The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott: The Squire from Haw River

By Julian M. Pleasants

“This biography will find its place among a growing literature on post-war Southern politics.” —Charles Holden, author of The New Southern University: Academic Freedom and Liberalism at UNC

When W. Kerr Scott (1896–1958) began his campaign for the North Carolina gubernatorial seat in 1948, his opponents derided his candidacy as a farce. However, the plainspoken dairy farmer quickly gathered loyal supporters and mobilized a grassroots attack on the entrenched interests that had long controlled the state government, winning the race in a historic upset.

In this meticulously researched book, Julian M. Pleasants traces Scott’s productive and controversial political career, from his years as North Carolina commissioner of agriculture, through his governorship (1949–1953), to his brief tenure as a U.S. senator (1954–1958). Scott was elected at a time when southern liberals were on the rise in post-World War II America. McCarthyism and civil rights agitation soon overwhelmed progressivism, but the trend lasted long enough for the straight-talking “Squire from Haw River” to enact major reforms and establish a reputation as one of the more interesting and influential southern politicians of the twentieth century. This long-overdue look at his political career illuminates the spirit that transformed an introspective, segregated society dependent on tobacco and textiles into a vibrant, diversified economy at the center of the industrial, banking, and information revolution in the South.

“Pleasants writes with clarity and authority.” —Jeffrey J. Crow, Deputy Secretary, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (ret.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9780813146782

Julian M. Pleasants

Julian M. Pleasants, coauthor of Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina, is professor of history and director of the Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

William Kerr Scott was the most controversial, polarizing, and successful North Carolina politician of his age. When Simmons Fentress, a writer and astute observer of North Carolina politics, evaluated Scott at the end of his four-year term as governor, he referred to him as the century’s most cussed governor: Columnists and commentators attacked him as a political accident, a notorious spender of other people’s money, a dangerous liberal tied to Harry Truman’s coattail, a governor of only half of the people. The man who changed the face of the state was, according to Fentress, as plain as a plow point, as candid as a school kid and as stubborn as an Alamance mule and just as unpredictable. While many would be glad to see him go, the gladdest are the men in the front offices of the big utilities. Fentress concluded that Scott would be remembered as a builder but that he was, essentially, a needler, a provoker, a builder of fires under the foot-draggers and the indolent, but always for a good cause. The governor brought a new level of political courage to Raleigh, a brand of effrontery that had him delineating the ills of the legal profession before an audience of lawyers and cursing private power companies at a power plant dedication. In a profession where everyone avoided controversial issues and parsed each sentence, Scott was an anomaly who always spoke his mind. He never understood the value of no comment. In summary, Fentress praised Scott for stubborn and fearless commitment to his goals.¹ Scott’s impressive achievements changed the course of the Old North State and led to an industrial revolution and improved living conditions for all its citizens.

Up until 1948, North Carolina had been dominated by a powerful machine organization, known as the Shelby dynasty or the Gardner machine. Led by what V. O. Key Jr. called the progressive plutocracy,² the machine consisted of an oligarchy of bankers and industrialists who dominated the state’s political and economic decision making. The Shelby dynasty favored sound, conservative government and maintained power by controlling the elective and appointive offices of the state administration. For twenty years, its members had, in effect, chosen the governor of the state. They were believers in the status quo and had access to the political funding that would keep them in power.

Governor W. Kerr Scott with his ever-present cigar. Photograph by Hugh Morton, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.

Kerr Scott, a folksy, plainspoken, ambitious candidate, changed the power structure in the state in 1948 by winning one of the greatest political upsets in the state’s history. When he announced as a candidate for governor, very few gave the Alamance dairy farmer much of a chance, but he effectively mobilized his supporters with a populist attack on big business and a constant denunciation of machine politics. Farmers and the poorer element in the state believed that they had not been given their fair share of state largesse and grew tired of the conservative, business-dominated political system. Kerr Scott believed that, in a land of forgotten people, what was bad for two-thirds of the state was bad for the entire state. He understood the needs and desires of the state’s less fortunate citizens and rode their demand for improvement in their lives to victory in the race for governor. His defeat of Charlie Johnson, the state treasurer, ended a twenty-year reign of conservative machine politics in the state and changed the face of North Carolina politics. If Johnson, the chosen candidate of the progressive plutocracy, had prevailed, then North Carolina would be a far different state than it is today.

This book is focused on the contributions of Kerr Scott as governor from 1949 to 1953, but it is also the story of North Carolina’s dramatic progression from a state not far removed from an introspective, backwater, segregated society dependent on tobacco and textiles into a vibrant, diversified global economy and the center of the industrial, banking, and information revolution in the South. Many of these changes took place during the ten-year period 1948–1958, when Kerr Scott held political office. When he took office, North Carolina had a per capita income that ranked forty-fifth of the then forty-eight states, an average school completion of 7.9 years, and a major problem with illiteracy. Sixty-six percent of the population lived in rural areas, and only one city had over 100,000 in population. There were no interstate highways, and only sixteen thousand miles of the state’s sixty-three-thousand-mile road system were hard surfaced. The state had no regional hospitals, no community colleges, and very few opportunities for advancement for those who lived in rural areas. Most of the rural folk lacked medical care, suffered from inadequate schools, and were isolated without telephones and electricity. In the legislative session of 1949, Governor Scott’s progressive legislation to improve roads, schools, and medical facilities set in motion the changes that would lead to the state’s rise to prominence.

In 1948 the state had begun to change in many ways. There was a new mood of optimism among returning veterans and young people just beginning to vote. The state government had a large surplus accumulated during World War II to spend on citizens’ needs. World War II had a transformative effect on the state and set the stage for Scott’s legislative successes. The massive government spending in the state for the purchase of farm and manufactured goods, along with the building of army and marine bases, gave a significant stimulus to the economy. The increase in shipbuilding and manufacturing led to many skilled jobs and a burgeoning urbanization.

Kerr Scott’s story is also the history of the factional struggles that distinguished state politics in the 1940s. There was a sharp ideological split in the Democratic Party between the conservatives and the progressive/populist wing led by Scott. This clash of ideas over race, culture, and the purpose of government has been the essence of North Carolina politics from 1948 to the present. Voters have elected liberals such as Governors Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt while at the same time choosing hard-line conservative US senators B. Everett Jordan and Jesse Helms. The epic struggle between Jim Hunt and Jesse Helms in 1984 for the US Senate pitted Hunt, the inheritor of the Scott mantle for progress, against the congenital naysayer and archconservative Jesse Helms. The Helms-Hunt race marked the beginning of the end to one-party politics in the South and, along with victories by Strom Thurmond in South Carolina and other southern Democrats who had switched parties, was a seminal example of the increasing influence of the resurgent Republican Party. The 1984 Senate contest was another in a long line of political fights for the mind and heart of the region. Helms won by a narrow margin and pushed the state toward a more conservative posture.

During Scott’s term as governor, the bitter ideological clashes between the two factions in the state were most evident in election contests: the gubernatorial elections of 1948 and 1952; Frank Graham’s defeat by Willis Smith in the 1950 Democratic senatorial primary, the most contentious and bitter conflict in the state’s history; and Scott’s victory in the 1954 Senate race, often referred to as the third primary, where he gained revenge on those conservatives who had defeated Frank Graham in 1950.

Kerr Scott defeated the machine in 1948 and 1954 when he ran for office, but he could not transfer his popularity to candidates he supported—Frank Porter Graham and Hubert Olive in 1952. He had a huge success in the 1949 state legislature with his Go Forward program but fared badly with the recalcitrant 1951 legislature as a lame duck governor. In his confrontations with the conservative wing of the party, despite the losses of Graham and Olive, he won the major and most meaningful confrontations by prevailing in the gubernatorial race in 1948 and with his 1949 legislative successes.

The period from 1948 to 1958 also encompasses the state’s attempt to maintain its moderate stance on race, The North Carolina Way, in the face of many controversial Supreme Court decisions and violent resistance in a South threatened by an end to segregation. North Carolina did not have any demagogues like Strom Thurmond or the Talmadges and did not close the state schools like Virginia. It had a reputation as the most progressive state in the South largely because it was generally free from political corruption and boasted of sound government practices. It did not exhibit the white racist demagoguery of the Deep South during this period, but its claim to be a national model of race relations was undermined by the racist campaigns of 1950 and, to a lesser degree, 1954. Scott, Frank Graham, and Jonathan Daniels represented the belief that interposition was not the way to resolve race issues. They improved communication between the races and fought injustices in education, employment, and voting. They believed that men of good faith and optimism could eventually lift up those who had been discriminated against, to the benefit of all the citizens of the state. In the end, however, these moderates on race did not embrace integration and failed to build up support for a gradual change in race relations.

Exactly who was this political phenomenon, Kerr Scott? A man of the people? An uncouth, semiliterate dirt farmer? When one mentioned Kerr Scott in 1948, his name evoked two totally different reactions. The Branchhead Boys, those isolated rural dwellers who lived at the head of the branch of the creek and on the star routes, admired him for his integrity and his work ethic and saw him as one of their own—a farmer, a man of the soil. They innately knew that he understood their yearning for a better life and their urgent need for roads, schools, electricity, and telephones. They liked him because of his outspoken and charismatic personality. He could be articulate and urbane when he needed to be, but he never forgot his roots.

The middle- and upper-class urban dwellers, led by the better-educated business leaders in the state, had a totally different, elitist view of Scott. The country club set never cottoned to him, partly because of his crude language and country drawl. They saw him as a rude intruder—a poorly educated, crass, unsophisticated rube who, with his radical views, would turn the state upside down if he ever came to power. Not only did they dislike what they perceived to be his blunt-spoken, brash personality, but they also feared his liberal politics. Ultimately, his critics made the mistake of underestimating his intelligence and vote-getting ability—to their great chagrin. With Kerr Scott, as with collards, people either liked him or hated him—there was usually no middle ground.

Scott could be as down home as he needed to be, but, in fact, he was college educated and a sensible, practical, highly intelligent man who was as comfortable with university presidents as with a crossroads gathering of tobacco farmers griping about farm prices. He could deliver a commencement address, or milk a cow, or chair a session of the Presbyterian elders at his church. He was, as the state would learn, a canny, resourceful politician—far more dangerous than the state’s progressive plutocracy could ever have imagined.

Most observers did not expect the extraordinary success that Kerr Scott would have as governor. His critics initially dismissed him as an uncouth farmer, but he proved to be an astute politician and a true visionary. He reformed state government with his Go Forward program, and, during his four years in office, he made great progress in correcting the inequities between the haves and the have-nots. He engineered the passing of two statewide bond issues on roads and education. The education bond money resulted in 8,000 new classrooms, 175 gymnasiums, and 350 lunchrooms. He put in a school health program and insisted on giving pay raises to teachers. His road program ended up paving 14,810 miles of new roads and upgrading and improving thousands of miles of highways. This transportation revolution enabled the state to begin its move toward greater industrialization and enabled the farmer to get his goods to market. Scott’s commitment to improved health care in the state led to a new medical school and teaching hospital at Chapel Hill and a number of regional medical centers. During his watch, funding for public health programs, nursing homes, mental health programs, and old-age assistance increased dramatically.

The first governor to recognize the long-term significance of water resources in North Carolina, Scott came up with the first comprehensive plan for water and soil conservation. He began a modernization of the state’s prisons, he sponsored a bond issue for the construction of modern port facilities in Wilmington and Morehead City, and he was by far the most prolabor governor of his era. His constant prodding of the electric and telephone companies led to the installation of some 31,000 rural phones and 150,000 new electrical connections. Despite the adamant opposition of conservative state legislators, he managed to push through an astonishing array of game-changing bills in the 1949 legislative session by appealing to the public, by shrewd bargaining, and by hard-hitting leadership.

Scott was one of the most colorful governors in the state’s history, and his controversial personality excited his followers and angered his critics. He was forthright and candid to a fault; no one ever doubted where he stood on any issue. He had the courage to confront his critics face-to-face: as noted, he excoriated lawyers at a legal convention and cursed private power companies at a power plant dedication. He was often self-righteous and stubborn, but he disliked the status quo and wanted immediate change. He was an agitator and a provoker of the foot-draggers, the indolent, and those who got in his way. He usually prevailed.

As governor, Scott struck blows for women’s rights by appointing the first female superior court judge. Fifteen percent of his appointees to state offices were women. He chose the first black ever selected to the state Board of Education, opened a dialogue with Negro leaders in the state, and worked tirelessly to improve Negro schools.³ He was never a demagogue, but, despite his moderate stance on race, he consistently defended segregation in the state.

Scott served as a US senator from 1954 to 1958 and achieved some success in that office, but, as a junior senator, he did not have a significant effect on the Senate. He frequently complained about the inability of one man to get much done in the Senate and bemoaned the slow progress of any legislation. He did cast some important votes, including the censure of Joe McCarthy, and worked hard for farmers, especially tobacco growers, as well as for water power and soil and water conservation. His proposal for a world food bank was visionary, but much of his time was spent grappling with Brown v. Board of Education and civil rights. His senatorial career was too short for him to establish a distinguished record, so the discussion of the years 1954–1958 is relegated to one chapter.

Chapter 1 has limited coverage of Scott’s early life, but it is essential to give the reader a sense of his history, where he came from, and how family, place, and faith contributed to and informed his political career. Kerr Scott was one of the most effective commissioners of agriculture ever to serve in that post in North Carolina, but the coverage of those years is restricted to how that experience prepared him for and affected his term as governor. This book is more of a political history than a full-length biography, and the focus is on Scott’s contributions to the state from 1949 to 1953. His electoral victories and his achievements and effectiveness as governor paved the way for other progressive leaders in the state, including Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt. I have concluded, on the basis of his achievements and the long-term effect of the reforms he advocated, that Kerr Scott was one of the most influential governors in twentieth-century North Carolina.

Writing in the Greensboro Daily News, Bill Snider saw Scott’s gubernatorial administration as a time of spirited moving forward and his idea of combining rural living with modern industrial society as an important blueprint for the future. Scott wanted to redress the balance between farmers and lawyers and between the people and the moneyed interests. Snider compared him to Harry Truman: Scott and Truman were alike. Their hearts were in the right place and they were sound on many large and memorable issues. They were sometimes wrong, and petty, on small ones. Scott, continued Snider, had a mind open to new ideas and was the epitome of North Carolina’s independent spirit: He was a bulldozer, not a diplomat, a doer, not a philosopher. He never plowed under false colors. Snider concluded that Scott was as near a symbol of the state’s motto, To Be Rather Than Seem, as we have had in this century.⁴

This book has been written essentially from primary sources. In many instances, however, the primary material was simply not sufficient for a full explanation of events, so secondary sources were needed to flesh out the story. While a variety of newspapers gave broad coverage to North Carolina politics from 1948 to 1958, I have used the Raleigh News and Observer extensively during Scott’s term as governor since the Old Reliable covered events in the legislature more thoroughly than any other paper.

The state Department of Archives and History in Raleigh has Scott’s gubernatorial papers and his Senate papers. Both sets of papers were reasonably well organized and enabled me to gain some insight into Scott’s thoughts and his judgments on political activities. Both collections, however, especially the senatorial papers, were thin on key decisions as Scott was careful not to include his innermost thoughts in his personal writings. Nonetheless, his correspondence helped ascertain his views on state and world events, if not always his motivation for certain decisions.

Other than the Kerr Scott collections, the most helpful papers were those of William McW. Cochrane, Roy Wilder Jr., Terry Sanford, William B. Umstead, Luther Hodges, Capus Waynick Jr., Clyde R. Hoey, and Harry Truman. The Congressional Record was a valuable resource for Scott’s speeches and votes while in the US Senate. The North Carolina Collection at Chapel Hill, as always, provided a rich collection of varied and relevant sources.

This study would not have been as complete without access to a significant number of valuable oral histories. These remembrances of Kerr Scott supplied the details and the anecdotes that gave the study a greater understanding of the man and a richer, fuller overview of his life. Oral histories are not infallible. Each person brings a mind-set and a bias into each conversation. In some cases it was not possible to verify the details of these recollections, but in most cases I have tried to ascertain whether the information was accurate. The most useful of the interviews were those with Robert W. Scott, Ralph Scott, Roy Wilder Jr., Terry Sanford, William Friday, Lauch Faircloth, and Frances Reesman, who gave me a precise description of Scott in the governor’s office. The same is true of Roy Wilder Jr., who had inside information on Scott’s activities in the Senate.

1

THE EARLY YEARS

William Kerr Scott began his journey to the statehouse in Raleigh on April 17, 1896. Born in a farmhouse in Haw River, Alamance County, North Carolina, Kerr was the eighth of the fourteen children of Robert Walter Scott (July 24, 1861–May 16, 1929), a prosperous Hawfields community farmer, and Elizabeth Hughes, a former teacher and a pious daughter of a pioneer Orange County family. The Scott family first arrived before the Civil War, traveling among the adventurous Scots-Irish families who made their way to North Carolina via the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. These pioneers carved out small family farms in the Piedmont and scratched out a living with tobacco and cotton. The Scotts represented the best qualities of the rough-hewn, unpretentious, independent farmers in the state. They were typical in that they wore brogans and loved cornbread, but they were also enlightened and believed strongly in education.¹

Kerr Scott’s father, commonly known as Farmer Bob, established a family dynasty destined to affect the state for the rest of the twentieth century. Robert W. Scott married Lizzie J. Hughes in January 1883, and, of their fourteen children, eleven lived to maturity. Led by Farmer Bob, a state legislator and leader of the Farmers’ Alliance, the family produced two governors, Kerr Scott and his son, Robert W. (Bob) Scott II. Kerr Scott went on to the US Senate. Influential Scott family members also included Ralph Scott, a state senator of impressive influence for many years; Samuel Floyd, a beloved physician in Alamance County; Elizabeth Scott Carrington, a nurse and the chair of the committee that founded the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina; and Meg Scott Phipps, the daughter of Governor Bob Scott, who became the state commissioner of agriculture.

Robert W. Scott, Kerr’s father, was born in Hawfields in 1861, the son of Henderson and Margaret (Kerr) Scott. Robert W. Scott’s father, a farmer and merchant in Mebane prior to the Civil War, eventually settled in Hawfields. Robert W. got his schooling at the local Hughes Academy and later at Broughton School. He had to leave the University of North Carolina in 1878 to take over the family farm, which had fallen into disrepair. Intent on developing and utilizing new farming techniques, he visited prosperous farms in New York and Pennsylvania and brought new technology and innovative farming methods to Haw River.

Hailed as the first master farmer in the state, Farmer Bob was a pioneer in agricultural innovation. He had a reputation as a book farmer as well as a practical one who studied, practiced, and encouraged others in crop rotation and diversified farming. He became a leader in the Farmer’s Alliance and later developed an intense interest in politics as a way to improve the lives of the poor in the state. He developed an intimate friendship with Charles B. Aycock, North Carolina’s education governor. Aycock visited in the Scott home on many occasions, and his zeal for expanding public education made a profound impression on Kerr Scott, then a lad of twelve. Governor Aycock appointed Farmer Bob to the state Agricultural Board, where he served from 1901 to 1929. Voters elected him—in 1889, 1891, and 1903—to three terms in the state House of Representatives, where he was a member of the roads committee. He also served two terms in the state Senate in 1901 and 1929. Robert W. Scott backed Aycock’s education program, campaigned for tax support for the Hawfields public schools, and joined the leadership that established the North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College (later North Carolina State University), where he was named a trustee.²

Robert Scott had an extraordinary influence on his son’s values and his career. All the Scott children learned the importance of hard work at an early age. It was understood that they were to keep their word and honor all their obligations. Each child had his or her assigned daily chores, which their father expected them to perform efficiently and with good cheer. A devout Presbyterian and elder in the Hawfields church, Kerr’s father insisted that all the children be in church on Sunday and admonished them to observe a high moral and spiritual code on a daily basis. From his father, Kerr inherited traits of stubbornness, tenacity, sternness, good business judgment, and a compelling urge to help people help themselves. Bob Redwine, who knew the family well, wrote that Kerr’s Go Forward program of better schools and roads was the program Farmer Bob had worked for all his life. From his mother, Kerr inherited a gentleness of nature and a sentimental streak that was not always visible to those outside the family. He also learned from the Hugheses, his mother’s side of the family, a deep appreciation for history and literature as many in her family were educators, preachers, and doctors.

There was never any question about what Kerr Scott wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be a farmer and a good one. Contrary to later public opinion, he was not a poor dirt farmer. He had been born into an important local family with large landholdings and at least a middle-class income. After completing Hawfields High School in 1913, he enrolled at North Carolina A&M and graduated in 1917 with a ninety-two grade-point average and a B.S. in agriculture. At State he excelled in track, YMCA work, and debating. As one professor noted: [Kerr] listened more intently than any other student I had. His willingness to learn and his hard work were characteristics that enabled him to achieve great success in his life’s endeavors. Dr. Floyd Scott, his older brother, recounted: Kerr was born with tremendous energy. He could do more work than any two men in the field and he used his head. He arrived at practical solutions sooner than the rest of us.³

After graduation, Scott worked briefly as an emergency food production agent for the US Department of Agriculture. After World War I began, he enlisted as a private in the army and served in the field artillery at Camp Taylor, Kentucky. Four months later, just as he was about to enter officer training school, the war ended, and he was discharged from military service. He returned to Haw River and, after borrowing $4,000 from his father, purchased 224 acres and began clearing the land and raising a few head of sheep and cattle.

His father had advised Kerr early on that, since he was the only one in the family with political ambitions, he should buy some land and develop it into a successful business. Then, when he ventured into politics, he could sound off on what he thought was right on any issue. Other politicians could not speak forthrightly for fear of losing their jobs. Kerr need not be afraid to blast away because he could always return to his farm.

Needing a partner in life, Kerr became engaged to Mary White, a neighbor’s daughter. They both attended Hawfields High and Hawfields Presbyterian Church and had been lifelong sweethearts. Scott and Miss Mary, as he always called her, were married on July 2, 1919. Mary quit her position as a teacher in Haw River and helped Kerr clear the land and build their first house. The energetic Scott and the gentle, soft-spoken Miss Mary cut their own timber and, with the aid of a jack-leg carpenter, built the seven-room house he occupied until his death. He and Miss Mary had three children, Osborne, Mary Kerr Loudermilk, and Robert W. (Bob) Scott II.

Kerr, always devoted to his wife, depended on her for many things, and observers noted that there was a softness in his voice whenever he referred to her. Although quiet and reserved, Mary was an equal partner and her husband’s confidante and adviser in all important matters during his career. She served as his anchor and his compass and calmed him down when he let his emotions get out of control. Her sense of purpose was as strong as his, and, when Kerr became commissioner of agriculture, she assumed the responsibility of business agent and resident manager for the farm. The wife of one governor and mother of another, sometimes referred to as Queen Mary of Scotts by her friends, she was loved for her poise, friendliness, and wholesomeness of manner.⁴

Kerr and Mary’s son Bob Scott admired how hard his parents had worked to develop their farm and dairy business: Like so many North Carolina farmers he [Kerr Scott] was an entrepreneur. He remembered that his father and mother took some old worn-out land covered with gullies and built up its fertility over the years: When you build something like that you put your soul in it and you don’t give up. His parents, he noted, had roots very deep in the soil of Alamance County and in their farm and the community. When Kerr Scott was commissioner of agriculture, he drove back and forth to Raleigh each day so that he could live at home and get work done on the farm. Bob Scott also recalled that all the Scott brothers had a sense of humor: They believed that you should be able to laugh at yourself … don’t take yourself too seriously. It was a natural humor—not contrived.⁵ A year after he married, Kerr Scott took his first public job when he became the farm agent in Alamance County. For the next ten years, he traveled by horse, buggy, and Model T from one end of the county to the other, advising and assisting farmers with various problems. He used money from his salary to buy additional land in Haw River and practiced on his own farm what he preached to his neighbors—soil conservation and soil improvement.⁶ Terry Sanford later described Scott’s life as a farm agent: The Jersey herd was growing and Kerr was rising at 5:00 A.M. to help milk, and taking the milk to the market in his pick-up truck as he went to his office. His first desk was a nail keg, in his office in the basement of the old Courthouse in Graham, and there he worked those first years without an assistant…. Any time off the job was spent in pushing some special project at the farm.⁷

In 1930 the North Carolina State Grange elected Scott grand master, a post he held for three years. During that time the Grange experienced its greatest membership growth. In the dark days of the Great Depression, Scott became one of the first in his state to advocate rural electrification. He caught the attention of Franklin Roosevelt, and, when the president called a meeting of national farm leaders at Warm Springs, Georgia, Kerr Scott was the only southerner invited. Shortly thereafter, Roosevelt appointed Scott as an investigator for the Farm Credit Administration and later selected him as the regional director of the newly created Farm Debt Adjustment Administration. Scott’s region included five southern states, and the Tar Heel administrator helped save numerous farmers from mortgage foreclosures. Those were both heart-rending and happy days for me recalled Scott. Heart-rending because of the misery, want and hunger we saw on every side; happy because of the fear we were able to lift from the eyes of thousands of men, women and children.⁸

By 1936 Scott decided that his experience as a county agent, his leadership of the Grange, and his work for the federal government qualified him for the post of commissioner of agriculture. The family version of events was that, on his deathbed, Farmer Bob asked Kerr to run for commissioner and make his department the best in the country. Farmer Bob had vied for the office unsuccessfully in 1908; he had been defeated by the father of the current holder of the office, William A. Graham. Scott, as would be his modus operandi in the future, waited until only three months prior to the primary election to announce against the incumbent. Graham had been in office since 1923, and no one expected the upstart Scott to have a chance. Despite his late entry, Scott waged a vigorous campaign and won the Democratic primary by 227,808 to Graham’s 207,750.⁹ Scott won reelection by large margins in 1940 and 1944 and served as commissioner for eleven years.¹⁰

As commissioner, Scott completely reorganized the Department of Agriculture and, as he did throughout his career, traveled the state preaching rural electrification. He helped expand agricultural marketing facilities in North Carolina, as the state had encouraged increased production without assisting the farmers in marketing their products. He compelled feed and fertilizer manufacturers to eliminate the use of sawdust and sand in their products. He fought against bovine tuberculosis in farm animals and became the first commissioner to operate the state fair without a financial loss. On a national level he led a successful campaign to obtain congressional passage of the Research and Marketing Act of 1946, which provided federal assistance to farmers in the marketing of their goods.

While building a state and national reputation in agriculture, Scott expanded his own farm from 224 to 1,300 acres. By 1948 he had 200 cows, 350 acres of pasture, 700 acres of corn, wheat, and alfalfa, and large areas committed to timber. His son Osborne, with significant assistance from Miss Mary, ran the operation along with fifteen farmhands and tenants. Kerr Scott primarily worked as a dairy farmer, supplying milk to Guilford Dairies, a cooperative in Greensboro.¹¹

As commissioner of agriculture, Scott had incurred the wrath of the electric power industry as well as the powerful feed and fertilizer groups. The consensus was that he could be reelected as commissioner as long as he wanted but that his political future would be limited to that post. Scott, however, had higher ambitions than his current post and, despite the prevailing opinion, decided that he had the ability and the contacts to be elected governor. He then embarked on a quest for higher elective office and a political career that would result in some of the most dramatic and compelling political races in the history of the state. In the most significant contest, the Democratic primary of 1948, he would achieve a momentous upset that would spell the end for the Gardner machine in the state.

2

THE ELECTION OF 1948

The First Primary

Why did Kerr Scott, a dairy farmer with limited statewide name recognition, no real political organization, and a dearth of wealthy supporters, suddenly, in early 1948, decide to run for governor against the entrenched Gardner machine? O. Max Gardner, a resourceful textile executive from Shelby, North Carolina, had been elected governor in 1928 and quickly constructed a powerful political organization. He combined the remnants of the old Furnifold Simmons machine with the leaders of the business community in the Piedmont. The leading bankers, utility and tobacco company executives, and textile mill owners were aided by effective courthouse organizations around the state. Gardner’s machine, known as the Shelby dynasty because two governors, Gardner and Clyde R. Hoey, were from Shelby, dominated state party politics from 1928 until 1948. The Gardner machine selected future governors ahead of time, and its candidates usually managed to win elections by significant margins.

The governors from 1928 to 1948 in North Carolina were part of what V. O. Key Jr. called the progressive plutocracy. The historian George Tindall referred to these leaders as business progressives. Writing in 1949, before he had a chance to absorb the significance of Scott’s 1948 victory, Key presented North Carolina as a state with a reputation for progressive action on education, industrial development, and race relations. The financial and business elite, an aggressive aristocracy of manufacturing and banking, controlled the state’s economic and political life. According to Key, this oligarchy ruled with a strong sense of community responsibility, favoring funding for education and road building, and with a conscientious, business-like efficiency. The machine maintained power by controlling the elective and appointive offices of the state administration and took great care to ensure that those officials were fundamentally in harmony with the machine’s overall point of view. In short, the Shelby dynasty favored sound, conservative government and had easy access to the political funds essential for maintaining its supremacy.¹

It became increasingly apparent by 1948, however, that some elements in the state, especially the farmers, were beginning to tire of a conservative, business-dominated political system. Although the Democratic Party controlled statewide elections, in reality North Carolina had the appearance of a two-party state. There was an ideological split between the conservative, status quo machine wing of the party and the more democratic, that is, more liberal wing. There had always been a decidedly sectional character to North Carolina politics, and many in the eastern part of the state, mainly farmers and low-wage workers, believed their needs were ignored in Raleigh.

Over the years, these ideological and sectional factions had, with one or two exceptions, coalesced around one candidate, and the Shelby dynasty managed to maintain control until 1948. The machine had been challenged on a few occasions, mainly by Ralph McDonald in 1936, but with limited success. By 1948, however, the political landscape had changed. The machine’s leaders, O. Max Gardner and Senator Josiah W. Bailey, had died without leaving successors. After World War II there appeared two large groups of new voters, returning veterans and a cohort of young men and women who had come of age during Roosevelt’s New Deal. Neither group had any allegiance to the machine. The opposition to the Shelby machine thus became centered around this new group of voters, aided by the small shopkeepers and tobacco farmers in the east who continued the Populist tradition of suspicion of entrenched government.²

Kerr Scott had come by his Populist views honestly. His father had been a leader in the North Carolina Grange and had participated in the Farmer’s Alliance, a political protest organization designed to represent the protests of disaffected farmers from all over the country. The late 1880s and early 1890s were difficult times for North Carolina farmers. They faced deflated prices for farm goods, felt victimized by high railroad rates, especially when there was no alternative means of transportation, complained about high interest rates charged by the banks, and faced a never-ending struggle against insects, soil erosion, floods, and droughts. Feeling isolated and ignored, they had very little bargaining power and turned to the Farmer’s Alliance for help. The rural element understood that they could not influence a society run by big business and corrupt politicians unless they created a third party. They began to call themselves the People’s Party or Populists. The Populist Party achieved some national political success in 1892, but its ideas were eventually absorbed by the Democratic Party.

In North Carolina, the Farmer’s Alliance had grown quickly and by 1890 had some 100,000 members. The Populist Party managed to elect fourteen members to the North Carolina state legislature in 1892 by using antibusiness slogans and by appealing to farmers. The local leader, Marion Butler, decided to form a coalition with the overwhelmingly black Republican Party, and the fusion took control of the state legislature. Once in power, the new coalition passed laws increasing democracy with the popular election of local officials and significantly expanded the state education system—all reforms designed to undermine the Jim Crow system and the authority of the white supremacists. The Democrats, in the vicious White Supremacy campaigns of 1898–1900, regained power, repealed the fusionist reforms, and established a permanent system of white supremacy. The Democrats, in league with the corporate interests of the state, would thus control state politics for the next half century.³

Scott had inherited from his father, from his own work in the Grange, and from his experiences as a farmer the Populists’ animosity toward big business along with their demand for a more democratic society, greater economic development, and increased aid to farmers. He accepted the premise that, for the state to prosper, the black community had to prosper but had difficulty achieving this goal so long as the corporate leaders and the conservative members of the Democratic Party used white supremacy to stay in power. Nonetheless, his Populist rhetoric and concern for the rural poor were significant aspects of his political success. Many historians would judge Kerr Scott as the most Populist of the state’s governors.

While V. O. Key Jr. saw North Carolina as a progressive state, he admitted that, on many economic indices, the state ranked far down the ladder, even among southern states. The median income for families in 1950 was $2,121, and in rural areas the average was $1,304. Fifty-three percent of the state’s population had incomes of less than $2,000, and 66 percent of those lived in rural areas. The state’s main industries—textiles, furniture manufacturing, and tobacco—paid notoriously low wages, and labor unions had been vigorously suppressed. In 1947 some 42 percent of the workforce was engaged in farming-related industries, and 28 percent was employed in manufacturing jobs. While unemployment for whites was low, at 2.1 percent, the unemployment rate for Negroes was 5.3 percent. Illiteracy was a major problem, especially in the mountains and in rural areas. Citizens over twenty-five had completed an average of only 7.9 years in schools. For Negroes, that number was 5.9. There were no regional hospitals, no community colleges, no interstate highways, and very few opportunities for advancement for those in rural areas—many of whom had to live without telephones, electricity, and paved roads.

North Carolina’s population had increased from 3,571,623 in 1940 to 4,061,929 in 1950, a gain of 490,306. Some of that increase came with an influx of new residents from the North. Many came with the military and stayed; others were attracted by retirement communities, resort developments, education opportunities, and jobs in manufacturing and textiles. There was also the beginning of an in-state migration as Negroes and farmers moved to the cities for better jobs. This migration marked the beginning of a trend toward urban growth. In 1950, Charlotte, with 134,102 inhabitants, was the only city in the state with a population over 100,000. The other five largest cities were Winston-Salem (87,811), Greensboro (74,389), Durham (73,368), Raleigh (65,679), and Asheville (58,437). The median age in the state was twenty-five, and only 5.5 percent of the state’s citizens were over sixty-five. The foreign-born population was listed at 16,134 for the entire state. Nonwhite residents numbered 26.6 percent, and by every standard—jobs, education, voting rights, and health care—their opportunities were limited, and they languished behind whites in almost every category. Kerr Scott looked at these numbers and realized that the state had to expand services for its citizens, even if it meant raising taxes, and knew that the state would not budge from its low economic ranking unless there was a strong push for new roads, better schools, and a more industrialized society.

World War II had a major effect on all these statistics and helped move the state toward a stronger economy and a more democratic electorate. A large number of Negroes migrated to the North during the war years for jobs and better living conditions and returned with a new attitude toward civil rights. North Carolina soldiers had traveled all over the world and come home with a less parochial outlook and a more enlightened view of politics and a rapidly changing society. In 1948 the University of North Carolina, while regionally significant, had not yet achieved national stature. The state system had been favorably changed by a large influx of World War II veterans, who came to study on the GI Bill. These veterans were mature, hardworking students, eager to get their degrees and begin their business or professional careers. Clarence Mohr notes that the war greatly democratized access to southern colleges and universities. Southern universities expanded in both numbers and in quality and moved into the national mainstream. Attitudes among whites were modified by the war as well. Jim Cobb argues that the changes set in motion or intensified by the war had rendered W. J. Cash’s version of the southern mind obsolete as southerners were now more heterogeneous, less exclusionary, and more democratic.⁴

The ideological dimensions of the war exposed weaknesses in the South’s views on white superiority. The war had been waged against Germany, whose views of Aryan superiority and an end to democracy had motivated thousands of Americans to defeat the evil menace of Nazism. Now that the war had ended, what about the rights of Negroes in the South? Blacks were aware of the double standard and wanted a Double V—victory over tyranny in Europe and victory for civil rights in America. Tim S. R. Boyd demonstrated that the significant changes finally wrought by the 1960s civil rights movement were largely the product of myriad social and economic developments that were already well under way by the end of World War II. All these changes undermined the basis for a one-party system in neighboring states like Georgia and eroded the economic underpinnings of white rule.⁵

North Carolina was considered to be more progressive on race than other southern states and did not exhibit the rigorous and confrontational approach to preserving white supremacy that the Deep South states did. With more enlightened leadership the state was less likely to resort to demagoguery and would be more amenable to changes in racial politics and economic development. While the state maintained a powerful commitment to the traditionalism of the South and remained distinctly southern, its expanding entrepreneurial spirit, its flexibility on race issues, its pursuit of improved education opportunities, and its progressive tendencies made it different from other southern states. Nonetheless, it had a history of white supremacy dating from the 1898–1900 racist campaigns, and the conservative element of the Democratic Party, by and large, wanted to maintain existing conditions and practiced segregationist politics.⁶ Race remained a crucial issue in state politics, and candidates like Scott had to tread lightly on the subject as the majority of whites in the state were as yet unwilling to accept integration and their views would be revealed in the bitter Senate race of 1950.

The enormous military mobilization from 1941 to 1945 also created new opportunities for women. As Judy Barrett Litoff has explained, southern women joined women from throughout the nation in contributing to war bond drives, volunteering for military service, and assisting the Red Cross. Women seized new economic opportunities by taking over jobs vacated by men leaving for service. As Litoff notes, the war improved the way women thought about themselves, expanding their horizons and affording them a clearer view of their capabilities.⁷ As a result they became stronger and more self-reliant, and many of them supported Scott in 1948 and 1954 because he recognized their new status and believed in their drive for equality.

By any standards, World War II had a transformative effect on North Carolina, perhaps as significant as any event since the Civil War. In economic terms the reshaping of the state was dramatic. Sarah Lemmon, e.g., reported that, in addition to massive government spending ($2 billion alone for the purchase of manufactured goods in the state), North Carolina expanded its industrial base with shipbuilding (merchant marine ships, submarine chasers, ship repair stations), the production of furniture products, and the manufacture of rockets, radar components, machine-gun belts, airplanes, tents, blankets, towels, bandages, uniforms, hosiery, underwear (P. H. Hanes Knitting Co.), and other items for the war effort. The industrial expansion led to many skilled jobs outside agriculture and a burgeoning urbanization as farm workers moved to the cities or to work in the textile mills. As in many southern states, the population became more urban and less rural, and the balance of power shifted to the Piedmont. Farming remained an important part of the state’s economic base, and the state’s farmers responded to the great demand for their goods by tripling production during the war years.

The years from 1941 to 1945 brought greater wealth to the state as newly hired workers and GIs spent money on