Kissing Honest Politics Goodbye, Again?

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 1-3

George Wallace’s election with significant black support in Alabama in 1982 reaffirmed that politics makes strange bedfellows in the South. This November, Bill Allain’s close election in the Mississippi governor’s race suggests in 1983 that bedfellows make strange Southern politics.

A state attorney general who has opposed Mississippi’s big utilities and the Delta leaders of the state legislature, Allain almost lost his bid for governor when, three weeks prior to the general election, supporters of his Republic opponent produced affidavits from three black males alleging that Allain had sought their services as male prostitutes. In the middle of October, before the public allegations, Allain was leading in the polls by a margin of more than thirty percentage points. After the disclosures, he won by a margin of less than ten percent of the vote.

While the truth of the allegations remains undecided, the episode is the clearest instance of a new trend in the dirty politics of guilt by association. In the South’s politics, the most durable form of such trickery is, of course, race baiting. For generations, any white candidate associated with blacks or black causes earned instant discredit with white voters.

As late as the 1960s and ’70s, key segregationists owed their political careers to race baiting. One of the most effective recent examples came in 1970 in Alabama when George Wallace’s supporters used a photograph to taint his opponent, Governor Albert Brewer. After the primary election, Wallace found himself behind Brewer in a run off. Faced with the need to get out as many white voters as possible, the supporters of Wallace went to work. At almost every crossroads store in south Alabama, leaflets appeared showing Brewer’s daughter holding hands and smiling at a young black teenage boy.

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While Brewer agonized publicly about the “vicious attacks” upon his family, he was fixed. He could not attack Wallace directly for doctoring the photographs. Because a good black turnout was absolutely necessary to defeat Wallace, Brewer could not make the Southern white politician’s traditional response: that he would never allow his daughter to hold hands with a black boy. His failure to rise to the charges was sensationalized into the political imagery and gossip, picturing Brewer as approving race-mixing, interracial dating and interracial marriage. With a heavy turnout from rural, white counties, Wallace won the election.

These techniques are still found in local politics in the South, but race-baiting in statewide Southern politics now appears to be the exception. Although the 1984 North Carolina Senate compaign is already heated with racial rhetoric, most candidates seeking statewide office today seek black support. Those who do not, usually fear the reaction of whites to a campaign of race-baiting. Yet, as Bill Allain’s problems show, “gay-baiting” has now arrived, and in several instances, has succeeded race-baiting in statewide campaigns.

The Mississippi race isn’t an isolated instance of gay-baiting, only the most recent and most public example in Deep South politics. In the last two races for governor in Alabama, rumors have been spread to taint one of the candidates as a homosexual. In 1978, Attorney General Bill Baxley was seeking the governor’s chair and political gossip suggested that bachelor Bill was gay and hired homosexuals on his staff. The stories spread and were accepted with amazing credulity even among the most crafty political observers. A lawyer who had helped mastermind George Wallace’s election in 1962 on a segregationist platform said to me in 1977, “Of course it’s true. Look at the boy’s rosy cheeks. He’s funny all right.”

Last year, gay-baiting reappeared in Alabama’s governor’s race. Lieutenant Governor George MacMillan, who has a high-pitched voice and a gentle, if energetic, demeanor, was running for governor against George Wallace. Rumors spread that MacMillan was homosexual. The gossip was supported by reference to MacMillan’s physical traits. “Just listen to that boy. Watch him. He’s as sissy as they get,” I was told in 1982 by a Montgomery lobbyist. MacMillan lost the runoff.

Now in Mississippi, the political technique has been refined even further: rumors are “substantiated” with news conferences. For several weeks before the news release against Allain, rumors were spread across the state that the state attorney general was a homosexual. Allain is single by divorce. He is also so white-skinned that his cheeks flush very visibly at times. Qualified by stereotypical characteristics, Allain was rumored as a sex-starved homosexual who cruised Jackson streets in search of male prostitutes. In late October when the signed affidavits were made public, the attorney general angrily denied the charges. His ex-wife went on television denying them. Still, Allain’s standing among Mississippi voters dropped and he lost much of his enormous lead.

While Allain and other candidates can deny these sorts of charges without fear of offending a large segment of statewide voters, they have trouble making an effective political response. In Mississippi, Allain and his ex-wife’s defense was met with references to their divorce papers in which she alleged that the two had not slept together for a few years. Allain also could not run the political risk of viciously attacking, in the racist rhetoric of the old Southern politics, the personal credibility of his three black accusers. He was dependent on blacks as voters, not as scapegoats.

While Allain’s responses were politically limited, his opponents were able to taint and taunt him, a white male Southern politician, with the accusations of interracial homosexuality.

In Alabama, when candidate Baxley faced the rumors, state political reporters speculated that both his marriage and subsequent fatherhood conveniently met political needs.

Four years later, facing rumors about his sexual preference, George MacMillan began every political speech by calling his wife and children to the podium. MacMillan also began speaking and acting more imperatively and abruptly–an obvious effort to show some “manly” mannerisms. At the end of the campaign, he appeared at times a caricature of a Southern orator with exaggerated gestures that seldom matched what he was saying. His efforts simply made him look awkward and inarticulate, contradictions of the two characteristics which had won him past political success.

Although no candidate’s defeat can be attributed only to rumors of homosexuality, the charges obviously have a deteriorating effect upon politics in general. Physical attributes take on unreasonable importance. Gay stereotypes go unquestioned or get carried to greater extremes of exaggeration. Significant issues are abandoned for precious days or weeks during a campaign while the media and public explore what a candidate does between the bed sheets. And, the most likely victims of gay-baiting in

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politics, as with race-baiting, turn out to be those candidates with support from progressive or liberal voting groups in the South.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the prospect of gay-baiting is that nothing in the present Southern political scene appears to be an obstacle to its increased use as a ploy. While the increase of black voters was able to slow down race-baiting, the South’s gay population is not a political force in any statewide election and is not likely to become one in the foreseeable future. Thus, supporters of candidates who spread rumors or bankroll the search for affidavits about a candidate’s homosexuality have nothing to lose and every advantage to gain if their rumors and charges are circulated.

In Mississippi today, Governor-elect Allain portrays his victory as the repudiation of gay-baiting. Yet, political strategists are not likely to ignore the fact that he lost twenty percent of his support in only three weeks simply because of the allegations of homosexuality. Rather than demonstrating a firm rejection of this trick, Mississippians have made it an even more seductive come-on for the Southern politician who lusts for victory at any cost. With the passing of race-baiting as the universal ploy in this area of the South’s statewide politics, gay-baiting may become the surest political kiss of death.

Steve Suitts is the executive director of the Southern Regional Council.

New Federalism and Minority Rights: After Three Years

By Alex Willingham

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 3-5

When Ronald Reagan was elected President, he was widely regarded as a threat to the progressive social policies gradually put in place over the preceding five decades. In the main these policies–in civil rights, economic justice, environmental protection, care for the aged and handicapped, rights of the accused–had been based on an expanding federal role in domestic affairs. Reagan attacked these policies directly. He criticized them as costly. He questioned the very propriety of federal involvement. The arguments were not new but Reagan’s attack was particularly troubling because persons sharing his views made major gains in decision-making positions during the election of 1980.

Furthermore there was a self-conscious effort to avoid compromise or moderation in developing alternative policies. The new President believed that a major part of the problem had been a reluctance even on the part of conservative administrators, including Jimmy Carter’s, to put forth bold plans to brake the expanding role of the federal government. His strategy was to redefine federal-state relations. Thus the “New Federalism” of Reaganomics was a direct challenge to the array of protections that social liberalism had valued since the 1930s.

Reagan did make a bold step to change things, particularly in the heady first year when his influence was highest. But in the three years of his administration, dramatic change in federal-state relations has been minimal–a curious circumstance given the self-conscious attention brought to the question of federalism. We might ask why the results have been so small? The answer lies, I believe, in a certain contradiction within the Administration’s philosophy of government.

We may review the record. Attempts by the Reagan Administration to change federal-state relations started with proposals for a “block grant” system that would continue federal funding to local govenments but eliminate federal administration. The block grant tactic was a sort of half-way house between the old categorical federal aid system and a system of unregulated revenue sharing. Under the categorical system the federal government sets specific purposes and guidelines for administration. Under revenue sharing there are no strings attached to federal money sent to local governments.

Even though the latter system would fit better the “states’ rights” philosophy of Reaganism, it was unacceptable primarily because it contradicted another of this Administration’s cherished principles: that social wellbeing is only promoted through private sector market relations. Therefore, coupled with the return of federal power to the states was a proposed cut in the level of funding amounting to between twenty and twenty-five percent in the funding levels of block grant programs in the 1981 proposals.

Reagan’s federalism reform attempted to serve two contrary purposes. The call for local control evoked values of democracy. It painted the traditional liberal policy with its over-reliance on Washington as antipopulist. When pursuing this line, the Administration tried to take advantage of a growing conviction, among diverse local officials and community based groups, that it is desirable to expand local initiatives. This conviction reflected a residual American distruct of central government and a growing confidence among some community groups that local alliance

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could be struck to protect and expand hard won opportunities.

That conviction was evident in several forms. During the first year of the Reagan administration one of the more loyal spokesmen for the reform plan was Georgia Governor George Busbee, then chairman of the National Governor’s Association. And, while national staffs of associations of local officials remained skeptical about the proposal, local chapters tended to support it. Civil rights groups were dubious, especially concerning the impact in the rural South, but even in race relations there was no denying the growing legitimacy and influence of black voters and public officials at the local levels. Empowerment of minorities was likely to coninue if, as finally did happen, federal voting rights protections were reenacted.

In this atmosphere the Reagan Administration did make some bold moves. A specific proposal for block grants was included in the Economic Recovery Plan put forth within months of taking office. A more detailed plan was subsequently proposed to Congress when the revised FY 1982 federal budget (Reagan’s first) was submitted. That budget emerged as the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, still the crowning legislative achievement of the Reagan presidency and a symbol of his power at its highest. The Act contained nine block grants, substantially fewer than the President wanted but still a change of large dimensions. The $7.7 billion would eventually change hands based on funding limits set in the Reconciliation Act.

In 1982 the administration proposed a “revolutionary” New Federalism plan that would replace the block grant system already in place. This was the widely publicized proposal containing the “swap/turnback” scheme and the federal trust fund. Under the swap, the federal government would take full responsibility for all medical assistance programs while the states would take responsibility for AFDC, food stamps, and a number of other categorical programs. The “trust fund” would be funded by federal excise taxes. The fund would be distributed to the states over a four-year period. They could either continue present services or divert the trust fund money to some other area. Reagan proposed to phase out this trust fund after four years–a firm target date when the federal role in local affairs would end.

The 1982 New Federalism proposal was sketched out in the January State of the Union Address. Specific legislative proposals were to be sent later. Meanwhile, the President continued his initiative by proposing to expand block grants. These proposals were placed in the Executive Budget submitted to Congress. The budgetary proposals would follow the example of a year earlier, creating new block grants that would in effect relinquish federal responsibility in certain program areas. The reform of federal state relations was moving on two tracks.

All observers, including the President’s detractors, concluded that during the early months of 1982, he had succeeded in focusing public attention on federalism reform. It was labeled the centerpiece of his domestic policy. These federalism proposals were promoted with the same optimism as the proposals in the budget battles six months before. The sheer magnitude of the proposed changes, and a certain regard for the president’s momentum, commanded attention as many groups debated the merits. Congress reviewed the expanded block grant system in the federal budget while it awaited the Administration’s legislative package embodying proposals for the broader reform. Intense public debate occurred in the context of expectations of inevitable change in federal-state relations.

But the federalism reform movements of 1982 never got on track in a practical sense. By midyear the Administration had not sent a specific legislative package to Congress as promised. Public discussion, although intense, was limited to the proposals sketched in the January speech. These were subject to diverse interpretations. The President did not communicate an overriding goal for federalism reform and, increasingly, his motives became the issue. Was he aiming to increase local autonomy? Was he primarily concerned about reducing the role of government?

Local officials who would welcome the former feared the latter, especially in an era of declining economic conditions in the states. Many became convinced that the call for local control, while couched in sometimes appearing philosophical terms, in fact masked a concrete drive to cut back federal resources in the local communities and, generally, to cripple the public effort in social development. In this way the 1982 federalism reform proposals lost credibility with local officials and stirred the ire of traditional liberals.

The Administration may have been able to build a consensus had it not met its own internal contradictions. It was unable to unify its forces. The budget cutters supported the programs as a way to reduce the federal budget. Conservative ideologues feared the proposal because the expansionary implications of the swap for medical services seemed to carry the beginnings of a bureaucracy which could ultimately lead to “socialized” medicine. In spite of an auspicious start, no part of the 1982 federalism reform proposals have become law. The Reagan Administration never submitted a specific legislative package and Congress refused to accept any of the proposed block grants in the budget.

The turn-around was dramatic in other ways, too. The year before, Busbee, as chairman of the governor’s group, had pleaded for support of the federalism reform even as a member of the opposite political party. In 1982, his replacement (Richard Snelling of Vermont), though generally a loyal Republican, became increasingly critical of the federalism proposals, declaring them dead in December.

But Reagan’s federalism reform was to have one more chance. In January of 1983, the President once again called for major overhaul in federal-state relations. In February, he submitted a comparatively modest plan to Congress based on the block grant system. But the debate of 1982 had taken its toll. The 1983 proposals were given a flashy introduction and supportive testimony to Congress was made by Budget Director David Stockman. But, after that, the proposals received no serious attention.

Nor are the prospects very bright for any federalism reform in 1984. An election year makes any major change difficult. Ironically, the improved business climate argues against justifying any such change to pecuniary enterprise. Finally the President himself seems to have decided that foreign affairs need his attention and has entered major engagements of American troops abroad.

Has the Reagan federalism reform effort been a failure? The answer here would have to be yes and no. There clearly

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has not been the whole scale reform that Reagan wanted. In that sense he has failed. On the other hand a fledgling block grant system is in place and the effect has been increased latitude for local officials. It is a significant system that will be of interest to community groups and others concerned about empowerment at the local level.

Does the apparent end of the Administration’s states’ rights push mean an end to its challenge to federal institutions that protect the disadvantaged? The answer is no! It only means that one tact has so far proved ineffective. The Reagan Administration still has full control of other federal compliance mechanisms (with the possible exception of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, a non-enforcement agency), and has established a track record of lax enforcement faithful to its anti-liberal views. The failure, so far, of the Administration’s federalism reform is merely brief respite in an otherwise continuing attack on the rights of minorities.

Alex Willingham is a political scientist currently living in Shreveport, Louisiana. This article is drawn from his research as a research fellow in public policy of the Southern Education Foundation.

Blockading the Bomb Plant

By Sue Bowman

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983 pp. 5-7

Demonstrations against the deployment of US Cruise and Pershing missiles have been mounted all over Europe this fall. In West Germany the campaign is called “Hot Autumn.” Included in the protests are civilly disobedient blockades of the American bases, scheduled as the deployment sites for the first-strike missiles.

In the early morning hours of October 24, the Natural Guard blockaded the “Bomb Plant” in South Carolina, the birthplace of every one of the United States’ nuclear weapons.

The pre-dawn light revealed about one-hundred people filing down the shoulder of Highway 125 toward the Jackson gate of the Savannah River Plant. Cars zipped by, their headlights glancing off the signs and banners that the protesters carried. The drivers looked straight ahead and kept moving–it was seven a.m., shift change, and they were among sixteen hundred workers entering this gate to be at work by 7:45 at SRP, the nation’s current producer of bomb-grade plutonium and tritium.

At the precise moment it was light enough to distinguish human forms from shadows, two cars travelling abreast on the highway slowed and stopped, halting the entire flow of traffic. Occupants of the car, members of a Natural Guard “affinity group” from Charleston, jumped out and positioned themselves and their banners in the road. The two cars pulled away, leaving the determined human roadblock.

Police, who had expected the protest but were unsure of the form it would take, immediately moved to arrest the blockaders, but as those people were dragged away, another group thirty yards back stepped into the road. This was repeated by three more groups.

Forty-five minutes later the traffic was still blocked. At one point the stoppage stretched back to Augusta, Georgia, twelve miles from the gate. Fifty-four people were arrested at the Jackson gate, as supporters cheered from the sidelines and chanted, “No Pershing, no Cruise, either way we all lose!” and “The people united will never be defeated!”

At the New Ellenton gate of the three hundred and twelve square mile facility a group of approximately sixty women who had participated in a peace camp sponsored by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) converged on a busy intersection at a red light. Twenty-five women blocked that entrance for fifteen minutes.

Seventy-nine blockaders were charged with refusing to obey police officers’ orders to leave the highway. Bond was set at $110.25. Some refused to give their names and were denied bond, some chose to stay in rather than pay bond for financial or moral reasons, and others bonded out the same day. Trial was initially set for November 8, but requests for jury trial have pushed the date to January 9.

The blockade capped a weekend of anti-nuclear actions that began with a Saturday rally at a site approved by SRP officials. Speakers at the rally included Anthony Guarisco of the National Association of Atomic Veterans, who spent sixty-seven days at ground zero in the Bikini Islands; Rebecca Johnson, a participant in the two-year-old peace encampment at Greenham Commons, a US base in England and one of the first deployment sites for the cruise missiles; Kay Camp, former member of President Carter’s Nuclear Disarmament Committee just returned from meetings with European peace activists; and many others.

The events were sponsored by the Natural Guard, a coalition of peace, environmental and human rights groups. The platform for the actions called for a halt to the global testing, production and deployment of all nuclear weapons, the funding of human needs over the military, and an independent study of the health and economic impacts of nuclear weapons production at SRP.

The Savannah River Plant was constructed hastily in the early 1950s, part of the government’s anti-communist thrust and the global powers’ race to gain thermonuclear superiority. The federal Atomic Energy Commission swallowed 312 square miles–two towns, six thousand people and 6,100 graves–in a rural corner of South Carolina, taking chunks out of Barnwell, Aiken and Allendale counties. Displaced farmers couldn’t buy land for what the government paid them, and the economy quickly shifted from its agricultural base to a dependence on the Bomb Plant. Today nearly ten thousand people work there. It is difficult to find a person in the surrounding communities who has no personal or family connection with the plant.

SRP is owned by the Department of Energy, direct descendent of the AEC, and has been operated since the beginning by E.I. duPont de Nemours. DuPont has so downplayed its connection with the military that few know of its integral role in nuclear weapons. The company operates SRP on a cost-plus contract as its “patriotic duty,” according to a DuPont report entitled “Certain Information About the Savannah River Plant.”

The facilities include five reactors, three now churning out plutonium, one inactive, and the L Reactor, scheduled to restart this year. The L Reactor recently became the subject of a heated controversy when the state of South Carolina joined a suit by environmental groups to prevent the reactor from operating without an Environmental Impact Statement. The DOE reluctantly agreed under legal order to do an

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expedited EIS, but other questions remain unresolved and troublesome. The reactor will dump 176°F. water into Steel Creek because the reactors, unlike commercial plants, have no cooling towers; radiation releases are not controlled by containment structures: and the Tuscaloosa aquifer beneath SRP is threatened with eventual radioactive contamination (officials are now dealing with chemical contamination in the aquifer).

Meanwhile, production is being stepped up, with the possibility of a new reactor being sited at SRP, although there is increasing sentiment expressed by experts that the plutonium and tritium are not needed.

The Bomb Plant has operated for thirty years under the government’s cloak of mysticism–national security. Consequently, most of the reports on radioactive releases from the plant have been classified. Dr. Carl Johnson, former Director of Health for Jefferson County, Colorado, who has done extensive studies on health effects around the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, examined declassified documents from SRP and found that routine and accidental releases of radiation have been several times that reported to the public. Although vital statistics indicate that rates of infant mortality, cancer and heart disease are higher study done surrounding counties, there has never been an independent study of the health effects caused by SRP’s operation.

An unpublished by DuPont has shown that “lung cancer and leukemia were significantly increased” among workers at the Savannah River Plant when compared with other DuPont workers and the general public, according to Bob Alvarez of the Washington based Environmental Policy Institute. Alvarez was asked to participate in a Center for Disease Control evaluation of the study.

Why did the Natural Guard take on the Bomb Plant with civil disobedience?

“Six years ago the Natural Guard took the point on opposition to nuclear waste and reprocessing with eight-hundred arrests in 1978 and 1979,” commented Natural Guard organizer Brett Bursey. “We were then viewed as the lunatic fringe. Now the governor and even Strom Thurmond have come around on that issue. Direct action is but one of the factors that change social and political realities–but I believe it is a dynamic catalyst that can light fire under an issue. The issue of nuclear disarmament will be resolved when the social and political costs outweigh the gains. We plan to be a significant cost they will have to consider.”

Jill Morris of Athens, Georgia, said she blockaded SRP “because the Bomb Plant is killing us–and if we don’t commit civil disobedience at the Bomb Plant we’re commit tiny ourselves to suicide.”

Local farmer Steve McMillan, who has long been a vocal opponent of SRP in every other forum available to him, said, “To tell you the truth, I’m putting my money where my mouth has been. I felt kind of lonesome out there–I knew I would probably get criticized by a lot of local people who would look down their nose at me and think I’m crazy, but it was time for me to take a stand for what I been saying.”

Randy Tatel commented, “When I decided that nuclear weapons were a political and humanistic insanity, I turned to find a legislator who represented me…and there were none. Consciously, it fell to my shoulders to be my own representative and take the military machine head-on. Civil disobedience then was a natural decision.”

Bursey notes that it is not a frivolous decision. “What we’re seeing now is that the government is ready and willing to crack down on civil liberties to stem mass protests like this.” He pointed to a legal maneuver by the federal government just before the blockade which would have drastically altered the character of the demonstration. “A federal judge virtually declared martial law in South Carolina.”

One week before the blockade, a US Attorney, prompted by the Department of Energy, asked federal judge Charles Simons for an injunction to prevent the Natural Guard from interfering with the operation of the Savannah River Plant. The injunction would have provided criminal contempt of court charges against anyone who trespassed or blocked access to the plant. Wording of the request went as far as to request that the injunction prevent anyone from aiding, abetting or assisting someone in trespassing or blocking access to SRP. It attempted to certify the Natural Guard as a class, subject to a class action suit, although it is not a membership organization but “an ad hoc coalition called together to host a specific event.”

U.S. Attorney Henry Dargan McMaster said the broad nature of the injunction meant protest organizers could be cited for contempt before the blockade and jailed without bond for six months and possibly longer. Bursey asked hypothetically, “Does that mean if a church takes up a collection to support the blockade, they could be held in contempt for aiding and abetting the blockaders?”

It was only the point of interfering with access that actually concerned the blockade plan. The Natural Guard’s stated objective was to block traffic on state property, never intending to trespass on federal land. The state misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of thirty days and/or one hundred dollars, while trespass on SRP property would have brought a fine of one thousand dollars.

Federal officials, frustrated that they would have no jurisdiction and fearing that the state penalties would not discourage protesters, sought to extend federal authority onto state property. The idea was that with the injunction in place, the federal government would have the power to deal with anyone who even looked cross-wise at the Bomb-Plant if they could convince the court that such activity would irreparably threaten national security.

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Judge Charles Simons was glad to oblige the US Attorney’s request. Simons is used to power. As Strom Thurmond’s former law partner, maneuvered into judgeship by Thurmond under Nixon, he has long wielded a stern gavel in South Carolina. In numerous cases before him Simons has been openly hostile to anti-nuclear protesters. He said on the record that wherever Brett Bursey goes “violence is likely to follow”. He clearly expresses his view that the Natural Guard is more than a bunch of pesky demonstrators but a dangerous threat to national security.

During the three hour hearing, Simons told Natural Guard attorney Danny Sheehan, “We do things a little different in South Carolina,” and proceeded to talk at though he had already ruled even before he had heard the defense. When defense attorney Lewis Pitts protested, “We just feel the ballgame’s over,” the judge snapped, “I happen to be in the driver’s seat and we will move forward.”

“Regardless of the legal niceties I would be inclined to do whatever is necessary to protect the operation of the bomb plant,” Simons said.

The judge was riled by the suggestion that he may not have the authority to issue the injunction. “I don’t care if they (the protesters) are up in Columbia. I’d have not hesitancy about issuing an injunction if the operation of the SRP was in question.”

“If I don’t have the authority to enjoin, I’d be surprised,” he growled.

Natural Guard attorney’s argued that the injunction violated separation of powers because there were already penalties established by state and federal legislators for the violations protesters intended to commit. Sheehan noted “They are actually subordinating fundamental constitutional structures to get at these people.”

“Waving the red flag of national security is used frequently to blind the court,” Sheehan insisted.

Simons was not impressed and he slapped on the injunction with apparent relish. The ruling confused many people planning to attend the legal rally on Saturday, who believed Simons had made even that exercise illegal.

The Natural Guard made a mad dash for the Fourth Circuit of Appeals, racing to get a decision before the rally now only days away. On Friday night, an expedited hearing before one judge gained a suspension of Simons’ order pending a full hearing. Fourth Circuit judge Francis D. Murnaghas, Jr., ruled that the proposed actions would not be a grave threat to national security and that the First Amendment rights of the protectors would be impermissibly infringed upon by the injunction.

The constitutional nature of this case has prompted legal assistance from national and state organizations of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as several large firms specializing in constitutional law. The outcome will have implications for any group planning to demonstrate at federal facilities linked to national security.

The many-faceted international opposition to nuclear weapons, combined with a growing awareness of “the bomb in our backyard,” is tugging away SRP’s cloak of mysticism. The reality behind it is becoming more frightening. Antinuclear activists in the southeast will be increasingly called upon in the near future to “Blockade the Bomb Plant” not only with civil disobedience but with every means available to sane, intelligent and nonviolent people.

Sue Bowman lives in Columbia, South Carolina and writes regularly about Southern disarmament activities for several publications.

Demonstrating at Weapon World

By Dan Bernstein

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 7-8

The people who gathered on a baseball field under cloudy skies were as diverse a group as you could imagine. There were teen-agers and grandmothers; doctors and musicians; hippies and priests.

But they had all come to Orlando on Saturday, October 22, for the same reason: to protest the planned deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.

About five hundred people, half the anticipated number, braved heavy rains to march for an hour and a half through a portion of this central Florida city. Singing songs and chanting slogans, the group formed one of a series of demonstrations across the United States and Western Europe opposing the placement of five hundred and seventy-five Pershing II and Cruise missiles in five European countries in the next five years.

Orlando was chosen as Florida’s sole protest site because the Pershing II is being built by Martin Marietta, a defense contractor with a plant just outside the city. Hence, the protest’s title: “Halt the Pershing at its source.” And hence, signs like “M &M melts your mouth and your hands.” (In addition to the protests, candlelight vigils were held at the plant grounds the night before and the day after the march.)

While many of the demonstrators said they doubted the protests would stop the missiles from being deployed, they said they still felt the need to march. “Silence is complicity and we don’t want to be part of that complicity,” said TJ. Powers, an Episcopal priest from Gainesville, who carried a large red sign reading “Choose Life, Pax Christi.”

Aside from the busloads of people who came from throughout Florida, the march and afternoon rally attracted some people from outside the state, including a group from Atlanta.

Many of the protectors said they had been involved in the Vietnam War protests. They agreed that the nuclear freeze movement represented a greater cross-section of America and said it was farther reaching than Vietnam because it involved a possible world war with millions of deaths as opposed to localized fighting by guerillas.

Some said they were too young to get involved in the Vietnam protests, but have been very active in the freeze movement. “If nothing else, Ronald Reagan has spurred us on the road to peace,” said Chris West-Harazda, a thirty-year-old prep school teacher from Tampa.

Indeed, some marchers seemed to be using the demonstration as a way to attack the President. “Ronald Reagan, he’s no good/send him back to Hollywood,” was among the chants heard from the group during the march. One speaker at the subsequent rally referred to Reagan as “Hatchetman.”

Other speakers appealed to different levels One had a comedy routine. Others harmonized. A University of South Florida cancer researcher spoke about the medical effects of a nuclear war.

“The bottom line,” said Dr. Gary Lyman, “is that if one

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or two percent of the nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union were fired at Florida, there would be five million immediate deaths and three million severe injuries.”

Before the speeches, the crowd held hands and formed a large circle around the baseball field near the Tangerine Bowl. Softly, they sung, “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.” The haunting John Lennon lyric was repeated over and over.

During the rally, buttons, T-shirts and books were sold to raise money to offset the $2,500 it cost to put on the march, $1,500 of which was to pay the city for police protection.

The Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign, which organized the march, has challenged that fee on the grounds that it hinders free speech. A federal district judge ruled in favor of the city, and the money has been placed in an escrow account pending the outcome of an anticipated appeal. Lawyers for the freeze group said the case could end up in the lap of the Florida Supreme Court.

As for their part, police reported no problems during the three and a half mile march or the rally, which continued despite a constant drizzle. At one point during the march, a policemen noticed that a peace sign had been placed on the windshield of his parked motorcycle. He quickly pulled off the soggy cardboard and kicked it into pieces.

Dan Bernstein is a reporter for the Tampa Tribune.

The Movement Remembered: “Like A Banked Fire”

By Staff

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 8-13

Worth Long: When did you first realize that there was a need for civil rights change, for change in the state of Mississippi?

Aurelia Norris Young: Even before my children were born. I noticed that there were no parks or playgrounds or libraries. We could not get into the Scouts, Boy Scouts nor Girl Scouts. I really didn’t want to rear my children in Jackson. But my husband was from Mississippi, and in spite of efforts of my father to get him transferred to Ohio, he said he’d rather stay. So I began to work in the community to get activities for children.

We started a little library on Farish Street, by donating our own used books and buying used books. That was the time that I realized that the black community needed more than we had.

I was mainly interested in starting a music program. There was no degree program for music in the state. I began working at Tougaloo. They promised that they were going to set up a program, and did not. So the president of Jackson State promised that if I’d come there, he’d set up a music program. So I moved to Jackson State, stayed there thirty years.

It was not a university then and I was simply one of two music teachers. We taught practically thirty hours a week. We had to do everything, even going out recruiting students for the program.

Jackson State had a laboratory school and I took my children with me everywhere I went. They went to the nursery on campus, and elementary school. My husband was working at the post office and making shoes at night. So he got home very late, I was young and it didn’t seem like such a big job then. I couldn’t do it now.

As in many black communities in the South, our community of black people was self-contained. We seldom had to go to the white community for anything. Very little contact, so I really did not know what we could do. We worked trying to get things for that little small community.

Long: You said your husband was born in Mississippi. What was his name and where was he born, and under what circumstances?

Young: Jack Harvey Young. He was the third child in a family of four. His mother was a widow. His father died when he was nine. He worked after school to help her support the other children.

He was a postman for twenty-five years. One day I saw two law books and found out that his desire was to study law. I kept insisting that he study, but we couldn’t find any school in the South that would take a black person. So he read law under Sidney Redmond in St. Louis. He read at night. He would come in from his work, eat, rest and about ten o’clock get up and study. When he passed the bar in the Fifties he began practicing right away. Those were hard times for us. We felt that if you were to work in the post office and practice law on the side, you would always be known as the postman rather than the lawyer. But, it was fortunate because when the civil rights movement came he was available to help.

Long: How many other attorneys in the city would take civil rights cases?

Young: There were only two others. Carsie Hall, and R. Jess Brown. Carsie and my husband went all through high school together and they studied together, Carsie passed the bar a year later.

Long: So that meant how many black attorneys in the state of Mississippi?

Young: At that time I think there were five or six. One in Mound Bayou, one in Meridian who was quite aged and these three. But only the three here in Jackson took civil rights cases. So they ran all over the state.

Long: Do you remember during those years who was able to register and vote? What were the prerequisites?

Young: There had been people who had been registering in the city of Jackson for many, many years without problems. But in the rural areas and in the towns smaller than Jackson they could not register. Prerequisites varied from city to city. It depended on who was asking the questions. How many buttons on your clothes, recite the constitutions. So there was no such standards, but the main idea was to ask the questions they could not answer.

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Long: How did change happen when it did come?

Young: I suppose it’s like a banked fire, and just suddenly it breaks out. That’s the way it happened in Jackson. It started here with nine students at Tougaloo in March, 1961, sitting-in at the public library. They were arrested. My husband got them out of jail right away, and they were to appear for trial the next day.

Now we didn’t have any papers, so the grapevine got around. We could get news out within five minutes. You just called one of the schools and tell the teachers and they would tell the children, and they would tell the parents, or call the ministers, they would call their people. It was very effective. So, the next day, people were standing on the courthouse lawn. Students from Millsaps College (a white Methodist school) decided they were going to march in sympathy and meet the Jackson State students at the courthouse.

The Millsaps students were turned around without incident. The black students were chased through a ravine that ran through the city. They were sprayed with tea gas. At the courthouse the police brought dogs, people were bitten and some were beaten. That was the beginning. I think that prepared us for the actions of the Freedom Rides in May of that same year.

Long: What effect do you think the Freedom Rides had on the consciousness of the people in Jackson?

Young: Well, the whites were angry. The blacks were complacent; we didn’t feel involved at first. It was as if we were onlookers. Gradually we became involved. Later in the summer there were demonstrations by high school students, trying to integrate the parks and the playgrounds. When your own children are threatened, you become actively involved. And that drew the entire community into it.

Long: What role did you play during the demonstrations?

Young: I started out as more of a secretary, answering telephone calls. Arrests were happening so fast. Trying to keep in touch with my husband and letting him know who was arrested and where. And simultaneously, things began to break out in the smaller communities throughout the state. He was running from here and there trying to get people out on bail and raising bail.

I began collecting toilet articles, dietary supplements for the students in jail and began to draw many other people into the movement. I would solicit things from the grocery stores and drugstores and those people became interested and involved.

During the middle of the summer, there were more than three-hundred Freedom Riders. I gave telephone information to parents of the out-of-state students who were arrested. The first ones who came in were from colleges. So the colleges were calling–Cornell, Rutgers, Oberlin. Then reporters came. We had them as far as Europe and Canada. Then we began to receive them into our homes as well as the religious people from the schools, the deans and that sort of thing. Then lawyers were constantly coming in. In the late summer, legal groups were sent down to relieve my husband and R. Jess Brown and Carsie Hall. So they stayed at my house.

It was not long before we began to get the threatening and obscene phone calls. They would count down my husband’s life. So that summer we sent our children away.

Later on, I began to write letters after the students were

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sent to Parchman, the state penitentiary. They’d send one group in, another would come out. They all bathed and dressed in our home and I’d feed them. Some would leave right away; some would stay two or three days. By talking to them, I found out the conditions in Parchman. So, being a mother and knowing how worried parents were, I would write to the parents.

Long: Did this event happen before the so-called “fairground incident?”

Young: The “fairground incident” happened when several hundred high school students had a demonstration. There were so many of them, the police took them down in trucks and placed them on the fairgrounds. They were mostly local people who had been sitting in at the municipal zoo, in the parks and swimming pools. They were trying to integrate the recreational facilities. But they were just caught up in all of the civil rights activities. They would attend the meetings we had almost nightly. They heard the appeals from the churches for money. They had the natural exuberance of young people. And they were about to get out of school that summer.

The police put them in the cattle pens where the stock fairs were held. It was hot. But, there again I think their youth stood them in good stead. I doubt that older people could have stood that kind of treatment, but the young people are a little more resilient.

During that period a lot of notable black figures came down, Medgar brought them down for a weekend: fighters, singers, ball players. We found homes for them in the city. We had mass meetings. The people in the community, some of whom had never taken part, were thrilled to say, “Well, Marguirette Belafonte is staying at my house.” That made them an integral part of the movement.

One little sidelight. Gloster Current of the NMCP and I, just talking one day, decided that there ought to be something we could do to shake up the white community. During that time hootenanny’s were very popular. And they were about to have a big hootenanny that fall at the Mississippi State Fair. So I wrote to Delta Sigma Theta, my sorority, and asked them if they could put some pressure on the booking agencies to ask these performers not to perform at the Fair. So the hootenanny singers as well as several opera singers and actors agreed not to perform. And the State Fair had a terrible time trying to find entertainers. And this was all done with a letter to Delta. It made the white community know that we had some strings to pull outside of the state.

Whenever I needed money I always wrote to Delta Sigma Theta, and they always came through. For instance, when the farmers were thrown off the land in the Delta for registering to vote and they moved into tents, we found out that they were without winter clothes and that they were needing food. The winter rains had set in. They didn’t have boots and raincoats and blankets and clothing. I called the national office of Delta and they sent money to provide those things for them.

Long: Were there other community or social institutions that were in support of the movement at that time?

Young: Not at first. I became ill and couldn’t feed the people coming out of Parchman. My husband sent me to New Orleans to rest. Then they fed them at the Episcopal church. Then a group called Church Women United took over that role and I had only the lawyers and reporters and the religious leaders to feed.

Long: What about local colleges, what was their role in social change in the sixties?

Young: Tougaloo played a very important role, and Campbell College, the AME school. When the students came back for arraignment there were more than three hundred of them. They were housed on the college campuses. Jackson State played no part in the movement at all. Sadly enough, they were in the best position to have used the Lynch street and the offices there as a laboratory, but they did not.

Long: Was this because Jackson State was a state university, and because of President Reddix and his policy.

Young: Probably so.

Long: But, you had the full confidence of the students at Jackson State?

Young: Oh yes, I had taught many of their mothers and fathers, so they knew me, and having had musical groups, I performed all over the state in their churches, and in the recruitment drives. Then, my husband had a very imposing manner, he was tall and always well dressed, and he became an image for many of the students. He went around to all the towns. It had been years since a black had passed the bar. He was called on to give commencement speeches, and speak at lodges and churches. So he was well known throughout the state. So I was either simply “lawyer Young’s wife” or “Mrs. Young the music teacher.”

You have to remember that back in the thirties and forties there were few positive black images in Mississippi, men or women, because we had no newspapers, we had no TV, no radio. And I was surprised in these late years to find out that we were models. So, they did listen to me. And, I suppose anybody who teaches extra-curricular classes has an entree to students’ thoughts. I had a listening laboratory and they would be listening and of course not realizing that when they were talking to one another that I could hear, that they were shouting. So I knew all about their private lives. I suppose a coach would have had the same kind of influence.

Long: So you were able, based on your understanding of the larger society, to direct them in a way so that they could stay alive and survive?

Young: Yes. And then I had more intimate knowledge as to what was happening legally by the lawyers being in my house. And I think they had a little faith in my knowledge of what was going on.

Long: Were there particular incidents where students might have been killed?

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Young: I remember they were about to demonstrate one day. There had been a series of demonstrations in the city, and down at the jail my husband had said the mood of the cops was just one of anger. They were called in to extra duty. And I suppose without extra pay. He had said, “I believe somebody’s going to get killed because the cops are very very angry.”

A student ran into my room about 5:30 that afternoon and told me that the students were about to go out into the streets. The cops were lined up on either side of Lynch street.

I ran up to the president’s office, where he and the business manager were in conference. I told him what was happening and that we should stop them cause some of them were going to get hurt. He said, “I’ve done all that I can do, if they just want to do that it’s up to them.” And they both got into the president’s car and drove off.

I ran up on the campus, and they were all massing themselves on the dining hall steps. And I pushed my way to the front where they had a microphone, and I began to shame the leaders, I said “You gonna stand up here, and send those other people out in the streets.” I asked the other students, “Where is your head? You know they are gonna send you out there first and see what happens to you and they might bring up the rear.”

The students began to laugh. And they didn’t go out.

I came home one day from school and my son was sitting on the porch, he and his friend. Now they were in high school, and tears were running down their cheeks. I asked him why he was crying. He said “This is tear gas. Policemen are down the street shooting tear gas.”

Well there was a barricade in front of my house because I lived at the end of my street, and policemen were there. That was to keep people from going into town. I never felt such anger before in my life. It felt like my body had just blown up as a balloon. And I stood out on the steps and tried to curse–I’m not a cursing woman. They only thing I could think of was “damned stupid cops,” and I said that over-and over and over. I wanted them to shoot me or do something. I was always fearful of what my own anger would do.

Long: Who were some of the Jackson movement figures, those persons who were in leadership from the early movement?

Young: Well, mostly the people who raised the bail. Now of course, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP, was the leader. And there was Rev. R.L.T. Smith and Houston Wells; and Mr. Broadwater who is now a federal marshal. The ministers of course, the ministerial alliance.

Long: Was there a general strategy on the part of the local leadership?

Young: No, we took things as they came. That first summer things were just popping out so fast, we tried to rise to every occasion.

Long: What about Medgar Evers and his basic strategies? Did the NAACP on a local and state level seem to have a basic approach for change?

Young: I remember a strategy meeting at our house a little later in the movement, trying to decide about putting up somebody to run for office. And it. was decided at that time not to try for any of the major offices or for the legislature, but to try to put black people in some of the small town offices where blacks had to go daily. Blacks were treated so harshly in courthouses and by the highway patrol and police that we felt it would be better to concentrate in each city. For a long time we didn’t have anybody in the legislature and later, only one. But we were concentrating on the minor offices. In Jackson we were asking, under Medgar’s leadership, for school crossing guards, for policemen and later for firemen.

These were some of the demands given to the mayor. We had a mayor then, Allen Thompson, who had been in office many years. The city was controlled by him and his cohorts. We didn’t have street lights in black neighborhoods. Many of the streets were unpaved. At that time there were even a few outdoor toilets.

Most black people would go to town only to get what they needed and come back. The buses were segregated, but few people rode them. There were certain stores where you could try on clothing, hat and shoes and dresses and others that would let you take them home and try them on. No restaurants were open, no lunch counters. But as I said, our community was almost self-contained. There was seldom much need to go downtown. Farish Street was our main street and West Jackson had developed quite a few businesses. There were small restaurants and shoe shops and things. I suppose this would have been found in most Southern cities.

Long: Would you talk about your remembrances of Medgar Evers during this period?

Young: Well, I remember him as a very gentle kind of person. He was in and out of our house quite often, had many a meal there. I knew his wife, Myrlie, fairly well, not as well as we knew Medgar, and of course, we’d met the children. He was very level-headed, not overly emotional. I thought he was a fine person, and would have liked to have him for a friend even without the civil rights movement.

Long: When did you last see him before his assassination?

Young: It was the night that he was killed. I had some lawyers staying at my house. Gloster Current was there and Frank Reeves from Washington. I had been ill. Medgar came by, it must have been about 10:30 or near 11:00 and said he was hungry because he hadn’t eaten all day. I told him that I didn’t have any leftovers–people were always

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bringing us a ham or turkey or something. So he said, “Well, I’ll just go on home.”

About that time the telephone rang. Gloster got it. My husband was calling from the office and said that they had run out of mimeograph paper. Medgar said he had some paper at the office; he’d go get it and drop it by on his way home.

The next time the telephone rang, it was Myrlie, and she just screamed at me, “Oh, Medgar’s been shot!”

I really didn’t think he’d had time to get home. But they say he didn’t stay long at the office. Must have been about a quarter of twelve then.

I called a friend whose son was a physician. She got so excited she dropped the phone and I couldn’t call anybody out. I ran next door to the hotel and they got in touch with lack and the other lawyers, and he said, “Don’t go, we’ll come by and pick you up.” I didn’t realize until then that there might have been any danger to us.

So we drove out to the house. The children had been taken across the street to neighbors at once. They had just taken Medgar to the hospital, so Barbara Morris and I stayed with Myrlie. We tried to keep her busy, helping her gather up his things to take to the hospital.

She kept walking. She’d walk outdoors, and there was this big pool of blood, and I know she didn’t know what she was doing, but she would manage to step over the blood. She would not step in it.

Barbara and I followed every footstep she made, then later the men came to say that Medgar had died.

That was one of the most horrible things during my lifetime cause I never knew there was so much blood in a human body. I’d never seen anybody killed before. And I didn’t know that blood was thick. It was just like somebody had poured a lot of jelly in the driveway.

I didn’t go to his funeral. But a lot of people gathered at my house and I fed them. Houston Wells, in the furniture business’ brought a freezer to my house and several grocerymen filled it up with food. The chef at Jackson State would periodically bake a large ham or turkey for me.

I remember so many people being in my house that day. They were sitting everywhere, on the beds and everything. Eating from plates in their laps. The phone rang and we heard that the students were demonstrating downtown–this was after the memorial service. John Doar, a lawyer with the Justice Department, threw his plate down and jumped in somebody’s car and went down. He walked down the middle of the street and calmed the students. At that point we all felt we didn’t want any more bloodshed.

Long: What was the effect of Medgar’s death on people in Jackson?

Young: There was a smoldering resentment. People were angry. At first there was shock and then the smoldering kind of anger set in.

Things were happening concurrently. I suppose everything grew out of Medgars Evers’ death, and yet we had deaths following that.

I believe the whites began to feel ashamed, and when they act for the good, whether out of shame or fear or guilt, I think the results are the same. There were many white people who, I suppose, decried what was happening all along, but they didn’t come out. They were as repressed as black people. Then they began to get together in some of the white churches. Began to identify each other much as we did. We began to identify those who were really with the movement and those who were not.

We had a big dog and all the neighborhood children loved him. I was surrounded on three sides by whites, but we had lived there so long. We knew everybody. And my dog would go around and play with the children, make his rounds, and the come back home.

Early one morning a little white kid came up and said, “Mrs. Young, dog catcher has your dog.”

There was an old white couple who lived around there and didn’t like children or dogs or anybody. They had caught the dog and had pinned him up on their porch until the dog catcher came.

I went around the corner and there was a police car. I was there by the time the dog catcher arrived. When he ran to get the dog, I braced myself. He drew back his hand as if he was going to hit me. My daughter came around the corner and screamed, and of course that brought people out. A policeman came up and wanted to know what the trouble was. I thought they were taking me to jail. I said, “Okay, I live right around the corner. I’ll get my toothbrush and I’ll come with you.”

They just cruised along slowly while we were walking back with the dog following us. They opened the car door and the dog jumped into the police car. He liked to ride. I wanted to kill the dog.

This was all before nine in the morning. I called my husband and he went down and got the dog out. Later he told me that he went to the chief of police and told him that he didn’t want his family harrassed because of his work. The chief told him nothing would happen to us unless we committed a serious crime. We didn’t tell the children, because we could see our boys speeding and running stop lights just to see if they would get picked up.

So I had the assurance that they were not going to harrass me. However, I did have FBI agents. I would go to the store and they would appear from nowhere. That was the first time I realized that they had black agents. We’d had them since Medgar’s death because the rumor had gone out that they were going to kill my husband, Reverend Smith and the other leaders. Five of them were on a hit list.

I’d go to the store and I’d look around and there’d be a person standing. Our community is so small that we knew strangers. And they looked like FBI people. Before I’d get home, there’d be another one and then they would disappear.

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I guess I was fearful, apprehensive, but not anymore than I’d been when Jack would go out in the little towns. He had a couple of murder cases where I just knew he was going to get killed before he got back. I guess that sort of prepared me. Then we went over to Birmingham and I talked with the black lawyers’ wives over there. I admired them. Mrs. [unclear]ores’ house had been bombed. I think that helped me to at least put up a show of being fearless. But after a while you get so that you aren’t afraid of the fear.

The following edited interview with Ms. Aurelia Norris Young (born 1915 in Knoxville, Kentucky) chronicles her involvement in the 1960s’ Jackson, Mississippi freedom struggle. Ms. Young is currently president of the J.C. Maxwell Group, minority operators of WMPR-FM, a Mississippi public radio station scheduled to begin broadcasting within the next few weeks from Tougaloo, Mississippi. Worth Long of the SRC’s Civil Rights Radio Project continues in this interview a series documenting the modern civil rights movement in the Deep South.

The North Georgia Forty

By Gregg Jones

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, p. 13

Their rallying cry is “Keep public lands in public hands,” and Dr. Phillip Greear hopes it will help save national forest land from the auction block.

An ecologist at North Georgia’s Shorter College, Greear takes credit for coining the phrase that is appearing on bumpers around the United States in protet of the federal government’s talk of selling national forest lands.

In all, 856,000 acres of national forest are being considered for sale in the fourteen state Southeast region–a little less than ten percent of the region’s twelve million forest land acres–sprawling from Virginia’s Potomac River to the Brazos River of Texas. Georgia lands for possible sale include 95,000 acres in the Chattahoochie National Forest and 34,000 acres in the Oconee National Forest.

Greear has been joined by farmers, teachers, college students, artists, labor leaders and even state senator Ed Hines, some forty north Georgians in all, fighting the possible sale of parts of the Chattahoochie and Oconee national forests in the state.

Selling government land has been proposed by the Reagan Administration as a means of reducing the national debt. Under the Administration’s directive, Secretary of Agriculture John Block is drafting legislation that would allow the sale of forest lands, according to Roy Gandy, director of lands and minerals for the U.S. Forest Service Southeast Region. (National forest lands fall under the control of the Department of Agriculture.)

“We decided that since the proposal has to go before Congress, we had to speak out and let congressmen and senators know that we object to the plan,” says Greear, a pipe-smoking environmental activist. He has successfully fought potentially environmentally damaging federal proposals before in the North Georgia mountains, and he views this as yet another threat on forest land around the country.

Greear grew up in the mountainous North Georgia forests. He saw the government acquire depleted forest land from private lumber interests and nurture it to a more pristine state as the Chattahoochie National Forest.

It wasn’t long after he came into office that President Reagan sowed the seeds for the forest land fight. In 1981 he created the Property Review Board, which was instructed to study national forest, park and wildlife lands for possible sale. In turn, regional federal officials began reviewing public lands. Last spring, the Southeast Region of the U.S. Forest Service released its list of lands that might be sold.

Greear and other opponents of the proposed sale banded together and began raising funds. They rallied five hundred sympathizers in May and began sending out newsletters to the media and the public. As a recent move to underscore the importance and value of the Chattahoochie National Forest, group members began work on a forty-seven mile trail that will provide recreation benefits to thousands.

The program to sell off “surplus federal property” already has picked up steam this year in Georgia and other Southeastern states, reports Barney Maltby, of the General Services Administration’s regional office in Atlanta. In 1982 only two small pieces of federal land were sold in the state, fetching eight thousand dollars. As of September, 258 acres of federal land in Georgia have been sold for nearly one million dollars in 1983. Maltby said he expects the sales in the Southeast to top twenty million dollars by the end of this month.

The proposal has resulted in environmentalists leveling yet another broadside at the Reagan administration and its environmental policies. Public reaction was harsh enough to prompt former Interior Secretary James G. Watt to decide against selling his department’s refuge and national park lands.

The issue of selling forest lands, however, remains very much alive before the Agriculture Department. The sale question will likely be decided by Congress, and Gandy says “just about anything” could happen.

Greear and the North Georgians, meanwhile, are whipping up support and lobbying state and federal legislators. They vow to continue the fight “until we get the government to drop the plan,” says Greear. “Our main goal is to keep the issue alive and keep pressure on Congress, and hopefully prevent legislation from ever being introduced.

Gregg Jones is a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Reaping What We Sow

By Cary Fowler

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 14-18

American agriculture is imported. All the major food crops grown in North America originated elsewhere.

It is believed that agriculture began independently in Southwest and East Asia, Mesoamerica, and probably South America and Africa in prehistoric times and gradually spread to other lands (see Chart A). The different grains and vegetables as we know them did not exist, for their present form is the result of thousands of years of evolution and domestication.

The conscious planting and harvesting of plants for food over wide geographic areas helped create enormous natural, genetic diversity in crops. Some of the seeds of plants that had successfully survived the growing season were not eaten, but saved to be replanted the following year, thereby perpetuating their own characteristics. Thus, countless genetically distinct varieties of each crop developed in response to different ecological conditions and human needs. Natural defenses evolved to the different pests and diseases encountered in each locality.

Modern agriculture changed all that.

Sacrificing Seeds

By the early 1950s, major efforts were underway at research centers supported by private and government sources to breed grains which would produce high yields when pumped full of fertilizers and water. Food crops, especially vegetables, were also bred to fit the demands of brutal harvesting machinery and the rigors of long-distance transportation. Taste and nutrition were forgotten, even scorned.

Modern agriculture needs predictability; therefore, plant breeders strive for uniformity. Plants are bred and inbred to develop the desired characteristics. The result has been the creation of new varieties that are extremely genetically limited.

These new varieties have quickly spread around the globe, replacing old, traditional varieties. “Suddenly in the 1970s,” writes Garrison Wilkes of the University of Massachusetts, “we are discovering Mexican farmers planting hybrid corn seed from a midwestern seed firm, Tibetan farmers planting barley from a Scandinavian plant breeding station, and Turkish farmers planting wheat from the Mexican wheat program.”

Seed companies, governments, and international aid agencies have gone into areas where traditional varieties predominate and promoted the new plants, often calling them “miracle varieties.” Convinced of the “superior” qualities of the new variety, the Third World farmer or peasant ceases to grow the traditional crop. Instead, leftover seeds of the traditional variety may be used as food for the family or their animals. In a moment’s time, thousands of years of crop development and seed selection become meaningless, as another variety becomes extinct.

As food crops become more uniform, so do cultures. Foods and crops are an important part of a people’s heritage; they perpetuate and enrich its customs. As food crops become more uniform, so do people. As traditional varieties become extinct, human cultures lose something very special and irreplaceable.

The Ultimate Gamble

Where thousands of varieties of wheat once grew, only a few can now be seen. When these traditional plant varieties are lost, their genetic material is lost forever. Herein lies the danger. Each variety of wheat, for example, is genetically unique. It contains genetic “material” not found in other varieties. If, because of genetic limitations which result from inbreeding, new varieties are no longer resistant to certain insects or diseases (conceivably even insects or diseases never before known to attack wheat), then real catastrophe could strike. Without existing seeds which carry specific genes conferring resistance, it may not be possible to breed resistance back into wheat, corn, or any other crop.

Serious problems result from lack of genetic diversity. We now know that the Irish potato famine of the 1840s was caused by such lack of diversity. The two or three varieties of potatoes introduced to Ireland had come from the five thousand plus varieties growing in the Peruvian Andes, original home of the potato. It took many years for the spores of the potato fungus–the black rot–to reach Ireland from South America. When it did, the results were catastrophic. The genetically vulnerable potatoes were wiped out. Although wealthy landlords still had traditional crops to export out of the country, the potato-dependent poor had nothing.

By the mid 1840s, two million Irish had died, two million more had emigrated and the remaining four million faced a bleak future.

In 1970, a corn blight struck in the U.S. Old, open” pollinated varieties were not affected, but most farmers were growing the new hybrid models–all of which were susceptible to the blight. Nearly fifteen percent of the nation’s crops was destroyed. In some Southern states where the corn smut found weather conditions favorable, the losses topped fifty percent.

A study the next year by the National Academy of Sciences showed that just six varieties of corn accounted for seventy one percent of the acreage planted. This same lack of diversity is seen in all the major crops in American agriculture. Could it happen again? Listen to what is being said:

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The key lesson of 1970 (year of the corn blight) is that genetic uniformity is the basis of vulnerability to epidemics. The major question the Committee on Genetic Vulnerability of Major Crops asked was, “How uniform genetically are other crops upon which the nation depends, and how vulnerable, therefore, are they to epidemics?” The answer is that most crops are impressively uniform genetically and impressively vulnerable.

-National Academy of Sciences

The array of diseases that pose threats to wheat, rice, maize, and sorghum is formidable. Except for the case of the Irish potato when neither plant pathology nor genetics had been born, research teams have been able to move fast enough to salvage our crops from complete devastation. But, we are becoming more and more vulnerable and there is no assurance that we can always react in time.

-Dr. Jack Harlan
Professor of Plant Genetics
Department of Agronomy
University of Illinois

Thus far, as Dr. Harlan notes, scientists have been able to work fast enough to avoid major catastrophes. When new varieties have been discovered to be genetically vulnerable to pests or diseases, scientists have scurried to collect old varieties or even “wild relatives” in a search for genetic material that could be bred back in to confer resistance. In recent years, wild potatoes have been used to breed in protection against eight major pests. Wild tomatoes have similarly provided resistance to a few pests. But all over the world, the new varieties are rapidly replacing old varieties. The National Academy of Sciences states that centers of wheat diversity are being destroyed “at an alarming rate.”

New wheats and rices have washed over Asia and the Near East with remarkable speed. New rice varieties came to occupy over seventy million acres in Asia in less than a decade. In Turkey, many priceless relatives of cereal grains are now found only in graveyards and castle ruins. U.N. scientists now estimate that the, Near East, center of genetic diversity for many of our grains, will simply disappear before the turn of the century.

Much, if not most, of this genetic wipe out is occurring due to the replacement of old varieties with new ones. International trade in seeds–the sale of seeds developed in North America and Europe to peasant farmers using old varieties–is the biggest factor behind the problem.

Other factors are also involved. Tropical forests, which contain the majority of the world’s higher plant species (including valuable food crops and plants used for making modern drugs), are being decimated by agricultural expansion and reckless timbering. These forests are now disappearing at a rate of up to twenty-seven million acres a year.

Recently, a rush of mergers and corporate takeovers has hit the seed industry. Many old family-owned seed companies have been bought out by large multinational corporations. The petrochemical and drug industries–major producers of pesticides and fertilizers–have been especially active

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(see Chart B). Their interest in the seed business raises three provocative questions. First, will corporations who are big producers of pesticides and fertilizers encourage their new seed company subsidiaries to breed plant varieties that require more or fewer pesticides and fertilizers? Second, will the acquisition of small seed companies by corporations who are active around the world tend to create international seed companies that will be better able to spread their new varieties to regions where old varieties still predominate? Will they therefore speed up the process of driving these old varieties out of existence? Finally, will the takeover of seed companies like Burpee by ITT bring slick, uninformative advertising to the seed business?

Patent That Plant!

As seeds have become big business, pressure has been put on governments around the world to insure high profits for the seed industry. Until recently plants were considered “public property.” One could own a “Big X” tomato, but one certainly could not prevent someone else from raising that variety of tomato and selling it or its seeds. The seed industry has been successfully challenging that custom and at their request many nations have established a system of patents for new plant varieties. Now companies are able to patent a form of life.

In the U.S., plant patenting laws were first passed in 1970. Controversial amendments expanding the scope of U.S. laws were passed by Congress and signed into law by President Carter in December, 1980, despite strong opposition. The Rural Advancement Fund/National Sharecroppers Fund spearheaded a nationwide campaign to oppose the amendments, arguing that they would encourage seed company takeovers, lead to higher seed prices and contribute to the replacement and ultimate extinction of many traditional vegetable varieties.

But the seed industry, a powerful appendage of multinational petrochemical and drug corporations, was not to be denied a victory for its special interest legislation.

In Europe, where patenting laws were first passed, thousands of traditional varieties (including the Big Boy tomato) are being literally outlawed. Common Market countries are phasing in a system which makes it illegal for seed companies to sell the seeds of the old varieties. The crime committed by the traditional varieties is that they compete with the new, patented varieties being offered by the big companies who are entering the seed business.

Dr. Erna Bennett, formerly of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, predicts that by the end of this decade, fully three-quarters of all the vegetable varieties now grown in Europe will be extinct!

One thing is certain. Patent laws make seed companies attractive investments for larger corporations. Shell Oil of Great Britain has bought fifty-six seed companies since passage of a patent law there would encourage takeovers in the seed industry. They need only look at what has happened in the U.S. for a preview.

Although big-time seed industry officials argue that patent laws will encourage research and development of new varieties and thus aid the public, it seems that precisely the opposite might happen. Scientists at some research centers have already noted the increasing reluctance of seed companies and other researchers to exchange information and resources.

Under existing plant patenting legislation, corporations get protective patents, royalties and vastly reduced competition. Farmers and gardeners are faced with illegal varieties, hybrids whose seeds cannot be saved and royalty fees they never had to pay for non-patented seeds. Plant patenting laws offer protection for corporate profits while further narrowing the genetic basis on which agriculture itself depends. Declaring certain varieties illegal and patenting others is a bizarre luxury we cannot afford.

The Seed Bank

All major crops without exception originated in that part of our globe we call the Third World. And it is in these areas where genetic diversity is greatest that conservation efforts are most important. For some years now primitive crop varieties and wild relatives of modern crops have been collected and brought back to industrialized countries for storage in refrigerated seed banks.

But these efforts are perennially crippled by anemic budgets. Expeditions to collect endangered wheat varieties in the Mideast are no one’s priority. Seed banks to store them in are poor competition for jet fighters in budget debates.

The U.N.-supported International Board for Plant Genetic Resources, the agency charged with coordinating the collection of crop genetic material and its storage in a system of some sixty seed banks, has an annual budget of only three million dollars. Collection of some crops like rubber and cocoa will be left to industry by necessity despite the fact that no international codes exist to guarantee access to such genetic material.

CHART B:
Update on Recent North American Seed Company Takeovers

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The flagship of the U.S. seed bank fleet is the National Seed Storage Laboratory (NSSL) located on the campus of Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Unfortunately, the NSSL does not meet the IBPGR’s standards for classification as a preferred “long-term” storage facility. For fifteen years its dedicated staff and once modern facilities languished without any budget increase. Budget considerations hold its total staff below twenty-five. An unbelievable forty thousand dollars a year is all the U.S. government devotes to collecting vanishing resources on which the future of agriculture rests.

Dr. Jack Harlan of the University of Illinois claims that no seed collection in the world is adequate–“all are incomplete and shockingly deficient.” According to Dr. Harlan, “These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine. In a very real sense, the future of the human race rides on these materials. ” Can we entrust the responsibility for creating an international seed protection system to an under-funded staff of four? Can we rely on the Fort Collins collection? Dr. Harlan gives us a blunt answer. “If you are willing to entrust the fate of mankind to these collections, you are living in a fool’s paradise.”

Sowing Seeds of Action

Bringing diversity back to our food crops, stabilizing world food supplies, and insuring the future of agriculture are goals we should all work towards. There is not an individual in the world who cannot do something. Everyone’s contribution is important.

The debate over seed patenting proposals alerted many

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to this crisis. Through the efforts of farm, garden, environmental, and church groups, and many concerned individuals, thousands of American learned of the genetic vulnerability of our major crops, the silent crisis that stalks world agriculture. Out of this increased awareness can come solutions.

What can we do individually and collectively?

(1) Support increased funding for collection and storage of our plant genetic resources, before those resources disappear forever. Storing seeds is only a partial solution, however. We need as many varieties as possible out in the real world, growing in their own diverse environments so they can continue to change and adapt. In addition, all seeds eventually lose the life they hold within themselves. Periodic” ally, all stored seeds must be taken out of storage and grown into plants who seeds must be collected and stored afresh. This would be a monumental task; even the inadequate Fort Collins collection contains over thirteen hundred species.

(2) Help promote “plant preserves.” Here, wild ancestors of our major food crops could be allowed to live in safety much the same way that lions and elephants are protected in African game preserves. If traditional varieties are to be preserved, their environment must likewise be preserved. At present, “plant preserves” are more concept than reality. Public awareness of the need for plant preserves could help make them a reality.

(3) Multinational corporate involvement in the seed industry should be closely monitored. Manufacturers of pesticides and fertilizers should not be allowed to own seed companies. Companies that export seeds to Third World areas should be required to file statements documenting the environmental impact of those seed exports. If old varieties will be replaced, the company should be responsible for seeing that they do not become extinct. If a company will not make this guarantee, it should be prohibited from marketing m a given area.

(4) Oppose plant patenting legislation. Most governments do not expect much public awareness over this issue; therefore, a few letters expressing concern would have a big impact.

(5) Governments at all levels should be encouraged to offer marketing incentives to small farmers who grow the older varieties, for example, price supports for traditional varieties. Other government farm benefits could be offered to farmers willing to devote a small amount of acreage to endangered varieties.

(6) Farmers should consider banding together to buy bulk quantities of traditional seeds and to market the produce in bulk or through farmers’ markets. When selling the old varieties, farmers should help educate the public by labeling their produce with the name of the variety. Consumers can then learn to tell the difference and begin to put pressure on supermarkets to carry good produce.

(7) Individuals, churches, community groups, colleges, and town governments can begin to plant and safeguard the old varieties. In some areas, groups have established small “preservation” orchards devoted to traditional varieties of fruit trees. These efforts bring people together to promote awareness of the problem, while contributing to its solutions.

Planting a Future

In the end, the future of agriculture can be insured only by healthy, vibrant small farms. The old varieties are threatened today, not because they taste bad or are nutritionally deficient, but because they do not suit the requirements of the factory farmers and the food processing industry. The California farmer who grows tomatoes to be shipped all over the country cannot grow the old, tasty varieties. Their skins are not tough enough. Their insides are not hard. If the old varieties are to flourish, they must be, as they have always been, grown by small farmers and sold to a local market. This system of agriculture has provided sustenance to people for well over ten thousand years. It is an enduring agriculture that we tamper with only at great risk.

Seeds are a unique product of the efforts of people and nature. In seeds, culture and agriculture are linked. This bond dissolved, both are threatened. Our ancestors knew this and lived accordingly. Thomas Jefferson once professed his belief that “the greatest service which can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” For our generation, the challenge will be to preserve the useful plants we already have.

Parent Company	Seed Company
Abbott-Cobb (USA)	Twilley Otis
Agrigenetics (USA)	Arkansas Valley
	Keystone
	McCurdy
	Taylor-Evans
Amfac (USA)	American Garden
	Gurney Seed
	Henry Field
Atlantic Richfield (USA)	Dessert Seed
Cargill (USA)	Dorman
	Kroelor
	PAG
	ACCO
	Paymaster Farms
	Tomco-Genetic Giant
Celanese (USA)	CelPrill
	Joseph Harris
	Moran
	Niagara
	Nugrains
Ciba-Geigy (Switz.)	Funk’s Seed
	Louisiana
	Stewart
Clays-Luck/ Participex (France)	Neumann
Dalgety (Gr. Bri.)	Driscoll Strawberry
DeKalb Pfizer Genetics (USA)	Clemens Farm
	Jordan Wholesale
	Sensors
	Trojan
Diamond Shamrock (USA)	Golden Acres Hybrid
Grain Processors Corp.(USA)	L. Teweles
	Americana
	Morton Sons
ITT (USA)	Burpee
	O. M. Scott
Int’l Multifoods (USA)	Baird
	Gildersleeve
	Lynk Bros.
Kleinwanzlebener SAAT (W. Ger.)	Cokers Pedigreed
	KWS Seeds
Limagrain (France)	Ferry Morse
	Advanced
	Hulting Hybrids
Monsanto (USA)	DeKalb Hybrid Wheat
Occidental Petroleum (USA)	Excel Hybrid
	Missouri
	Moss
	Payne Bros.
	Stull
Pioneer Hi-bred (USA)	Green Meadows
Reichold Chemicals (USA)	Florida Feed Seed
Sandoz (Switz.)	Northrup King
	Gallatin Valley
	Woodside Growers
Southwide Inc. (USA)	Cotton Seed Distributors
Stauffer Chemicals (USA)	Blarney Farms
	Prairie Valley
Tate Lyle (Gr. Bri.)	Seed Farm Supply
Tejon/Times-Mirror (USA)	W-L Resources
Upjohn (USA)	Asgrow
	Farmers Hybrid
	United Hagie Hybrid
Yates (Aus.)	Yates Arthur

Fred Hobson. Tell About the South: The Southern Rage to Explain, Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

By Elliott Gorn

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, 20-21

I recently attended a workshop for historians held at a Southern university. One scholar, who teaches in New York state and whose field of study is Latin America, confided to me that he couldn’t understand all the fuss over the South. Most of those attending the workshop were Southerners, and their teaching and writing focused on their native region. My newfound friend was sure they were wasting their time. At best, the South deserved passing notice as a slight national aberration, to be quickly discussed and dismissed in general United States history classes. While not primarily a Southernist, I argued that slavery, Jim Crow, staple agriculture, enduring folk traditions, rurality, and other factors all contributed to a distinct Southern past. I failed to convince him. The next time I find myself slipping into such a fruitless discussion, I’ll save my breath and hand over a copy of Fred Hobson’s Tell About the South. If Hobson fails to convince, the case is hopeless.

Hobson’s fine book concerns a strangely neglected subject, or perhaps more accurately a subject which scholars frequently skirt but rarely address frontally. Tell About the South, as its subtitle implies, concerns “The Southern Rage to Explain.” Not the contours of history or the aesthetics of fiction, but Southern consciousness–the awareness of being Southern–is Hobson’s theme. Apologias, jeremiads, calls for reform, justifications, paeans of praise, all were united by their author’s impassioned, even feverish consciousness of Southern identity. A professor of English, Hobson reaches beyond short stories and novels to include essays, tracts, speeches, journalism, polemics, even sociology, in a sub-genre of South-centered writing.

Hobson is not a newcomer to his subject. His much praised Serpent in Eden: H. L. Mencken and the South, and this year’s Lillian Smith Award winner, South Watching: Selected Essays of Gerald W. Johnson establish his credentials as a capable scholar of Southern Studies. But Tell About the South leaps beyond these monographs to a comprehensive discussion of a dozen and a half of the region’s most penetrating and influential commentators. It is the bringing together of pre-Civil War spokesman like George Fitzhugh, Edmund Ruffin, and Hinton Helper, voices from the post bellum industrializing South such as Thomas Nelson Page, Howard Odum, Donald Davidson and Wilbur Cash, along with Southerners of the Civil Rights era like Lillian Smith, Richard Weaver and James McBride Dabbs, which gives the book its sweep and power.

Hobson’s prose is always highly readable, and at times moving. But both style and substance are at their best in the book’s midsection, the era spanning the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. Here social and moral conflicts haunted Southern thinkers, conflicts which spurred the imaginations of great novelists from Twain to Faulkner. The moral dilemma of slavery in a world obsessed with equality was difficult enough. The outcome of the Civil War simply added tangled new problems to explain or interpret: Defeat, humiliation, and impoverishment; a twinkling of racial justice snuffed out as suddenly as it appeared; industrialization, urbanization and a new spirit of capitalist boosterism, amidst tenant farm and milltown squalor.

Hobson places his dramatic personae in two broad categories of Southern thought which he labels the school of guilt and shame and the school of remembrance, the former critical, introspective, often liberal, the latter celebratory, nostalgic and conservative. Thus, in the antebellum period we have George Fitzhugh and Edmund Ruffin defending slavery and the plantation ethos against the assaults of the modernizing North, while Hinton Helper railed against slavery and eventually the entire black race as impediments to the advancement of the poor white majority. A century later, Richard M. Weaver took his conservative stand for a traditional Southern ethic–including a mistrust of abstraction, idealism and progress, a knowledge of tragedy and failure, and a love of place, nature, the spoken word and all that was tangibly Southern–while Lillian Smith wrote prophetically on the human destructiveness of racial and sexual segregation.

But it was the era of Jim Crow beginning late in the nineteenth century through the Northern assault on the “benighted” South during the 1920s and 1930s which produced not just critics or defenders, but great and self-conscious dialogues on the meaning of the South. As the region underwent the most intense period of economic transformation, pairs of antagonists took it upon themselves to define the meaning of the South for their contemporaries. Each developed a group of followers, and the opposing sides helped shape and define each other. Thus, Thomas Nelson Page eulogized the life of the old upper South for its heroism, gentility and grace, all those qualities which made Robert E. Lee a representative man. But his distant cousin, Walter Hines Page, looked with a more jaundiced eye on what he considered sloth, intellectual sterility, poverty, and the dangers of growing industrialization. By the 1920s the focus shifted to Southern universities, particularly Vanderbilt and North Carolina, as Southerners responded to the Northern intellectual community’s attack on their region’s racial, intellectual, and religious “backwardness.” Donald Davidson led the agrarians of I’ll Take My Stand against the liberal modernizing juggernaut they saw embodied in Howard Odum and the Southern sociologists. Here the defense shifted from the aristocratic South to the conservative values of the deep South’s plain folk, while the social scientists who criticized their own region sought ways to merge economic and social progress with enduring rural ways. By the eve of the second World War, Wilbur J. Cash and William Alexander Percy become the leading antagonists in the drama, the former assuming the mantle of reform, the latter writing in an elegiac manner on the lost life of the Delta aristocrat.

A review cannot possibly capture the depth and subtlety which Hobson brings to his subject. Above all what comes through in his work is the passion of these writers for telling about the South. Not what they said but the way they said it was crucial:

The radical need of the Southerner to explain

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and interpret the South is an old and prevalent condition, characteristic of Southern writers since the 1840s and 1850s when the region first became acutely self-conscious. The rage to explain is understandable, even inevitable, given the South’s traditional place in the nation–the poor, defeated, guilt-ridden member, as C. Vann Woodward has written, of a prosperous, victorious and successful family. The Southerner, more than other Americans, has felt he had something to explain, to justify, to defend or to affirm.

Personal and regional identity merged. Prophets, Jeremiahs, patriots, all were possessed by the need to explain their cause and give it meaning:

If apologist for the Southern way, he was felt driven to answer the accusations and misstatements of outsiders and to combat the image of a benighted and savage South. If native critic, he has often been preoccupied with Southern racial sin and guilt, with the burden of the Southern past–and frustrated by the closed nature of Southern society itself, by the quality which suppressed dissent arid adverse comment.

William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom is Hobson’s prototype for the Southerner obsessed with telling the tale. Like the fictional Compson, four of the writers discussed by Hobson finished their story then took their own lives.

There are, of course, criticisms to be made. Tell About the South is occasionally repetitious. Moreover, the dialogue Hobson traces is primarily between liberals and conservatives. One wonders how the Southern radical tradition fits in, especially the populist voices at the turn of the century. I also suspect that Hobson’s implied eulogy for the passionate Southerner amidst sunbelt blight is a bit premature; commercialism and hype have not completely drowned out the voices of enraptured Southerners. But all of this is quibbling. Tell About the South is an important book about an important subject.

Elliott Gorn is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Marie Faulk Rudisill. Truman Capote. William Morrow & Co., 1983.

By Harriet Swift

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 21-23

Marie Faulk Rudisill, Truman Capote’s aunt, has succeeded in accomplishing what most people thought was impossible: she has brought her nephew and the homefolks in Monroe County, Alabama, into complete agreement. Both Capote and Monroeville are deeply offended by Rudisill’s new book, Truman Capote, and are united in their opinion of the memoir: It’s all wrong.

The book, subtitled “The story of his bizarre and exotic boyhood by an aunt who helped raise him, “tells of Capote’s childhood, filtered through the history of lore of his mother’s family. Rudisill, now seventy-two and living in Beaufort, South Carolina, wrote the book with the help of James C. Simmons, a California writer with an academic background in Southern literature.

Rudisil1 opens her story with the 1954 suicide of Lillie Mae Faulk Persons Capote, her sister and Truman’s mother. After an intimate pre-funeral chat with her nephew about his homosexuality and her dashed hopes for a match with his childhood friend and Monroeville neighbor, Nelle Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird), Rudisill settles down for one of those languid, repetitive family brooding sessions that every Southerner is acquainted with from birth. AII family closets and cupboards are emptied and ruminated over, underlining the favorite themes of love, love lost, betrayal, the inevitability of hardship and the evil in the hearts of men, women and small children.

Rudisill chronicles the fortunes of the Faulk tribe from the time of the War between the States, which she says devastated the huge family plantation and left the family destitute. One daughter, in the best Scarlette O’Hara tradition, grasps that King Cotton’s rule is over and determines to build a new life. She parlays her sewing talent into a small shop that offers hats, lingerie and other feminine finery to the town carriage trade. Jenny Faulk, who never marries, is a woman of iron will and razor-sharp business instincts. She builds a house in Monroeville and becomes head of a family which includes her widowed mother, a brother and two spinster sisters. Later, two young cousins from Mississippi are added to the household when their parents’ deaths leave them orphans.

One of the orphans begins a family of his own at eighteen, briefly bringing his sixteen-year-old bride to Miss Jenny’s house before striking out on his own as a horse trader. When he is mortally injured while breaking a horse, Miss Jenny brings his widow and five children to her house. The young widow grieves herself to death and Miss Jenny takes on the raising of the children. The eldest is the beautiful and spirited Lillie Mae. She and Jenny fight constantly.

In the middle of this unending battle of wills is Lillie Mae’s younger sister Marie, nicknamed Tiny, who is alternately Lillie Mae’s confidante and victim. The imperious Lillie Mae sets her cap for a rich husband and fetches up one Archulus Persons, the unattractive and unambitious son of a Fine Old Alabama Family from Troy. Their son Truman

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is born in 1924 and is more or less consigned to Miss Jenny’s household until Lillie Mae acquires a second mate in 1931, a wealthy Cuban businessman who lives in New York City. There are regular visits back to Monroeville but Truman has been molded by growing up amidst a family headed by a stern matriarch, an indifferent mother, an obsessively devoted older spinster (Sook, the model for the sweet, simple-natured cousin in A Christmas Memory), and the other “bizarre and exotic” members of the household and citizenry of Monroe County.

Although Truman Capote now issues a blanket “no comment” through his literary agency on his aunt’s book, he was quoted in The Washington Post shortly after its publication as saying “If there are twenty words of truth in it, I will go up on a cross to save humanity.” Monroeville, always more circumspect in its pronouncements than its most famous son, puts its feeling another way: “Why would she do this to her family?” is the first response when the home folks are asked about Rudisill’s book. “Why would she do this to Monroeville?” is almost always the next comment.

Capote’s discomfort is easy to understand. No matter how uninhibited one has been about coming out of the homosexual closet and making literary hay of an unorthodox family background in the mysterious South, it can only be painful to have childhood foibles and parental indifference committed to the printed page. Especially when the story is being told by a relative one has not seen or spoken to in fifteen years.

Monroe County’s unhappiness with the book is part of a larger problem. This dignified, tranquil Black Belt community prides itself on an unremarkable gentility that prized good manners, bland opinions and unbroken calm. There were no civil rights demonstrations in Monroe County, no “incidents” that made their way to the six o’clock news. There was no Ku Klux Klan to speak of, and the county has remained a bastion of temperance to this day. Into this peaceful Southern Eden came unwanted and distasteful celebrity through the successful writing careers of Capote and Nelle Lee. To Monroeville, Marie Rudisill’s memoir is yet another cross to bear.

Although the hometown reaction is rooted in a code that believes in keeping family skeletons in the closet and settling disputes behind locked doors, the predictable wail of “It’s not true! That isn’t the way it happened!” seems justified. There are some odd errors and omissions in the memoir that nod darkly toward hazy memories of half a century ago shaped for publication by, say, a California writer with a background in Southern literature. For the reader unfamiliar with Alabama and Monroe County, Rudisill stretches her credibility with supposedly verbatim quotes of long conversations that took place over fifty years ago and, in some cases, before her birth. For the reader who does know anything about Monroe County, the story is riddled with inaccuracies and puzzlements.

One of the strangest assertions concerns the love of Lillie Mae’s life, a proud Indian doctor from a nearby reservation. There are no Indian reservations in Monroe County and never have been, according to those familiar with the generally unimpressive history of the county. Rudisill places the reservation on the edge of town, Claiborne (consistently misspelled as “Clairborne), at the edge of the Alabama River. The names of families and institutions are misspelled (including her own college) and well-known facts are scrambled. She says, for instance, that Nelle Lee’s only brother died at birth, when he in fact was the model for To Kill a Mockingbird’s Jem.

Monroeville’s indignant howls of “how could she do this!” go to the heart of the book’s purpose and the town’s annoyance. Actually, it’s easy to see how Aunt Tiny could do this to her family (two sisters, reportedly very unhappy over the memoir, still live in Monroeville). The book is less about Monroeville and the shaping of a literary legend than it is about the settling of old scores. Lillie Mae Capote has been dead almost thirty years, but the wounds she inflicted on her younger sister have never quite healed. Lillie Mae, the egotistic beauty, delighted in humilating others and her apparently eager to please young sister was a target too easy to pass up. The guileless Tiny even followed Lillie Mae to New York, but complains bitterly about being used and manipulated by her sister. The sins of the mother are visited in the son, who seems never to have properly appreciated all that Aunt Tiny did for him.

“How could she do this to Monroeville,” is a bit more complex. Although Rudisill spins yarns that she knows go against Monroe County’s grain, telling of wanton young white women (Lillie Mae), interracial alliances producing children acknowledged by white fathers (in one case her uncle), wild bucks who rode horses into stores and staid businesswomen with secret lovers from New Orleans (shudder), she emphasizes her family’s refinement, uniqueness and charm at every chance. Her father’s horses weren’t just horses, but “magnificent white stallions,” they all attended “prestigious” schools, ordered clothes from “the finest stores,” and were included among the “gentry” of Monroe County. The Faulks, one is supposed to see, were a Fine Old Family of charming eccentrics in the best Southern tradition. Even without the notoriety bestowed by Truman Capote, the Faulks were an impressive and intriguing bunch, her book insists. Aunt Tiny may have been an overlooked middle child, but she is emphatic that her family was counted among the aristocracy.

Monroeville, however, is having none of it. Tiny has captured some of the atmosphere of the time, those who have read the book say politely, citing her descriptions of 1920s and ’30s which recount the long summers of heat and ennui, the insular life in the Black Belt. But the balance of the book is not credible, they add, taking special exception to Rudisill’s depiction of the Faulks as a leading family. She has “flowered up” the family’s story, to use the words of one Monroeville matron who hated the book. “The Faulks were rather common,” she says calmly, “not our kind of people.” There was no Taraesque plantation, say others who knew the family, vaguely recalling some acreage outside of town. The general consensus paints Miss Jenny and her clan as hardworking country people who took care of their own but were regarded as a peculiar bunch and relegated to the edges of the “nicest” circles.

Truman Capote (the book) has garnered so-so to hostile reviews in the literary world, causing only a small ripple of interest. In Monroe County, it is being received with a sigh of resignation. There’s a waiting list for the town library’s one copy. Those who have ordered personal copies from bookstores in Birmingham and Atlanta are plied with requests from family and frieds for a look-see. The town

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that Nelle Lee described in To Kill a Mockingbird as a “tired old” place in 1935 has grown and even prospered a bit. There’s a big Vanity Fair (lingerie) sewing factory, a junior college and several large pulpwood mills on the Alabama River. But it’s still a very conservative place, completely satisfied with itself. A little probing convinces one that the oft-stated indifference to celebrity is genuine. Even if Nelle Lee were not obsessive about her privacy (she has not published since the huge success of Mockingbird in 1960, she does not give interviews and cuts off anyone who is quoted in print about her) and if Truman Capote did not live what is delicately referred to as “an unusual lifestyle,” Monroeville would still not be interested in being known for its writers.

There is a market for Monroeville. Ann Pridgen, the town librarian, reports a steady stream of letters and visitors from all over the United States and several foreign countries seeking information about the town and its famous son and daughter. Steve Stewart, editor of the county’s excellent weekly newspaper, The Monroe Journal, is often called on by visiting writers and journalists who single out Monroe County when writing about the South. Yet there are no To Kill a Mockingbird T-shirts to be had in Monroeville, no signs proclaiming this the childhood home of Lee and Truman Capote, only a mimeographed handout available at the library of Chamber of Commerce office explaining that the Lee house is now the site of a Dairy Queen and Boo Radley’s tree does not exist. The reading room in the musty museum in the old courthouse is the Nelle Harper Lee-Truman Capote Room, but even that concession to fame seems unenthusiastic and underplayed. Something was expected of the town, and that seems to be [unclear]response.

“We’re the safest folks in the world,” explains one shrewd character in To Kill a Mockingbird to the disillusioned Jem and Scout. The safest folks are nice to know and pleasant to visit but ill at ease with the world of ideas and mystified by fame that seems to them based on stories that are not “true” and images that are distorted. Monroe Country, which did not choose to run for literary immortality, has nevertheless been elected, but firmly refuses to serve.

Harriet Swift, currently a reporter with the Oakland Tribune, is a native Alabamian who spent her childhood summers on her grandfather’s farm in Monroe County.

Stephen Oates. Let The Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harper and Row, 1982. Paper edition by Plume, New American Library, 1983.

By Lawrence J. Hanks

Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 23-24

Let The Trumpet Sound is the first biography of King to appear since David Lewis’ King: A Critical Biography was published in 1970. One still might reasonably ask, “What could Oates possibly add to the telling of such a well-known life since four book length biographies have already appeared?” (Lawrence Reddick’s Crusader Without Violence, 1959;Lerone Bennett’s What Manner of Man, 1964; William Miller’s Martin Luther King, Jr. His Life, Martyrdom, and Meaning for the World, 1968; and the Lewis biography.) To begin with, Oates is the first to use newly available King materials at Boston University and at the King Center in Atlanta. He has also made excellent use of government documents, oral histories and many writings touching upon King’s life and the civil rights movement that have appeared in the last ten years.

Oates allows King to speak for himself whenever possible, infusing the familiar portions of the biography with new vitality. At times, this device makes the work seem autobiographical, with Oates adding analysis: it creates a sense of listening to King.

Writing that he has “no interest in adding to the deification of King as a flawless immortal ” Oates deals compassionately with his frailties. The result is the best and most complete account we now have of King’s life, revealing an individual striving toward philosophical consistency. He wished to be more like Gandhi. yet his desire to take a vow of poverty and discard his middle-class wardrobe struggled with a strong sense of family responsibility and the image of his leadership role. He wanted to take a day for fasting and praying each week but the pace of his schedule often took control. King wanted to take a vacation from the movement and completely develop his non-violent philosophy, but his charismatic presence and fund raising skills always seemed to be required.

King reacted to the frequent charge of being middle-class by largely rejecting the more negative superficial middle-class values; he abhored conspicuous consumption and refused to enrich himself from speech making. donating these earnings to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other civil rights groups. He refused a number of lucrative jobs in order to stay with the movement.

The sacrificing of personal needs found little compensation in King’s role as leader. There were jealousies, factionalism and genuine strategic disagreements. And, he was extremely sensitive to the common perception of the modern black struggle for civil rights being called the “King Movement.”

While accepting the role as the most well-known figure, King felt that this was a result of his being the chosen leader of the movement rather than a result of personal ambition. He repeatedly pointed out that the real heroes and heroines were the blacks of the South who found the courage to fight for their rights–he was simply an “instrument of history.” He made this point in Stride Toward Freedom and in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Oates’ examination of King’s ordeal with the FBI and the campaign waged against him by J. Edgar Hoover is perhaps the only part of Let The Trumpet Sound that is “new.” Determined to discredit King. Hoover received official sanction from President Kennedy to tap his home telephone and those of the SCLC. Between October 1963 and December 1964 the FBI bugged rooms wherever King stayed. In January 1965, the FBI sent a composite tape of these recordings to the SCLC.

Oates argues that “whether or not the tape with its alleged sounds of sexual activity actually incriminated

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King may never be known.” He dismisses Andrew Young’s and Coretta King’s denials of the tapes’ incriminating potential as attempts “to protect King.” Although it is never explicitly stated, Oates’ contention that King was guilty of infidelity is based on statements made by King to confidants, statements in his sermons and personal statements by confidants. The case is strong, albeit circumstantial, even to those who wish to deify. Since well-known papers such as the Chicago New, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Constitution, and the New York Times all refused to carry the King “sex stories” when they were offered by the FBI, the rumors never became widespread public knowledge during King’s life. Even within the movement, only a few confidants knew about the tape. King perservered to confront Selma, Chicago, Memphis, the Viet Nam war, and to make plans for the Poor People’s March on Washington before his assassination.

At the time of his death, King was becoming a more radical critic of America. He had grown to realize that segregation and disenfranchisement were only symptoms of a larger problem: the economic exploitation of poor people regardless of color. The Civil Rights Bill of [unclear] and The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did little to improve the daily lives of the nation’s poor blacks. The Acts did not bring economic independence to rural Southern blacks or anything substantial to northern ghetto dwellers. Bayard Rustin had argued since 1962 that the civil rights movement should expand its agenda to focus on wealth and poverty in America as well as race. King could now see the merit of Rustin’s position and he was ready to act. The Poor People’s Campaign would have been his first effort toward the goal of bringing about a redistribution of wealth in America.

King theorized that part of the reconstructing of American society “might require nationalization of vital industries, as well as a guaranteed income for impoverished Americans.” While Oates stops short of placing an ideological label on King’s new philosophy, others have argued that King was moving toward democratic socialism (See David Garrow, Illinois Times, 31 March-6 April, 1983, “From Reformer to Revolutionary”). One can easily argue that King, if he were alive today, would support the women’s movement, disarmament, and abhor the growing middle-class consciousness among black Americans.

Having the credentials to insulate himself from the harshest aspects of class and racial discrimination, King could have easily lived a comfortable life. He could have pursued his personal dream and taught theology at a university. Instead, he felt compelled to advocate [unclear] rights and humanity of others that he jeopardized his own self-preservation. Let The Trumpet Sound is a comprehensive and compassionate account of this great life.

Lawrence J. Hanks is a graduate student in government at Harvard University. His dissertation research focuses on black political participation in the rural South since the 1965 Voting Rights Act.