With recourse exhausted among state officials, Loewen sought legal advice after he and Sallis met with the entire

State Textbook Purchasing Board. After the editors’ brief presentation Matthews typed out a written response, stating his appreciation of the authors’ interest in the matter, but that the board had no authority to overrule the rating committee’s decision.70 Loewen then wrote to Stanford University education professor Robert D. Hess, requesting his services as an expert witness in a forthcoming lawsuit. “Last week,” Loewen began, “we were finally given a hearing by the [Textbook] Board, at which time it informed us that they would not give us a hearing!”71 Matthews’s unwillingness to give the authors a fair hearing represented the state government’s continued recalcitrance on racial issues. The

68 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012.

69 Mississippi History Project, “Press Release,” Feb. 11, 1975, Box 6, Folder “Loewen Correspondence, 1969-1975,” EBC.

70 W.A. Matthews to Sallis, Feb. 12, 1975, Acc. 21870027, Box 4, Folder 6 Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

71 Loewen to Robert D. Hess, School of Education, Stanford University, Feb. 19, 1975, Box 1, Folder 58, Loewen Papers.

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Board allowed citizen protest of adoptions made by its constituent screening committees, but authors could not question the reasons for rejecting books.72

Since the Textbook Board refused to hear the editors’ protests in the matter,

Loewen and Sallis sought legal counsel. By rejecting the text, the state denied the authors an audience since Mississippi was the only state to require a ninth-grade Mississippi history class. On November 5, 1975, Loewen and Sallis and twenty-two co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the state in federal court. The NAACP’s Legal Defense and

Educational Fund (LDF) and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law represented the plaintiffs. The co-plaintiffs included students, teachers, and administrators from Jefferson County Schools, an all-black public school district since immediate integration orders took effect, and the Archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of

Greenville. The complaint named John Turnipseed and six other members of the rating committee as defendants, in addition to Governor Waller, Superintendent Johnston, and

Matthews. By listing Greenville resident Turnipseed as lead defendant, attorney Melvyn

Levanthal steered the case toward the Northern District Federal Court and sympathetic

Judge Orma R. Smith, thereby avoiding Judge Harold Cox’s Southern District. In many previous cases, Cox had ruled in favor of maintaining segregation. Levanthal realized that his clients could hardly receive a fair trial in Cox’s courtroom.73

72 Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board, “Statement of the Procedure Governing Protests of Books Offered for Use in Mississippi Public Schools,” April 22, 1964, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, NARA.

73 Carol Caldwell, “Harold Cox: Still Racist After All These Years,” The American Lawyer 1 (1979): 29-33; and Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 167-71; and Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

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The suit charged that the state violated the plaintiffs First, Thirteenth, and

Fourteenth Amendment protections. The complaint claimed the Board’s rejection fulfilled a pattern by which it “adopted for use in all history courses taught in Mississippi, only those texts which minimize, ignore, or denigrate the role of blacks and other minorities in the history of the United States and of Mississippi.” It further charged that the state’s education system depicted “historical events in a manner sympathetic to principles of racial segregation and discrimination, black inferiority and ‘white supremacy.’” The complaint asserted that the Loewen-Sallis book “explores notions antithetical to ‘white supremacy’ and black inferiority.” It charged the defendants with knowingly violating the authors’ Fourteenth Amendment protections since the Textbook

Board offered no hearing and failed to document the rejection in writing. The suit, moreover, complained that because the state adopted books in six-year intervals, the

Board’s actions amounted to state censorship of educational materials based on “vague standards.” In short, the complaint said that the state’s rejection of Conflict and Change and the approval of the new Bettersworth text amounted to a “symbol of resistance to integration.”74

Inclusion of the Jefferson County School District underscored the goals sought by the plaintiffs and Levanthal—a committed Mississippi activist for racial justice.

Following the 1969 Alexander decision, ordering immediate transition to a unitary school system, many whites fled entire school districts, and Jefferson County provides an

74 Melvyn Levanthal and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Original Complaint, filed Nov. 5, 1975 U.S. District Court for the Northern District, Greenville, MS, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA; and Barbara Mueth, “Textbook Authors Sue,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Nov. 6, 1975, 3A.

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appropriate example. Its public schools became all-black following integration as whites fled for nearby all-white private schools in Natchez, or dropped out of school entirely.

Being a black majority district, Jefferson County proved conducive to such an extreme instance of white flight. Jefferson County schools, moreover, retained the unique distinction of being one of a few school districts led by black administrators. Levanthal and other proponents of integration had long sought true integration instead of a reformulation of the dual and segregated school system. He then sought out the Jefferson

County School Board in addition to parents of students and history teachers in the district as plaintiffs in the class action suit. The state’s approval of Your Mississippi and rejection of Conflict and Change directly affected these individuals since the school board held responsibility for “development of curricula and programs”—a right denied by the

Textbook Board’s decision. Perhaps Levanthal thought strategically, realizing that the attorneys representing the state had learned their lessons on race and history while growing up in nearby Wilkinson County.75

During the 1970s, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office operated under the domination of like-minded Old South apologists who had the task of rebutting the confrontation by the Mississippi History Project. In 1962, state’s attorney Peter Stockett, for example, joined the legal team that blocked James Meredith’s attempts to enroll at

Ole Miss.76 A decade later, Stockett mentored a new assistant attorney general, Ed Davis

Noble, Jr., who was fresh out of law school when the plaintiffs filed the case. Noble later

75 Melvyn Levanthal and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Original Complaint, filed Nov. 5, 1975, 3, U.S. District Court for the Northern District, Greenville, MS, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 169-75.

76 Eagles, The Price of Defiance, 240-42.

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explained how Attorney General A.F. Summer and his assistants, along with Southern

District Federal Judge Harold Cox, had previous connections and similar backgrounds that offered at the very least moral support for the state’s attorneys. “My daddy owned a plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi,” Noble began, “that is where I grew up…Peter Stockett had a cotton farm in Woodville, Mississippi that had been in their family since territorial days. And I remember Harold Cox…his family owned a plantation in Sunflower County.”77

The familial similarities and the connections the state’s attorneys had with

Mississippi’s plantation past provides a significant rationale for their defense of the

“traditional” history sanctioned by the textbook board. As descendants of planters,

Stockett and Noble hoped public school history courses would continue to offer romanticized and triumphalist interpretations of the planter elites’ contributions to the state’s development. Noble’s father even corresponded with then-governor Paul B.

Johnson, Jr. about appointing “loyal Mississippians with a sincere desire to perpetuate our way of life” as history guardians on the textbook screening committee.78 The 1970s context in which Mississippians tried to account for sudden changes in the racial order affected Noble and his fellow lawyers with the Attorney General’s office. He later bemoaned “‘ol Dixie being nailed to the proverbial cross,” especially after the end of segregated schools with the order resulting from Alexander.79 The legal strategy they

77 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012.

78 Ed Davis Noble, Sr. to Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr., Aug. 29, 1964, Box 80, Folder 13, JFP. The elder Noble recommended retired history teacher Cecil G. Smith of Fayette to the history textbook screening committee in 1964.

79 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012.

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developed for Loewen, therefore, required a federal judge sympathetic to commonplace assumptions about Mississippi and southern history. Cox’s courtroom policies affirmed the judge’s sympathy with a mythologized southern past. Noble remembered, for example, that Cox “had the most unusual system that I knew of for running his court,” which closed “on the 19th of January, the 30th of April and the 3rd of June [pauses] because that’s Robert E. Lee’s birthday, Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson

Davis’s birthday.”80 Cox, unlike Judge Smith, his Northern District counterpart, could care less if an appellate court reversed his decisions, Noble said.81

As state attorneys had done in other suits, the defense counsel attempted to delay the action. In any lawsuit, attorneys for both sides begin with discovery—the process of determining the facts involved by soliciting written responses to questions and oral testimony. As discovery continued, attorneys for both sides filed additional pleadings with the court; Stockett filed several intended to delay the trial. The first was for summary judgment, which asks the court to dismiss the case without a hearing or a trial.

Summary judgment is usually granted when an error has been made or in the event a lawsuit is obviously frivolous. Stockett’s motion unsuccessfully claimed that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had filed the suit in the wrong court system, suggesting that state court was the proper system to file a case against the state.82 Yet any first-year law student knew that actions involving a state government went to federal court. In another motion—one for change of venue—Stockett claimed that the defendants, except for

80 Ed Noble Davis, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012.

81 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012.

82 Peter Stocket, Mississippi Special Assistant Attorney General, “Motion For Summary Judgment,” Feb. 6, 1976, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 3, NARA.

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Turnipseed, lived closer to Jackson than Greenville. Judge Smith overruled both motions.83

Melvyn Levanthal developed a legal strategy to expose the shifting arguments for rejecting the textbook posited by the screening committee members. He conducted most of the pretrial work, including interrogatories, depositions, and motions. While the

Textbook Board claimed that the Loewen-Sallis reader failed to meet the criteria for adoption used by the Board, evaluation forms specifically noted the racial concerns listed by the screening committee members. One of the educators on the committee, Howard

Railes, wrote “I feel that this book is too racially oriented,” citing too many “isolated incidences of mis-treatment of slaves and blacks by whites.” He thought that such information meant that all whites treated blacks badly, which he found especially objectionable.84 McElhaney avoided mentioning race on her evaluation form, but instead stated that the book’s content failed “to present a true picture of the history of

Mississippi.” A veteran textbook screener since 1964, McElhaney’s savvy steered the state’s defense, citing a readability level unsuitable for ninth-grade students and the lack of a teacher’s manual.85 To counter this tactic, Levanthal worked closely with the scholarly community as well as Loewen and Sallis, who recommended the inclusion of twenty-nine expert witnesses—all of whom testified that Conflict and Change employed a writing style suitable for ninth-grade students. Yet deposition testimony provided by

83 Peter Stocket, Mississippi Special Assistant Attorney General, “Motion For Change of Venue,” Feb. 9, 1976, Loewen et al. v. Turnipseed Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 3, NARA.

84 Howard E. Railes, “Rating Committee Report: Mississippi: Conflict and Change,” Oct. 18, 1974, and Deposition of Howard E. Railes, Oct. 28, 1976, Clarksdale, MS, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, NARA.

85 Loewen v. Turnipseed, 488 F. Supp., 1147.

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each of the screening committee members demonstrated that racial concerns indeed played a role in the book’s rejection.86 Matthews built on McElhaney’s critique that the authors simply did not know their history. He signed an affidavit comparing the Loewen-

Sallis reader with Bettersworth’s Your Mississippi, counting how many of the state’s governors each text covered. He found that Conflict and Change was sorely deficient, thereby revealing that history for him was a simple chronicle of gubernatorial administrations.87

Each side’s legal strategy reveals the strength by which the state defended the

Textbook Board, its sanctioned history standards, and the plaintiffs’ ability to challenge it. Stockett’s team relied on time-tested approaches when the Attorney General’s office tried to counter anti-segregation cases. Motions for summary judgment and change of venue delayed the case and any ruling that might embarrass the state and the Board.

Stockett likely realized the futility of the strategy given that his side lost repeatedly in federal court or upon appeals. Stockett’s argument that the case belonged in, first, state court, and later in Judge Harold Cox’s Southern District federal court, seemed foolhardy and represented delay tactics. In contrast, the plaintiffs had to demonstrate that the

Textbook Board violated its own standards when it rejected Mississippi: Conflict and

Change and approved a newer version of the Bettersworth text.88 Thus, Levanthal wanted

86 Deposition of John Turnipseed, Oct. 28, 1976, Clarksdale, MS, transcript, 9-13; Deposition of Virginia McElhaney, Oct. 27, 1976, Hattiesburg, MS, transcript, 5-7, 28-30; Deposition of James Earl Wash, Oct. 26, 1976, Jackson, MS, transcript, 10, 21-24, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, NARA.

87 Affadavit of William A. Matthews, Oct. 27, 1977, Loewen v. Turnipseed, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, NARA.

88 Loewen to Robert D. Hess, Feb. 19, 1975, Box 1, Folder 58, Loewen Papers.

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to illuminate the Board’s flimsy justifications that it developed after the rating committee specifically noted racial fears as cause for the book’s rejection.

The case, moreover, involved key constitutional and civil rights questions.

Levanthal successfully exposed William A. Matthews’s reluctance to provide the authors with a hearing. Fourteenth Amendment protections provide for due process, which

Matthews violated by refusing to offer Loewen and Sallis recourse after the authors learned of the Board’s decision.89 Sallis contended that they asked for state approval so

Mississippi schools could use the textbook rather than as an attempt to ban the

Bettersworth book. He said he hoped to achieve state approval of Conflict and Change so school districts would have a choice of which textbook to offer its students.90 Without offering districts a choice, Levanthal argued, the state violated the plaintiffs’ First

Amendment protections. The last point in Levanthal’s legal strategy involved the additional co-plaintiffs from Jefferson County Schools. As an all-black school district, state rejection of the Loewen-Sallis book meant that it had to provide to its students the state approved text: Your Mississippi by John K. Bettersworth. On this point Levanthal reasoned that the state violated Jefferson County’s students and teachers of their

Thirteenth Amendment protections abolishing slavery. Reaching for effect, the civil rights activist and attorney argued that black students’ continual exposure to white supremacist history alienated them from the mainstream of Mississippi society and

89 Melvyn Levanthal, “Complaint for Injunctive Relief,” Nov. 5, 1975, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

90 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; Letters from Loewen to potential book publishers reveals how he hoped that Conflict and Change would eventually replace the antiquated Bettersworth text. 275

destined African Americans for a life of servitude.91 The inclusion of the Jefferson

County School District and its students, therefore, made the case about the continuance of racial injustice in Mississippi.

Despite an eleventh hour change in lead counsel, the plaintiffs pressed forward on their challenge to state sanctioned history. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter nominated

Levanthal to the Civil Rights Division of the Housing, Education, and Welfare (HEW) agency. Jackson civil rights attorney Frank R. Parker then took over as the plaintiffs’ chief counsel, which caused a further trial delay. He had to learn the facts of the case, read a mountain of paperwork, and counter a final motion by the defense.92 Sallis later recalled, however, that Parker’s legal mind had been “pure genius” and the new lead attorney proved to be an asset.93

Parker had the task of reading the extensive material compiled by Levanthal, which provided him with insurmountable evidence detrimental to the state’s case.

William A. Matthews’s deposition testimony, for example, clearly showed that the State

Textbook Purchasing Board adopted only one book for Mississippi history and

Mississippi government classes while it approved numerous titles for other subjects. In other words, white supremacist or public relations tracts held a monopoly in courses about Mississippi. Matthews’s statements, moreover, demonstrated that he lied about providing Loewen and Sallis a hearing as well as a written explanation for their book’s

91 Melvyn Levanthal, “Original Complaint,” Nov. 5, 1975, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 1, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

92 Frank R. Parker to Judge Orma R. Smith/Magistrate David Orlansky, April 18, 1978, Box 2, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA. The state filed a motion objecting to the case’s status as class action.

93 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

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rejection by the textbook board.94 John Turnipseed, who headed the Mississippi history rating committee for the state, testified his belief that the Bettersworth was more historically accurate than the Loewen-Sallis reader. Levanthal had conducted the deposition and his questions placed Turnipseed in a position that required him to reveal the racial reasons for the book’s rejection:

Levanthal: You think the Loewen text—I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. I don’t think I can do that, but I’m just trying to paraphrase you. You think the Loewen text gives you a black point of view while the Bettersworth text presents a neutral point of view; is that what you think?

Turnipseed: Well, the Loewen text just seems to dwell on the issue of, you know, the black, the white’s treatment of blacks; and it just makes it seem like the two were constantly in class [clash], and I feel like that in a classroom that this would cause, maybe, the same type of resentment in a classroom.95

Turnipseed continued to testify in the deposition that he believed the Bettersworth book, which his committee had approved, took “a more middle-of-the-road stance” that would have been a “more suitable book for classroom use.” Levanthal continued to ask

Turnipseed difficult questions about his ideas regarding Mississippi history:

Levanthal: What role has race, in your judgment, played in the history of Mississippi? A minor role or –

Turnipseed: Well, I know very definitely that both races have contributed to quite a lot.

94 Deposition of William A. Matthews, Oct 26, 1976, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

95 The original uses the word “class” which could have been an error caused by transcription. Deposition of John Turnipseed, Oct. 28, 1976, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2 Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA. 277

Levanthal: Yes, I’m talking about racial conflict or to what extent has race been a factor in the state’s history, in your judgment?

Turnipseed: It’s been, I guess you would consider it major; but I think there has been some issues in the past that we just—well, that need to be—well, I don’t know exactly how to put it.

Levanthal: Try.

Turnipseed: Well, I guess historically both blacks and whites, you know, probably made bad decisions and but and I feel like that now both races have got to now come to a meeting point and proceed from there.

Levanthal: And to accomplish that we are better off not talking about certain things, is that what you think, or not putting them in history books?

Turnipseed: Well, I feel like that this book by Loewen just tends to harp on those issues maybe too much and cause, maybe, tend to cause harsh feelings between black and white students.

Moments later, Levanthal finally succeeded in extracting the most detrimental statements from Turnipseed. He asked the rating committee chief if he rejected the

Loewen-Sallis reader based on racial considerations—that if Turnipseed believed that the book was biased toward the black perspective. Turnipseed responded “Well, yes, sir.”96

His statement negated the contention used by the state’s attorneys and the Board insisting that Loewen and Sallis employed a vocabulary too advanced for ninth-grade students.

Turnipseed’s testimony, moreover, revealed his insistence that unsavory aspects of the state’s past be omitted from a history course.

The damning statements made in the depositions and the defense’s inaction in countering the plaintiff’s reading and content experts demonstrate how the state

96 Ibid.

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proceeded toward trial without a coherent defense. Peter Stockett, however, remained

confident that he could prevail in court. Based on assistant attorney general Ed Davis

Noble’s memory of Stockett and of the case itself, the two attorneys believed that they

“could turn the plaintiffs’ witnesses.” The state relied on the method of cross-

examination that would discredit them and their testimony.97 To accomplish the goal,

Stockett tried to indict the credentials of the two authors, Loewen and Sallis. He tried an old massive resistance tactic designed to stymie confrontations by civil rights activists: depict them as communists. In his questions for Loewen, Stockett continued in a line of queries about the scholar’s use of the term “Marxist” in book reviews and journal articles.

Loewen’s superior intellect showed that Stockett’s questions ventured beyond the attorney’s expertise, especially regarding his confusion of academic and political

Marxism. In Loewen’s responses, he calmly assured Stockett that political Marxism advocated violent overthrow of oppressive socioeconomic institutions whereas the academic variety emphasized historical actors’ economic motivations. Moreover,

Stockett hoped to depict Loewen as an advocate for violence—especially in the classroom. He asked, “your value judgment would be that under certain circumstances, conflict is healthy?” Loewen responded, “Yes.” When pressed for a further explanation and if he did indeed advocate “conflict within a ninth grade classroom,” Loewen answered: “If for example it was intellectual conflict so that different persons or different groups in the classroom did research to bolster their position, had a structured debate…I think it could be an exciting learning experience. But as a general rule, it’s best not to polarize different racial groups in a classroom setting and have, say, whites debate black

97 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012. 279

students. You’d want to mix up opposing groups.” Stockett then changed his line of questioning.98

Stockett’s approach differed when deposing Charles Sallis that revealed his status as a state insider as opposed to Loewen’s as an outsider or even an agitator. The veteran state’s attorney used a much more polite tone in questioning the Millsaps professor, and none broached the topic of political or economic philosophies. Instead, Stockett challenged Sallis on historical content. He took particular issue with the characterization of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Conflict and Change. One question was “Why do you call Fort Pillow a massacre” in Mississippi: Conflict and Change.

“Well, it was a massacre…Forrest having ordered his men to kill the surrendering Union soldiers…and I explained this on the very page you are referring to in the text.”99

Interestingly, in an earlier deposition with John K. Bettersworth, Stockett repeatedly objected to a similar line of questions from Levanthal, which probed the Mississippi State professor’s use of the term “massacre” when referring only to Indian attacks on whites.100

Again, Stockett ventured outside of his comfort zone, especially since he had been brought up in the tradition of reverence for triumphalist historical interpretations, exalting figures like Forrest. Stockett’s questions to Sallis represented the state’s attorneys’ goals to guard historical knowledge.

The 1979 trial demonstrated the superior preparation of the plaintiffs as state’s attorneys bumbled their way through the witness list. All present at the trial vividly

98 Deposition of James W. Loewen, June 12, 1978, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

99 Deposition of Charles Sallis, Aug. 6, 1977, Box 2, Folder 2, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

100 Deposition of John K. Bettersworth, Aug. 4, 1977, provided by Charles Sallis and in the possession of the author. 280

recalled what Loewen termed “the Perry Mason moment,” referring to the time in the

1950s-era television show in which viewers knew that Raymond Burr’s Mason character would be victorious in court. The moment in the Loewen v. Turnipseed case came when lead defendant John Turnipseed took the stand. Repeating much of what he said during deposition testimony, he objected to the photograph of a lynching contained in the book.

He asked rhetorically “why should we dwell on it now?” At that point, Judge Orma R.

Smith took over the questioning of the witness, stating in response to Turnipseed’s question: “Well, it is a history book, isn’t it?” The courtroom audience erupted in laughter. Both Loewen and Sallis claimed that the moment meant Smith would decide in their favor.101

All of the other screening committee members took the stand as Parker tried to discredit their knowledge of history in addition to the screening committee’s “expert” status. Lea Anne Hester, who had recently completed her master’s degree in journalism, had been assigned to cover the trial for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. She said that testimony of Virginia McElhaney led to more laughter in the courtroom. “Frank Parker, asked her a series of questions about her current reading,” Hester recalled. “And here’s this old lady on the stand with her, probably her Sunday’s best on, and she said ‘the newspapers.’ Parker asked her which ones and she said something like the Clarion-

Ledger and her hometown weekly newspaper, whatever it was. And then he asked her what history books she’s read and…she couldn’t say anything. He pressed and pressed and finally she said ‘Redbook’ as in the old ladies’ magazine…the whole courtroom

101 Lea Anne Hester Brandon, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012; Charles and Harrylyn Sallis, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012; and James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013.

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busted out laughing.”102 Sallis also remembered that several of the rating committee members who had voted against approving his book failed to name any titles in the history genre that they had read. Evelyn Wilder, for example, taught first-grade at a segregationist academy, Jackson Preparatory School located in Rankin County near the state capitol. Parker specifically questioned Wilder about her ability to screen high school history books, and the educator failed to supply him with an answer other than reiterating her committee appointment by Governor John Bell Williams.103 Based on the way Parker handled the near two-week trial, Hester remembered that the state’s attorneys seemed beaten. “They slept-walked through it,” she said about Stockett’s abilities to direct and cross-examine his witnesses.104 Her characterization of the lead defense attorney’s abilities proved especially damning since the state’s main tactic involved discrediting the plaintiffs’ witnesses.

In April 1980, the state’s obstruction and delay finally ended with Judge Smith’s decision. After trial testimony concluded, both sides had to wait for the decision since the judge allowed sixty days for concluding arguments to be filed in writing.105 He expected his decision in November, but it actually took a little longer. Smith found that the state had violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment protections of the authors and the co- plaintiffs. He issued an order to the state, enjoining the textbook board to approve and adopt the Loewen-Sallis text. He rejected plaintiffs’ claims that the state’s action in

102 Lea Anne Hester Brandon, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

103 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, Feburary 2012.

104 Lea Anne Hester Brandon, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

105 Lea Anne Hester, “Textbook Bias Ruling Delayed,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Sept. 7 1979, 3A.

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failing to approve the textbook had violated anyone’s Thirteenth Amendment rights. He wrote that if he ordered the state to ban the Bettersworth texts, then such action would amount to the very treatment Loewen and Sallis had received by the state.106

Throughout the country and Mississippi legal scholars and academicians alike received the decision with great joy. Sallis wrote and later commented that he believed that “the writing of history” had been freed by Smith’s ruling.107 The state had the option to appeal, but feared that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would merely affirm Smith’s decision. Yet the rating committee members like Turnipseed remained obstinate to the end, calling the book “improper” for use in an integrated classroom.108

Several months after Judge Smith’s ruling, attorneys Parker and Stockett returned to court to decide how much money the state, the losing party in the matter, would have to pay to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and the Lawyers

Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The initial claim filed by the LDF itemized the plaintiffs’ expenses totaling a little more than $51,000. The new Attorney General Bill

Allain, who had succeeded Summer prior to the August 1979 trial, ordered Stockett to appeal this “loser pays” judgment. A few months later, the judge amended the amount and ordered the state to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys $48,000.109 Given the time involved

106 Loewen v. Turnipseed, 488 F. Supp. U.S. (1980); Lea Anne Hester, “Judge Rules State Was Biased in Rejecting Textbook, (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 3, 1980, 3A; and Scott, “Loewen v. Turnipseed,” 8.

107 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012; and Sallis, “A Textbook Case,” 10.

108 Hester, “Judge Rules,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, April 3, 1980, 3A.

109 Stockett to Judge Orma R. Smith/Magistrate David Orlansky, April 11, 1980, Acc. 21870027, Box 2, Folder 3, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA; and Peter Stockett, “Motion of Defendants to Pay Costs of Court,” filed on April 24, 1981, Box 2, Folder 3, Loewen v. Turnipseed, NARA.

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and the years that passed, the state’s total cost to the taxpayers in the losing effort probably amounted to more than $150,000—a large sum considering the overwhelming evidence in favor of Loewen, Sallis, and their co-plaintiffs.

In retrospect, Ed Davis Noble, Jr. commented on why the state expended resources and effort on a hackneyed legal strategy that eventually failed in a federal courtroom. He said “[A.F.] Summer’s policy was that you represent your client. In this case, our client was the textbook board and we did what they told us to do. That didn’t change when [Bill Allain] took over [as attorney general]. We believed we could turn their witnesses…and I read that textbook…it was wrong. Lynchings happened, but I know history and I know Mississippi history and what they wrote in that book…it was unfit for any classroom.”110 Noble’s statements about the operating policies of two

Attorneys General uncover one explanation in which the state’s attorneys provided faulty legal representation to their clients. Most lawyers would have convinced the state to settle out of court as a cost-saving measure that would uphold its reputation. Another explanation involves Noble’s ideas about history. He and Stockett, as well as the two attorneys general, knew supposedly irrefutable facts about the state’s history—and in this regard their views resembled those of the rating committee members who had rejected the book. Thus, the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Education believed it unwise for any attempt to examine Mississippi’s record on race relations and civil rights history. Mississippians oftentimes contested their history, but the state’s approach was that it was uncontestable.

110 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012. 284

Another explanation about why Mississippi went to court in a losing case involves the recent history of challenges to Jim Crow laws and school desegregation. A settlement could have been confidential thereby preventing the controversy from reaching the public through media accounts. The state, however, needed the federal courts to order the book’s adoption. In such an event, the attorney general’s office and the textbook regulatory agency could always say that the courts forced them to adopt the text. The head of the sociology department at Tougaloo College, Ernst Borinksi, commented that Mississippi’s public and elected officials needed the courts to do its dirty work. “Mississippi accepts new things,” he wrote to Joyce Ladner, “only after litigation. Once the courts have spoken, many people, who silently agree with us, will come out in the open. And so it will be with [Mississippi: Conflict and Change].”111 Ed Davis Noble, Jr. likewise offered an explanation that few of the state’s leaders wanted to break the news to the white public that suddenly their children had to attend school with blacks, and learn “integrated” history lessons.112

The outcome of the Loewen case serves as a fitting reminder of the destiny of

Mississippi: Conflict and Change. Few education reformers dared to challenge the state sanctioned history curriculum, and when they did, figures like Loewen and Sallis faced a coordinated defense that drew upon the very historical myths the authors tried to change.

Judge Orma R. Smith’s 1980 ruling enjoined the state to approve and adopt Mississippi:

Conflict and Change; the decision, however, stopped short of mandating the book’s use by the state’s 154 school districts. Few public schools incorporated the book into

111 Ernst Borinski to Joyce Ladner, Nov. 14, 1974, Box 6, Folder “Loewen Correspondence, 1969- 1975,” EBC.

112 Ed Davis Noble, Jr., in discussion with the author, March 2012. 285

Mississippi history classes and every private school except for Jackson’s St. Andrew’s

Episcopal eschewed offering the text to its students. By one count, only twenty school districts, most of which had a black majority student population, provided the book.113

Such evidence countered the statements James Wash made in his 1976 deposition testimony, arguing that the content of the text would reinforce conceptions of black inferiority. In 1983, the state government had the final decision regarding the book when the legislature amended the law, reassigning Mississippi history from the ninth grade curriculum to the seventh. Since Mississippi: Conflict and Change had been written for ninth grade classes, Charles Sallis considered the state’s action as an explicit gesture of payback to the authors for an embarrassing loss in federal court. At the beginning of the

1984 school year, school districts and teachers did not have any Mississippi history textbooks approved for seventh grade students.114

The Loewen case reveals the staying power of massive resistance and how a political ideology infected the textbook regulatory agency in addition to the educators serving on screening committees as well as the state’s attorneys. Loewen and Sallis favored curricular reform emphasizing improved history textbooks and instructional standards. State political leaders balked at the opportunity presented by Conflict and

Change. They could have approved the book, yet collective disappointment and upheaval brought about by social change and rapid integration caused Mississippi officials to resist altering the way history had been taught in public schools. To do so would mean that the state would have to face its past in a new light. Instead, the department of education and

113 Cliff Treyens, “20 Miss. School Districts to Use Textbook that was Subject of Lawsuit,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, July 24, 1981, 2B.

114 Charles Sallis, in discussion with the author, February 2012. 286

the attorneys general decided that the best course relied on concealing the state’s

deplorable past record of racial injustice and oppression.

The Loewen case highlighted both the state’s desire to whitewash the treatment of

African Americans, and the professional duty of the scholars to point out faulty history

and curriculum standards. The Loewen case indicated the lengths to which the

Department of Education would go in guarding historical knowledge. They believed, as

scholar David Lowenthal reported, disloyalty resulted from accurate historical lessons;

erasure of the past and selective forgetting enhanced fealty to the state.115 Many people already believed that integration made public schools unsafe, and state officials chafed at the prospect of a history curriculum that would enable students to evaluate how and why race played such an integral part of the state’s development. Educators then offered knee- jerk reactions to a comprehensive treatment of racial injustice contained in Conflict and

Change, arguing that the book was racially inflammatory. Clearly, public officials considered concealment and distortion of the historical record as the preferred course. By its recalcitrance, Mississippi’s officials in education and the Attorney General’s office muddled the process through which its citizens could come to terms with the damage done by decades of white supremacy, segregation, and massive resistance.

Similarly, Loewen and Sallis guarded historical knowledge, albeit from a vastly different perspective. They trained extensively in their respective discipline, thereby holding the status as professionals. The two editors believed it their professional duty to correct historical myths, inaccuracies, and reform state standards. They failed to realize, however, that their well-crafted confrontation in the form of an award-winning and

115 David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York and other cities: The Free Press, 1996), 148-58. 287

innovative textbook would fail to reach the state’s history guardians. In other words, the state had a vastly different conception of history—freed from its professional moorings based on logic, critical thinking, and empirical research. Academic history simply existed in another realm than did the state’s version, which more closely represented heritage.

The state’s conception of the past developed out of faith rather than inquiry. In light of such realizations, it makes sense that Loewen believed justice had failed despite the favorable outcome of the court case. He and Sallis merely talked past the other guardians of historical knowledge instead of reaching them.116

By the time Smith issued his final ruling the Loewen case, the state’s textbook controversies had come full circle. Beginning with Theodore G. Bilbo’s failed centralization efforts and continuing throughout the Cold War and the black freedom struggle, various Mississippians at the grassroots level attempted education reform with an emphasis on shaping the content of social studies textbooks. As historian William J.

Reese explains, the local schools across the nation remain as “multipurpose institutions” complete with the perceived ability to shape society because of their prominence within local communities. They are “forever in need of reform,” he writes. Yet this expectation that children’s lessons should be geared toward fixing manifold ills of society is unfair and impractical as the previous dissertation narrative argues. Shaping historical knowledge to inculcate in students a hardline conservative ideology, Mississippi’s reformers insisted, not only fixed schools but served as a bulwark to communism and egalitarianism. Yet their methods and mandates actually had the opposite effect by gutting social studies courses of the necessary ingredients of logical reasoning, critical

116 Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past, 105-26, 128; and James W. Loewen, in discussion with the author, July 2013. 288

thinking, and problem solving. Mississippi’s conservative activists with the DAR and

Farm Bureau believed that the best history instruction included chronicles and facts that remained fixed and static in their meanings. By the time Loewen and Sallis appeared on the scene, history teachers once hostile to the conservative ideals espoused by people like

Edna Alexander and Boswell Stevens had generally accepted what can best be called

“bad history.” Chronicling the gubernatorial, presidential, or monarchial regimes supplanted interpretation of facts and passed as history instruction while outdated textbook content reinforced these ideas. In other words, the earlier Cold War era reformers had amazing successes in shaping social studies curriculum despite certain defeats—which included Ross Barnett’s disinterest in textbooks once he received additional appointment power, and especially the court-ordered rapid integration of

Mississippi’s schools.

The reform agenda fashioned by Mississippi’s conservatives in civic-patriotic societies provided an oblique method for defending white supremacy and inculcating conservatism in the broader culture. While the Citizens’ Councils preferred chest- thumping shibboleths of austere racism, the civic club leaders’ execution was more insidious in that they channeled lofty political and philosophical ideas about the past and developed by political elites to students via textbooks—the basic instructional material used in Mississippi schools that in many ways determined the curriculum. In addition, patriotic society rhetoricians such as Alexander and Stevens used extensive political and business connections as well as their position in society as public historians to determine the features of what constituted the truer vision of the past. In the process, these reformers had amazing ability to shape the state’s impenetrable conservatism. In

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Mississippi today, conservative education reformers have lauded the tuition voucher programs, a remnant of 1960s-era tuition grants, charter schools, a throwback to state-run private schools, and unflinching local control of education—one of the central themes in this dissertation. Instead of the DAR and Farm Bureau—public organs that have since fallen out of favor—today’s education reformers have coalesced into broad based movements such as the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party and Mississippi First. Both organizations, while using different rhetoric for varying aims, hold conservative positions that originated during the state’s textbook controversy flashpoints. The TEA Party cloaks its racism in appeals to individual freedom and unflinching local control of education, demeaning the federal government, embodied by President Barack Obama, as power mad and totalitarian. Mississippi First is a group of highly educated reformers, conservative in their outlook, arguing that integrated education has failed the general public and the only recourse is to open schooling to the market in the form of charter schools. These publicly funded and corporate controlled institutions, the argument goes, will compel the state system to improve its academic quality. Through a near century of guarding historical knowledge, Mississippi’s education reformers have shaped the way several generations view education, condemning it as a boondoggle and at worst a ponzi scheme.117

117 The Mississippi TEA Party website outlines the archconservative positions, based on their “defense of the Constitution” very similar to the DAR’s activism of the 1950s and 1960s. See Mississippi TEA Party, database online < http://msteaparty.ning.com/ >; Tommy Christopher, “Morning Joe Previews Interracial Cheerios Super Bowl Ad Without Mentioning Twitter Controversy,” Jan. 30, 2014, accessed online, Jan. 30, 2014, < http://www.mediaite.com/tv/morning-joe-previews-interracial-cheerios-super- bowl-ad-without-mentioning-twitter-controversy/ >; Jimmie E. Gates, “Protests Targets Common Core,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 8, 2014, 1A; Mississippi First, “MSF Charter School Position,” Nov. 2010, accessed online, Jan. 21, 2014 < http://mississippifirst.org/charter-schools-resource-page#publications>; and Marquita Brown, “Charter school backers say new approach is needed,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, March 7, 2012, 1A.

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Perhaps another conclusion aptly drawn from this study of Mississippi’s textbook politics flashpoints concerns the cultural force of history and strong citizen opposition to intellectualism. The way that previous education reformers envisioned history instruction, shorn of critical thinking and empirical research, has affected the way Mississippians think about the purposes of schooling. In the current conception, education serves only a means to an end; schooling prepares one for work and educational institutions operate as grandiose employment services. With modern society dependent on the management of information and technological capability, social studies instruction has seemingly lost out to science, technology, and math. In other words, historical knowledge no longer requires an active defense because its importance in current society has diminished while STEM subjects now hold prominence.118 Once considered a bulwark to synonymous threats to

Mississippi’s way of life—communism and racial egalitarianism—today history is perhaps the least emphasized subject area in public schools because it has lost its function. The state, moreover, remains the buckle of the Bible belt, and whatever emphasis on the subject that remains, many interpret the past in a manner consistent with evangelical religiosity by repeating the divine inspiration and Christian founding myths related to America’s development. Culture wars have had little meaning in a place where few voices of opposition garner much respect.

118 Mississippi Gulf Coast Alliance, “Mississippi Answering STEM Education Call,” Jan. 6, 2012, accessed online Jan. 21, 2014, < http://www.mscoastalliance.com/news-publications/details/1/>.

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CHAPTER VII

EPILOGUE “LET THE BOTTOM GO HANG THEMSELVES”: WILLIAM F.

WINTER AND THE LEGACY OF EDUCATION REFORM IN MISSISSIPPI

By the 1970s, the fierce anticommunist, segregationist, and former leader of the

Mississippi Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, Edna Whitfield Alexander had abandoned textbook politics and instead had taken up a foreign cause. After several extended trips to Johannesburg and to South Africa’s consulate in Washington, D.C., she later informed Governor Cliff Finch that South Africa “is the one bastion between the

Russian East and the West.” In 1979, Finch appointed Alexander as Mississippi’s official ambassador. In this capacity she warned audiences at schools, universities, and the South

African diplomatic corps that “the advancement of Godless Communism which we daily see [is] applying its ring about the free world.” She believed both Mississippi and South

Africa had much to offer each other, promoting cultural exchange where citizens of both

“countries” could fully understand race relations in each rather than relying on biased media reports. Alexander and the South African government held in common a hatred for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), condemning it for a report on segregated education in that nation. “Attempts made,”

South Africa’s response began, “to conduct [racially] mixed schools proved that such as

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system was impracticable,” echoing the refrain made by white Mississippians during the state’s massive resistance phase.1

Coinciding with Alexander’s remarks about communism and segregation to South

African diplomats, in 1979 Lieutenant Governor William F. Winter toured Mississippi in advance of his third gubernatorial campaign, cajoling audiences to support his plan for fixing the state’s school system. Winter knew Alexander very well since the two education reformers, albeit with contrasting agendas, spent much of their adult lives just three miles apart from each other. His campaign speeches, however, demonstrated how differently the two Grenada County residents understood post Jim Crow race relations.

The former DAR regent continued to advocate racial segregation in education—by supporting a foreign nation’s system of oppression—while Winter tried to convince voters that if elected as governor, he could eliminate a century of racism from the operation of the state’s public school system. In other words, he believed he could erase the long term effects that Alexander’s activism had on public schooling.2 In a recent oral history interview, Winter admitted to being a practical segregationist, which he repudiated in the early 1970s, and then dedicated his career to correcting the inequities in the state’s schools. He remembered vividly Alexander’s activism during the Cold War, claiming “she was a rabble rouser…and she had influence. She could say the word

1 Edna Whitfield Alexander to Governor Cliff Finch, Feb. 2, 1979, and Donald A. Sole, South African General Consul, to Edna Whitfield Alexander, Feb. 5, 1979 and April 5, 1979; and Information Service of South Africa, “The United Nations and South Africa: Setting the Record Straight,” pamphlet (New York: Information Service of South Africa, 1970), 8-11, Box 1, Edna Whitfield Alexander Papers, Special Collections, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

2 Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 62-103.

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‘communism’ and suddenly people would listen. Edna Alexander was a problem.”3 As several historical accounts contend, Winter was Mississippi’s solution to reactionary and hardline conservatism.4

During Winter’s successful 1979 campaign, he promised Mississippi voters that he would fix education. After defeating Evelyn Gandy in the Democratic Primary, he outpaced Republican Gil Carmichael. Historian Charles C. Bolton explains that the two gubernatorial candidates held similar views about how to move the state beyond its segregationist past. Winter, once a devotee of white supremacy, proved victorious due in part to his ability to court black voters—who became a significant political force following the end of Jim Crow. Unlike earlier campaigns, both Winter and Carmichael sought the support of civil rights organizations. Yet by this time most black voters had fully sided with the Democratic Party that doomed Carmichael’s chances for victory.

With 61 percent of the vote, and many from African Americans, Winter finally claimed the office of chief executive. He brought a remarkably interracial vision to the governor’s office underscored by his attempt to reform education. A recalcitrant and conservative legislature, however, tried to block Winter’s effort.5

3 William F. Winter, in discussion with the author, February 2012.

4 The most recent account of Winter’s education reform agenda can be found in Charles C. Bolton’s new biography, William F. Winter and the New Mississippi, 160-231. The epilogue of Bolton’s earlier monograph on integration in Mississippi serves as the starting point for his biographical sketch of Winter. See, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 217-21; A former Winter administration staff member later received a doctoral degree in history and wrote a celebratory account of the governor’s education reform effort. See, Andrew P. Mullins, Building Consensus: A History of the Passage of the Mississippi Education Reform Act of 1982 (Waynesboro, MS: Mississippi Humanities Council, 1992); and Rebecca Miller Davis, “The Three R’s—Reading, ‘Riting, and Race: The Evolution of Race in Mississippi’s History Textbooks, 1900-1995,” Journal of Mississippi History (Spring 2011): 40-45

5 Bolton, William F. Winter, 186-89.

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For two years, Winter pushed education reform on opponents in the statehouse.

By the time of the 1982 special legislative, it had become clear that Mississippi schools had emerged from the era of segregation as the worst education system in America.

Graduating students scored lower on the American College Testing (ACT) exam than any other students nationwide. Yet the tragedy was that many never reached that stage; the dropout rate at 39 percent was the highest in the country, disproportionately affecting pupils from low income families. Teacher pay lagged behind other former Confederate states that meant those trained in Mississippi’s schools of education oftentimes fled for the prospect of higher earnings elsewhere. Public kindergarten programs existed in every other state in the union except Mississippi. In terms of educational funding, the state received the highest in federal aid to education, accounting for 25 cents of every dollar spent on public schools. Commentators blamed lingering racism, arguing that “state leaders have let the system decline because they don’t want black children to get good educations.” Others blamed the “segregation academies” for diverting lawmakers’ attention from the public schools since the private system served business and political elites. Dennis Mitchell, reporting for Edna Alexander’s hometown newspaper, the

Grenada Sentinel-Star, claimed that “fear of integrated education keeps Mississippians divided and inhibits the development of a quality education system.”6A teacher from

Gulfport had a more damning comment, calling “Mississippi…a plantation society. We

6 Dennis Mitchell, “Racism Holds Back Education,” (Grenada) Sentinel-Star, Dec. 6, 1982, 1.

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take the cream of the crop and give them anything they want. Let the bottom go hang themselves.”7

Up until that special session in December of 1982, Winter and his energetic staff fashioned several reform bills that all died in either the Senate or House due in part to the difficulty in finding money for the governor’s proposals. Essentially whites’ support of public schools deteriorated after rapid integration in the previous decade. The biggest roadblock to securing legislative approval of Winter’s reform package involved publicly supported kindergartens. White conservatives opposed their seventeen black colleagues and a host of Winter supporters in the legislature. The opposition considered public kindergarten programs well outside the scope of state government, calling it a violation of familial privacy, freedom of religion, and “a communistic approach to education.”8 Their concerns echoed the far-right conservative principles from the era of massive resistance, similar to the DAR’s denunciation of guidance counseling provisions of the NDEA and to federal mandates forbidding religious instruction in public schools. Since lawmakers appeared intractable, Winter rallied public opinion.

Lea Anne Hester, a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger, covered one of nine public forums with the first held in Oxford. She remembered the overwhelming turnout by the general public, noticing that many of the automobile license tags in the high school parking lot came from places as far south as George and Pike Counties. She estimated

7 Nancy Weaver and Fred Anklam, Jr. “Mississippi Schools: Hard Lessons,” (Jackson) Clarion- Ledger, Nov. 6, 1982, 1A; and Mullins, Building Consensus, ??; and Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, Mississippi Politics: The Struggle for Power, 1976-2006 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi), 129- 49.

8 Charles C. Bolton, William F. Winter, 215; and Cathy Hayden, “Debate Over Kindergarten Still Rages,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Dec. 6, 1992, 1A:19A.

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some twenty-five hundred people descended upon the school to hear the governor’s proposals.9 Later that fall, around twenty-seven hundred teachers, parents, and interest groups attended a rally a Siwell Junior High in Jackson. The Winter administration repeated these spectacles throughout the state that summer and fall. The outpouring of public support for Winter’s proposals caught the attention of some of the state’s lawmakers, including one who said “legislators are seeing that there is a great deal of concern and interest in education.”10

The connections between the state’s education system and economic development in Mississippi included the speaking points Winter emphasized at these widely publicized rallies. He had developed enthusiasm for educational issues as the state treasurer and later as Lieutenant Governor. During this time, his wife Elise had become an active member in

Mississippians for Public Education, which had long supported restructuring the state’s entire system. The MPE advocated a new state board of education, higher teacher pay, compulsory attendance requirements, and kindergarten programs. On two counts the

MPE scored victories in 1977 with a renewed mandatory attendance law, however, it contained few enforcement provisions; by 1982, Winter had secured a constitutional amendment reformulating the state board of education. The new law created a state board of education staffed by nine appointments from the speaker of the house, lieutenant

9 Lea Anne Hester Brandon, in discussion with the author, Feb. 2012.

10 Peggy Austin, “2,700 Turn out in Jackson to Support Education Plan,” (Jackson) Clarion- Ledger, Sept. 22, 1982, 1B; and James Saggus, “State legislators Still Predict Tough Education Bill Battle,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 24, 1982, 1A.

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governor, and governor. It was the first victory on the education front for the Winter

administration.11

Called by contemporary commentators and other observers since as the

“Christmas Miracle,” Winter secured passage of an omnibus education reform bill in

December 1982. The law created public kindergartens to take effect in three years’ time;

provided an attendance enforcement provision; and included a large teacher pay raise.

One of the provisions of the bill with lasting staying power was a teacher accountability

requirement and the new funding formula. It allowed for the highest tax hike in state

history—$110 million—mandating increases in the sales tax, specifically targeting

alcohol, tobacco, and soft drinks. Teachers, under the act, had to demonstrate proficiency,

and the law set up extensive standardized testing of students to gauge the educators’

performance.12

While the law finalized the educational restructuring of the public school system,

it avoided curricular reform. Disputes over creationism explain legislators’ reluctance.

During the regular session in the spring of 1982, Senator Emerson Stringer introduced a

bill to require instruction in creationism, and it passed by an overwhelming 48 to 4 vote.

In the House, however, education committee head Robert Clark balked at approving a

similar version since he believed curriculum fell outside the scope of the legislature’s

power and he orchestrated its death. As Bolton explained, Winter agreed with Clark,

believing that a law mandating creationism would create so much controversy that it

11 Bolton, William F. Winter, 118, 215-21.

12 Bolton, William F. Winter, 221-25; Fred Anklam and Cliff Treyens, “Historic Education Bill Passes,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger Dec. 21, 1982, 1A; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 218; Davis, “The Three R’s,” 40-45; and Mullins, Building Consensus,” 92-96, 101-02, 180-84.

298

would only “distract lawmakers from more substantive education matters.” By the

December extraordinary session, therefore, curricular issues took a backseat to the overall

restructuring of the state’s education system—taking precedence over what and how

students learned.13 Lawmakers had already dismantled the Mississippi State Textbook

Purchasing Board that for forty years set standards in every subject through its adoption of schoolbooks.

Despite calls and rallies for education reform, textbooks and malfeasance reminiscent of Theodore G. Bilbo’s accusations about an elusive “school-book trust” made front-page news. The textbook board came under fire from publishing company agents and the legislative investigative body called the Performance Evaluation and

Expenditure Review (PEER) Committee, exposing instances of unethical and criminal conduct. The PEER Committee initiated its investigations as news of the Loewen trial reached the general public. In 1978, as Winter began crafting his strategy for yet another gubernatorial campaign, PEER investigators discovered that Superintendent of Education

Garvin H. Johnston and Board executive secretary William A. Matthews accepted kickbacks from publishing companies to adopt and purchase books at costs higher than those in neighboring Tennessee and Alabama. In the wake of the fallout, Johnston stepped down and Charles A. Holladay received appointment as the new superintendent.

In February 1982, however, evidence came to light resulting in Holladay’s and

Matthews’s indictments on charges of selling surplus schoolbooks to supply companies and pocketing the money. Matthews resigned on Winter’s orders, and along with

13 Bolton, William F. Winter, 218; and Robert Ourian, “Winter Expected to Call Session on Textbook Board,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, June 9, 1983, 1B.

299

Holladay, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor criminal charges. Attorney General Bill

Allain ordered the superintendent to pay $13,000 in restitution while Matthews received a

$2,000 bill with 8 percent interest for his involvement. With this news the state legislature took decisive action, abolishing the Board and replacing it with the Textbook

Procurement Commission. Yet Mississippi’s elected officials, who had long known of the wasteful and duplicitous operations of the Board, refused to abolish it after several recommendations. They instead acted decisively only when criminal action came to light.

Following passage of the Education Reform Act, the legislature refused to renew the commission’s charter. After eighty years of state regulation and adoption of textbooks, by

1988 Mississippi finally returned to allowing for local control of the process.14

Throughout the 1980s, Mississippians confronted the state about the need for new textbooks for school children. In 1983, for example, Winter called a special legislative session so lawmakers could work out a compromise on textbook appropriations. Setting aside $5.4 million for the purchase of a new round of texts, the legislature refused to extend the life of the Procurement Commission. Without the Commission, the state could not purchase new books and thus Mississippi’s patrons continued to receive outdated and tattered schoolbooks. A citizen group formed by Robert Crook called Together for

14 Peer Committee Report, Dec. 11, 1980 and Peer Committee Report, Jan. 8, 1981, accessed online Jan. 21, 2014 < http://www.peer.state.ms.us/reports/rpt467vI.pdf>; Fred Anklam, Jr., “State Officials Profited From Selling Sample Textbooks—PEER Report,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 14, 1981, 1A; Don Hoffman, “Recover Textbook Funds, Group Urges,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 15, 1981, 7B; Fred Anklam, Jr., “6 Officials Ordered to Repay Money to State,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 28, 1981, 1A; Don Hoffman, “Winter: Matthews Ouster Job-Related,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 6, 1981, 1A; Don Hoffman, “Board Takes Matthews’ Resignation,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 11, 1981, 4A; Lea Anne Hester, “State Education Chief Pleads No Contest,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 12, 1982, 1A; Fred Anklam, Jr. “Ex-textbook Board Chief Fined $2,000 for not Reporting Book Sale Income,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Jan. 20, 1982, 1A; and Robert Ourian, “Winter Expected to Call Session on Textbook Board,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, June 9, 1983, 1B.

300

Excellence in Texts (TEXT) lobbied the state for appropriating funds to purchase and

provide students with new textbooks. At the time, Mississippi only spent about $8 per

text and Crook’s citizens’ organization asked for a $21 appropriation per book. Despite

education reform, Mississippi still experienced textbook politics. A reporter sympathetic

to TEXT wrote a satirical article explaining the nature of the state’s convoluted laws and

procedures regarding schoolbooks. Andy Kanengiser led off his 1986 editorial with a

hypothetical scenario from the official Soviet news organization, TASS. It began: “And

now for the news in the so-called Free World…Capitalist America, which falsely accuses

us of running a high-powered propaganda machine and distorting our proud history, is

using ragged textbooks in its schools to brainwash the children of the poor state of

Mississippi.”15

Two years earlier Kanengiser had interviewed John K. Bettersworth about racial

issues and textbook content. The aging Mississippi State administrator noted that his

books indeed contained coded racism because “the times determined what textbooks

would be published.” Jackson State University professor Leslie McLemore also chimed

in, noting that in Bettersworth’s era African Americans “were either completely excluded

or denigrated” in history books. In response to the outcome of the Loewen case, historians

John Ray Skates and David Sansing decided that they would split the difference between

Bettersworth’s and Loewen’s readers. The two scholars produced Mississippi History

Through Four Centuries. Kanengiser quoted Sansing’s admission that the new book

“does not tackle civil rights at length.” While the Loewen-Sallis text found its way into

15 Andy Kanengiser, “Outdated Textbooks Give State’s Schools Bad Image,” (Jackson) Clarion- Ledger, Nov. 23, 1986, 12A.

301

the classrooms of only thirty-three districts—all of which were black majority schools—

Mississippi’s students continued to receive substandard state history texts in addition to

American history books that were twenty-five to thirty years old. Kanengiser closed his article, noting “older history books told what they think happened rather than what actually happened.”16 If his final comment on the matter is any indication, even as late as the mid-1980s, Mississippians’ conception of the history remained unchanging, and historical investigation meant accurately apprehending this static past.

Mississippi entered the twenty-first century with a host of new as well as lingering educational issues. The legalization of casino gaming, sold as a method for funding education, has failed to live up to its expectations. The state is required by law to provide full funding, but the legislature has repeatedly been unable to abide by the statute.17 As far as instructional materials are concerned, much like the rest of the nation, school patrons in the Magnolia State rely on computers in addition to textbooks. Adopted at the local level, oftentimes the school districts pass on purchasing new texts in favor of funding other aspects of schooling, especially athletic programs.18 Between 1980 and

2008, few statewide citizen organizations have called for education reform, although political leaders continue to hype education as the means to economic development and moving Mississippi forward. With the implementation of the federal No Child Left

16 Andy Kanengiser, “Textbooks Now Giving Blacks Fairer shake,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, July 1, 1984, 1B.

17 Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald, “State’s Future Depends on MAEP Funding,” (Jackson) Clarion- Ledger, Jan. 31, 2014, accessed on-line, Feb. 1, 2014, < http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20140201/COL04/302010008/State-s-future-depends-MAEP- funding>.

18 Jackie Mader, “Back to School, But Without Books and Basics in Mississippi,” Aug. 25, 2013, Hechinger Report, accessed on-line, Aug. 30, 2013, < http://hechingerreport.org/content/back-to-school- but-without-books-and-basics-in-mississippi_12917/>. 302

Behind Act and the Department of Education’s Common Core standards, more citizens

began voicing frustration, especially following the election of President Barack Obama.

In 2010, Mississippians organized under the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party

movement expressed indignation at federal prerogatives in the state’s educational system.

The conservative citizens’ group gained the attention of Governor Phil Bryant. In 2013,

three years following the state’s acceptance of Common Core standards, the chief

executive denounced the federal government for its attempt to control Mississippi’s

schools. With Bryant’s comments, a legislature dominated by Republican Party members

expressed interest in setting up roadblocks to the full implementation of Common Core.

Yet a high-ranking Republican, Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves, broke with the

conservatives and stymied his colleagues’ efforts to block the federal initiative. Thus, the

legislature began once again to intervene in matters related to curriculum, and Reeves’s

split from the core of the Mississippi Republican Party indicates the differences in

strategy and vision for present day conservative leaders. Lost in all of the political

gamesmanship and conservatives’ insistence on state control and states’ rights,

Mississippi’s schoolchildren get lost in the shuffle.19

In Mississippi, where education remains a hot political topic and statistical

indicators demonstrate a failing system, the twenty-first century is much like the previous

one. There is plenty of conflict, but very little change.

19 Brian Eason, “Common Core Poll Lacks Common Sense,” (Jackson) Clarion-Ledger, Feb. 1, 2014, accessed on-line, Feb. 1, 2014 < http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20140202/NEWS010504/302020063/Brian-Eason-s-Buzz-Common- Core-poll-lacks-common-sense>; and Associated Press, “AP analysis: Gov. Phil Bryant’s Executive Order Eases Common Core Fight,” Gulflive, Dec. 13, 2013, accessed on-line, Jan 21, 2014 < http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/12/ap_analysis_gov_phil_bryants_e.html>.

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