The Struggle to Build White Democracy at the University of Mississippi, 1890-1948

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi) University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 1-1-2016 The design of the southern future: The struggle to build white democracy at the University of Mississippi, 1890-1948 THOMAS JOHN CAREY University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation CAREY, THOMAS JOHN, "The design of the southern future: The struggle to build white democracy at the University of Mississippi, 1890-1948" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1420. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1420 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE DESIGN OF THE SOUTHERN FUTURE: THE STRUGGLE TO BUILD WHITE DEMOCRACY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI, 1890-1948 A Dissertation Presented in partial fulfillment of requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Department of History The University of Mississippi by THOMAS JOHN CAREY May 2016 Copyright Thomas John Carey 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how ideas about the future and the past shaped the meaning and role of Mississippi’s flagship state university during the Jim Crow period. “The Design of the Southern Future” is a story of contingency and contestation, of struggles over expansion and democratization, and of the burdens of founding myths and myths of the founding. It reveals the interior dynamics that shaped the University of Mississippi’s development from the birth of Jim Crow until just before the desegregation crises of the 1950s and 1960s. These internal processes allowed the institution to overcome problems of exclusivity and class tension, but they also tied the future and identity of the university closely to the cause of white supremacy and segregation. By examining the building of the University of Mississippi as an element of an ambitious program to combine the promise of a white majoritarian future with the permanent exclusion of African Americans, “The Design of the Southern Future” treats the erection of a segregationist institution as a project in equipping Jim Crow for the long-haul by expanding and modernizing the services and possibilities that a dynamic form of white supremacy seemed to offer. By the 1940s, the University of Mississippi had succeeded in mending its internal divisions and harnessing the power and resources of the federal government to build itself into a laboratory for white democracy. Thus when African Americans challenged segregation at the university in the 1950s and 1960s, defenders of Ole Miss were not merely protecting a citadel of Jim Crow; they were fighting to promote future visions of white supremacy. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Jarod Roll for all that he has done to help me through this dissertation. He has always been encouraging, constructive, and helpful. Without the guidance and direction he gave me, I would not have completed this project. Charles Reagan Wilson and Ted Ownby have been reading my work and offering insightful suggestions since my first semesters as a graduate student. Every conversation with each of these men is as enjoyable as it is interesting. I thank them both. Amy Wells Dolan was as helpful when she read my completed dissertation as she was when she pointed me in useful directions during the planning of the project. I thank her as well. Joe Ward has helped me through graduate school since the first day I arrived in Oxford, and I thank him for all of the support he has given me over the years. The classes and conversations I had with Oliver Dinius, Jeff Watt, Sheila Skemp, and Nancy Bercaw informed my thinking and writing. I am grateful to each of them. As a graduate student at Ole Miss and as a citizen of Oxford, I have benefitted from membership in a community of kind and thoughtful people. I am particularly thankful for the friendships I have shared with Will Hustwit, Benji Purvis, and Ryan Fletcher. Above all, I thank my family. My parents have supported me in all imaginable ways; my sister is my closest friend. The errors are shortcomings within this dissertation are my own; whatever is good and thoughtful about it is a product of all the people who helped me to write it. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………………...ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………………….. iii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1- THE INVENTION OF OLE MISS ……………………………………………...15 CHAPTER 2- FRANKLIN L. RILEY AND THE PRODUCTION AND USES OF MISSISSIPPI’S HISTORY……………………………………………………………………...45 CHAPTER 3- “THE MUD BENEATH THE WHITEWASH”: THE FRATERNITY TROUBLES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI……………………………………….68 CHAPTER 4- BILBO, THE MISSISSIPPI IDEA, AND THE FUTURE OF OLE MISS, 1927- 1932………………………………………………………………………………………………93 CHAPTER 5- OLE MISS’S NEW DEAL: BUILDING WHITE DEMOCRACY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI, 1933-1941………………………………………………….142 CHAPTER 6- “[T]HE OPPOSITE OF CIVIL RIGHTS”: OLE MISS AND THE SOUTHERN FUTURE………………………………………………………………………………………..192 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………238 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………243 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………………...263 iv INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines how ideas about the future and the past shaped the meaning and role of Mississippi‘s flagship state university during the Jim Crow period. ―The Design of the Southern Future‖ is a story of contingency and contestation, of struggles over expansion and democratization, and of the burdens of founding myths and myths of the founding. It reveals the interior dynamics that shaped the University of Mississippi‘s development from the birth of Jim Crow until just before the desegregation crises of the 1950s and 1960s. These internal processes allowed the institution to overcome problems of exclusivity and class tension, but they also tied the future and identity of the university closely to the cause of white supremacy and segregation. By examining the building of the University of Mississippi as an element of an ambitious program to combine the promise of a white majoritarian future with the permanent exclusion of African Americans, ―The Design of the Southern Future‖ treats the erection of a segregationist institution as a project in equipping Jim Crow for the long-haul by expanding and modernizing the services and possibilities that a dynamic form of white supremacy seemed to offer. By the 1940s, the University of Mississippi had succeeded in mending its internal divisions and harnessing the power and resources of the federal government to build itself into a laboratory for white democracy. Thus when African Americans challenged segregation at the university in the 1950s and 1960s, defenders of Ole Miss were not merely protecting a citadel of Jim Crow; they were fighting to 1 promote future visions of white supremacy. From the 1890s through the mid-1920s, the university invented an institutional identity around the imagery of the Old South and attempted to use scientific methods of knowledge-production to interpret the present through the study of the past. These projects occurred in the midst of a convulsive political revolution within the state‘s Democratic Party and against the backdrop of several rounds of internal skirmishes over elitism and snobbishness at the university. By the end of the 1920s, educational reformers had articulated a forceful critique of the university and designed a greater, modern replacement for it. Though administrators and alumni succeeded in preserving ―Ole Miss‖ and keeping the state university in Oxford, the New Deal years saw the institution harness federal money for ambitious projects to build up the university physically and to open its doors to a larger number of white Mississippians. By the mid-1930s, Mississippians had made significant progress in turning their state university into an agent of outreach and democratization. During and after World War II, as the state‘s political culture reacted defensively to developments in Washington and within the national Democratic Party, voices of racial moderation at the university and within the state affirmed their loyalty to Jim Crow and to Mississippi‘s leadership. By the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948 and the university‘s centennial, the state‘s founding myth of white supremacy and the militant opposition of civil rights had become synonymous with the name Ole Miss. The project of building a more expansive, a more democratic, and a greater University of Mississippi made the institution‘s future something that challengers threatened and something that defenders deemed worth protecting. At first glance, the University of Mississippi seems an unlikely place to find 2 internal tensions or to uncover the outlines of a decades-long project of development. Indeed, because of the enthusiasm with which the institution supported the Confederacy and the deadly rioting by which it resisted desegregation, the university has seemed to be a place of recurring explosions of reaction, not the site of sustained change over time. A set of examples, one taken from the university‘s own yearbook, the others taken from a collection of interested observers, suggests something of the temptation to write history— and

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