Communism in South Carolina

Photo of Harvey Klehr
From Emory University

This post is tied to my posts about Governor Timmerman's attacks on professors at Benedict College and Allen University.  The posts start here.

Last week Harvey Klehr, an Emory Political Science Professor and an expert on the American Communism movement, generously took the time to chat with me about communism in the Deep South, especially in South Carolina.  Talking to him put the Governor's attacks into perspective.

Recall that, in 1958, the Governor publicly accused 6 professors at Benedict College and Allen University of harboring communist workers.  After explaining how the schools were harboring "known communist workers," he said

It is believed that the presence of communists at these two Negro institutions is in furtherance of a long-range program to promote racial hatred among young and impressionable Negro students, looking toward an ultimate communist goal of creating civil and racial disorder.

When I first read the Governor's speech, I felt it was easy to dismiss the accusation as a nonsense: this seems like a ham-handed attempt to demonize a handful of liberal academics.  I think it is worth revisiting this issue.  A major accomplishment of Klehr's was to document that there were valid reasons to be concerned with communist infiltration.  The Soviet Union provided funding to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and members of the CPUSA were committing espionage for the Soviets.

The CPUSA was also actively supportive for African American rights and, at times, promoted radical positions.  For example, in 1920s the party endorsed a plan to create an independent African American nation within the United States.

The accusations were also taken seriously by people sympathetic to the dismissed professors.  Former Allen student and State Senator Kay Patterson spoke glowingly of Hoffman and Rideout in a 2008 interview, but he is also defensive about the accusations ("It is alleged that they were Communists. That’s the allegation but now they were the best teachers there")

Former State Senator Kay Patterson
Photo from Carolina Panorama December 15, 2016

The Governor made very specific accusations against the professors (he doesn't mention anyone by name, but he gives enough details to figure out who is who).  While overblown in some cases, the accusations were probably accurate.  The speech was part of the public record, so he probably had the text vetted by lawyers.  Moreover, he could draw on law enforcement to collect information on the professors (one of the Davis's children said that their parents had been under police and FBI surveillance for some time before the governor's speeches), so he had ample tools for documenting previous political involvement.

The most serious accusation is that Marion Davis joined the Communist Party (presumably meaning the CPUSA) in 1945.  Marion and her husband Horace (who is only tangentially mentioned in the speeches as he had already left South Carolina) were indeed members of the CPUSA.  Their son Chandler, for example, has discussed their membership in later interviews.  In the interviews, Chandler says they had left the party by the late 1950s (the time of the Governor's accusations).  This was not uncommon as many people left the party after 1956, as people became more aware of the crimes of Stalinism.

In any case, there is little information about what the Davises did in South Carolina.  The Governor is silent on this matter; the last accusation he makes is that Marion "Entertained CP leader in home at Kansas City" in 1953, two years before she moved to South Carolina.  While some of the dismissed faculty (like Hoffman) were actively involved in the civil rights movement,  Marion's daughter Terry Davis said that she doesn't remember her parents being involved in these issues (although they were later involved in civil rights issues in like lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina).

Marion and Horace Davis were the only people whose names Klehr recognized.  The only other person accused of membership in a communist political party is Forrest O. Wiggins who was accused of being a member of the Socialist Worker Party (SWP).  While both the SWP and the CPUSA were communist political parties, they differed in important ways.  Most significantly, the CPUSA aligned itself the political positions of the Soviet Union (which helped fund the party), the SWP was Trotskyist and often in conflict with the Soviet Union. (Update: the FBI actually found no evidence that he was a member of the SWP. See this blogpost.)

The SWP and its activities are as well-documented as the CPUSA, but compared to the CPUSA, it was a much smaller organization, and it was not promoting the interests of a foreign nation the was the CPUSA was.

Whatever the SWP was doing in the late 1950s, I have been unable to find any information about what Wiggins was doing in South Carolina.  The Governor's last accusation against him is that he subscribed to the National Guardian.

Besides Wiggins and the Davises, the dismissed faculty weren't accused of being a member of being members of a communist political party.  Moreover, of all the dismissed faculty, the Davises were the only people Klehr (an expert on the CPUSA) recognized.  I am hesitant to say that that others weren't members of communist organizations (defenders of the Red Scare would argue that it is hard to document that people were party members because the organizations like the CPUSA were so secretive), but looking at the Governor's accusations, it looks like other dismissed faculty members had pretty far left political beliefs but were not Soviet agents.

Regardless of what the dismissed faculty were doing, there was hardly a credible communist threat to everything.  South Carolina was essentially a desert of communism.  The state provided a very weak basis for communist organizing.  A major source of recruits to communism was industrial workers in urban centers, but mid-century South Carolina was a largely rural state where much of the population worked as farmers.

We can put some numbers to communism in South Carolina.  Scholar Ernie Lazar has collected many FBI documents on the CPUSA.  Here are the FBI's membership number estimates:

December 31, 1952: 6 members
December 31, 1955: 5 members

June 30, 1957: 5 members
June 30, 1960: 0 members
June 30, 1965: 0 members

To be these numbers in perspective, the FBI estimated that the total membership in the CPUSA was  22,700 in 1954.

Governor Timmerman can, I suppose, claim to have been effective.  All 5 CPUSA members driven out of the state shortly after his governorship ended.

#DisruptJMM, 1960 Edition

The Hotel Wade Hampton, location of the 1960 MAA meeting in South Carolina
U of SC, South Caroliniana Library

The hashtag #DisruptJMM was used a lot on social media to publicize "disruptive" actions at the 2020 Joint Mathematical Meetings that drew attention to issues facing groups historically underrepresented in math.  I think the idea first appeared and was strongly promoted in Piper Harris's post on the AMS Blog inclusion/exclusion.

As far as I can tell, nobody used the #DisruptJMM hashtag to raise awareness of the history of the professional societies (the AMS and MAA), and their meetings were impacted by racial segregation.  As I mentioned in a footnote of my Notices article, being able to participate in professional meetings was a major concern for African American mathematician in the 1950s and 1960s.

A very basic and practical concern was access to food and lodgings.  African American had to worry about whether they could make hotel reservations since many hotels, especially in the South, were racially segregated.  Once at a meeting, they might not be able to eat with their white colleagues since restaurants too were often racially segregated.

There were also more subtle concerns: African Americans might be excluded from leadership positions or passed over as invited lecturers, for example because of concerns of offending local segregationist politicians.

Sit-in protest  at a segregated lunch counter in Columbia, SC on February 16, 1961
From the Richland Library

How these fears played out is illustrated by what happened at the 1960 MAA meeting of the Southeastern section.  At the meeting, a group of mathematicians from Atlanta University left the  meeting in protest because the hotel refused to provide the African Americans among them with accommodations. Separate hotel accommodations were not the only indignity experienced by the African American participants.  They also were unable to eat with their white colleagues as most of the restaurants in the area refused them service (lunch counter sit-ins had started in March, but downtown businesses in the city wouldn't fully desegregate until 1962).

Atlanta University issue a press release about the protest.  The release was publicized in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper and Jet Magazine.

An announcement of protest against MAA meeting in Jet Magazine
From Jet Magazine, April 21, 1960

How did the MAA report on this event?   Here's the report in the August-September issue of the American Mathematical Monthly:

Report from the American Mathematical Monthly

No mention that the AU group left in protest!  In fact, the report goes on to list the talks given at the meeting, and among them is purportedly the following:

Abstract from the report in the American Mathematical Monthly

According to the press release, Dr. Shabazz never gave this talk, and he was quite upset about this fact.  None of the African American mathematicians in the Southeast would have had input into how this report addressed the AU protest because none of them were MAA officers.  Certainly Dr. Shabazz would have wanted it reported that he didn't give his talk.

The handling of the 1960 MAA meeting is especially striking in light of the fact that the MAA had passed an anti-discrimination resolution almost a decade earlier.  In response to a request from mathematicians at Fisk University, the MAA had passed a resolution affirming the organization's "steady intention to conducts its scientific meetings...so as to promote the interests of Mathematics without discrimination."

D. Baylis Shanks was one of the organizers of the 1960 MAA meeting

From 1960 Vanderbilt yearbook

The organizers of the 1960 MAA meeting did not display much intent in conducting the meeting in a manner that avoided racial discrimination.  We can get some insight into the organizers thoughts from a 1981(!) account by the U of SC Department Chair, who was one of the organizers.  The Chair writes that the meeting was moved from the university campus to a local hotel "so that if any blacks showed up, the hotel, not the University, would have to handle the matter."  I read this to mean that the Chair was primarily worried about having to deal with controversy, and he had little interest in facilitating African Americans participation or fulfilling the MAA's anti-discrimination resolution.

The Chair's language, "handle the matters", also obscures the issue.  What exactly was the matter?  Allowing participation by African Americans wasn't as big a deal as the Chair's language insinuates.

No laws were in danger of being broken.  State laws made is illegal for U of SC to hire African Americans as professors or admit them as students, but African Americans weren't banned from campus.  For the entire 20th century, African Americans worked on campus in jobs like janitor or maintenance worker.  For example, the photo below depicts African American cooks who worked at the university.  African Americans alive in the 50s say they weren't allowed on campus, but what they presumably mean is that they weren't welcome on campus except as menial workers.

African American cooks on the University of South Carolina campus in 1919
From the 1919 Garnet and Black Yearbook

The situation with the Hotel Wade Hampton was similar.  Unlike some states, South Carolina did not have any laws requiring the racial segregation of hotels. The Hotel Wade Hampton excluded African Americans purely as a matter of hotel policy.  All in all, I find the organizing committee's actions pretty shameful.

Who were the mathematicians from Atlanta University that left in protest?  Of course, they included Dr. Shabazz who had planned to deliver a talk.  Shabazz is a well-known mathematician and educator who passed on a few years ago.  Many readers probably know about him, and if not, you should at least read his Wikipedia page.

One other professor was there: Subhash C. Saxena.  Dr. Saxena left Atlanta University in 1964 to move to Northern Illinois University.  Dr. Shabazz had left Atlanta that year, so this was a natural time for Saxena to leave.  He worked at a few different places before ending up at Carolina Coastal University in 1973, where he worked until he retired.  Carolina Coastal has honored Dr. Saxena in a number of ways, for example by holding a math contest named after him.

Subhash C. Saxena
From Carolina Coastal University

The other people from Atlanta University were graduate students: William E. Brodie and James D. Vineyard.  I haven't been able to find much information about them.  I couldn't find Brodie listed in Atlanta University records, so he may not have been a student there (Dr. Shabazz also mentored students at other universities, I think).  In a later interview, Dr. Shabazz said that Brodie taught at Florida A & M.

Vineyard was from Springfield, Illinois and had been an undergraduate at Blackburn College.  He graduated from Atlanta in 1961 with a master's thesis on "Field equations of general relativity."  He appears to have died in San Francisco on March 31, 1987.

Vineyard was one of the few (maybe the only?) white student in the Atlanta University Math Department, so he must have had an unusual and interesting experience.  If anybody know about these people, please let me know!

James Vineyard
From Springfield High School Yearbook (1955).