The Making of a Southern Democracy: North Carolina Politics from Kerr Scott to Pat McCrory

The Making of a Southern Democracy

The Making of a Southern Democracy

NORTH CAROLINA POLITICS FROM KERR SCOTT TO PAT McCRORY

Tom Eamon

University of North Carolina Press CHAPEL HILL

© 2014 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Set in Utopia and Gotham types by codeMantra

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eamon, Tom.

The making of a southern democracy : North Carolina politics from Kerr Scott to Pat McCrory / Tom Eamon.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4696-0697-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4696-0698-9 (ebook)

1. Political participation—North Carolina. 2. Political culture— North Carolina. 3. Democracy—North Carolina. 4. North Carolina— Politics and government. 5. United States—Politics and government. I. Title.

JK4189E35 2014

320.9756—dc23

2013028282

18 17 16 15 14      5 4 3 2 1

To my editor, David Perry,

and to my parents,

Floyd William Eamon and Carletta Shaw Eamon

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1 / Uprisings

2 / The 1950s

3 / There’s a New Day Coming

4 / The Unsettled Society

5 / Dirges in the Dark

6 / The Storms of ’72

7 / Transition in the Shadow of Watergate

8 / Eyes toward Washington

9 / The New South Meets the New Right

10 / Breaking New Ground

11 / Partisan Mix

12 / Seismic Shifts

EPILOGUE / The Perilous Climb

APPENDIX / Comments on Methodology and General Approach

Notes

Index

Illustrations and Maps

ILLUSTRATIONS

Kerr Scott, early 1950s, 17

Civil rights demonstrators, High Point, North Carolina, 1963, 88

Counterdemonstrators and police, High Point, North Carolina, 1963, 88

Terry Sanford and Leo Jenkins, 1961, 104

Leo Jenkins and William Friday, late 1960s or early 1970s, 161

Pat McCrory, January 2013, 320

MAPS

1. The geography of North Carolina, 5

2. Results of the 1960 Democratic runoff primary for governor—Sanford versus Lake, 67

3. Results of the 1960 presidential election—Kennedy versus Nixon, 74

4. Results of the 1968 presidential election—Humphrey versus Nixon and Wallace, 122

5. Results of the 1972 senatorial race—Galifianakis versus Helms, 151

6. Results of the 1972 gubernatorial election— Bowles versus Holshouser, 152

7. Results of the 1984 senatorial race—Hunt versus Helms, 211

8. Results of the 1990 senatorial race—Gantt versus Helms, 236

9. Results of the 2008 presidential election—Obama versus McCain, 297

10. Results of the 2008 gubernatorial election—Perdue versus McCrory, 305

11. Results of the 2012 vote on Constitutional Amendment 1, 313

12. Results of the 2012 presidential election—Obama versus Romney, 319

13. Results of the 2012 gubernatorial election—Dalton versus McCrory, 321

Acknowledgments

The outstanding staff at UNC Press has provided me with assistance far beyond what one might receive from the typical publisher. The staff took a keen interest in the book and made invaluable suggestions. They paid close attention to details in an attempt to achieve perfection. Furthermore, they were unfailingly courteous and welcoming. Some staff members I met and others worked behind the scenes. Caitlin Bell-Butterfield, Paul Betz, Mark Simpson-Vos, Jennifer Hergenroeder, Beth Lassiter, and Regina Mahalek were especially helpful as I wrapped up the project.

John Sanders, one of the leading pioneers in the study of government and public affairs of modern North Carolina, took an interest in my study from the beginning. John is as generous with his time as anyone I know. He reads a manuscript with remarkable attention to detail yet never loses sight of the big picture. He has been a selfless mentor to so many students of North Carolina government and politics.

Political scientist Patrick Cotter of the University of Alabama devoted hours to the manuscript and offered excellent suggestions.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Janice Nicholson for typing the initial manuscript. Janice, a longtime family friend, volunteered for the task. She read the manuscript with the keen eye of an individual well trained in the intricacies of English grammar and well versed in North Carolina and American politics. Janice is not only a perfectionist but also skilled in the art of diplomacy.

Copyeditor Ellen Goldlust read the book draft with great commitment and an amazing attention to detail.

My graduate assistants—Kristen Casper, Amanda McGee, and most recently Spencer Anhalt—have contributed immensely to this effort. My 2011–12 graduate assistant, Stefan Haus, devoted hours to the project and was a constant source of inspiration and insight over a period of a year and a half.

As department chairs in recent years, Rick Kearney and Brad Lockerbie were supportive in all respects. In addition, Brad as well as my colleagues Peter Francia and Tinsley E. Yarbrough read portions of the manuscript. Nancy Spalding and Robert Thompson helped me in various ways. And I could not have completed the project without the help of our administrative support team, Sheila Ellis, Kiwana Washington, and previously Violet Blackwelder, Mary Harris, Mary Wesley Harvey, Becky Moye, and Cynthia Manning Smith. Many other colleagues in the ECU Political Science department sharpened my insights in various ways.

So, too, have my students and former students. They have been lively companions with wide-ranging perspectives. While giving full credit where credit is due would take several pages, I must mention several individuals: William Brooks, Michael Carpenter, Jon Dougherty, Daniel J. Fussell, Brent Gaither, Brett Matheson, and Patrick Sebastien.

Other friends who have provided inspiration and insights include Leslie Bailey, Phillip Bailey, Robin Cox, Michael Dunne, David Elliott, Marvin Hunt, Robert Hunter, Mitchell McLean, Bill Mercer, Robert Mills, Bobby Mills, Carmine Seavo, Neil Sessoms, Ray Tyler, Cheryl Warren, Reed Warren, and Willis Whichard. Five friends—Jonathan Brooks, George Hearn, Wayne Holloman, Charles Mercer Jr., and Mary Lynn Qurnell—helped open doors and opportunities for me as I sought interviews as well as offered invaluable suggestions.

My close relatives were supportive all the way, especially my cousin, Jack Shirey, who read much of the manuscript and provided astute comments.

I am indebted to several scholars who have pioneered in the study of modern North Carolina. Political scientist Jack Fleer and historian William Powell led the way. Sociologist Paul Luebke skillfully questioned long-term assumptions related to the state’s progressive mystique. Historians David Cecelski, Glenda Gilmore, and Timothy Tyson brought to light the tragic developments in the politics of race in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the impact of these events on modern North Carolina politics. Thad L. Beyle, one of my former professors and a mentor to many, has been a leading figure in the study of American state governments. At the same time, he has been a pacesetter in the study of North Carolina politics, and his DataNet and related publications paved the way for all of us with an interest in the subject. Scholar-journalist Ferrell Guillory has worked closely with Beyle and others to keep many projects going. Earlier, Guillory was a distinguished political reporter for the Raleigh News and Observer. And I am indebted to several historians who have produced biographies of major political figures and campaigns. The works of Augustus M. Burns III, Karl Campbell, William Link, and Julian Pleasants guided my way. The studies of southern and American politics by political scientists Earl and Merle Black, Michael Bitzer, V. O. Key Jr., Alexander Lamis, Charles Prysby, and Harold Stanley were vital to my work.

North Carolina has produced an able crop of journalists, some of whom have written major books on state politics. In addition to the writings of Ferrell Guillory, I have benefitted from books and articles by Bob Ashley, Ned Cline, Howard Covington, John Drescher, Marion Ellis, and Gary Pearce, the latter a journalist, before going into political consulting.

Rob Christensen, the author of The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, read a number of my chapters. He was enthusiastic and supportive, offering excellent suggestions. Rob is one of the leading interpreters of North Carolina politics from 1898 to now.

I would like to thank Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina and John Hood of the John Locke Foundation for providing keen insights on the current state of affairs in North Carolina. Equally informative were John Davis’s background comments and his newsletter.

The staffs of libraries and archives were invariably helpful. Materials at the UNC-Chapel Hill, East Carolina University, and Durham County Library were especially useful. I appreciate the efforts of Jonathan Dembo and Maurice York at East Carolina’s Joyner Library and Lynn Richardson at the Durham County Library.

My editor at UNC Press, David Perry, was an outstanding mentor, and now his friendship is a blessing to me. David offered invaluable advice and encouragement from the beginning. We have met at least once every two months for the last six years, sometimes much more frequently. Near the outset of the project, I lost several relatives who were very close to me, including my mother. Had it not been for David, this book might not have seen the light of day. While the manuscript had to undergo rigorous outside review, as do all UNC Press books, David’s help and wisdom were an inspiration all the way through. As an editor and as editor in chief of UNC Press, he has played a key role in the production of many major books on North Carolina history and politics.

This book is dedicated to David Perry and to my parents. My father, Floyd Eamon, is the reason I developed a strong interest in history and politics even before I learned to read. Both he and my mother, Carletta Shaw Eamon, nurtured this interest and so many others as long as they lived. They were stellar parents, and, equally important, they were my great friends and companions, full of wit as well as keen insights.

Prologue

After the triumph of freedom in World War II, the American South remained entrenched in its old ways. It was a rural and traditional region where white supremacy prevailed even as schoolchildren were taught the words All men are created equal. North Carolina, a state that had some claim to being the most innovative and progressive in the South, lived in a state of hypocrisy.

This is a book about how and why contemporary North Carolina developed as it did.¹ More broadly, it tells a story of the evolution of American democracy, stressing the period since 1948, the year of the first major election after World War II. It is a narrative of political events. Much of the story is told through the election battles that set the course for the future and the debates that shaped these elections. The North Carolina story is not one producing the nice, neat tapestry of a novel, one where all the threads can be tied together perfectly in the end. Yet, in its own way, it is as compelling as any novel could be.

The first theme is North Carolina’s transition from a racially segregated society based on the concept of white supremacy into a state more closely resembling a participatory democracy, where all people have voting rights and fundamental liberties. Well into the era of cars, planes, television, and air-conditioning, almost total segregation permeated North Carolina society. By 2010, blacks and whites patronized the same restaurants and theaters. Interracial dating was not unusual. In 2008, African Americans voted at higher rates than did whites in many locales. Taking the long view, it was a different world.

The second theme is North Carolina’s move away from a one-party political order, with the Democratic Party supreme, into a two-party system with stiff competition between Democrats and Republicans.² In earlier days, a big-business- and attorney-led faction had the upper hand in the Democratic Party, promoting state support for education and highways as a means of promoting economic development.³ Toward that end, North Carolina adopted statewide income and sales taxes. The state achieved a progressive reputation even as its political leadership backed white supremacy and resisted workers’ rights. By the twenty-first century, North Carolina had become a two-party state. Republicans proclaimed the conservative faith, favoring low taxes, capitalism, and traditional moral values. Many elected Democrats were liberals of some shade but preferred the progressive label. They pushed for expenditures on education, the environment, and transportation. Democrats advocated legal protections for gays, women, and racial minorities. Two-party competition, Democrats versus Republicans, had arrived with a vengeance.

The third theme is that elections matter—often a lot. At times from the 1940s through 2012, political party primaries and general elections took on a sharp ideological tone. While candidates ranging from mildly liberal to mildly conservative prevailed in races for governor, all were fundamentally progressive on education-related issues. A wider range of individuals were elected to the U.S. Senate with center-right and right-wing candidates winning more often than moderates and liberals. Elections reflect the tenor of the times. A few change the course of history, an impact that may not be apparent when the election occurs. They are watersheds.

A fourth central theme is that people make a difference—often a big difference. I believe that individuals influence the course of history as much as do the underlying social and economic forces.⁴ The stereotypical great leader is charismatic and has a powerful personality and superior communication skills—Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan. In North Carolina, Governor Jim Hunt and Senator Jesse Helms, towering figures of the late twentieth century, were effective communicators before cameras and in small group settings. Both did much to shape their political parties and, especially in Hunt’s case, the state’s agenda. Not all great leaders ooze charisma. North Carolina’s governor Terry Sanford (1961–65) lacked the forensic skills of Roosevelt or King, and his down-east drawl was not magnetic. Yet through determination, vision, enthusiasm, and talent at backroom wheeling and dealing, Sanford guided the state through a crucial period in American history. He had an impact.

If the story seems people-centric at times, I make no apologies. As the book moved along, I became more convinced than ever that particular individuals may alter the course of history.

A meaningful study of North Carolina politics must also be mindful of the big national events of the time. A major debate in Washington or an assassination in Memphis may have profound implications for the state. So throughout this narrative, state and national affairs are inextricably linked.

Throughout any comprehensive study of politics, one should also keep in mind underlying population trends as well as cultural factors—the deep-seated or underlying attitudes of a society.

An abundance of books and articles pertaining to the state’s history and politics have helped provide us with a better understanding of North Carolina. However, prior to William Link’s and Milton Ready’s recent books, most general histories stressed specific constitutions, conventions, or battles while giving less attention to the seamier side of North Carolina’s political evolution.⁵

Historians David Cecelski, Glenda Gilmore, and Timothy Tyson have offered riveting accounts of civil strife and setbacks for freedom between the 1890s and the 1970s. Their works also attempt to knock major North Carolina heroes, most notably Charles Aycock, from their pedestals. Progressive North Carolinians were portrayed as villains or at least deeply misguided.⁶ Sociologist Paul Luebke, later a prominent state legislator, argued in a 1990 book that ordinary working-class North Carolinians had gained little as modernizer or progressive-style politicians fought political battles with traditionalist elements.⁷ Longtime journalist Rob Christensen presented an incisive account of North Carolina politics throughout the twentieth century, one further enhanced by Christensen’s storytelling abilities.⁸ Other studies have dealt well with specific aspects of state government and politics such as the nature of political parties and the judiciary.⁹

Yet I have long felt the need for a close look at post–World War II North Carolina politics that focuses on the whys and hows of the state’s entry into the modern world. Such a study, I thought, should come from someone with both an academic background and an inquiring spirit, and preferably not someone who was unduly ideological or partisan.

I wanted a study that would focus deeply on elections as well as the politics of major debates on central issues such as race and education. In short, I aimed for a book of record and a serious work of scholarship, one that would be comprehensible not only to professional social scientists but also to interested laypersons and the simply curious. The goals are to explain what happened, how it happened, and why it happened.

I must add with three caveats, however. First, being relatively nonideological or fair should never block one from telling the truth, even when it hurts. Second, very few politicians are pure heroes or pure villains. Fairness demands looking at the good and the bad before reaching a final judgment. Third, although I have some degree of objectivity, I also have biases. The most notable is an abiding faith in the possibilities of an American-style democratic republic.

A VARIED LAND

North Carolina is among the most geographically varied of American states. Southeastern North Carolina is the land of beaches, live oaks, cypress trees, and haunting yet bewitching gray-green Spanish moss, sometimes drooping from the tree branches almost to the ground or the river. This region, especially around Wilmington, resembles subtropical North Florida or the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Boone, in the state’s northwest corner, is thirty-three hundred feet above sea level and is a land of majestic autumns and winter gales. Boone’s median 29.5° F January temperature is the same as in Providence, Rhode Island, seven hundred miles to the northeast.¹⁰

The Tar Heel state’s three major regions are the Atlantic coastal plain, often called the east; the rolling red clay piedmont plateau; and the mountains, or west. A fourth zone, the sand hills, straddles the southern piedmont and southern coastal plain. In most political discussions including this one, the eastern sand hills around Fayetteville are grouped with the coastal plain and the western sand hills, Pinehurst vicinity, are grouped with the piedmont. Forty-one counties are classified as the coastal plain, thirty-six are in the piedmont, and twenty-three are western or mountain. North Carolina has an area of 53,819 square miles, similar in size to England. (The land area, which excludes Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, is 48,611 square miles.) The state is oriented on an east-west axis, with a width of 500 miles at some points.

All three regions have been heavily Protestant Christian, befitting a state that until the 1950s was the most Protestant in America. The coastal plain and the northern and southern fringes of the piedmont culturally resembled Deep South states, with large black populations and agricultural economies. Most of the state’s cities lie along or near the piedmont’s Interstate Highway 85 corridor, roughly forming a crescent. The mountains long suffered from poverty and isolation, but a booming vacation industry has propelled growth since the late twentieth century. Asheville, the region’s major city, transformed from a provincial town decried by Thomas Wolfe, a native and sometime New York writer, in the 1920s to San Francisco on the Blue Ridge in the early 2000s.¹¹

Eastern North Carolina was overwhelmingly Democratic from 1900 through the 1960s. The piedmont was a partisan blend, with Democrats having a strong advantage until the 1950s and closer competition afterward. The mountains were divided, with family partisan loyalties going back to the Civil War. A lot of mountain people opposed the state’s secession from the Union, believing that secession benefited only lowland planter aristocrats. After the war, those who had opposed North Carolina’s decision to join the Confederacy expressed their anger by voting Republican, and many of their descendants still do so today, whether out of belief or inheritance. Mountain Democrats may trace their loyalties to Jefferson Davis or Franklin Roosevelt, but either way, they can be a fiercely partisan lot.

Map 1. The geography of North Carolina

Two North Carolina urban clusters, Charlotte and Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill, are among America’s fastest-growing. Charlotte is a major banking city and, along with New York and Chicago, one of the country’s top financial centers.¹² The financial sector and consequently Charlotte’s economy were shaken in the 2008–12 period, yet the area continued its rapid population growth and thrived as a corporate headquarters and trade center. In terms of central city populations alone, Charlotte is bigger than Atlanta, Boston, and Washington, but those cities lie at the centers of gigantic metropolitan areas surpassing Charlotte’s. Raleigh, the state’s capital, and the nearby cities of Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham stand at the forefront of a new knowledge-based and creative economy and constitute a major center of research and technology. Another major population center, Greensboro–High Point–Winston-Salem, specializes in finance, commerce, and manufacturing.

Across the state, bleeding industries—largely furniture, textiles, and tobacco—contributed to economic distress. Agriculture suffered as tobacco came under attack and smoking declined. The state boomed and atrophied at the same time. Still, agriculture, including poultry production, remained vital to the state’s economy.

For the last half century, social scientists have split southern states into two categories: the Deep South and the Peripheral or Outer South. The Deep South states are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. The Peripheral South states are Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina.¹³ For decades, the Deep South states have had higher percentages of African Americans in their populations than have the Peripheral South states. But for most of the last century, North Carolina’s 21–27 percent black population has been higher than that of the other Peripheral South states. Blacks have been the majority in from six to nine of North Carolina’s one hundred counties. Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina experienced a higher black net population increase than all but three states.

The term Black Belt or Black Belt counties has often been used in explaining southern politics. The term is applied to counties with populations that are 40 percent or more African American. Historically, whites in such counties were resistant to black political activity and voting. V. O. Key Jr. attributed this resistance to whites’ fear of losing control.¹⁴ This resistance was notable in North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s, when the civil rights movement reached its peak. After African Americans achieved full voting rights, the Black Belt counties moved to the left politically. North Carolina’s Black Belt counties are mostly in the state’s northeastern quadrant, but a few are near the Virginia border in the piedmont, and Anson and Richmond Counties are in the southern piedmont. Just to the east are Hoke and Robeson Counties, where African Americans and Native Americans combine to outnumber Caucasians.

Between 2000 and 2010, North Carolina’s Hispanic population grew quickly, reaching almost 10 percent of the total. In 2008, however, Hispanics comprised only 3 percent of state voters, a figure certain to rise in coming years. The Asian population is also growing, especially in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary area.

North Carolinians are often surprised to hear that their state is one of the more rural in the country. Not until 1990 was the state majority urban. However, urban areas now play a much more important role in guiding the state’s destiny than was previously the case.

THE CLEANSERS AND THE SPIRIT OF FIRE

In his October 12, 1933, Founders’ Day speech at the University of North Carolina, Robert Winston referred to the revolutionary spirit of his old college friend, Charles Aycock, during their days as students in Chapel Hill in the 1870s: In a word, he became the leader of the radical Left Wing of the college, a thorn in the flesh of the ultra conservative Right, and the disturber of the peace and quiet of the good old days when every one was supposed to know his place.¹⁵

Winston’s words hinted at the irony in Aycock’s life. While serving as governor from 1901 to 1905, Aycock posed as a bold reformer who was trying to make North Carolina better than it had been in his childhood. Aycock’s rhetoric and some of his initiatives went against the grain of traditional thinking in North Carolina and the South. Few leaders have spoken more eloquently or passionately for universal public education that at least ostensibly included men, women, blacks, and whites. He tenaciously carried forth his crusade for seven years after his gubernatorial term ended. On April 4, 1912, Aycock addressed a Birmingham, Alabama, group, recalling his commitment to education for all children: I canvassed the state for four years in behalf of education for the children of the state. Sometimes on Sundays they would ask me down to churches to talk, and I always talked about education.¹⁶

At that moment, he collapsed and died of a heart attack. Aycock’s shadow dominated North Carolina politics for decades to come. Generations of North Carolina schoolchildren were taught that Aycock had been the patron saint of education. North Carolina had no Washington or Jefferson, but it had Aycock. He filled a vacuum for a state that lacked great heroes. Aycock’s shadow had a darker side, however. In the 1898–1900 period, he, publisher Josephus Daniels, and Furnifold Simmons formed a triumvirate that led the Red Shirt attack on fundamental democratic values, most notably voting rights for blacks. The followers of the movement were called Red Shirts because of the bright red shirts they adopted as their uniform. Similar movements were sweeping the South from Virginia to Texas. Aycock defended southern womanhood, by which he meant white southern womanhood, a not-so-veiled reference to what whites saw as the ever-present threat of rape by black men. Prevailing prejudices had paved the way for Aycock to be elected governor in 1900. The same year, Simmons was selected as one of North Carolina’s U.S. senators, a position he held through 1930. In addition, he became the informal leader of the dominant Democratic faction. He knew well the nuts and bolts of party organization.

Almost a century after Aycock’s election, social historian Timothy Tyson wrote, It was the illegitimate and bloody seizure of power in 1898 that gave birth to the state’s moderate posture of white supremacy, but it was the violent and resilient nature of that ‘progressive mystique’ that preserved white supremacy. The racial paternalism embodied by Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, one of the leading architects and beneficiaries of the white supremacy campaigns, served to consolidate a social order carved out in murder and violence but preserved by civility and moderation.¹⁷ Not only Aycock but all of North Carolina’s image as a progressive state was now under assault. Aycock did much to shape the future of a state and its life, and on that his critics and defenders agree.

THE ESTABLISHMENT REFORMERS

In 1915, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation authorizing party primaries. The Democratic Party promptly moved toward choosing all statewide candidates and most county candidates through the direct primary, a process that enabled all registered party members to vote in an election to choose nominees. Ironically, white supremacists promoted direct democracy as early as the 1898–1900 period. Daniels had journeyed to Louisiana to study how that state’s Democratic Party used the primary to solidify white control over the electoral process. But with rare exceptions—the Senate contests of 1900 and 1912 featured advisory primaries—North Carolina had not had primaries. By 1915, more than forty states had adopted the primary system in the name of a more pure democracy. Prairie populist William Jennings Bryan, a friend of Daniels, viewed primaries as counteracting the influence of corporations and moneyed interests. Daniels shared this perspective and stressed the benefits of the primary system for the common man rather than a racial rationale. All over America, progressives of the time equated the primary with democracy. Since 1900, Democrats had won all of North Carolina’s statewide contests, and general elections had less meaning than in earlier times. The primary restored an open election of sorts. North Carolina was a follower rather than a leader in adopting the primary.¹⁸

In 1916, Attorney General Thomas Bickett won the first Democratic primary and went on to beat his Republican opponent in the general election for North Carolina’s governorship. While incumbent Democratic president Woodrow Wilson easily beat his Republican challenger, Charles Evans Hughes, in North Carolina, Wilson barely won the national election. Tax reform was Bickett’s legacy. The property tax, which was the state’s chief revenue source, had become unwieldy and inequitable. Bickett pushed for a graduated income tax capped at 6 percent, a move designed to decrease (though not eliminate) state reliance on the property tax. The state legislature concurred and submitted the question to the voters, who approved the necessary constitutional change. Many families initially had incomes low enough to escape the new tax altogether.¹⁹ This change put all of the state’s resources in the service of all the people and lessened discrimination based on place of residence. In the early 1930s, the state stopped collecting the property tax; subsequently, all property taxes were collected and used by counties and cities. In this respect, North Carolina was ahead of much of the country in moving to share the wealth.

Between 1920 and 1940, two governors stood out: Cameron Morrison (1921–25) and O. Max Gardner (1929–33). Both men sought the governorship in 1920. Gardner was the incumbent lieutenant governor, but the older Morrison prevailed, in part because of his support from Senator Simmons’s organization. Critics said that Morrison’s forces had stolen the Democratic primary election.²⁰ Gardner backed women’s suffrage. Morrison opposed it. Morrison forces attempted to link the campaign for female voting with a potential drive for African American voting, a specious claim. Shortly after the spring primary, the necessary three-fourths of all states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote everywhere in the country. North Carolina’s legislature had failed to ratify the amendment despite its support from reformers such as journalist Josephus Daniels.²¹

As governor, Morrison was no reactionary. His legacies were a massive road-building program and school improvements. The typical road in 1920 was rutted and bumpy, as hard on the human constitution as on the tires. Morrison persuaded the legislature to levy a gasoline tax of one cent per gallon, to allocate car registration fees to highways, and to borrow fifty million dollars for highway building through the issuance of bonds, earning the nickname the Good Roads Governor.²² Despite tremendous progress in building intercity two-lane highways, however, most rural roads remained covered in dirt or gravel. The state legislature also approved Morrison’s request for funds to extend the public school year to six months, an unfunded mandate held over from the 1921 legislature. The number of public schoolteachers rose from 16,800 to 22,340. Spending for colleges and universities almost doubled.²³

Morrison’s onetime rival, Max Gardner, won the governorship in 1928. Gardner was unopposed in the Democratic primary but garnered only a lackluster 55.5 percent in his general election race against Republican H. F. Seawell. The Democratic Party that year had nominated New York governor Alfred E. Smith for president. Not only was Smith a Catholic, but he also favored restoring the legal sale of alcoholic beverages, which had been banned since the advent of Prohibition in 1919. Republican Herbert Hoover won a resounding national victory, taking five of the eleven states in the usually Democratic South. Hoover carried North Carolina with 54.9 percent of the vote. Senator Simmons opposed his party’s presidential nominee, and many Protestant clergy asserted that the pope would run America from Rome if Smith were elected. Gardner, a loyal Democrat, damaged his candidacy by campaigning for Smith.²⁴

Less than a year later, in September 1929, the Great Depression hit. Governor Gardner faced diminished resources and pushed for greater program efficiencies while attempting to protect the core mission of the public schools and higher education. In 1931, he began a successful campaign to consolidate the administration of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill with the agricultural and mechanical college in Raleigh and the state college for women in Greensboro. Under the plan, each school kept its own identity and location, and each had a chancellor reporting to the university president in Chapel Hill.²⁵ The trustees approved Gardner’s candidate for the presidency of the consolidated university, history professor and University of North Carolina president Frank Porter Graham. Graham was a humanitarian and a liberal, sympathetic to labor unions and quietly supportive of minority rights. He was charismatic and a first-rate lobbyist. Charles Cannon and other textile executives considered Graham a dangerous radical.²⁶ Gardner, himself a textile mill owner, antiunion man, and lawyer, was so fond of Graham the educator that he overrode the objectors.

Gardner led the effort to defeat Senator Simmons in the 1930 Democratic primary on the grounds that he had supported the now-despised Hoover. After Simmons’s defeat by Josiah W. Bailey, Gardner took control of the business-oriented Democratic machine. For fourteen years after his gubernatorial term ended in 1933, Gardner remained the organization’s most influential figure.²⁷

The economic depression caused an enormous drop in state, county, and city revenue from income and property taxes. In response, Gardner urged the 1931 legislature to abolish the property tax as a source of state revenue so it could be used exclusively by local governments. To recoup lost revenue, farmers and Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, called for a sales tax on luxury items. Conservatives advocated a general sales tax, which Gardner protested, saying it would hurt the poor. He persuaded the legislature to raise income taxes and corporate taxes.²⁸ Gardner is sometimes portrayed as personifying rule by bankers and industrialists. However, his positions on taxation were more in line with what economic populist-style politicians might have advocated. He angered elements of the business community, who felt that they contributed disproportionately to the state coffers and pushed for tax reductions. The dire economic circumstances meant that most of the population still paid no state income tax. Despite their displeasure with the tax situation, most business leaders did not turn against Gardner the man, seeing him as a kindred spirit who sympathized with corporate North Carolina.

In 1932, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Roosevelt defeated Hoover. Nationally, he achieved a landslide victory in both electoral and popular votes. In North Carolina, Roosevelt led Hoover 497,566 to 208,344. All statewide Democratic candidates won commanding victories. Roosevelt would be reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944.

Gardner’s successor, J. C. Blucher Ehringhaus (1933–37), faced an even more dire fiscal crisis and further pressures from the business community to reduce corporate and income taxes. He proposed modest reductions in income taxes while pushing the legislature to enact a 3 percent sales tax on all nonfood items. In calling for the sales tax, Ehringhaus said, If it is a choice between the sales tax on the one hand or a decent school on the other, I stand for the school.²⁹ Ehringhaus said that enacting a sales tax would not only keep the schools open but assure that all schools could achieve the recently mandated eight-month term, a policy not yet implemented in some poor counties. To save money, teachers’ salaries and other state services were cut. Ehringhaus might have saved the public schools, but the poor, who could least afford the sales tax, paid a dear price, a price that economic liberals such as Daniels thought should have been borne by the well-to-do.

V. O. Key Jr., a great scholar of southern politics, called North Carolina’s rulers during this period the progressive plutocracy.³⁰ He believed that business-oriented elites wanted the state to move ahead as long as such progress did not challenge the fundamental order of society. A few leaders, most notably Gardner, were not mere errand boys for the industrialists, kindred though they were. To stay in charge, the state’s machine politicians needed to pay heed to the wave of popular protest, which was a reincarnation of economic populism harkening back to William Jennings Bryan in the 1880s and 1890s. The small farmers and working class fueled the movement.

In 1933, Roosevelt launched the New Deal, with programs that included pensions under the new social security program for retired Americans, welfare benefits for the needy, and government employment programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (which assisted private contractors in beautifying the Blue Ridge Parkway) and the Works Progress Administration (which built many small bridges in North Carolina). The Rural Electrification Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority brought electricity to the rural South, a benefit that had been almost totally absent outside the towns and cities. While Governor Ehringhaus and fellow conservatives welcomed assistance from Washington, they were skeptical of federal controls. Tensions developed when Washington funded local programs that potentially threatened state autonomy. State-level politicians feared influence from dangerous radical troublemakers.³¹ The Roosevelt programs marked the beginning of an adjustment in national-state relations. More than ever, the federal government emerged as the dominant partner in this often tense relationship.

In the early 1930s, leftists and rightists camped inside both national parties. With Roosevelt, the national Democrats emerged as the clearly more liberal party, first on economic and welfare issues and later on others. This shift was bound to cause friction between the national party and southern states. The paradox of the New Deal was that it built a stronger Democratic Party while planting the seeds for a Republican rise from the ashes. But the seeds would not bear fruit until long after the Great Depression.

FIGHTS FOR DEMOCRACY

With America’s entry into World War II following the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, new North Carolina military bases were established and existing ones such as Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune were expanded. Much as authorities might have tried to hide or suppress racial tensions, their efforts had little effect. Black soldiers still served in segregated military units but were on the same bases as whites. Black troops—including many from the South—bristled at the sting of segregation and overt white supremacy. The atmosphere was consistently venomous near Monroe in Union County, the home of Camp Sutton, and in the Hampstead–Holly Ridge–Wilmington area close to Camp Davis and the naval installations on the lower Cape Fear River. A race riot broke out in Durham after Booker T. Spicely, a black soldier stationed at Camp Butner, defied local segregation practices by sitting at the front of a bus and was then shot and killed by its driver, Herman Council. A whole block of downtown Durham was gutted.³²

A few blacks achieved successes in business, sometimes with white patrons but often going it alone. With segregation in death as in life, black-owned funeral homes provided their owners with income and status. Durham had profitable black-owned banks and insurance companies, with blacks among the city’s economic elites. The elites did not typically ride buses, so the seating issue generally did not affect them; nevertheless, for African Americans of both high and low status, the constraints of race remained ever-present.

In Durham and Raleigh, African Americans had begun to organize and vote on a small scale in the mid-1930s.³³ Their organizations grew in the 1940s. In 1944, near the time of the D-Day invasion in Europe and the Durham riot, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Allwright that blacks could no longer be excluded from Democratic primaries, which were the only real elections in southern states.³⁴ For decades, court interpretations had enabled southern state Democratic Parties to exclude blacks from primaries on the legal theory that political parties were private clubs subject to guidelines set by their members—in effect, the white leaders. Long before Smith v. Allwright, a few North Carolina communities had permitted a few blacks to register and vote as Democrats. North Carolina’s exclusion was more by local interpretation and intimidation than official practice. However, the ruling encouraged supporters of minority voting drives. Such drives were most effective in urban areas, where confident black leaders promoted voter registration. Nevertheless, the old white supremacist order continued to reign in nearly all public and private settings.

After World War II ended in the late summer of 1945, North Carolina’s legislature adopted Governor Gregg Cherry’s recommendations for a major increase in public education funding, which were not controversial after the freezes of World War II. School attendance was made compulsory up to age sixteen. A new State Board of Education, appointed by the governor, was set up to supervise the expenditure of school funds. The legislature authorized a four-year medical school and teaching hospital in Chapel Hill and a statewide public hospitals program, setting off an unprecedented expansion of medical services across the state.³⁵ Cherry also promoted corporate well-being, much in the spirit of earlier governors.

Yet rumblings of discontent could be heard among much of the populace. Talented leaders in the Democratic establishment continued to hold sway, and not by organizational skills alone. The most effective governors—Aycock, Morrison, and Gardner—had incorporated some of the earlier economic populist philosophy into their programs. To a lesser degree, other governors did the same. And all of the state’s leaders maintained their friendly posture toward big business.

Pressures built for change. Old-style economic populists, mostly whites and Democrats, dreamed of a new order. African Americans dreamed of equality. The boiling point might be near.

CHAPTER ONE

Uprisings

It is a well-known genre, especially in the American South—the self-proclaimed economic populist running for office on a platform calling for more abundant lives for struggling, ordinary, hardworking folks. Some of the more strident—Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, Theodore The Man Bilbo in Mississippi—were foul-mouthed racists who poisoned the political environments in their states. Others, notably North Carolina’s Senator Bob Reynolds (1933–45), provided loud, entertaining rhetoric and did minimal harm.¹

Immediately after World War II, two committed neopopulists sought the highest positions in their respective states—James Kissin’ Jim Folsom, who was elected as Alabama’s governor in 1946, and Kerr (pronounced car) Scott, who was elected North Carolina’s governor in 1948. Both attracted an almost fanatical following based largely on their rural appeal. Both were rough-hewn and occasionally crude politicians. Both met resistance from economically conservative legislatures wanting to maintain the status quo. Folsom and Scott were racial moderates by the standards of their day, taking segregation for granted while favoring steps that would enhance the economic status of African Americans. But there were differences. Folsom was a heavy drinker and womanizer whose appetites became a bigger story than his forward-thinking policies. Scott was a devout and straitlaced Presbyterian whose vices were tobacco and earthy language. Folsom could find humor in nearly every situation. Scott’s greatest flaws were his temper and unforgiving spirit.

THE CAMPAIGN OF ’48

Economic populists had sought the North Carolina governorship earlier in the twentieth century. All were defeated. Scott was a latecomer to the nomination fight. At the campaign’s onset, liberals looked to R. Mayne Albright, a young and liberal Raleigh attorney who announced his candidacy in August 1947. A war veteran, he had been the state director of the United World Federalists, not considered a radical organization in the immediate aftermath of the carnage of World War II. Albright proclaimed himself the antimachine candidate as he toured the state in a Ford, pulling a campaign trailer. He favored repeal of the state sales tax. Albright was a serious candidate but was unlikely to beat the organization’s choice, state treasurer Charles Johnson, a native of the Burgaw area of Pender County in southeastern North Carolina.²

Governor O. Max Gardner had named Johnson to head the state treasurer’s office when a vacancy occurred in 1932. Since then, Johnson had won election at four-year intervals and so was one of the state’s more seasoned officials. The white-haired Johnson possessed an understanding of the intricacies of state government matched by few others, but critics thought him pompous.³ A majority of the legislators endorsed Johnson, as did myriad state officials, county commissioners, and Democratic Party activists. The state’s 1947–48 Speaker of the House, Thomas Pearsall of Rocky Mount, served as Johnson’s campaign manager, and he had the support of most business leaders. Among the most prominent were tobacco magnate James Gray of Winston-Salem, textile giant Charles Cannon of Kannapolis, and banker Robert Hanes of Winston-Salem, then the most astute and politically powerful of corporate leaders. Political kingpin Gardner had died early in 1947, just before he was to depart for England to serve as the U.S. ambassador there.⁴ The Johnson apparatus, however, was one of the greatest assemblages of former Gardner people ever seen. Johnson was about as close to being a crown prince as any North Carolina politician had ever been.

The hint of another scenario came when Scott spoke at the annual wild game dinner on January 9 at Raleigh’s Carolina Hotel, an event sponsored by the state agriculture department. Amid the aroma of cooked rabbit, squirrel, and venison, Scott announced that he would not seek reelection as agriculture commissioner but instead return to tending the two hundred cows on his dairy farm in the Hawfields community of Haw River, just east of Burlington in piedmont Alamance County.⁵ In reality, however, he had other plans. At a February 3 appearance in Asheville, Scott delivered a passionate oration calling for paved farm-to-market roads, more extensive rural electric and phone service, and an improved state school system. It sounded like a campaign appeal. At a Burlington press conference three days later, Scott made his candidacy official, adding, I shall resign immediately from the office of commissioner of agriculture because I feel that no man occupying a high state office can serve the people properly while campaigning for the governorship.⁶ This statement was a direct swipe at Johnson, who planned to remain state treasurer while running for governor.

Governor Kerr Scott on his Haw River Farm, early 1950s. Hugh Morton Collection of Photographs and Films (P081), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wilson Library, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

Scott’s allies cheered, but his outlook was guarded at best. Scott’s entry would divide the liberal vote with Albright, although Scott had better personal and political connections than his rival. Accordingly, Albright suggested that Scott was part of the ruling state political organization, an assertion that Scott rejected even as he hoped to recruit organization members who for a variety of reasons did not like Johnson. Furthermore, Scott’s call for sharing increased state wealth with rural people resonated in a rural state. Scott possessed a folksy appeal lacked by both Johnson and Albright.

Albright, Johnson, and Scott called for many of the same programs: a teacher pay scale ranging from twenty-four hundred dollars to thirty-six hundred dollars for nine months, state assistance in building local schools, and compulsory school attendance laws. On matters of public education, conservative establishment candidates had often been as progressive as liberals. The campaign of 1948 was no exception.

While Albright opposed the sales tax and Johnson favored it, Scott’s position was equivocal. He said that the tax should be removed immediately from restaurant meals—grocery store food items were already exempt—and repealed on other items as soon as was feasible.⁷ Johnson called for a one-hundred-million-dollar bond issue to finance rural roads. Scott asserted that Johnson’s proposal would line the pockets of bankers and said that the road money should come from unused state monies held in banks.⁸ This position eventually came back to haunt Scott.

Both Albright and Scott portrayed themselves as men in the mold of the late, mourned president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Albright possessed a polish more akin to Roosevelt’s, but Scott, who personified the president’s spirit, connected with the voters. Johnson ran as an advocate of fiscal responsibility and a friend of free enterprise and tried to counteract his urbane image by noting that he had grown up on a dirt farm. Up north he might have been a Republican; in North Carolina, however, he was a conservative Democrat with a few progressive instincts.

THE OUTCOME

Johnson led in the May 29 primary, but the results did not augur well for him. The count: Johnson 170,141; Scott 161,293; Albright 76,281; and others 15,371. Johnson ran best in western North Carolina, his native southeast, and parts of the Charlotte region. Scott led in rural counties and small towns scattered across the state as well as in the urban counties of Forsyth (Winston-Salem), Guilford (Greensboro and High Point), and Wake (Raleigh). Johnson had carried fifty-one counties and Scott forty-one. Albright took seven counties, mostly in the western coastal plain or nearby areas of the piedmont. These counties, which included the towns of Rocky Mount, Tarboro, and Wilson, had been strongholds for populist-style insurgents of the past.⁹ All had large black populations but overwhelmingly white electorates. A Johnson-Scott primary runoff was on.

Albright believed that his bid had been derailed by Scott and refused to endorse either candidate in the runoff, but his state manager, John Barnes, joined Scott’s campaign. Indeed, Scott was the logical choice for Albright voters who wanted the state to break with the status quo. One Albright voter who switched to Scott was young Terry Sanford, a former World War II paratrooper and future governor then in law practice in Fayetteville.

Second (runoff) primaries were nearly always nasty. In this one, the stakes were high, and the candidates could not have been more different. Many power brokers—bankers, textile and tobacco executives, and entrenched politicians—feared a loss of access and influence if Scott won. Johnson saw his long and respectable career imperiled. Johnson forces accused Scott of managing his huge dairy farm when he should have been tending to the agriculture department. Johnson also asserted that Scott had built a political machine within the department. Scott called for more open government and a break from business as usual. He portrayed Johnson as a man out of touch with the needs of working people.¹⁰

One issue not discussed in the campaign was race. In the 1930s and 1940s, candidates were united in their support for segregation. The federal courts had begun to hint that they would look much more closely at the equal part of the separate but equal doctrine, but they had not dealt head-on with segregation. With Albright out of the race, Scott counted on getting most of the urban black vote, support that could help in a close primary. Outside of a few urban areas, the African American vote was of little consequence. So the campaign bluster was aimed more at whites, with the candidates preaching to their