Benedict College Mystery Solved, Part 2

This blogpost is preceded by

• "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1957"
•  "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1958"
• "Timmerman attacks: Allen University and Benedict College"
• "Timmerman attacks: the Benedict professors"
• "Timmerman attacks: the Allen University professors"
• Timmerman Attacks: Hoffman Update"
• "What was Forrest O. Wiggins up to?"
• "What's in an FBI record?"
• "Benedict College Mystery Solved, Part 1"

Horace B. Davis's fight to retain his job at the University of Kansas City dragged on from the summer of 1953 to spring 1955. Judge Whittaker's dismissal of his lawsuit made his continued employment there unlikely. Horace ended up teaching at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina.

It is unclear when he started teaching at Benedict. The State newspaper announced that Horace had started working there in fall 1955. However, he may have moved to South Carolina before then. The Savannah field office of the FBI began collecting information on Horace in September 1951, more than a year before he was called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. The Savannah office was responsible for activities in Columbia, but normally they would not have been involved with activities in Kansas City. The earliest that Horace could have started work at Benedict is fall 1953. That semester he was still employed by KCU but he was on sabbatical.

Horace ended up at Benedict through sheer chance. Benedict was only one of the many school he applied to, and he initially did not receive a response. However, shortly before the fall semester started, Benedict found itself without a chair of its Humanities Department. The person they'd hired simply hadn't shown up. 

The chair of Benedict's Social Science Department, J. S. Kennard (one of the other professors who would later be dismissed), set about trying to find a replacement to serve as humanities chair. He ended up contacting a friend of Horace's (writer and leftwing activist Grace Hutchins) who suggested Horace as a candidate. While Horace had not written a dissertation in the humanities (he was an economist), Professor Kennard was able to persuade the college president to hire him. (At the time, many of Benedict's faculty did not hold a PhD, and the college focused on offering basic coursework, so lacking a humanities PhD was not an obstacle to hiring in the way that would be at a modern university.)

Horace appears to have found teaching at Benedict to be frustrating. In a later account of his time in South Carolina, he complained that the students were badly prepared for college coursework, many of the faculty were poorly educated and maintained low teaching standards, and the general campus atmosphere was one of acceptance of South Carolina's culture of white supremacy. He was especially critical of Benedict President Bacoats. Bacoats, he said, "had been chosen for his ability to balance the books; he did not know the difference between a monograph and a monogram."

When he moved first moved to South Carolina, Horace left his family behind. His wife Marian got a job teaching in northwestern Missouri, and the rest of the family remained in Kansas City. The separation from his wife must have been especially difficult for Horace. His wife had been diagnosed with cancer, and doctors predicted she only had six years left to live. Marion was able to join him in 1956, when she was hired as an English instructor.

Horace does not appear to have been particularly politically active while in South Carolina. It would have been almost impossible for him to have engaged in the sort of labor organizing that he had long been involved in. South Carolina was one of the worst places in the county for that sort of work. South Carolina had no large cities (Columbia, the state's largest city, had a population of only about 87,000 in 1950) and little industry.

There were, however, important political developments within the state that touched on Benedict College. The civil rights movement was beginning to gain strength. In spring 1955, students at S.C. State University (the public HBCU in Orangeburg) organized major protests in support of a NAACP selective-buying campaign. Protests escalated to the point that students went on strike and refused to attend class. Protests ended when the president threatened to expel protestors. The president retaliated against protest organizers by dismissing several faculty, suspending a number of students, and expelling the student leader Fred H. Moore. Moore moved to Columbia to attend Benedict's neighbor Allen University in fall 1956.

Fred H. Moore at a March 22, 2019 presentation
Facebook post by the UofSC Center for Civil Rights History & Research (@uofsccrc) on March 23, 2019.

In Columbia, Moore and other Allen University students tested laws segregating public buses. Unfortunately, their activism isn't well-documented, so it not entirely clear what happened. Busing became a major issue in the city in July 1954 (about a year before Horace moved to Columbia). That month an African-American woman, Sarah Mae Flemming, filed a lawsuit because she'd been forced to move to the Blacks-only section of a bus. Her suit was still making its way through the legal system when Horace moved to town.

In a later account, Horace says that Allen University students organized a campaign to challenge segregation by riding in the Whites-only section of buses. The campaign, he says, was a collective effort, and his colleagues Edwin D. Hoffman and John G. Rideout played leadership roles, for example by collecting money for bus fare. Horace dates the start of the campaign to shortly after the start of the Montgomery bus boycott (in December 1955). An AAUP account of the events at Benedict mentions the campaign, but only says that Fred Moore (the expelled S.C. State student) led a group of students who tested segregation by riding in the front of buses. Moore enrolled at Allen in September 1956, so he could not have started the campaign during the previous December. 

The legal issues surrounding bus segregation were largely decided by winter 1956. The U.S. Supreme Court's Browder v. Gayle decision (concerning bus segregation in Alabama) in November and the end of the Montgomery bus boycott in December marked the defeat of legal efforts to maintain bus segregation in the south. It is unclear what the practical impact was in South Carolina. The book Profile in black and white: a frank portrait of South Carolina reports that, even after the 1956 court decision, buses in Columbia remained segregated through social practice.

John G. Rideout in 1951
Iowa State University, the Wickiup Yearbook (1951), Ancestory.com, pg. 305.

While certainly sympathetic to the movement, Horace does not seem to have been particularly involved in civil rights issues. He did lend his support in small ways. In January 1956 (during his first year at Benedict), Horace attended a rally in support of segregation. He went at the request of some African American colleagues. His colleagues wanted to know what was said at the rally, but of course, their own presence at the event would have been highly unwelcome.

Mississippi Senator James Eastland speaking at  a 1956 rally
From The State, January 27, 1956. pg. 1.

The rally was a major event that was organized by the pro-segregation South Carolina Association of Citizen's Councils. The main speaker was Mississippi Senator James Eastland. Also participating were U.S. Senators Strom Thurmond and Olin D. Johnston and state Congressman Solomon Blatt. 

The (White-owned) newspaper The State reported on the rally. The newspaper reported that it drew a wide range of citizens from all over the state. Rally participants, the newspaper emphasized, were orderly, and there was none of the rabble-rousing that one might have expected. The speakers affirmed their intention to fight to preserve segregation, especially in light of recent Supreme Court decisions that had dismantled segregationist laws. The speakers said that the integration must be strongly resisted, but this must be done in a lawful manner. The newspaper reiterated the importance of lawful resistance, telling readers that other ways of protesting would "defeat [their] own purpose." The rally was described as a success. For example, the atmosphere was described as one of "unquestioned resoluteness."

Horace's own account confirms some newspaper details but contradicts others. Like the newspaper, Horace said that there was no rabble-rousing. For example, he described Senator Eastland as a "business-man type" rather than a "rabble-rouser."  However, he did not describe the atmosphere as one of resoluteness. Rather, he says there was a feeling of defeatism. He came away with the impression that the crowd felt that  "the ground was slipping from under them."

Principals at the 1956 rally. Left-most is speaker of the SC House Solomon Blatt

From The State, January 27, 1956. pg. 1.

In March 1956, Horace and other faculty presented a play that may have, in part, been an attempt to thumb their noses at segregationists. The play they presented was William B. Branch's "In Splendid Error." This was a recent play (written in 1954) about Frederick Douglas and his relationship with John Brown. Horace played the role of John Brown, and the role of Frederick Douglas was played by Forrest O. Wiggins. Wiggins was one of the other professors who were later dismissed. 

The play was announced in newspapers such as The State. The State offered no commentary on the play, but it would have been highly provocative in 1950s South Carolina. For example, the last act of the play is set after John Brown's execution, on the day that Lincoln's election as president is announced. On Brown's behalf, his widow presents Douglas with a musket, an American flag, and a message from Brown that reads "Tell Douglas I know I have not failed because he lives. Follow your star, and someday unfurl my flag in the land of the free." The play ends with Douglas hosting the flag as people sing "John Brown's Body." The average white South Carolinian viewed John Brown as a fanatical terrorist and, had they been in attendance, would have found the play's ending to be highly offensive. However, none appear to have been in attendance, and the play attracted no special notice. 

In all, Horace's presence at Benedict does not seem to have attracted significant attention. Horace's lawsuit against the University of Kansas City had made national news and been reported on by regional newspapers like The State. However, no newspaper connected the Horace B. Davis that had been dismissed from KCU for ties to Communism to the Horace B. Davis that had been hired at Benedict. All this would change in Spring 1957.