Timmerman attacks, Spring 1957

Allen University President Frank R. Veal
From Joseph Simeon Flipper Library

As I mentioned in an older post, loyalty oaths were not used extensively at South Carolina universities in the 1950s.  However, universities did experience Red Scare attacks by the state government.  Some of the most serious attacks were against the private HBCUs Benedict College and Allen University.  I will describe what happened in a series of posts.

At the end of the 1956-1957 school year (on June 15, 1957), Allen University President Veal asked three faculty members, Edwin D. Hoffman, John G. Rideout, and Forrest O. Wiggins, to resign from their positions for the best of "both the University and yourself."  If they did not resign, he further stated, then he'd recommend their dismissals.

President Veal gave no justification for his request, but he was reacting to pressure from the state government.  Over the course of spring semester, he has been in communication with state officials who wanted the three faculty members dismissed.  One report has Veal receiving a phone call from "the people downtown."

Postcard of Allen University in 1949
From Richland Library

As would become increasingly clear over the course of the academic year, Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins were being targeted because of their involvement in left-wing politics.  Rideout and Wiggins, and possibly also Hoffman, had moved to Allen University after being dismissed from other universities because of their political engagement.  (Update: Hoffman did not move to Allen after being dismissed from his previous job.  He wanted to teach at an HBCU.  More details here)

It's unclear to me what the professors had done to provoke the state government.  They never received formal dismissal charges from the university.  Governor Timmerman later publicly accused them of organizing "typical CP [Communist Party]" activities, but he justified this by citing political activities outside of South Carolina.  For example, the Governor pointed to Rideout's leadership of the New Hampshire Progressive Party in 1946 as evidence that he was a "trained communist worker."

This dynamic was common during the Red Scare.  A person involved in left-wing politics could be accused of being a communist on the basis of minimal evidence.  Such an accusation might not result in legal charges, but it could be used to justify dismissal from a job or social exclusion by peers.  Moreover, having been accused would make a person a target for future accusations.

Timmerman may have been targeting the professors simply because they provided a convenient way to attack civil rights activists.  A mysterious unsigned letter in the University of South Carolina archives alleges that Timmerman's goals were to tie African American political activities to communism and to advance his political career.

Attacking Allen University and its faculty was a natural way to attack civil rights activism as the university was a center for activism in the 1950s and 1960s.  A recent action that Timmerman took as an offense was the university's decision to admit a student from S. C. State University who had been expelled for his activism against segregation.

Forrest O. Wiggins
From Blackpast.

I do not think that the professors were promoting communism in any substantial way.  Some of the accused may have been members of the Communist Party, but as far as I can tell, nobody charged any of the professors with taking any concrete action to promote communism in South Carolina.  Moreover, 1957 was towards the end of the Red Scare, so by this point, the major communist parties were crippled by years of legal and political persecution.

The professors may have challenging legalized racial discrimination, and this was commonly equated with communism in the 1950s South.  Hoffman and Rideout were both white, and Rideout's family lived in campus housing.  Racially mixed housing was rare, although not illegal, in South Carolina at the time.

White professors living and teaching at a private HBCU was not a major affront to segregationists in the way that an African American attending a whites-only public university would have been.  Such an arragement could be viewed as the type of paternalistic relationship that was permissible under segregation.  I can't find any documentation that Hoffman, Rideout, or Wiggins were taking any specific actions for civil rights, but I suspect they may have been involved in an action that presented a serious challenge to segregations: the desegregation of Allen University.

In the 1956-1957 school year, Allen University admitted as students five white refugees from the Hungarian Revolution.  They had been placed at the university by a refugee aid program.  Evidently the program director evidently hadn't realized Allen was an HBCU, and when he realized this, he offered to make alternative arrangements.  Four students decided to attend other schools before arriving at Allen, but one — Andre Toth — planned to arrive on campus for fall semester.

By the end of the summer, President Veal had repeated his request for the resignations of the three professors, recommended their dismissal to the Board of Trustees, and removed them from all faculty committees, but all three remained faculty.  The conflict seemed to have reached a stalemate, but it would escalate in September when Toth arrived on campus and break the color barrier in South Carolina's higher educational system.

This series continues with:

1. "Timmerman attacks, Fall 1957"
2. "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1958"
3. "Timmerman attacks: Allen University and Benedict College"
4. "Timmerman attacks: the Benedict professors"
5. "Timmerman attacks: the Allen University professors"
6. "Timmerman Attacks: Hoffman Update"
7. "Communism in South Carolina"
8. "What was Forest O. Wiggins up to?"
9. "What's in an FBI record?"

Soviet tank in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution
From Wikipedia