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By JEFF WILKINSONStaff Writer

USC and the Guignards have

agreed to include the familys 94-acre tract of property on the eastbank of the Congaree River inthe planning for the universitys$142 million research campus.

Folding the Guignards plansfor private, riverfront develop-ment into the public researchcampus is an agreement thatcould eventually stretch USCsinfluence, if not its campus, fromFive Points to the river.

No one involved would saywhether USC plans to build onthe land or advise the Guignardsabout their own plans for resi-dential and commercial devel-opment.

But a partnership with USC whatever its nature shouldspeed development of thewooded property between Blos-som and Senate streets, one ofthe last and largest tracts ondowntown Columbias riverfront.

University spokesman Russ

McKinney would not commentprior to todays news conference,except to say the announcementwould be exciting.

Guignard spokesman CharlieThompson could not be immedi-ately reached for comment.

Mayor Bob Coble said the cityis involved but wouldnt providedetails. However, he called theannouncement good news fordowntown Columbia.

This a strategic alliance be-tween the Guignards, the uni-

With his white suits andbooming oratorical skills,William Jennings Bryan Dorncultivated an image as a flag-waving ultraconservative politi-cian from the Old South.

He thrived on it.But upon closer inspection,

Dorn was anything but a race-baiting congressman from SouthCarolina.

He was one of the few mod-erate whites in South Carolinawho understood the relationshipbetween economic developmentand Southern progress and mod-

erate race relations, S.C. StateUniversity political analyst WillieLegette says.

For a decade, Dorns votingrecord reflected a streak of pro-gressive independence. He was

Man of the people honored

Palestinians hopethe Israeli pullout,which continuedThursday with theforcible removal ofGaza settlers, willhelp pave the wayto statehood. Butsuch questions aswho will rule Gazaafter Israel leavesand whether thesides can rein intheir respective extremists cloud prospects for renewed peacemaking.

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South Carolina deaths, B1 RHODES TO GOStores new owners turn out the lights | PAGE A11

Friday, August 19, 2005

)(114TH YEAR, NO. 231 | SOUTH CAROLINAS LARGEST NEWSPAPER COPYRIGHT 2005 | COLUMBIA, S.C. ++ C APITAL FINAL

thestate com

NASCARs versionofAMERICAN IDOL

How students can makeColumbia feel like home

SPORTS, C1 WEEKEND

C. ALUKA BERRY/THE STATE

Friends and family of William Jennings Bryan Dorn enter the First Baptist Church inGreenwood for Thursdays funeral service.

Longtime congressman had progressive streak

More than 500 attend funeral

for former lawmaker

Clemson slips slightlyin U.S. News rankings

Alliancesets stage

for USCto grow

[ I N T H E N E W S ]

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN DORN | 1916-2005

Prospects for Gaza

KEVIN FRAYER/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LeeBandyOn Politics

lbandy@thestate.com(803) 771-8648

WHAT IT

MEANSUSC COULD GROWcloserto the river.

THE PARTNERSHIP COULDSPEED UP the developmentof the Guignard tract.

A RIVERFRONT CONNEC-TION COULD ENHANCE themarketability of USCs re-search campus.

A SUCCESSFUL RESEARCHCAMPUS IS ENVISIONED asthe engine driving Columbiasfuture economy.

ON THE WEB

For William Jennings BryanDorns obituary, seewww.thestate.com.

INSIDE

USCsMooreSchool ofBusiness isstill No. 1,according toU.S. News& WorldReport.Page A7

Pact with Guignard familyis boon for research campusand riverfront development

HOW S.C. SCHOOLS FAREDSome noteworthy rankings by state schoolsin the U.S. News & World Report collegiate

rankings:

Best universities masters category: TheCitadel, at No. 7, received the highest rank-ing among state schools

Highest graduation rate in the South:Claflin University ranked No. 1

Best of the Souths comprehensive col-leges: Claflin ranked No. 10

Best liberal arts college nationally: FurmanUniversity ranked No. 41

Engineering: The Citadel ranked No. 32among schools awarding masters degrees.

For a complete list of the rankingsgo to usnews.com

SOURCE: U.S. News & World Report

By CAROLYN CLICKStaff Writer

GREENWOOD William Jen-nings Bryan Dorn was remem-bered Thursday as a public ser-vant who cared about thecommon folks, a man who en-joyed political success and en-dured setbacks with legendaryequanimity.

He believed that everyone,everyone had the chance to getahead in life, former Gov. DickRiley said in his eulogy for theformer Third District con-gressman.

He used his energy and in-fluence to get things done.

More than 500 people cameto the First Baptist Church inGreenwood to pay their re-spects to the Democratic politi-cian, who died Saturday at hishome in Greenwood. He was

89.Riley remembered Dorn asa larger-than-life figure whowas first elected to the stateLegislature at the age of 23 andwho re mained a man of th epeople through a career thatspanned more than twodecades in the U.S. Congress.Dorn remained a representa-tive until his retirement in 1974,although he made unsuccess-ful bids for the U.S. Senate andthe governorship.

Riley recalled how Dorn ral-lied to his side in the 1978 gu-bernatorial race, even afterDorn had suffered defeat in theDemocratic primary.

I needed his help immedi-ately, Riley said, mainly be-cause Rileys opponents sug-gested Riley did not have thestamina to be governor.

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By JAMES T. HAMMONDStaff Writer

When Clemson Universitytrustees approved a $976 annualtuition increase in June for SouthCarolina students, one of theboards oft-stated reasons was toboost the school among the na-tions Top 20 public colleges, asranked by U.S. News & WorldReport.

Today, the magazine droppedClemson back two notches in itsmuch-watched rankings amongthe nations 162 public doctorate-granting universities to 34thfrom 32nd last year.

This is a long-term process,and we knew there would be upsand downs, said Clemson Pres-ident James Barker in a state-

SEEAGREEMENTPAGEA10

SEE REPORT PAGEA7

SEE DORN PAGEA6

ON THE WEB

To read more about the changing face of Columbia in Building OurCity, go to www.thestate.com.

BUILDING OUR CITY

SEE FUNERAL PAGEA6

7/29/2019 Remembering William Jennings Bryan Dorn

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY C. ALUKA BERRY/THE STATE

Members of the military carry the casket of William Jennings Bryan Dorn at Bethel United Methodist Church cemetery.

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I said, Bryan, lets walk together. In 95degrees, we walked five miles to Anderson.

A huge crowd greeted the pair, and thecolorful Dorn rose to speak.

Boy, what a speech, Riley said. Hemade one of those wonderful, wonderfulspeeches to his people.

Dorn, one of 10 children, came to Con-gress in 1947, just two years after the end ofWorld War II, in a freshman class that in-cluded John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

He participated in national debates overcivil rights, Vietnam, communism and theanti-war movement. He touted himself as theNo. 1 enemy of communism

An Army veteran, he understood thatAmerica was changing in the post-war worldand that South Carolina, still mired in oldagrarian ways, would have to change with it.

He pushed for the GI Bill, which openedup educational opportunities to thousands ofhis fellow GIs, advocated for vast dam pro-jects to bring electrical power to rural areas

and worked to preserve the once robust tex-tile industry.Like many white South Carolinians, he

did not relish the growing clamor for greatercivil rights, believing, as he wrote NAACPsecretary James Hinton in 1948 the leastsaid about race consciousness and race prej-udice, the better off our Nation will be.

He opposed both the Civil Rights Act of

1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 asfederal intrusion on what he saw as a mat-ter to be decided at the local level with Chris-tian brotherhood.

Eventually, Dorn worked for peaceful in-tegration and tried his utmost to open the

Democratic Party to minorities. His youngestson, the Rev. Johnson Dorn, recalled Thurs-

day the fallout from his fathers eventual em-brace of civil rights. He remembered a nightwhen his father packed several of his chil-dren into the back seat of his car and rodeto the outskirts of a Ku Klux Klan rally.

With the headlights doused, they listenedto the fiery speeches. That was the first nightI heard someone cuss my father, JohnsonDorn said.

He was scared, he admitted, but his fa-ther laughed all the way home.

Johnson Dorn, Steve Griffith Jr., the con-gressmans first cousin, and retired JudgeJack Tra cy, a former Dorn staffer, evokedlaughter and tears with stories of old cam-paigns and family lore, including stories ofMiss Millie, the newspaper woman whowould become Dorns wife and greatest con-fidante in 1948. Millie Dorn died in 1991.

The Rev. Tony Hopkins, Dorns pastor,spoke of Dorns deep faith and his keensense of the separation of church and state.

He did not use his office to practiceChristian imperialism, said Hopkins, nordid he use the church to practice politics.

Among those paying their respects toDorn were state Treasurer Grady Patterson,state Superintendent of Education InezTenenbaum, state Sen. John Drummond, D-Greenwood, and former Reps. Butler Der-rick and Elizabeth Patterson.

Dorn was buried with full military hon-ors at Bethel United Methodist Church Ceme-tery near Callison.

one of the first white Democraticpoliticians from South Carolina tomake the transition from segrega-tionist to progressive.

He was one of the white De-mocrats who started out as one ofthe conventional segregationistsand then made the transition tobiracial politics, says Rice Univer-sity political scientist Earl Black, a

nationally recognized scholar onSouthern politics.Dorn, 89, was buried with full

military honors Thursday at theBethel United Methodist ChurchCemetery near Callison.

Back in the 1960s and early1970s, most white Southern politi-cians were segregationists. Theyvoted against the landmark 1964Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Vot-ing Rights Act.

The single most importantpiece of legislation to the South,the Voting Rights Act took blacksfrom being bystanders to beingparticipants in the electionprocess.

A light went on, Black said.White lawmakers from the

South started courting black vot-ers by supporting programs theircommunity embraced. One wasthe war on poverty offered byPresident Johnson.

Dorn stood out among Deep

South congressmen in supportingschool busing and racially inte-grated schools.

In response to a hostile ques-tioner at a public forum inGreenville in 1974, Dorn madeone of the most forthright state-ments on race heard from anAmerican politician in the 1970s,wrote authors Jack Bass and Wal-ter De Vries in their book, Trans-formation of Southern Politics.

Dorns comments were in re-

sponse to a question about bus-ing for racial balance.

Do you think were goingback to the days when the buswent around and picked up theblack children and took them toschool and came back and pickedup the white children? Dornreplied. Those days are gone for-ever.

The turning point in S.C. racialpolitics came in 1970 during thecontest for governor between De-mocrat John West and Republican

Albert Watson. While Westbacked busing as a means to inte-grate schools, Watson hammeredagainst the practice day and night.

Watson lost big.Republican U.S. Sen. Strom

Thurmond, who ran for presidentin 1948 as an arch-segregationist,saw the handwriting on the wall.Soon after, he hired the first blackstaffer in the states congressionaldelegation.

Today, race remains an under-lying and sometimes the over-lying issue in South Carolina.

You dont see the blatant ap-peals to race; its much more sub-tle, College of Charleston profes-sor Bill Moore says. Southernpoliticians today equate crimewith minorities, equate welfare re-form with minorities, equate affir-mative action with minorities, andequate an inferior education withminorities.

Those subtle messages led to

the growth of the GOP, as whiteconservatives moved to the Re-publican Party. That movementsaw the one-time political advan-tage of Democrats evaporate asRepublicans moved in to capital-ize on the discontent.

Dorn ignored overtures fromRepublicans to join their ranks, asmany of his colleagues had done.He was happy where he was.

He died a true yellow dogDemocrat.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN DORN | 1916-2005

The Rev. Johnson Dorn watches as the flag is folded duringhis fathers burial service.

Pallbearers carry Dorns casket as theyexit First Baptist Church

in Greenwood.

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