John R. Clark -
4/6/2011
From TIME Magazine, 15 November 1963:
Jim Silver keeps a loaded shotgun in his Oxford, Miss., home. It is not for hunting; it is for protection. For 27 years Silver, a history professor at the University of Mississippi, has spoken out against the segregationist way of Mississippi life. The anonymous threats against him have been so numerous that he long ago lost count. He has been hauled before the Ole Miss board of trustees on Citizens Council charges ranging from practicing communism to insulting a Confederate general's memory. In Mississippi, his has been a lonely battle.
Last week, as he stepped down as president of the Southern Historical Association, Silver delivered a scathing attack on life in mid-20th century Mississippi. It was by all odds the finest engagement he has fought so far.
"Mississippi," said Silver, "has been on the defensive against inevitable social change for more than a century." He charged that the state's churches have hemmed and hawed between racial right and wrong, that lawyers and judges are confused about whether or not to obey federal courts, that legislators spend much of their time "devising legal subterfuges to keep the Negro in his place," and that business leadership has abdicated its power to the white Citizens Councils. Even in such a "closed society," Silver found, the Negro has made some gains—and will make more as he demands and is grudgingly accorded the right to vote. But Mississippi whites themselves have succeeded only in losing freedom. "The white man, determined to defend his way of life at all costs, no longer has freedom of choice in the realm of ideas because they must first be harmonized with the orthodoxy," said Silver.
By committing itself to defending the biracial system, he said, Mississippi has erected a "totalitarian society" that blocks change and causes social paralysis. "Thus the Mississippian, who prides himself on his individuality, lives in a climate where nonconformity is forbidden, where the white man is not free, where he does not dare to express a deviating opinion without looking over his shoulder."
At age 56, Silver was obviously risking his Ole Miss job with some nine years left before pensioned retirement. That made no difference. He was just plain fed up.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873156,00.html#ixzz1Ilz2Wibk
John R. Clark -
4/6/2011
From The New Georgia Encyclopedia and written by James F. Cook of Floyd College:
In the summer of 1941 Governor Eugene Talmadge instituted the most devastating assault on higher education in the history of Georgia.
His firing of professors, administrators, and members of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia generated a storm of adverse publicity throughout the nation and led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to withdraw accreditation from all of Georgia's state-supported colleges for whites.
Walter Cocking, dean of the College of Education at the University of Georgia, was a key target in the Talmadge purge.
A native of Iowa, Cocking earned his doctorate at Columbia University in New York and compiled an outstanding record of scholarly achievement before his arrival in Georgia in 1937. After holding important administrative positions in Iowa, Texas, and Missouri, he served for five years as professor of school administration at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, and was commissioner of education for Tennessee from 1933 to 1937. Hired to improve the academic standards at the University of Georgia's maligned College of Education, he quickly instituted reforms that accomplished that goal, but his brash and domineering style offended members of his staff.
At the May 30, 1941, meeting of the Board of Regents, Talmadge, who was an ex-officio member of the board, asserted that Cocking wanted to integrate a demonstration school in Athens. The governor announced that he would remove any person in the university system who advocated "communism or racial equality." After heated debate the regents, most of whom were Talmadge appointees, decided by a vote of eight to four not to reemploy Cocking.
When the regents reconvened that evening after dedicating a building, they learned that Harmon Caldwell, president of the university, would resign unless Cocking received a hearing.
After acrimonious debate the regents, unwilling to lose the services of the esteemed Caldwell, reconsidered their earlier action and agreed to permit Cocking to answer the charges brought against him at the next board meeting.
Realizing the potential danger the Cocking case posed to higher education, forty-three senior faculty members at the University of Georgia sent a letter to Talmadge urging him to reconsider his stand against Cocking. These professors, who had daily contact with Cocking, discounted as "misinformation and misrepresentation" the rumor that he was not in sympathy with the southern view on race problems, and they praised him as a leader with "rare executive ability."
At the June 16 meeting of the regents, the only evidence presented against Cocking was an affidavit by a disgruntled teacher in the College of Education, which charged that Cocking wanted to integrate a demonstration school near Athens. Numerous faculty members and graduate students as well as documentary evidence refuted her accusation. A number of Georgia's most distinguished educators testified on behalf of Cocking. Harvey Cox, president of Emory University, described Cocking as "one of the best men in the field of education in the South." With overwhelming evidence in support of Cocking, the regents reappointed him as dean of the College of Education by a vote of eight to seven.
Furious at the outcome, Talmadge then launched newspaper attacks on Cocking's background, his racial views, and his relationship to the Rosenwald Fund, which the governor referred to as "Jew money for niggers." He also made sure the next vote would go in his favor by removing three members of the Board of Regents and replacing them with Talmadge stalwarts. In view of the governor's actions, no one was surprised when at the July 14 meeting the regents decided not to rehire Cocking. The vote was ten to five.
The dismissal of Cocking was merely the beginning of an assault on education that had far-reaching repercussions. Within a year ten outstanding educators (including the vice chancellor of the university system) had been dismissed, the Board of Regents had lost its independence, libraries had been purged, administrators had been intimidated, the morale of teachers had fallen to a new low, and public confidence in the state's colleges had been badly shaken.
The Southern Association found "gross political interference" in Georgia's schools and removed accreditation from Georgia's state-supported colleges for whites. The education purge proved to be Talmadge's worst political blunder: he lost the 1942 gubernatorial race to young Ellis Arnall.
Suggested Reading
Sue Bailes, "Eugene Talmadge and the Board of Regents Controversy," Georgia Historical Quarterly 53 (December 1969): 409-23.
James F. Cook, "The Eugene Talmadge – Walter Cocking Controversy," Phylon 35 (June 1974): 181-92.
James F. Cook Jr., "Politics and Education in the Talmadge Era: The Controversy over the University System of Georgia, 1941-42" (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1972).
Thomas G. Dyer, The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985).
