Swim: Hate in Dixie (1945)

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 16, 1945)

Klan stirring racial hatreds again in South

Trying to capitalize on war unrest
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

The men who preach racial and religious intolerance and exploit prejudices are trying to capitalize in the South the unrest that follows war.

Today the situation is confined chiefly to the South – but such things have a way of spreading. The Ku Klux Klan after the last war was a good example; the threatened national influence of Huey Long was another.

These advocates of intolerance seek to turn Protestant against Jew, management against labor, war veterans against unions.

The Scripps-Howard Newspapers sent Allan L. Swim on a tour of the South to report on this situation. Below is the first of six stories based on his investigation.

ATLANTA, Georgia (SHS, Dec. 15) – The recent appearance of a huge burning cross on Stone Mountain near here gave notice that the Ku Klux Klan is back in action.

The 300-foot cross blazed near the spot on which the Klan, in its modern form, was organized in 1915.

Nine Klan units now meet regularly in Atlanta. Members wear hoods and robes and carry out all of the KKK rituals of former days.

“There are probably 25,000 Klansmen in Georgia now,” said Dr. Samuel Green, grand dragon.

‘Never going to die’

“The Klan has never been dead – and the Klan is never going to die.

“Publication of our newspaper (The Fiery Cross) was stopped some time before Pearl Harbor. Our board of directors thought we ought to lay down anything that might produce prejudice during the war. In our last issue we asked all groups to join hands in the war effort.”

Dr. Green says many men returning from the armed services are joining the Klan “because they feel many of their rights and benefits have been taken away from them – and they want them back.”

No ‘foreigners’ allowed

The Klan, he says, is not fighting the Jews because of their religion.

“The Klan is essentially a white man’s organization and essentially a Protestant organization,” he said. “A man to belong must be a native American. No foreigners are allowed.

“One of our most active fights right now is against the Communists.

“We have had nothing to do with the America Firsters or any of that group and don’t intend to have any dealings with them. As a general rule, our individual members have nothing to do with such organizations.”

Principles claimed

Dr. Green, 55, physician, and a Klansman since 1922, said the “cardinal principles” of the KKK are “to develop character, to practice clannishness, to protect the home and the chastity of white womanhood and to exemplify a pure patriotism to the United States, its constitution and its flag.”

Under the guise of carrying out these principles, Klan groups in various parts of the country have engaged in terrorism and flogging. They sowed race hatred and carried on active campaigns of discrimination against Negroes, Jews and Catholics.

Numerous individuals hid their identities under Klan hoods while carrying out acts of personal revenge.

Negro fears Clan

The average southern Negro fears the Klan more than any other organization.

Although the Klan 1s not operating as a nationwide, incorporated organization because of a federal tax suit against it, KKK groups are being reorganized throughout the South.

J. B. Stoner of Chattanooga is devoting full time to organization work in Middle Tennessee. Cards he passes out to prospective members bear the words “white supremacy.”

Stoner says there are “several hundred” Klansmen in Chattanooga.

Burning crosses again

“We’ve been burning crosses in this area for about a year,” he says. “We burned one recently in downtown Chattanooga.

“We get along pretty well with the Catholics here, but were fighting the Jews and Negroes.”

Stoner last year sent Congress a “petition” which said: “I request, urge and petition you to pass a resolution recognizing the fact that the Jews are children of the devil and that, consequently, they constitute a grave danger to the United States of America.”

Klansmen in Houston and Dallas say the KKK in Texas is “ready to go into action if the need arises.” Several crosses have been burned this year in San Antonio.

TOMORROW: The commoner party.

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 17, 1945)

Exploiting Dixie’s prejudices –
Party fans hate for Jews, Negro

Commoners want ‘White Man’s nation;’ send out steady stream of pollution
By Allen L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Throughout the South there are men who are spreading hate, suspicion and mistrust by playing on racial and religious prejudice for their own selfish ends.

The Scripps-Howard papers have sent a staff writer to report on these hate peddlers. Here is his second article of a series.

CONYERS, Georgia (SHS) – The anti-Semitic, anti-Negro Commoner Party is waging a campaign to make the United States over into a “White Man’s nation.”

It wants to place economic shackles on the Jew and make it harder for the Negro to vote.

It is making a strong bid for veterans’ support, backs some of the programs of Gerald L. K. Smith and wants to become a power in national politics.

Heads of the party are James L. Shipp, 66, farmer and wholesale coal dealer, and Charles H. Emmons, 78, former Kansas newspaperman.

Shipp used his own money to launch the party early in 1944 and established himself as its president. Emmons became secretary-treasurer in July last year. They maintain party headquarters on the Shipp farm near here.

Publish book

Contributions from “friends” started coming in from “all over the country,” Shipp says, so last December he and Emmons put out a 32-page booklet called “The Organization Plan of the Commoner Party of the United States of America.”

The “plan” proposes the organization of “a gentile political party bloc to control the Jew and Negro racial blocs now active in the political affairs of the nation.”

The party “platform” contains these statements: “The night to vote and to hold office shall be limited to white people who are citizens of the United States, and to other racial individual citizens who can qualify under the franchise standard fixed by the Constitution and the acts of Congress.

Wants special courts

“The legislatures of the several states shall establish or designate certain established courts as ‘Franchise courts’ wherein native-born citizens other than White may be granted the right of franchise upon proof of voting qualifications.

“The Commoner Party demands that Congress proceed at once to make a complete and thorough investigation of international Jew penetration into American business and politics; to determine to what extent Jews have established monopolies in restraint of trade and to what extent Jews have entered the United States illegally during the present war.

“The Commoner Party believes that economic trends must be accepted and followed implicitly, patriotically and courageously if democracy is to be sustained as the guiding philosophy of this ‘White Man’s Nation.’ The general economic welfare of the whole people must be recognized as paramount to profits and swollen fortunes for the few.”

‘Thinking’ since 1913

Shipp says he began “thinking seriously about the ‘Jew-Negro problem’ back in 1913 because of an attempt to railroad a Negro to the gallows to save the life of a worthless Atlanta Jew.”

“I’m in full sympathy with religious and economic rights for Negroes,” Shipp says. “The Negro has been used by others for what they might gain. Jews take advantage of Negroes. They cheat them on merchandise and don’t pay them fairly for their work.

“I’m 100 percent for organized labor. However, the Jewish control of labor will eventually wreck it.

“I’m pro-Catholic. My wife is a member of the High Episcopal Church and my grandfather was a Methodist minister.

“Some members of the Ku Klux Klan are associated with us but there is no direct tie-up between the two organizations.”

Shipp says he had had “agreeable correspondence” with Gerald L. K. Smith and the American First Party.

He says Carl Mote, Indiana hate peddler who served as chairman of the America First convention in Detroit last year, “is a splendid man.”

On same road

He corresponds with Father Arthur W. Terminiello, the “Father Coughlin of Alabama,” Vance Muse, director of the anti-labor Christian American, Inc., and former Sen. Robert R. Reynolds, who established the Nationalist Party.

Asked whether the Commoner Party is working in cooperation with America First, Christian American and Carl Mote, Shipp replied: “Where their programs are in line with my program, we, naturally, are in the same road. Therefore, in that case, we are working together.”

Shipp says contributions to the party ranged from “very small amounts” to “substantial sums.” There is no visible evidence that the Commoners are spending large amounts of money or that they have many members.

But a steady stream of anti-Jewish, anti-Negro propaganda flows from party headquarters on the Shipp farm.

TOMORROW: Christian American.

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Editorial: Hatemongers

The exploiters of prejudice and bigotry are loose in the South again, seeking to make capital of the inevitable unrest that follows war.

What they do is of intense interest to the entire nation – for bigotry and intolerance know no state lines; once they get started they spread.

The Scripps-Howard Newspapers sent one of their writers, Allan L. Swim, on a tour through the South to investigate this situation, and we urge you to read his stories, now appearing in The Press.

Shrewd, cruel men are plotting to pit war veteran against civilian; worker against employer; unionist against unionist; churchman against churchman; color against color – American against American.

With evil whispers and loud lies these promoters are playing on prejudice. Practically, enough, they are demonstrating that, for their selfish purposes, prejudice is profitable.

Too many people have been willing to pay dues in the lodge of bigotry.

The officers of this lodge get fat. But the members get spiritually maimed and physically injured by a ritual that calls for fists, clubs, torches and bullets.

The poison peddlers must not get away with their evil schemes. America must answer “no” to their invitation to hate. “No” to hating the man next door; hating the other religion; hating some fellow’s color; hating a neighbor’s race.

Hatred is a swiftly spreading killer, not only of those who are hated but equally of those who hate. It rebounds with terrible effect.

The only thing we need to hate is hatred itself.

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Small minded people who don’t realize their ideology is dying.

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 18, 1945)

Hate in Dixie –
Name callers join hands to fight unions

Back ‘cause’ only to make money
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

This is the third of a series of articles on the men who are exploiting race and religious prejudices and antagonism to labor unions in the South.

HOUSTON, Texas – Vance Muse and Lewis Valentine Ulrey, who are old hands at name-calling and rabblerousing, have formed a union of their own to “save the nation from the tyranny of the labor unions.”

It’s the Right to Work Union and has no dues nor assessments. Muse and Ulrey, however, will accept contributions – and they say so frankly.

Creation of the “union” merely gave a new twist to the line Muse has been following for years, that of fighting for a “cause” that will provide him with a living.

Three congressional committees have investigated Muse’s activities.

Committee charges

The Caraway Committee, in 1929, called Muse’s operation “reprehensible in the highest degree.”

The Hugo Black Committee in 1936 questioned Muse about the Macon, Georgia, “grassroots” convention at which hate-peddler Gerald L. K. Smith spoke.

A committee headed by Sen. Francis Green questioned Mr. Muse about political campaign expenditures in 1944.

Muse is well known in the South – particularly among labor leaders – but Ulrey didn’t start building a reputation until after he became chairman of the Christian American Movement which Muse heads.

Aided Winrod

Ulrey, former Indiana state senator, was a prolific contributor to “The Defender,” propaganda sheet of Dr. Gerald Winrod, the “Jayhawk Nazi,” until Dr. Winrod was indicted on a charge of sedition.

In a letter to the late Sen. Robinson of Arkansas, Ulrey termed Dr. Winrod “one of America’s real patriots and one of the country’s leading protagonists of Christian Americanism.”

In “The Defender,” he wrote regarding World War I that “all historians and most scholars now know that it was not the Germans, but the French and Czarist Russians, who started the greatest war in all history of mankind and that the Kaiser did everything in his power to stop it.”

Charges church plot

In another article, he said: “The national youth control measure commonly called ‘The Child Labor Amendment’ is one of those dangerous instruments of power, to borrow a phrase from President Roosevelt, which are being rapidly formed and built up in Washington for the destruction of our free democracy.”

Ulrey once charged the Federal Council of Churches with participation in a plot to “overthrow the American social and economic system.”

Muse and Ulrey say they are friends of American laborers, that what they really want to do is to free workers from domination of “union racketeers.”

Following this line, they began a campaign to get “Freedom to Work” laws enacted by the various states.

Aided by O’Daniel

Sen. W. Lee O’Daniel of Texas climbed on the Christian American bandwagon and spoke before the Arkansas and Oklahoma Legislatures on measures outlawing the closed shop.

In Louisiana, however, Muse and Ulrey ran into trouble. The Legislature turned down their bill and asked the Dies Committee and the FBI to investigate Christian American.

Most Texans outside of the labor unions say Christian American is merely a vest-pocket propaganda outfit.

Muse and Ulrey don’t throw their weight around much in their home city of Houston or in Texas. But in other parts of the South, they’ve been spending energy and money fighting the “labor racketeers.”

TOMORROW: Free enterprise.

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 19, 1945)

Hate-peddlers scheme to end Texas CIO

Publish propaganda on ‘free enterprise’
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Fourth of a series.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (SHS) – William Walker and Phil Hopkins sit in their offices in the Bedell Building here and think up schemes for fighting what they term “Communism in the CIO.”

They call their organization Fight for Free Enterprise, and they publish a propaganda sheet, “Free Enterprise Bulletin.”

Nearly every piece of “literature” they send out appeals for liberal contributions and they have solicitors who work on a commission basis.

Former lawyer

Walker is a former Oklahoma lawyer who operates Victory Publication. He was asked by the USO and Red Cross to stop using their names in connection with his promotional schemes. He formerly claimed he was associated with Joe Kamp of Constitutional Educational League, the nation’s No. 1 peddler of “hate” pamphlets.

Now Walker – through his spokesman, Hopkins – says he merely was “acquainted with” Kamp and that he “engaged in various political activities in the East.”

Hopkins, former newspaperman, was news editor of Station KTSA in San Antonio before becoming vice president in charge of publicity for Free Enterprise.

Financed by public

Despite reports to the contrary, the organization is not connected with Constitutional Educational League, Hopkins says.

“Fight for Free Enterprise is financed by contributions from the public,” says Hopkins. “We are not affiliated with or connected with any industrial group or political party. And we haven’t any financial angels.”

Its technique is revealed in a “confidential memorandum” to members outlining its plan to fight the CIO in the Corpus Christi-Lower Rio Grande Valley area.

Punitive action

The memorandum proposes:

“Stern corrective and punitive action against those newspapers of the area which are running with the CIO wolf pack. Intense pressure is to be exerted on all advertisers to withdraw their patronage from them, and cooperation of the AFL will be (WE KNOW) forthcoming to partially cripple or at least harass them mechanically.

“Discharged veterans of this war (80 percent of all veterans of this war are strongly anti-CIO) will be carefully selected for toughness and peculiar abilities and set to work organizing “Americanism Protective Committees” in all towns of the area.

“These committees to be organized on the basis of observing, reporting and opposing CIO activities and to become political campaign organizations in the spring of 1946. They also will become direct action committees when, as and if this should be necessary or desirable in counteracting any strongarm work attempted by the CIO.”

Plan billboard drive

The memorandum also says that vitriolic attacks on the CIO and “its leadership” will be made on billboards throughout the area. It promises “certain peace officers will enter into an understanding” with Free Enterprise to “trap CIO hoodlum attempts to destroy these billboards.”

The organization, according to the memorandum, plans to ask for a writ of mandamus to force the Texas attorney general to investigate the conspiracy charges against the CIO.

“It should be noted that, regardless of the chances for success of this suit, it affords an opportunity to make allegations of a sensational order without regard to libel, and allows the newspapers of the state to print these allegations with complete immunity from any action of the CIO and its leadership,” the memorandum says.

Hopkins says the memorandum was allowed to fall into the hands of CIO leaders “to antagonize them.”

“We’re not fighting the CIO because it’s the CIO but because it’s permeated with Communism,” he added. “It’s Communism we’re fighting.

“We’d be glad to have the AFL dominate the labor scene because they’re not Communists. It’s the danger of the nefarious measures of the CIO-PAC that we fear.”

TOMORROW: Father Terminiello.

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 20, 1945)

‘Dixie Coughlin’ runs campaign against Jews

His letter claim plots on Christians
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Fifth of a series.

ANNISTON, Alabama (SHS) – The “Father Coughlin of Dixie,” who conducted a campaign of hate and anti-Semitism from his home here, packed up and left Anniston recently. He is now working in Birmingham.

“I told him he’d have to stop his radical activities or leave the parish – and he left,” said the Right Rev. T. J. Toolen, bishop of Mobile.

Recently the bishop revealed that Rev. Arthur W. Terminiello had resigned his pastorate here and subsequently had been suspended.

No longer priest

He said that Father Terminiello, “having refused to obey the orders of his bishop to cease sending out literature which we feel is detrimental to the nation and the unity of our country,” resigned his pastorate of Sacred Heart Church, Anniston, and is no longer considered a priest in good standing in the diocese of Mobile, nor has he the right to pursue his facilities as a priest, now is he considered a priest of the diocese.”

This wasn’t the first time Bishop Toolen had clashed with the Rev. Terminiello, secretary and director of the Union of Christian Crusaders.

Tells him to stop

Last May, Bishop Toolen said, “You can be sure I will not allow Father Terminiello to go along the lines of Father Coughlin. I have ordered Father Terminiello not to circulate any printed matter.”

Father Terminiello ceased publication of “Rural Justice” – but later started a propaganda sheet called “The Crusaders,” in which he attacks the Jews and make appeals for funds to carry on his fight against “foreign and domestic revolutionaries.”

In a recent circular letter, Father Terminiello said: “The B’nai B’rith is now conducting a campaign to raise four million dollars to carry on their anti-Christian plot to extermination those who oppose their plan of world domination and rape of the Holy Land. They are going to call it ‘exterminating the anti-Semites.’

To ‘astound U.S.’

“We are now working on two phases of the plan for World Empire which will astound the whole United States and throw new and unexpected light on the Pearl Harbor investigation.”

Father Terminiello once proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution “to outlaw Zionism and British-Israel.” He commented: “Zionism means the inducing to American citizens to leave the United States to form a Super State which will directly or indirectly control the destinies, the morals, the liberties and finances of the nation.”

The priest who advocated “peace now – by negotiation if possible,” said in a sermon at Huntsville, Alabama, October 22, 1944: “Pearl Harbor, then, was an answer to the prayers of our allies. In itself this dream was not entirely blameworthy on the part of Great Britain, for every nation tries to secure allies in war. The important question is, ‘Who in this country aided them in their propaganda campaign?’

Cites war gains

“We had in this country at that time, in addition to pro-British groups, union powers, industrialists who stood to gain financially by war; we had bureaucrats who stood to gain power and prestige by war; we had labor agitators who stood to gain by war; we had revolutionary elements who stood to gain by war. They definitely must share the blame!

“But back of them must have been some power which could make their hopes and dreams a reality. Together they all planned it that way long before Pearl Harbor.”

In a Christmas Eve sermon at Huntsville last year, he declared: “The Russo-German war is a phony war – a war intended to draw all our resources on the side of the Russian-German-Japanese coalition and fool us into putting all our manpower within firing range.”

TOMORROW: Dixie hatemongers.

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The Pittsburgh Press (December 21, 1945)

South has lost of prejudice exploiters

Even a senator is ‘smear technician’
By Allan L. Swim, Scripps-Howard staff writer

Last of a series.

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (SHS) – Scattered across the South are a group of men who exploit race or religious prejudices and use the smear technique to fight organized labor.

Not all of them espouse the same causes. Some work together. Others are independent operators.

In a category by himself is Sen. Lee “Pass-the-Biscuits Pappy” O’Daniel, a flour salesman who talked and sang his way into the Texas governorship and later into the U.S. Senate with the aid of a hillbilly band.

Dams ‘racketeers’

A newspaper bears his name in the masthead. He makes many radio speeches and spends much time damning the “dominating, blood-sucking, money-minded power-crazed, wild-eyed labor racketeers.”

He is a staunch supporter of Vance Muse and Lewis Valentine Ulrey, who operate the anti-labor Christian American, Inc. He spoke before the Arkansas and Oklahoma Legislatures in support of the Christian American “Right to Work” Bill.

His favorite theme used to be “this is Roosevelt’s war” and said “the Communists and labor racketeers got us into it.”

For white supremacy

Down in Georgia rabblerousing Eugene Talmadge, former governor, publishes “The Statesman,” pops his red suspenders and tests the winds – looking for an opportunity to regain his lost political power.

“Ole Gene” for many years campaigned on a “white supremacy” platform that eventually led him into political trouble. A report that two educators had drawn up a plan that would place Whites and Negroes on an equal footing in Georgia colleges sent him spinning into action.

Using his power as governor, he brought about the discharge of 10 University System officials and instructors. This resulted in University of Georgia losing its accredited standing and contributed much to the defeat of Talmadge by Ellis Arnall.

Joined Huey Long

Mr. Talmadge joined hands with the late Huey Long in a plan to buck President Roosevelt, later called the “Grassroots Convention of Southern Democrats” at Macon, Georgia, in 1936, used the phrase “a citizen without a soul” to describe a corporation, associated himself with a group called the Vigilantes and worked closely with Georgia Klansmen.

Maj. Ben C. Richards of the Texas State Guard, an ex-convict convicted of forgery, apparently is a leader without an organization.

Active in “political promotion” schemes for years, he “recruited” former servicemen into the military-like Order of American Patriots. Initiation fee and a year’s dues totaled $16. Backed financially by a group of Klansmen and others, he opened “Service Men’s Centers” in four Texas cites. These were equipped with bars, game tables and slot machines.

Voted to disband

Members, charging Richards with mishandling funds, recently voted to disband the Patriots. A group of them then formed the Independent Order of Minute Men.

Ray H. Duncan, editor of the newspaper of the Texas branch of the AMVETS, is busy fighting “penetration” of union members into the veterans’ organization. He calls unioneers “enemies of veterans.”

The anti-labor program of Mr. Duncan and his Texas supporters was repudiated by a vote of 149-1 at the national AMVETS convention in Chicago.

Sherman Patterson of Chattanooga, Tennessee, runs an anti-labor, anti-Semitic paper, “Militant Truth,” which appears in the areas in which the CIO has begun union organization drives.

One of the paper’s regular advertisers is Joe Damp of the Constitutional Educational League, one of the nation’s top-ranking hate-peddlers.