Politics in the Sunny South
'Connell, J. C. 0
372 THE COMMONWEAL February 9, I9z7 POLITICS IN THE SUNNY SOUTH By J. C. O'CONNELL ANORAMAS of religious bigotry in the South are bogies which terrify an.d intimidate many peo-...
...A week later the Klan official denied the statement, having heard from the recognized Democratic leaders that they resented his assumption of authority to speak for the party...
...The spark of resentment he had kindled flared into the fire of an independent movement threatening to consume the candidates of the "invisible empire...
...Many state leaders of the Presbyterian and Baptist churches also fought the organization and discouraged their members from joining it...
...The two Klan candidates obtained i33,965 votes...
...William A. Gunter, Jr., the mayor of Montgomery and an official of considerable backbone, announced that he would swear in the entire white male population of the city as an auxiliary police force to prevent the parade if the Klan insisted on taking part in the inauguration as an organized body...
...Captain John Craft, a Presbyterian and high Mason, state senator from his county, wrote a letter to the Montgomery Advertiser on November 24, I925, complimenting Dr...
...Of late it has become quite definitely customary to associate ,these things especially with Alabama...
...There were four candidates for governor and four for United States senator in the race, and the total vote cast was 439,86o...
...The Klan candidate for governor received 6 x,494 votes and his three competitors I6I,I52...
...When America entered the war, he applied for and received a transfer to the army of his native country...
...That "twenty-four votes for Underwood" slogan of Alabama at the Madison Square convention should not be forgotten by the Democrats of the nation...
...That is not all...
...What has happened to bring this moribund organization back to life in Alabama ? It is the purpose of this article to show that Alabama is the victim of a political accident...
...We should be proud that America is producing such stalwart leaders...
...When the price stayed up for a few years the doxology of rural Alabama became, "Praise Tom from whom all blessings flow...
...That church has been built, and Protestants subscribed to its erection and attended its opening...
...He was sent to Italy as a boy to study for the priesthood and while there developed a musical talent which found expression in several Masses and sacred compositions...
...It demonstrated that Alabama was not controlled by the Klan...
...Why has it apparently gained strength there while its power has waned in other southern states...
...At the outbreak of the world war he became a private soldier in the Italian army...
...I don't know Governor Smith of New York, except by his deeds and record, and I commend him, a self-made man...
...The orchestra was supplied by forty members of the Masonic Shrine band--the same temple of the Shrine which has given to the national order its present imperial potentate, Judge David Crosland...
...For a long time he wielded his trusty blade against the Agricultural Department and its cotton crop estimates...
...The question can be answered in one phrase--"Tom" Heflin is a bigger entertainment to the informed people of Alabama than he is to the country at large...
...Some day the American commonwealths will drive it out as they are driving illiteracy out, and the politicians who have lived on it will be driven from public life at the same time...
...In this it resembles the Ibsen play, Ghosts, recurring as a disease even to the second and third generations...
...The Methodist Church throughout the state reaped credit from the fact that its presiding bishop and leading ministers denounced it publicly as unchristian and unAmerican...
...372 THE COMMONWEAL February 9, I9z7 POLITICS IN THE SUNNY SOUTH By J. C. O'CONNELL ANORAMAS of religious bigotry in the South are bogies which terrify an.d intimidate many people...
...The Senator scored his only success in that fight...
...Prior to his advent in the Alabama capital, the Catholic community had February 9, x927 THE COMMONWEAL 373 celebrated the golden jubilee of Monsignor Denis Savage, for fifty years pastor of Saint Peter's congregation and a man of such charm and magnetism and of such broad charity, humility and gentleness, that the governor and other state officers, the city commissioners and a hundred or more notables in education, art, science and literature, joined with their Catholic fellowcitizens in honoring the aged priest...
...The community supports these asylums from one fund collected annually, and prorates the collection according to the number of inmates...
...Like the Knight of Mancha, he gives battle to windmills...
...The name would suggest that he is an Italian, but he was born near Pensacola, Florida, and is a member of a family established there for several generations...
...The stage furnishings for the accommodation of the large chorus were provided without cost by Fred J. Cramton, a Methodist, brother of Congressman Cramton of Michigan...
...The Klan governor and Klan senator were nominated in the Democratic primary last August...
...The principal singers of Gounod's music were the leaders of the Protestant and Jewish church choirs of Montgomery...
...That fact was published far and wide, but the sequel was not published outside the state...
...Walter Agnew, president of the college...
...The pastor and trustees of the First Baptist Church gave their Sunday-school room and the use of lights and a piano for the rehearsals for the Mass, which went on almost nightly for more than a month...
...Protestants first suggested that a monument should be erected to the dead priest, who, in two yellow fever outbreaks when the disease was a serious affliction in the South and before its source and control were discovered, had nursed the sick of all denominations...
...That primary is tantamount to election in a state where the total Republican vote is only a negligible 45,ooo out of an approximate registration of 55o,ooo...
...Not one daily paper of twenty-one published in the state, and only two of seventy-eight weekly papers supported the Klan candidates...
...A paragraph from Captain Craft's letter will describe the trend of the whole correspondence: When the South needed friends, Tammany Hall was ever loyal to the traditions of self-government and democracy and it ill becomes us, men who profits to be leaders of the Christian religion, to inject hatred and animosity into these political discussions...
...He defeated his near...
...The sword cut both ways, but it cut harder and deeper in the state offices, and the two nominees lost no time in making their partisan eat his own words...
...From the same source and the Catholic choirs a chorus of ioo was organized...
...As one means of raising funds for the new church, Father Campodonico organized a performance of Gounod's Messe Solennelle, which was given in the local theatre, donated by a Protestant...
...Georgia, where it was born, Texas and Oklahoma, where it held political control, have repudiated it...
...When he pounded the desks in the Senate, knocked over the books and shook his fist at the American nation, the cotton farmers of Alabama, with the unsold crop and the heavy hearts, knew that "Tom" was still on the job...
...The same city of Montgomery, a typical community of the old South, has afforded an excellent example of religious amity more in keeping with the real situation in Alabama and the social and political relations of its people than the present Klan activity...
...The primary election figures showed the comparative weakness of organized bigotry in the state and the small chance a Klan candidate would have against an anti-Klan candidate in a clean-cut fight...
...The city government of Montgomery gave the Klan its worst jolt when it refused permission for a parade of the organization at the inauguration of the governor the Klan had elected...
...There are four orphan asylums in Mobile, two Catholic, one Episcopalian, and one general Protestant...
...The religious intolerance manifested by 3 ~ percent of Alabama's population at the present time, of which Senator Heflin has made himself the Washington mouthpiece, is pathological as well as political...
...The state division of the American Legion openly opposed it...
...Alabama, as a whole, rejected the Klan when other southern and several northern states accepted it...
...Father Campodonico went to the college and conducted the Mass, and the state council of the Knights of Columbus being in session in Montgomery at the time, accepted two rows of seats tendered for the performance by Dr...
...And the performance was such a success from an artistic standpoint that the musical faculty of the Woman's College of Alabama, a Methodist institution, requested that it be repeated in the chapel of the college for their 6oo students...
...that the reported Klan strength there is only on the surface, and that the great majority of the people of the state discountenance racial and religious intolerance...
...As a soldier who had won a decoration, the Montgomery post of the American Legion welcomed Father Campodonico warmly...
...The heart of the state is sound, as witness the following series of incidents : The Catholic authorities appointed Reverend Manuel P. Campodonico to a parish in Montgomery...
...If this announced its intention to scratch A1 Smith in the event of his nomination, then the 7 ~ percent of loyal Alabama Democrats not affiliated with the Klan could assume the right to scratch the Klan candidates in the November election...
...The result was heralded as a victory for the Klan by its chief who was said by three Birmingham newspapers, and by the Associated Press and other news agencies, to have declared that "he had I5o,ooo men in Alabama who would scratch A1 Smith's name off the ballot," if the Democratic party nominated him for the presidency...
...Thus their following, largely developed by secret organization and oath-bound pledges, formed less than 3o percent of the Democratic electorate...
...The head of the civic organization which carries on this work is Gordon Smith, a Baptist, and the majority of the committee collecting and apportioning the fund are non-Catholics...
...How then, it may well be asked, could the Klan in Alabama elect a governor and a United States senator...
...Monsignor Savage died soon after Father Campodonico went to Montgomery, and his funeral was the occasion of a great public outpouring...
...As a musician with several published works, an organist and a choir director, the musical clubs of Montgomery gave him an equally warm reception...
...Father Patrick Turner, the new pastor of Saint Peter's, suggested that a church serving another part of the city would be the most appropriate monument...
...It thrives in illiteracy as disease thrives among the unclean...
...Even "Tom" Heflin could not further pretend to suspend the law of supply and demand for his Alabama constituents in the face of last year's crop, however, and the Senator had to look around for another windmill...
...These letters and others that followed from equally prominent men were the reaction within the state to the National Democratic Convention of that year...
...est competitor by only 1,825 votes...
...F. B. Cullens, of Ozark, one of the political and intellectual leaders of Alabama, for publishing a reminder of what Tammany and the Catholic Democrats of New York did to aid southern soldiers, prisoners of war at Fort Lafayette, in the 'sixties...
...and apart from the general political significance of what is implied, it is important as a matter of national history to see how far this custom is justified...
...But, aye, there's the rub, what about United States Senator James Thomas Heflin...
...He got into it when cotton was advancing in price...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 14
