- "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1957"
- "Timmerman attacks, Fall 1957"
- "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1958"
- "Timmerman attacks: Allen University and Benedict College"
Who were the Benedict faculty accused of being communists? The faculty members were Joseph Spencer Kennard Jr. (a religious scholar), Lewis Smith (the Chairman of the Division of Humanities), and Marion Davis (an instructor in English).
Lewis Smith
Because his name is such a common one, its challenging to find information about Lewis Smith. He received an AB and a MA degree from Harvard University. He then was an English graduate student at the University of Iowa. He wrote the dissertation "Changing Conceptions of God in Colonial New England." He received his PhD in spring 1953.
Smith had started working at Benedict in 1956, so he'd been employed for a little over a year when the Governor Timmerman started attacking him.
In his speech, Governor Timmerman made the following allegations against Smith:
Joseph Spencer Kennard, Jr.
By contrast, there is a significant amount of information about J. Spencer Kennard, and he seems like a fascinating character. He was born in 1890 in Ossining, New York to Isabella Daubey and J. Spender Kennard Sr, an internationally known lawyer and author. Kennard had received an excellent education with a A.B. from Harvard University, a S.T.B. from the Princeton Theological School, a Ph.D. from Yale, and a Th.D. from the University of Strasbourg. He was an active scholar in the 1940s and 1950s, publishing about 5-10 journal articles and a book.
Kennard seems to have been deeply religious and spent much of his life as a Baptist missionary. He lived in Japan from 1920 to 1936 as a Baptist missionary. This was a very eventful period as Japan was experiencing a rise in extreme nationalism and beginning to embark on a series of expansionists wars. Kennard's time in Japan came to an end in October 1936 when he was barred from reentering the country after a trip back to the US. Japanese officials justified their decision using language that anticipated Red Scare attacks in the US:
After being banned from Japan, Kennard did missionary work in China and taught at the West China Union University. He was in China from 1937 to 1944, a period that roughly coincided with China's war with Japan and overlapped with the Chinese Civil War. Kennard was openly critical of the Chinese National Party and opposed providing them with US aid. He went so far as to submit an opposition statement to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
His statement was titled "The year of the rat" and described Chinese Nationalist leaders as rats that have "gnawed at the pillars of society until today one of the world's greatest civilizations is threatened with collapse." Because the Chinese Nationalist party was fighting the Communist Party of China, opposing them was a controversial position that would have brought accusations of being a communist.
Kennard returned to the US in 1944 after the Mission Board denied his request to continue working in China. He then seems to have bounced around a bit, teaching at SUNY New Paltz (then State Teachers College), for example, and ended up at Benedict in 1952.
I should add that Kennard was married, and his wife May F. Kennard was also teaching at Benedict during this period. She evidently had advanced training in English studies (the AAUP report describes her as the only Benedict teacher with advanced training that remained after the dismissals), but I haven't found any other information about her. (Reading documents from the 1950s reminds me how much American society has changed when it comes to gender issues: the women are largely invisible in the accounts).
I haven't been able to find much information about what Kennard did after he was dismissed. He was 68 years old at the time, so he may have just retired. It seems that he moved back to the Northeast and remained involved in politics. In 1965, for example, the New York Times published a letter from him criticizing US involvement in the Vietnam war. He passed on in 1980 and is buried in Pennsylvania.
Marion Davis
Marion Davis may be familiar to the mathematician readers: she is the mother of Chandler Davis, a math professor at the University of Toronto and also a former target during the Red Scare (the University of Michigan has a lecture series honoring him).
She'd come to Benedict with her husband Horace B. Davis in 1955. Horace had taken the position at Benedict after being dismissed from a faculty position at the University of Missouri at Kansas because he had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
As with May Kennard, there isn't a lot of information about Marion Davis, except in relation to her husband. He had left Benedict the year before the Governor's public attacks on Allen University and had gone to Raleigh, North Carolina to work at Shaw University. She'd stayed at Benedict to continue teaching for a year.
Governor Timmerman's attacks against Davis seems pointlessly cruel to me. By the time he publicly attacked her in January, she'd already decided to leave Benedict at the end of the semester to join her husband at Raleigh. Moreover, at this time, she was fighting a battle with cancer. Cancer claimed her life a few years later, in 1960.
Horace B. Davis
One thing I hadn't realized until revisiting the literature is that there seems to have been a seventh target of Timmerman's attacks: Marion Davis's husband Horace. In his speech, Timmerman says that he'd left Benedict College after his "communist connections were revealed." I haven't been able to find any details about this, unfortunately.
This series continues with:
In his speech, Governor Timmerman made the following allegations against Smith:
- 1955 – Discharged dishonorably by U. S. Navy as Security Risk.
- 1956 – Told CP [Communist Party] leader he had been CP member.
- 1949-1951 – Refused to tell investigating committee whether or not had been, or is, CP member (Fifth Amendment).
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| Entrance to West China University in the 1920s Photo from Wikipedia |
By contrast, there is a significant amount of information about J. Spencer Kennard, and he seems like a fascinating character. He was born in 1890 in Ossining, New York to Isabella Daubey and J. Spender Kennard Sr, an internationally known lawyer and author. Kennard had received an excellent education with a A.B. from Harvard University, a S.T.B. from the Princeton Theological School, a Ph.D. from Yale, and a Th.D. from the University of Strasbourg. He was an active scholar in the 1940s and 1950s, publishing about 5-10 journal articles and a book.
Kennard seems to have been deeply religious and spent much of his life as a Baptist missionary. He lived in Japan from 1920 to 1936 as a Baptist missionary. This was a very eventful period as Japan was experiencing a rise in extreme nationalism and beginning to embark on a series of expansionists wars. Kennard's time in Japan came to an end in October 1936 when he was barred from reentering the country after a trip back to the US. Japanese officials justified their decision using language that anticipated Red Scare attacks in the US:
Maintaining Communist thoughts since prior to coming to Japan, Dr. Kennard has been connected with the Fellowship of Religion [the author meant "Reconciliation"] organization advocating anti-war principles and has propagated anti-war ideas.This was major news: it was reported in the New York Times.
After being banned from Japan, Kennard did missionary work in China and taught at the West China Union University. He was in China from 1937 to 1944, a period that roughly coincided with China's war with Japan and overlapped with the Chinese Civil War. Kennard was openly critical of the Chinese National Party and opposed providing them with US aid. He went so far as to submit an opposition statement to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
His statement was titled "The year of the rat" and described Chinese Nationalist leaders as rats that have "gnawed at the pillars of society until today one of the world's greatest civilizations is threatened with collapse." Because the Chinese Nationalist party was fighting the Communist Party of China, opposing them was a controversial position that would have brought accusations of being a communist.
Kennard returned to the US in 1944 after the Mission Board denied his request to continue working in China. He then seems to have bounced around a bit, teaching at SUNY New Paltz (then State Teachers College), for example, and ended up at Benedict in 1952.
I should add that Kennard was married, and his wife May F. Kennard was also teaching at Benedict during this period. She evidently had advanced training in English studies (the AAUP report describes her as the only Benedict teacher with advanced training that remained after the dismissals), but I haven't found any other information about her. (Reading documents from the 1950s reminds me how much American society has changed when it comes to gender issues: the women are largely invisible in the accounts).
I haven't been able to find much information about what Kennard did after he was dismissed. He was 68 years old at the time, so he may have just retired. It seems that he moved back to the Northeast and remained involved in politics. In 1965, for example, the New York Times published a letter from him criticizing US involvement in the Vietnam war. He passed on in 1980 and is buried in Pennsylvania.
 |
| Home of Kennard's father, Joseph Spencer Kennard, Sr. From Book News, Volume 24 |
Marion Davis may be familiar to the mathematician readers: she is the mother of Chandler Davis, a math professor at the University of Toronto and also a former target during the Red Scare (the University of Michigan has a lecture series honoring him).
She'd come to Benedict with her husband Horace B. Davis in 1955. Horace had taken the position at Benedict after being dismissed from a faculty position at the University of Missouri at Kansas because he had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
As with May Kennard, there isn't a lot of information about Marion Davis, except in relation to her husband. He had left Benedict the year before the Governor's public attacks on Allen University and had gone to Raleigh, North Carolina to work at Shaw University. She'd stayed at Benedict to continue teaching for a year.
Governor Timmerman's attacks against Davis seems pointlessly cruel to me. By the time he publicly attacked her in January, she'd already decided to leave Benedict at the end of the semester to join her husband at Raleigh. Moreover, at this time, she was fighting a battle with cancer. Cancer claimed her life a few years later, in 1960.
Horace B. Davis
One thing I hadn't realized until revisiting the literature is that there seems to have been a seventh target of Timmerman's attacks: Marion Davis's husband Horace. In his speech, Timmerman says that he'd left Benedict College after his "communist connections were revealed." I haven't been able to find any details about this, unfortunately.
This series continues with:
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