The Columbians, Inc.: A chapter of racial hatred from the post-World War II South

Journal of Southern History

Volumn 69, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 821-860

  Weisenburger, Steven ^a  

^a SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949639858     PISSN: 00224642     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/30040098     Document Type: Article

References (149)

1. Atlanta Daily World, November 1, 1946, pp. 1, 6. For assistance in researching this essay I am grateful to Bernard Crystal, Columbia University Special Collections librarian, for assistance with the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League papers; to Jordan B. Forman, assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League's Southeast Region office, for supplying copies of relevant publications in their files; and to John M. Kelso, Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Section Chief at the U.S. Department of Justice for processing my request for FBI files on the Columbians, also an invaluable archive. At the University of Kentucky, research assistant Joe Sanders traced the Columbians' record in U.S. newspapers and magazines
2. J. Wayne Dudley, "'Hate' Organizations of the 1940s: The Columbians, Inc.," Phylon, 42, no. 3 (1981), 264-65
3. and Robert Pierce Patrick Jr., "A Nail in the Coffin of Racism: The Story of the Columbians," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 85 (Summer 2001), 245-66
4. On 1940s urban racial violence see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1998), 115
5. Paul Kleppner, Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor (DeKalb, Ill., 1985), 40-44
6. and Arvarh E. Strickland, History of the Chicago Urban League (Urbana and London, 1966), 155-65
7. For reporting on these and related acts of terror see also Race Relations: A Monthly Summary of Events and Trends, 4 (May 1947), 301-2
8. For a reprinted edition of this journal see Race Relations (5 vols.; New York, 1969)
9. On the December 1945 Fontana violence see Paul R. Spickard, "Fire in the Night: A 1945 Southern California Hate Crime and Historical Memory," Southern California Quarterly, 82, no. 3 (2000), 291-304
10. Stephen E. Ambrose, The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys; The Men of World War II (New York, 1998)
11. and Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York, 1998)
12. Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies. Vol. II: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror, trans. Erica Carter and Chris Turner (Minneapolis, 1989)
13. It would be useful as well to supplement Theweleit's analysis with that of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis, 1983), who critique fascism as a paranoid reaction-formation galvanized around the father and the phallus and regimented totally against pleasure, multiplicity, and hybridity. In referring to fascism as a discourse, I refer to the Foucaldian sense of a discursive field, understood as deeply implicated in a specific regime of power
14. On mobilized, massed white working- and middle-class resistance to school integration after the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision see Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950's (Baton Rouge, 1969)
15. Atlanta Constitution, October 31, 1946, p. 1
16. New York Times, December 11, 1946, p. 3
17. and "Heil Columbians," Newsweek, 28 (December 23, 1946), 26. The NSANL Papers, donated to the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library during the early 1970s, were in the process of being sorted and cataloged by former NSANL director James H. Sheldon when he died in 1975. Sheldon had not yet processed the collection's "Investigative Files," including six boxes of material on The Columbians, Inc., and the Ku Klux Klan, covering NSANL-funded investigations that overlapped because they both concerned Atlanta activities and individuals, many of whom were members of both racist groups. When I studied those six relevant boxes in May 2000, evidently the first person to do so in their quarter century at Columbia, the unprocessed files consisted of numerous items in duplicate or triplicate, scattered through different folders and boxes. There were many untitled memoranda and assorted items that were unlabeled, while many items appeared in mislabeled folders and manila envelopes, none of them labeled. In all, this daunting research exercise both fascinated yet resisted any more concise method of referencing materials than what I offer here (given the absence of any other labeling), by box numbers
18. Deposition of Ralph Childers, December 4, 1946, Box 17, NSANL Papers
19. "Toy Hitters," 31-32 (quotation on p. 32)
20. Emory Burke, "I Confess" [1948], in Burke, Wake Up America: Three Essays (Metairie, La., 1980), 1-2 (first, third, and fourth quotations on p. 2)
21. Emory Burke to Ted [Theodore A.] Giles, November 19, 1942, Box 16, NSANL Papers (second quotation)
22. Burke to Deatherage, September 30, 1942 (first quotation), and Burke to Glenn Saunders, November 7, 1942, both in Box 16, NSANL Papers
23. Burke, "I Confess," 2 (second and third quotations)
24. Foltz to Hoover, May 15, 1947, Section 5, FBI File (fourth quotation)
25. Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon (New York and London, 1912), 36 (fifth quotation)
26. Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York, 1922)
27. William McDougall, Is America Safe for Democracy? (New York, 1921)
28. Earnest Sevier Cox, White America (Richmond, 1923)
29. Albert Edward Wiggam, The Fruit of the Family Tree (Garden City, N.Y., 1925)
30. Edwin R. Embree, Brown America: The Story of a New Race (New York, 1931)
31. Burke to Giles, December 30, 1942, Box 16, NSANL Papers
32. "Memo for Columbian File," Box 15, NSANL Papers
33. "Excerpts from Address by Prof. James H. Sheldon," March 20, 1947, Box 18, NSANL Papers
34. Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York, 1987), 268-72
35. Burke to Deatherage, September 30, 1942, Box 16, NSANL Papers
36. Stetson Kennedy, Southern Exposure (Garden City, N.Y., 1946), 184-85, 245
37. Burke to Giles, February 6, 1943, Box 16, NSANL Papers (quotations)
38. Burke to Glenn Saunders, May 17, 1942, Box 16, NSANL Papers. Evidence of Burke's obsessive writing regimen can be found in letters Burke wrote during a five-week period (from January 3 to February 13, 1943) to his favorite correspondent, Theodore Andrew Giles, a soon-to-be-drafted employee of the Georgia Industrial Board. During that time Burke sent eight closely argued three-page replies to Giles's letters; earlier Burke had written to Glenn Saunders of Arkansas a twenty-two-page treatise (dated May 17, 1942) on his theory of "Jewish-led" Communism's threats to "blood purity" through alleged Communist encouragement to "amalgamationists." Box 16, NSANL Papers
39. Burke to Saunders, May 17, 1942, Box 16 (third quotation), all in NSANL Papers
40. and Burke to Giles, February 13, 1943 (second quotation), both in Box 16, NSANL Papers
41. Burke to editor of The Statesman, August 1942 (second quotation)
42. Burke to editor of The Statesman, August 1942 (first three quotations)
43. Burke, "A Philosophy for Democracy" [circa 1944-45], (first quotation)
44. Burke, "American Soul Must Be Saved," 13 (first quotation)
45. Deposition of Lanier Waller, December 4, 1946
46. Burke, "The American Soul Must Be Saved," in Burke, Wake Up America, 11, 14 (sixth, seventh, and eighth quotations)
47. On February 4, 1943, Burke exulted in a letter to Giles, "The Jews have been concentrated in the vicinity of Warsaw . . . into a small area behind walls . . . a splendid idea." Five days later Giles replied to Burke, celebrating the Nazi action in Warsaw, seconding Burke's plan to concentrate all Jews in Madagascar, and discussing similar plans to "forcibly remove" all African Americans to Liberia as soon as the war should end. Burke to Giles, February 4, 1943, and Giles to Burke, February 9, 1943, both in Box 16, NSANL Papers
48. Burke recalled the job in "American Soul Must Be Saved," 20
49. On Atlanta as a modern metropolis see John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York, 1994), 216-17, 319, 375-78
50. on the city's racial politics see Clarence N. Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946-1988 (Lawrence, Kan., 1989), 14-35
51. "Memo from Informant John Brown," April 29, 1946, Box 18, NSANL Papers
52. Clifford M. Kuhn, Harlon E. Joye, and E. Bernard West, Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914-1948 (Athens, Ga., and London, 1990), 337-39
53. On Gewinner and the thirties-era Black Shirts see Charles H. Martin, "White Supremacy and Black Workers: Georgia's 'Black Shirts' Combat the Great Depression," Labor History, 18 (Summer 1977), 366-81
54. and Dudley, "'Hate' Organizations of the 1940s," 265-74, esp. 265-66
55. on Shea, Emmons, and Shipp and on Moseley's plans see Kennedy, Southern Exposure, 186 (quotation), 245-49
56. on Duke's battle with the Klan see Egerton, Speak Now Against the the Day, 378-80
57. and David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The First Century of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1965 (Garden City, N.Y., 1965), chap. 44
58. on Smythe see "Klan, Bund Negotiator Coming," Atlanta Constitution, September 7, 1946, p. 1
59. See Kennedy, Southern Exposure, 184-85, 245-48
60. and John Roy Carlson [Arthur Derounian], The Plotters (New York, 1946), 45-50
61. John Egerton echoes this analysis when he remarks that radical racists "knew that if they could stop change here [in Atlanta], they could stop it anywhere in the South." Speak Now Against the Day, 375
62. Stone, Regime Politics, 3 (first, second, and third quotations), 16-20 (fourth, fifth, and sixth quotations on p. 18)
63. Foltz to Hoover, October 16, 1946, Section 1, FBI File
64. Kennedy's report on "Brown's observations at Klavalier Klub, Inner Klan No. 1, May 15, 1946," Box 16, NSANL Papers (quotations)
65. Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day, 379-80
66. and Carlson [Derounian], Plotters, 41-51
67. William Anderson, The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge (Baton Rouge, 1975), 215-33
68. Lorraine Nelson Spritzer, The Belle of Ashby Street: Helen Douglas Mankin and Georgia Politics (Athens, Ga., 1982), chap. 5
69. Chapman v. King, 327 U.S. 800 (1946), 154 F. 2d 340 (1946). From close analyses of election results in key counties and from U.S. Department of Justice files, Joseph L. Bernd argues in "White Supremacy and the Disfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 66 (Winter 1982), 492-513, that Talmadge's violence-inspiring white supremacy virtually stole the 1946 gubernatorial election
70. Deposition of James Akin, January 4, 1947, Box 17, NSANL Papers
71. New York SAC Edward Scheidt to Hoover, November 26, 1946, Section 2, FBI File
72. Scheidt to Hoover, November 26, 1946, Section 2, FBI File (quotations)
73. Among the books are James Waterman Wise, Jews Are Like That! (New York, 1928)
74. Lewis Browne, How Odd of God: An Introduction to the Jews (New York, 1934)
75. Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color
76. and Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race: or, The Racial Basis of European History (4th rev. ed.; New York, 1921)
77. Scheldt to Hoover, December 10, 1946, Section 3 (fourth quotation), all in FBI File
78. In them Loomis was deploying Jefferson's commonplace claim that "the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government," with similar commonplace quotes from Lincoln about removing blacks to Africa. See Jefferson's Autobiography (1821), in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: Writings (New York, 1984), 44
79. On Shipp see Loomis Sr. to Loomis Jr., July 3, 1946, Section 5
80. On Burke's contacts with Moseley see James Nichols to Clyde Tolson, November 26, 1946, Section 2, FBI File
81. and "Summary of Anti-Nazi League Case against Columbians," Box 15, NSANL Papers
82. On Stoner and Burke's contacts with him see transcript of Stetson Kennedy interview with Stoner, June 1946, Box 19, NSANL Papers; and Stoner to Burke, November 20,1 946 (titled "Down with the Jews"), Box 15, NSANL Papers
83. See also "Segregationist Stoner Is Convicted In '58 Bombing and Gets 10 Years," New York Times, May 15, 1980, p. A20
84. On Loomis's overtures to Green and the Klan see Foltz to Hoover, October 22, 1946, Section 1, and November 27, 1946, Section 2, FBI File. Also see the extensive reports of informant "John Brown" to Stetson Kennedy about 1946 Klan meetings (in which Klan members discussed the Columbians and blacks moving into the West End, among other things), forwarded to James Sheldon in New York and filed in Box 19, NSANL Papers
85. "Preserve 'White South,' Columbian Leader Shouts," Atlanta Constitution, August 27, 1946, p. 9 (all quotations except "Jew- Communists" and "before race-war breaks out")
86. The organizational plan and the "Street Survey" results (quotations) are in Box 15, NSANL Papers. See also James Sheldon to Charles Adams, February 2, 1947, Box 17, NSANL Papers
87. Deposition of Ralph Childers, December 4, 1946, Box 17, NSANL Papers (quotations)
88. October 31, 1946, p. 1, 4
89. October 31, 1946, pp. 1, 6
90. Deposition of Ralph Childers, December 4, 1946, Box 17, NSANL Papers (quotation)
91. and November 2, 1946, p. 1
92. and Deposition of Ralph Childers, December 4, 1946, Box 17, NSANL Papers
93. The New York Times had begun daily coverage of the Columbians on October 31, 1946, p. 17, with a story about Mayor Hartsfield's vow to conduct "an exhaustive investigation" into the group
94. This was followed by "Bomb Rips A House in Atlanta Tension," November 1, 1946, p. 2
95. "Atlanta Clashes Turn to Jews," November 2, 1946, p. 10
96. and November 3, 1946, p. 35
97. On the definition and analytical utility of separate public/private spheres of social activity, ideas that grow from the work of Jürgen Habermas, see Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)
98. and on differentially gendered "spheres" and women's subordinate role in the "private" see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis, 1989)
99. and Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History, 75 (June 1988), 9-39
100. For Burke's remarks on women's roles and (symbolic) "hearths" see Burke, Wake Up America
101. "Address by Miss Renee Forrest," January 26, 1947, Box 15
102. James Sheldon to Charles Adams, December 10, 1946, Box 17, both in NSANL Papers
103. and November 9, 1946, p. 2
104. The dynamite plots were reported by Anti-Nazi League undercover investigators Gino Falco ("Mario Buzzi") and Renee Fruchtbaum ("Renee Forrest"). Undated notes from telephone conversations, Box 17, NSANL Papers. Jimmy Akin provided corroborating testimony about the plots in Deposition of James Akin, January 4, 1947, Box 17, NSANL Papers
105. October 31, 1946, pp. 1, 4
106. November 2, 1946, pp. 1, 2
107. November 3, 1946, p. 1 (first quotation)
108. November 6, 1946, pp. 1, 5
109. Atlanta Constitution, November 2, 1946, p. 2 (quotation). For reports by informant "John Brown" on the Klan activities of Hornsby, and of Hornsby's successor Neal Ellis, see the summaries transmitted via telephone by "Brown," undated notes in Box 19, NSANL Papers
110. "The Social Front: The Columbians," Race Relations, 4 (November 1946), 103 n. 2 (first quotation)
111. and "Terror, Inc.," New Republic, 115 (November 18, 1946), 657
112. "Confidential Report" from "Forrest and Buzzi" to James Sheldon, November 28, 1946, Box 20, NSANL Papers (first four quotations)
113. and "Address by Miss Renee Forrest," January 26, 1947, Box 15, NSANL Papers (fifth quotation)
114. "Address by Miss Renee Forrest," Januaiy 26, 1947, Box 15, NSANL Papers
115. Duke and Sheldon's press conference produced banner-headlined stories: "Confessions Are Called Knell of the Columbians," Atlanta Constitution, December 11, 1946, p. 1
116. D. M. Ladd to Hoover, December 12, 1946, Section 2, FBI File
117. Atlanta Constitution, February 13, 1947, p. 26
118. February 14, 1947, p. 25
119. February 15, 1947, p. 2
120. February 16, 1947, pp. 1, 9
121. Atlanta Daily World, February 16, 1947, pp. 1, 6
122. "Fair Brow," New Republic, 116 (February 24, 1947), p. 6
123. February 21, 1947, p. 4
124. Guy Hottel to Hoover, April 6, 1950, Section 6, FBI File
125. and the newsletter published by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, The Facts, 7 (January 1952), 2-3
126. Columbus Georgia Tribune, July 24, 1947, p. 1
127. The Facts, 2 (October 1947), 8 (first quotation), 11 (second quotation)
128. and Burke, "Chain-Ganged by the Jewish Gestapo," 38 (where Burke also mentions residing in Baltimore)
129. Interviewing leaders on the racist right, Raphael S. Ezekiel concludes that the leader realizes early in life the call of organizational leadership, which becomes "his world, his lover, his identity. Without it he is nothing; when engaged, he is God." Ezekiel, The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen (New York and other cities, 1995), 64
130. Similarly, Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile conclude from their research and interviews that leaders understand themselves as pivotal figures in a "community of descent and fate," naturally and/or divinely empowered, and dedicated to "a millenarian view" that commits them to the long haul. Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, "White Power, White Pride!" The White Separatist Movement in the United States (New York and other cities, 1997), 112, 132
131. See also Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill and London, 1994)
132. Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate (New Haven and London, 1988)
133. James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right (New York, 1987)
134. James Ridgeway, Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture (2nd ed.; New York, 1995)
135. and Frederick J. Simonelli, American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Urbana and Chicago, 1999)
136. "Echoes of The Thunderbolt," ADL Bulletin, 15 (October 1958), 3
137. The Facts, 13 (October-November 1958), 128
138. Atlanta SAC to Hoover, November 12, 1958, Section 7, FBI File (which treats the Bureau's investigation of Burke in connection with the Temple bombing)
139. Simonelli, American Fuehrer, 28-29, 73-78, 160 n. 3
140. On Alabama white resistance and the circles in which Burke moved see Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York and other cities, 2001), 84-145
141. and Frank Sikora, Until Justice Rolls Down: The Birmingham Church Bombing Case (Tuscaloosa and London, 1991)
142. "Echoes of The Thunderbolt," 3
143. On Edward Fields see Jessie Daniels, White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse (New York and London, 1997), 29-30, 40-43, 75-77
144. and Dobratz and Shanks-Meile, "White Power, White Pride!" 42-43. 82-83
145. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching (New York, 1979)
146. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill and London, 1996), especially 223-24 for her discussion of the "new racism for a new order" after woman suffrage in 1920 (all quotations on p. 224)
147. Virtually parallel with the rise of the Columbians in 1946, Christian Identity demagogue Wesley Swift, an associate of Gerald L. K. Smith, founded his first "church" in Lancaster, California, in the mid-1940s and enrolled as one of his most devoted followers a young Richard Girnt Butler. Butler was a Smith follower, too, and worked (as did Burke) in the CNC "crusades" of 1947-1949. In the late fifties and sixties, Butler and Burke both worked for the National States' Rights Party and Rockwell's American Nazi Party. See Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, 63-68
148. For example see www.natvan.com (accessed July 16, 2003), a website maintained by The National Alliance, a West Virginia-based fascist group headed by William L. Pierce, author [using pseudonym Andrew Macdonald] of The Turner Diaries (Washington, D.C., 1978). Click on the "Book Catalog" link
149. Emory Burke, The Unlifted Curse (Eclectic, Ala., 1992), viii (first quotation), 545 (third quotation), vi (fourth quotation)