SEEING RED: PARANOIA, POLITICS, AND MCCARTHYISM IN THE 1950

FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR THE U.S. SENATE

________________________________________________________________________

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

Florida Gulf Coast University

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirement of the Degree of

Master of Arts in History

________________________________________________________________________

By

Paul Kenneth Chartrand

October 11, 2013

APPROVAL SHEET

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Masters of Arts

____________________________

Paul Kenneth Chartrand

Approved: October 24, 2013

____________________________ Michael Epple, Ph.D.

Committee Chair / Advisor

____________________________ Irvin D. S. Winsboro, Ph.D.

____________________________ Erik Carlson, Ph.D.

Abstract

In 1950, Senator Claude D. Pepper and Representative George A. Smathers faced off in the Florida Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate in a battle that is deemed as one of the dirtiest campaigns in U.S. History, and for the first time in Florida history, resulted in the defeat of the incumbent. White Floridians supported and upheld the Southern traditions of Jim Crow racial discrimination and segregation. Meanwhile, the United States was adjusting to its role as a world power in the postwar era, attempting to introduce civil rights reform, and began formulating policies and strategies to deal with the perceived threats posed by the Soviet Union where both sides were capable of conducting war with nuclear weapons. This paper examines the background of each candidate, their upbringing, circumstances, environment, education, and life experiences as to how these influences contributed to the formation of each candidate’s character and political philosophy. Further, how their character and political philosophies, combined, with the important issues and events of the postwar and early Cold War era (1945–1950), to influence their decision making and the conduct of their individual campaigns during the primary, thus contributing to Smathers’s victory and Pepper’s defeat in 1950.

© 2013 Paul Kenneth Chartrand

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To my Parents

The late Jack K. Chartrand and Delcie McGowan Chartrand,

for all your love, understanding and everything else you gave me.

You live on forever in my thoughts, my words and in my heart.

To my Wonderful Wife,

Rebecca Lynn LeRoux Chartrand

You have made all the high–points possible and every low–point bearable.

I thank you and I love you.

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“Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, rottenness begins in his conduct.”— Jefferson

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Contents

Acknowledgements .… v

Abbreviations …. viii

Preface …. xi

Introduction …. 1

Part I Pepper and Smathers: The Pathway to Politics

Claude Denson Pepper: The Alabama Plowboy …. 4

George Armistead Smathers: The Judge’s Son …. 25

Part II McCarthyism, Communist Paranoia, and the 1950 Democratic Primary

Shifting Sands: The Cold War and the Dawn of a New World Order …. 46

Communism, Race, and the Changing Landscape of the American Polity …. 66

“Red Pepper” “Gorgeous George “and the 1950 Primary Campaign in Florida …. 88

Conclusions …. 115

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Acknowledgements

It is impossible to mention everyone who assisted me in developing this thesis from a

notion to fruition, and equally impossible to ignore their contributions to my research

efforts. To all of the library staff who did the laborious task of retrieving and returning

numerous boxes of papers, and volumes of books to and from the shelves, I thank you for

your hard work that helped make this project possible.

The bulk of my research took place at the Claude Pepper Library in the Claude Pepper

Center at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, Special and Area Studies

Collections of the PK Yonge Library of Florida History in the George A. Smathers

Libraries at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, Harry S. Truman Library,

Independence, Missouri, and the Library–Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society in

Madison, Wisconsin. My appreciation goes to Robert Rubero, Supervisor of Operations

Claude Pepper Library, John R. Nemmers, Assistant University Librarian, Dept. of

Special and Area Studies Collections, Dr. James Cusick, Curator of the P.K. Yonge

Library of Florida History at the George A. Smathers Libraries, Richard L. Pifer, Director

of Reference and Public Services, Helmut Knies, Archives Collection Processing and

Preservation, and to Harry Miller, Archives Reference Services at the Wisconsin

Historical Society for all of their insight and expertise in assisting in my research and

making me feel welcome during my visits. I wish to thank Dr. Randy Sowell, Head

Archivist and James Armistead, Archivist at the Harry S Truman Library for their

knowledge, expertise, and valuable assistance during my visit. I also wish to

acknowledge the contributions of Rachel Tait, Senior Library Technical Assistant, and all

of the staff at the Florida Gulf Coast University Library for their assistance in procuring

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books, newspapers, dissertations, and journal articles necessary to the research of this

project.

I am most grateful for the cooperation, assistance, guidance and patience of my

advisor, Dr. Michael Epple, for allowing me to overcome a great deal of personal

adversity to make this project successful. To Dr. Irvin D. S. Winsboro for his inspiration

to look at Florida history with greater appreciation, to explore the depth of possibilities

for historical research that Florida history has to offer, and for his passion and willingness

to push students to achieve their greatest potential—I give my most profound thanks. To

Dr. Nicola Foote, who helped me overcome the numerous hurdles of bureaucracy and

challenged me to broaden my historical horizons, I thank you for your help and guidance.

I wish to thank Dr. Paul R. Rivera for his confidence in my abilities as a budding scholar

and his providing me with the confidence and inspiration to continue forward. I wish to

thank Dr. Eric Strahorn for helping me to understand the importance of the philosophical

roots of the discipline and to prepare me and others to meet the challenges of the

profession beyond the classroom. I sincerely thank Dr. Michael Cole and Dr. Erik

Carlson for encouraging and stimulating my intellectual curiosities while helping me to

develop the skills necessary to be a historian. To Dr. John Cox for his mentoring, honest

evaluation, and critique of my writing toward increasing the level of professionalism and

scholarship in my work, I give my gratitude. I wish to thank every member of the

History Department at Florida Gulf Coast University for their dedication, passion, level

of professionalism and scholarship, and for setting a standard of excellence not only in

the classroom, but more importantly, in the quality of their professional work.

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Finally, I wish to acknowledge Leonard and Tina Robbins, Peter and Suzanne

Chartrand, Edward and Susan Chartrand, Victor and June LeRoux, Lorraine LeRoux, Ted

Sutton, my wife Rebecca, and my parents, the late Jack K. and Delcie Chartrand—their

constant love, encouragement, and support, made this project possible.

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Abbreviations

AAA — Agricultural Adjustment Act

ACL — Atlantic Coast Line

ADA — Americans for Democratic Action

AFL — American Federation of Labor

CAA — Civilian Aeronautics Administration

CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps

CIO–PAC — Congress of Industrial Organizations Political Action Committee

CWA — Civil Works Administration

DSH — Division Subsistence Homesteads

EBA — Emergency Banking Act

ERP — European Recovery Plan (The Marshall Plan)

FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation

FDIC — Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

FDR — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

FEC — Florida East Coast Railway

FERA — Federal Emergency Relief Administration

FEPC — Fair Employment Practices Committee

FEPC — Fair Employment Practices Commission

FHA — Federal Housing Administration

FLSA — Fair Labor Standards Act

FRG — Federal Republic of Germany

FSA — Federal Security Agency

FSRA — Federal Surplus Relief Corporation

GDR — German Democratic Republic

HOLC — Homeowners Loan Corporation

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HICCASP — Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions

ICCASP — Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions

JAG — Judge Advocate General

KGB — Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security)

NAACP — National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NATO — North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCPAC — National Citizens Political Action Committee

NIRA — National Industrial Recovery Act

NKVD — Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Security)

NRA — National Recovery Act

NWLB — National War Labor Board

OPA — Office of Price Administration

PCA — Progressive Citizens of America

PKWN — Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation)

PRRA — Puerto Rican Recovery Act

PSF — President’s Secretary’s Files (Truman Papers, Truman Library)

PWA — Publics Works Administration

RFC — Reconstruction Finance Corporation

SMOF — Staff Members and Office Files (Truman Library)

SSA — Social Security Administration

TVA — Tennessee Valley Authority

UDA — Union for Democratic Action

UN — United Nations

USHA — United States Housing Authority

USSR — Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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VE Day — Victory in Europe Day

VJ Day — Victory over Japan Day

VMB — Volar Marine Bomber

WPA — Works Progress Administration

WPB — War Production Board

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Preface

I, as many graduate students do, labored in search of a worthy thesis topic that is

original, timely and is supported by a wealth of credible primary sources. My interest

lies within the origins and early years of the Cold War. So I narrowed the scope of my

topic to the beginning of the Cold War in the United States and the communist paranoia

of the 1950s, now known as McCarthyism. However one of my mentors, Dr. Irvin D. S.

Winsboro, by example of his own research and writing on Florida’s role in the Civil War,

inspired me to examine how Florida impacted or was impacted by the this critical period

in U.S. history and, thus led to my decision to further explore the role that Florida played

in early days of the Cold War and the era of McCarthyism. So began my search to find a

suitable topic that involved Florida during that uncertain period in U.S. history.

During my preliminary research, I came across a reference to The Red Record of

Senator Claude Pepper, a booklet complied by Jacksonville Attorney and former Federal

Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Lloyd C. Leemis, that was widely distributed

during the 1950 Democratic U.S. Senatorial Primary in Florida between the incumbent,

Sen. Claude D. Pepper, and his challenger, Rep. George A. Smathers. A cursory

examination of the 1950 Florida Democratic primary showed that Smathers successfully

portrayed Pepper, a New Deal Liberal, as sympathetic to the Soviet Union and to

communist elements within the United States. The 1950 Florida Democratic primary was

even more intriguing due to Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s role in the successful

campaign to defeat his political enemy, Maryland Democrat Sen. Millard Tydings and the

similarity in the accusations and tactics used against Sen. Pepper in Florida. Sen. Tydings

chaired the Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees

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in February 1950 to investigate charges made by Sen. Joseph McCarthy regarding the

presence of Communists and Soviet operatives in the U.S. State Department. The

Tydings committee denounced McCarthy and repudiated the charges of Soviet operatives

and communist elements in the State Department. The findings of the Tydings

Committee infuriated McCarthy. The office of Senate historian notes,

McCarthy retaliated by concentrating efforts and money toward Tydings defeat in the 1950 general election. The complaints centered on reports of excessive campaign expenditures, massive out-of-state contributions unlisted in the required financial reports, and attempts to eradicate records of questionable expenses. A highly visible campaign activity involved the distribution of cheap tabloids, published under false statements of sponsorship and filled with half-truths and doctored photographs that smeared the patriotism and loyalty of Millard Tydings. Earlier that year, when Tydings had chaired a subcommittee investigating the Wisconsin senator's charges that Communists had infiltrated the State Department, his report described the allegations as "a fraud and a hoax." In retaliation, McCarthy entered the Maryland campaign on behalf of the Republican challenger, John Marshall Butler, and, after a vicious contest, Butler upset Tydings on November 7 by more than 43,000 votes.

1

The campaign against Tydings was found to have been unfair and McCarthy was

scrutinized for his role in the underhanded tactics used. However, according to Pepper’s

own account, McCarthy had no direct involvement in the Democratic primary in Florida

and, in fact, in his own campaign against alleged communists in the State Department did

not take place until February 1950, one month after Smathers’s Orlando announcement. 2

Yet, lack of direct involvement by McCarthy in Florida does not dispel the influence

McCarthy’s accusations had on public opinion in creating a climate of paranoia within

1 Anne M. Butler and Wendy Wolff, United States Senate Election, Expulsion, and Censure Cases, 1793-1990, S. Doc. 103-33, Washington, GPO, 1995. (486 1793-1990. S. Doc. 103-33. Washington, GPO, 1995, adapted for The Election Case of Millard Tydings v. John M. Butler of Maryland (1951), United States Senate website: Accessed April 24, 2011, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/contested_elections/130Tydings_ Butler.htm. 2 Claude Pepper and Hans Gorey, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, Large Print ed. (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1988; San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 263; Pepper wrote that, “Joseph McCarthy had not yet surfaced in a major way…The climate was perfect for a demagogue to pin labels on decent, honorable people, and soon Joe McCarthy came along to fulfill that role… McCarthyism, however, preceded Joe McCarthy.”

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American society regarding the “Communist menace” that allegedly was permeating the

government and promulgating fears of a threat to American safety and way of life.

McCarthy and Smathers were elected to the Congress in 1946. The “class of 46” was a

group mainly composed of young, ambitious veterans of World War II that came to

Washington with a sense of purpose forged by their wartime experiences, and would

eventually produce two future presidents in John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.

Their spirit was summed up by Kennedy in his 1960 inaugural address, “… the torch has

been passed to a new generation of Americans born in this century— tempered by war,

disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to

witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always

been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”3

Postwar America faced new challenges at home and abroad. President Roosevelt’s death

in 1945 signified the beginning of the end for the Great Depression era liberal agenda,

and a war weary nation, concerned with jobs for returning servicemen, and a stable

economy, sought to move forward while facing the challenges of transition to a

peacetime economy and leadership in a new world order.

President Truman offered a different style of leadership from FDR. The necessity of

expanding the social welfare programs of the New Deal seemed less important as

returning veterans with growing families faced severe housing shortages, unemployment,

higher prices at home, and the threat of a growing influence of Soviet power abroad as

the Iron Curtain descended and Europe became divided, East and West, both physically

and ideologically. As Arthur Herman notes, “the experience of war and military service

3 Quoted in, Theodore C. Sorensen, ed., “Let The Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1988), 12.

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seemed to reinforce a sense of populist mission and a forthright attitude toward foreign

enemies that would crystallize in a hatred for international communism.”4 Having been

first–hand witnesses to the failure of appeasement to stop the Fascist onslaught and its

destructive and bloody costs, this “new generation” vowed not to make the same mistakes

with Communists. It was this mindset that would come to bear upon Claude Pepper as he

ran for reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1950.

The 1950 Florida Democratic Primary continued the growing trend of young,

ambitious and energetic politicians, fresh from service in the Second World War,

achieving high office and charting a new course in American politics and foreign policy.

On the surface, the outcome of 1950 Democratic Senate primary appears to be the result

of successfully linking Senator Pepper to the rampant communist paranoia of the era.

However, there are several more elements that lie below the surface that contributed to

Smathers’s victory. The primary focus of this study is to examine the events that shaped

the tone and the eventual outcome of the 1950 Florida Democratic Senate primary,

including the climate of fear created by the communist hysteria, and further prove that the

defeat of the incumbent, Senator Claude D. Pepper, was the result of a culmination of

several factors—factors that include Pepper’s core beliefs, his record, legislative agenda,

personal ambitions, and his continual shift to the far left of the Democratic Party. The

candidate’s positions on civil rights and racial issues were a key factor in the outcome of

the election. The perception of Pepper’s stand on the Fair Employment Practices

Commission and how each campaign embraced and endorsed white supremacy and

segregation issues unique to Southern politics of the era, and Florida as well.

4 Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 49.

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Pepper’s liberal views, put him at odds with most Southerners’ of the era. Although

support for Negro civil rights was slowly growing in the North and becoming an issue on

the national political front—it was this very same issue that inflamed a bitter and solitary

South and was viewed by many Southern politicians and their constituents as a threat to

their right of self–determination and way of life. The impact of Pepper’s growing

contentious relationship with large business interests within Florida as the state and

nation adapted to the adjustments from wartime to a peacetime economy, including

Pepper’s proclivity toward antagonizing DuPont financier Ed Ball leading the latter to

mount a concerted and concentrated effort to achieve the defeat of Pepper in 1950.

This study will also examine the changing nature of the American political climate in

the postwar era and how these changes impacted the 1950 Florida Democratic primary.

Finally, that the 1950 Florida Democratic primary was both complex and dynamic, and a

major event in the political history of Florida. The campaign was recognized for its

importance and significance on a national scale by the political pundits of the era, and is

worthy of such a detailed and comprehensive analysis of its impact upon the history of

Florida. It also serves as an example of the powerful changes occurring within the social,

moral and political strata of the United States.

The research methodology for this study relied heavily on primary sources, and the

bulk of source material comes from archival documents. These documents include

correspondence, personal and public, memorandums, press releases, speeches, pamphlets,

advertisements, executive orders and news clippings. Documents relating to the

campaign, personal and public communications and government service of Pepper and

Smathers are contained in their respective papers. The repositories for these collections

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are found at the Claude Pepper Library at Florida State University, and the George A.

Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. Documents relating to Pepper’s personal

and public life shared with confident Raymond Robins, include copies of speeches, letters

and Pepper’s personal thoughts on pressing issues of the day. The repository for the

Robins Papers is the Special Collections and Archives at the Wisconsin Historical

Society in Madison. Documents relating to the end of World War II, the postwar

development of U.S.—Soviet foreign policy, the beginning of the Cold War, the Civil

Rights program and others pertaining to the Truman Presidency—are found in the papers

of Truman, cabinet members and advisors, Tom C. Clark, Clark Clifford, Rose Conway,

George M. Elsey, and Joseph M. Jones. These collections are located in the Harry S.

Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri. A wealth of presidential

documents used for this study, including State of the Union Addresses, Addresses before

Special Sessions of Congress, and Executive Orders were accessed online at the

American Presidency Project, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, researchers. The

Truman Library website and the National Archives online added valuable contributions

of presidential documents as well. Oral history interviews and transcripts for Pepper,

conducted by Jack Bass, online at the Southern Oral History Program; and for Smathers

at the United States Senate Office of the Historian website, conducted by Donald A.

Ritchie, provide insight from the candidates themselves on the issues, motivations and

actions leading up to the 1950 primary showdown. A key resource for Pepper is his

autobiography — Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century, written with Hayes Gorey (1987)5,

and the newspaper and periodical articles of the era enhances the understanding of the

5 Claude Pepper and Hans Gorey, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, Large Print ed. (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1988; San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 396p.

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issues and events.6 Eyewitness to a Century details the early life of the senator from his

childhood growing up in rural Alabama through his education at the University of

Alabama and later Harvard Law School. It also provides a retrospective of his career in

the Senate and later in the House of Representatives — including detailed accounts of his

1945 trip to Moscow, his meeting with Stalin and involvement in the “dump Truman”

movement at the 1948 Democratic convention. Herein, Pepper discusses his position on

vital issues, including the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), European

recovery, relations with the Soviet Union, and the 1950 campaign. 7

Numerous scholarly works from the body of secondary literature were consulted to

provide insight, comparison and contrast to the persons, events and outcomes from

scholars of the candidates, campaign, McCarthyism, and the issues and events of the

day—the Great Depression, World War II, and the origins of Cold War, that helped to

shape perspectives and positions of Pepper, Smathers, and major decision makers. The

6 Contributions made to a better understanding of the events, decisions and perceptions of the early Cold War era, Claude Pepper’s record and the national visibility of the 1950 Florida Democratic Primary came from the following: George F. Kennan’s, Memoirs, 1950-1963 Vol. 2,(Boston: University of Chicago Press, Little Brown & Co., 1967) and Harry S. Truman’s, Years of Trial and Hope: Memoirs, Vol. 2, (New York: Doubleday, 1956) provided a wealth of background information on the end of the war, the rapidity of change in U.S.-Soviet relations postwar and firsthand accounts of events leading to the recommendations and decisions made leading to the outbreak of the Cold War. Newspaper articles providing valuable background on Pepper’s record and the growing concern over Soviet relations and communism, but not cited, were found in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Star, and the Chicago Tribune. Articles of the national interest in the conduct and content of the primary campaign providing insight into national perceptions of the Florida race include the Nation, “Exit Senator Pepper,”; Newsweek, “Fire in the Everglades,” April 3, 1950; New Republic, “Smathers Blathers” January 30, 1950 and “Lessons of the Primaries,” May 1, 1950; Time, “Feud in the Palmettos,” April 3, 1950, “Florida: Anything Goes,” April 17, 1950, and “First Lame Duck,” May 15, 1950. The transcripts of an oral history interview of Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson were used to verify the identity of a recipient of a letter, from George Smathers to the office of Attorney General Tom C. Clark. 7 The Fair Employment Practices Commission was a proposal based on the wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee that was enacted to support the rights of women and African–American workers in employed in the war effort. President Truman as part of his civil rights program proposed that a permanent FEPC be established to protect the rights of minority workers. FEPC faced severe opposition Congress from the segregated South. Southern senators successfully filibustered and the measure failed to pass. However, on 26 July 1948 President Truman signed Executive Order #9980 establishing Fair Employment Practices in Federal hiring and several states initiated their own FEPC legislation.

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major works germane to this project include Brian Crispell’s Testing the Limits: George

Armistead Smathers & Cold War America (1999), Tracy Danese's Claude Pepper & Ed

Ball: Politics, Purpose, and Power (2000), James Clark's Red Pepper and Gorgeous

George Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary (2011), and

Patricia Wickman's The Uncommon Man: George Smathers of Florida (1994). A

valuable examination of Pepper’s life before politics is contained in Ric Kabat’s article,

“From Camp Hill to Harvard Yard: The Early Years of Claude Pepper,” (1993). 8

Unlike Claude Pepper, George Smathers did not write an autobiography and Crispell's

Testing the Limits provides the most comprehensive biographical overview of Sen.

Smathers’ early life and career, including his education at the University of Florida, his

service in the Pacific as a Marine Corps officer during World War II, and as a prosecutor

and U.S. attorney in Miami. Testing the Limits discusses Smathers prowess in conducting

his 1946 campaign against Pat Cannon for the U.S. House of Representatives as well as a

detailed examination of the 1950 Democratic primary campaign. Danese's Claude Pepper

& Ed Ball discusses the tumultuous relationship that existed between Claude Pepper and

DuPont family financier Ed Ball, who invested enormous sums of money in Florida, thus

increasing the wealth of the DuPont family and making a personal fortune in the process.

It reveals the deep resentment and animosity that existed between Pepper and Ball. As

the size and scope of Ball's investments in Florida grew—so did his influence on Florida

politics. Pepper’s deliberate and acerbic attacks on Ball’s business interests on behalf of

8 Brian Crispell, Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers & Cold War America (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 234p, Tracy Danese, Claude Pepper & Ed Ball: Politics, Purpose, and Power (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000), 300 p, James Clark, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2011), 206 p, Patricia Wickman, The Uncommon Man: George Smathers of Florida (Panama City, Florida: n.p., 1994), 178p, Ric Kabat, “From Camp Hill to Harvard Yard: The Early Years of Claude Pepper,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (October, 1993), 153-179.

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the DuPont Trust and Ball’s contempt for Claude Pepper’s New Deal liberalism came to

a head in 1949 as Ball vowed to do everything in his power to defeat Pepper in the 1950

Democratic U.S. Senate primary. In addition, Alexander R. Stoesen, “Road From

Receivership: Claude Pepper, the DuPont Trust and the Florida East Coast Railway,”

(1973), proved invaluable in understanding the relationship between Pepper and Ball.

Articles useful to understanding the political landscape in1950 include, Jonathan

Bell’s “Conceptualizing Southern Liberalism: Ideology, and the Pepper–Smathers 1950

Primary in Florida,” (2003), William G. Carleton, “The Southern Politician—1900 and

1950,” (1951), James C. Clark, “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of his 1950 Defeat, 1944-

1948,” (1995), and Hugh Douglas Price, “The Negro in Florida Politics, 1944-1954,”

(1955). 9

Wickman's The Uncommon Man was originally written as a companion to a

production in the Florida Department of State's Great Floridian Film Series. According to

Wickman, in a personal communication with the author, the content was expanded and

the book was privately published at the request of George Smathers and intended for

friends and family. Despite the limited scope intended, The Uncommon Man provides a

unique perspective of the life and career of George Smathers based on the author's

conversations with the senator, his son Bruce A. Smathers, from an unpublished

9 Alexander R. Stoesen, “Road From Receivership: Claude Pepper, the DuPont Trust and the Florida East Coast Railway,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 52, no. 2 (October, 1973), 132-156, Alexander R. Stoesen, “Road From Receivership: Claude Pepper, the DuPont Trust and the Florida East Coast Railway,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 52, no. 2 (October, 1973), 132-156, Jonathan Bell, “Conceptualizing Southern Liberalism: Ideology, and the Pepper–Smathers 1950 Primary in Florida,” Journal of American Studies 37, no. 1 (April, 2003), 17-45, William G. Carleton, “The Southern Politician—1900 and 1950,” Journal of Politics 13, no. 2 (May, 1951), 215-231, James C. Clark, “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of his 1950 Defeat, 1944-1948,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 74, no. 1 (Summer, 1995), 1-22, Hugh Douglas Price, “The Negro in Florida Politics, 1944-1954,” Journal of Politics 17, no.2 (May, 1955), 198-220.

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biography written by Bruce Smathers and this serves to complement Crispell's Testing

the Limits. Clark's Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in

the 1950 Democratic Primary, in 2011, the most recent scholarship examining the 1950

Democratic Senate Primary is a follow up to Clark's Ph D dissertation, “The Road to

Defeat: Claude Pepper and Defeat in the 1950 Florida Primary.” Red Pepper, is a

narrowly focused discussion of the 1950 primary campaign provides a detailed account of

Pepper’s political missteps and miscalculations, in contrast to the campaign savvy and

resourcefulness of Smathers, when combined with his blinding ambition, created a

blueprint for success in defeating Pepper in the 1950 primary.

The Great Depression era redefined liberal politics, ushering in the greatest

commitment to, and development of, social welfare programs in the nation’s history

while attempting to rescue the nation’s economy from the brink of disaster. Roosevelt’s

response to meeting the challenges of the Great Depression resulted in the creation of an

ideology that shaped the minds of liberal thinkers and defined the political career of

Claude Pepper and many others. Two works that proved to be valuable sources of

information into the background of the Great Depression are David M. Kennedy’s

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999),

and Eric Rauchway, The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction

(2008). 10 The war years of 1941-1945 helped to define a generation and brought the

nation into a position of world leadership that forever changed the political landscape at

home. To achieve a basic understanding of the impact of the war on the period and the

10 David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford Press, 1999), 936p. Eric Rauchway, The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Press, 2008), 144p, James C. Clark, “The Road to Defeat: Claude Pepper and Defeat in the 1950 Florida Primary” PhD diss, University of Florida, 1998, 260p.

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generation it fostered the following works proved invaluable. Simon Berthon and Joanna

Potts, Warlords: An Extraordinary Recreation of World War II: Through the Eyes of

Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin (2006), Wm. Roger Louis and Robert Robinson,

Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization,

Collected Essays 2nd ed. (2006), and, Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars from World War to

Cold War, 1939-1953, (2006).

The events surrounding the 1948 presidential campaign played a pivotal role in

sharply defining the direction of and the division within the Democratic Party,

illuminating differences between Pepper, Truman, and Smathers and highlighting

Pepper’s decisions during this critical period. Decisions, that would greatly impact his

1950 reelection bid. The following works helped to provide background and insight into

the dynamics involved during this crucial year: Clifton Brock, Americans for

Democratic Action: Its Role in National Politics (1962), Kari Frederickson, The

Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South (2001), Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the

New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (1973). 11

T.H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952

(1990), and Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and

Political Risks (2002) provides perspective into the impetus behind Truman’s civil rights

program and desegregation of the military in 1948.

11 Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts, Warlords: An Extraordinary Recreation of World War II: Through the Eyes of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2006), 386p, Wm. Roger Louis and Robert Robinson, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization, Collected Essays. 2nd ed. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 1065p, Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars from World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 468p, Clifton Brock, Americans for Democratic Action: Its Role in National Politics (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 229p, Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 311p, Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 635p.

xxii

By 1950, the Cold War was beginning to be entrenched in the political, diplomatic,

and military structures of the United States. Accusations and fear of communism,

communist subversives, and infiltrators would greatly influence and impact the daily

lives of U.S. citizens throughout the decade. The year 1950 was also the year in which

Sen. Joseph P. McCarthy thrust himself into the spotlight and accused the U.S. State

Department of harboring Communists in high–level positions within the department.

Literature useful in an understanding of the period includes Arthur Herman’s Joseph

McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator, (2000),

Ted Morgan’s Reds: McCarthyism in 20th Century America, (2003), and Athan

Theoharis’ Seeds of Repression: Harry S Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism,

(1971). 12 Each provides a unique perspective and useful insights into the motivations,

consequences and impact of the senator’s accusations upon the American public and as a

promoter of the fear and paranoia of communist infiltration and subversion within the

government and influential private sectors.

Irvin D.S. Winsboro and Michael Epple’s, “Religion, Culture, and the Cold War:

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in America’s Anti-Communist Crusade of the 1950s,” (2009),

demonstrates how the culture of fear and communist paranoia grew and soon invaded

mainstream America through the medium of television through Bishop Sheen and his

strong anti-communist views. Literature helpful in understanding the Cold War era

includes John Lewis Gaddis’ The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-

12 T.H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990), 1010p, Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (Carbondale, Illinois: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2002),276p, Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator, (New York: Free Press, 2000), 404p, Ted Morgan’s Reds: McCarthyism in 20th Century America,(New York: Random House, 2003), 685p, Athan Theoharis’ Seeds of Repression: Harry S Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism, (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 238p.

xxiii

1947, (1972), The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987), and

Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare and the Politics of

Communism, 1941-1945, (1979). Major articles providing a better insight into issues and

events surrounding the origins of the Cold War include Gary Hess’s “The Iranian Crisis

of 1945-46 and the Cold War,” (1974), and George F. Kennan’s “The Sources of Soviet

Conduct,” (1947). 13

The Pepper–Smathers campaign received a great deal of media attention and

generated numerous articles in Florida newspapers and national publications. These

articles provide a glimpse of analysis of the campaign, public opinion and sentiment at

the time and contribute valuable insight and information to the study of the campaign.

Newspapers and periodicals providing extensive coverage of the 1950 Florida

Democratic Primary include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian

Science Monitor, The Miami Herald, The Miami Daily News, The Tampa Tribune,

Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Orlando Morning Sentinel, Life, Time, Newsweek, The

Nation, and The New Republic. The goal here is to examine the changing dynamics

within the social and political climate in the United States brought on by the pressures of

the postwar world, both domestically and abroad, especially the growing tensions

between the United States and the Soviet Union at the outset of the Cold War. Further, to

provide a concise and cohesive analysis of how these dynamics influenced the campaign

13 Irvin D.S. Winsboro and Michael Epple’s, “Religion, Culture, and the Cold War: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in America’s Anti-Communist Crusade of the 1950s,” The Historian 71, no. 2 (Summer, 2009), 209-233, John Lewis Gaddis’ The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 396p, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 344p, Vojtech Mastny, Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 409p, Gary Hess, “The Iranian Crisis of 1945-46 and the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 1 (March 1974), 117-146, George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, 25 no. 4 (1947), 566-582.

xxiv

for U.S. Senate in the1950 Florida Democratic primary and examine how the campaign,

and its outcome, reflected the core values of the “G.I. Generation” destined to lead the

United States throughout the Cold War era and over four decades impacting the political

landscape of Florida and the nation.

1

Introduction

From 1945–1950, the rapidity of change by the United States from an isolationist

nation to a major international player was staggering. The United States and the Soviet

Union continued to become more ideologically polarized, as tensions continued to mount

as the Cold War deepened. The Truman administration adopted a policy of containment

designed to keep the USSR in check and curtail the spread of communism around the

world, and toward that goal the Truman Doctrine and the European Recovery Plan

(ERP), or Marshall Plan, provided economic aid to Western and Southern Europe and the

NATO alliance was thus formed. The Soviets countered with the formation of the

Eastern Bloc and the signing of the Warsaw Pact. The final collapse of the war time

alliance occurred in June 1948, when the Soviets blockaded Berlin’s sectors occupied by

France, Great Britain and the United States. The “trizonal coalition” countered the siege

with a massive airlift of food, water and other necessary supplies. In 1949, the Soviets

obtained nuclear capabilities thus escalating the tensions of the Cold War and deepening

fears of communism and the threat of Soviet world domination.

At home, the euphoria of the allied victory and the return of service personnel were

short lived as the Truman administration embarked upon its domestic agenda and created

tensions surrounding the issue of civil rights. Beginning in 1941, the U.S. House of

Representatives attempted to pass anti–poll tax and anti–lynching legislation. In 1944, the

Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright (1944)1 ruled that the all white primary in Texas

was unconstitutional. On 5 December 1946, Truman issued Executive Order 9808,

establishing the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. All of these measures drew the

1 Smith v. Allright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).

2

ire of Southern Democrats in Congress. On 26 July 1948 Truman issued Executive

Order’s 9980 and 9981, ordering the federal government to implement fair employment

practices for all federal employees and desegregation of the Armed Forces. Meanwhile,

Progressives, made up mainly of New Deal liberals led by Henry Wallace and supported

by Claude Pepper, favored a more conciliatory and friendly stance in relations with the

Soviet Union. Progressives disagreed with Truman’s “get tough” policy toward the

Soviet Union as detrimental to advancing the cause of world peace. These elements

created a schism in the Democratic Party and threatened the prospects of a Democratic

victory in 1948.

When Truman chose to run in 1948, he found as much opposition within his own

party as he did from the Republicans. This included a move by Progressives who

supported a “dump Truman” campaign that included a failed attempt to draft General

Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Democratic nominee, and at the eleventh hour, draft Claude

Pepper. The result was two factions of the Democratic Party breaking off and forming

third party efforts. When a comprehensive civil rights plank was added to the Democratic

Party’s platform, the hard–line right wing Southern Democrats formed the States’ Rights

Party, more commonly known as the Dixiecrats, and ran Governor Strom Thurmond of

South Carolina for President. After failing to dislodge Truman from the Democratic

ticket, the Progressive Party chose Henry Wallace as its standard–bearer. As Schmidt

noted, “The presidential campaign of 1948 was not exceptional in that it witnessed new

minor–party challenges to Democratic and Republican supremacy.” 2

2 Karl M. Schmidt, Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade 1948 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1960), 19–40, Ibid., vii.

3

The five–year period between 1945 and 1950 was one of both change and uncertainty.

During this period, Claude Pepper and George Smathers played a role in decisions

affecting the course of action on policy, both foreign and domestic, while defining their

stand on vital issues. Pepper came to the senate in 1936. He represented the old guard,

New Deal liberals that advocated a more pro–Soviet stance, greater social welfare, and a

continuation of the liberal status quo. Smathers had served in the Marines during the war

and represented a new wave of thinking. Smathers personified the new generation of

battle–hardened veterans that advocated a tough stand on the Soviet Union in order to

check Soviet promulgation of communism around the world. The cordial relationship

between the two men that existed before the war began to slowly dissipate, as differences

in political visions became apparent, and as Smathers political ambitions broadened. In

1950, a battle for the direction of the nation began with the first salvo having been fired

in Orlando, Florida on 12 January when George Smathers declared his candidacy for the

U. S. Senate in the Florida Democratic Primary, challenging his former mentor and

supporter, Florida’s senior senator, Claude Pepper.

4

Claude Denson Pepper: The Alabama Plowboy

Claude Denson Pepper was born on 8 September 1900 in Chambers County, Alabama.

Pepper, in the opening line of his autobiography, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, wrote,

“On a bright September day in the twentieth century’s first year, Lena Talbot and Joseph

Wheeler Pepper knew visitors would be calling… anxious to see Lena’s new baby, a

boy.”1 Pepper’s words displayed a cheery optimism that belayed the circumstances into

which he entered this world. As Kabat noted, “Claude D. Pepper was born into

economically deprived and socially humble circumstances… He grew up acquiring the

traditional values of hard work, delayed gratification, Christian moral teachings, and,

most importantly, a belief in cooperation and communitarian responsibility.”2 At the

time of his birth his father owned and operated a farm outside of Dudleyville, Alabama.

For the first ten years of his life Pepper was an only child, the Peppers lost three children

before him.

In 1904, Joseph Pepper moved his wife and son to Texas in hopes of a more

prosperous life, but after a year and no prosperity, the family returned to the Dudleyville

Alabama farm. In 1910, they moved to Camp Hill so young Claude could attend a better

school.3 That same year his brother Joseph was born; a sister Sara and another brother,

Frank, soon followed. During young Claude’s formative years, the search for a more

Note: The page numbers of the large print edition of Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century used by the author; do not directly correspond with the 1987 edition published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1987. 1 Claude Pepper and Hans Gorey, Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, Large Print ed. (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1988; San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), ix. 2 Ric A. Kabat, “From Camp Hill To Harvard Yard: The Early Years of Claude D. Pepper,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, 72, no.2 (October, 1993): 153. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1350864924923~150&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=fhq%20vol%2072%20no%202&adjacency=Y&application=DIGIT. Accessed August 21, 2010. 3 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 6.

5

prosperous life sought by J.W. Pepper never materialized despite numerous and valiant

efforts toward that goal. The elder Pepper tried his hand at business, failing in both the

furniture and grocery businesses he opened. He then went on to hold several jobs in law

enforcement. In 1922, J.W. Pepper ran for Sheriff of Tallapoosa County, Alabama,

losing the election. As Kabat notes, “After 1922 his father moved through a variety of

low paying jobs and often depended upon his son for support.”4

So it fell upon young Claude’s shoulders to help support the family and he took on the

responsibility dutifully and willingly. In April 1917, just before Pepper’s graduation from

high school, the U.S. entered World War I. After graduation from high school in

May1917, he spent the summer traveling around Alabama cleaning and blocking hats.

The venture was less successful than Pepper had hoped for, and soon he was searching

for new employment. In regard to his situation, Pepper wrote, “Despite tragic aspects,

war sometimes opens up opportunities for people, and thus it was with me in the early

fall of 1917.”5 The war had brought about an acute shortage of teachers in Alabama and

presented the opportunity for Pepper to obtain a job teaching fifth grade for the Dothan,

Alabama school system just before his seventeenth birthday. After a year of teaching,

Pepper returned briefly to Camp Hill before taking a job at the Tennessee Coal and Iron

Company in Ensley, Alabama. Pepper wrote about his experience in the steel mill,

noting, “I straightened rails, lifting one end of a 273–pound billet with a co–worker,

twelve hours a day, seven days a week. There was no union. Anyone who complained

about the hours was told to get out.”6 The work was dangerous and demanding and the

conditions less than ideal. This experience had a profound impact upon the future

4 Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 157-58. 5 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 21. 6 Ibid., 23.

6

senator. His own exposure to the realities of the extreme hardship endured by the

industrial working class was brief; but the lessons learned stayed with him and influenced

his views on labor issues throughout his political career. As Kabat noted, “Pepper’s

tough steel mill experience introduced him to the plight of industrial workers. His

memories of the poor working conditions, low pay and general helplessness of the blue-

collar laborers remained vivid…. As a senator, Pepper supported virtually all of the New

and Fair Deal labor legislation, including minimum wage.” 7 Pepper’s true ambition was

to attend college, and his desire was to go to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa;

however, his family obligations left him short of the necessary funds to attend. Pepper

received a scholarship to Howard College but his heart was set on the university. With

the help of his mother Lena and E.H. Hill, president of the Bank of Camp Hill he was

able to borrow the necessary funds and in September 1918 was admitted to the freshman

class at the University of Alabama.8

The second opportunity afforded Pepper by the circumstances of war was induction

into military service in the Student Army Training Corps. It was part of the War

Department’s efforts to train and prepare soldiers for service in the conflict while

allowing them to continue their college studies. Pepper wrote, “To me, the most

immediate benefit of being in the army was financial; all expenses were taken care of.”9

However, financial relief and his army service were both short–lived, lasting just forty

days from October 7–November 11, 1918 when the Armistice was signed ending World

War I. As fate would have it, Pepper was destined to receive another unexpected

windfall from his brief military service. Kabat notes that, “Army service changed

7 Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 160. 8 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 24-26. Also see, Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 161. 9 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 28-29.

7

Pepper’s life. While doing some heavy lifting he developed a hernia. The painful injury

translated into disability money from the government. Designed to train disabled World

War I veterans, the federally funded vocational program enabled Pepper to enter law

school.”10

Pepper’s ambitions for law school were lofty as he set his sights on Harvard and

fate had intervened in his favor once again. Pepper wrote,

And the law school I wanted was the one I judged to be the best: Harvard. To go to Harvard was now miraculously within my reach. Amazing! When government lends a hand, possibilities can be limitless. That is my philosophy, and my experience. That hand even extends to former cotton pickers and plowboys from rural Alabama.11

During his trip to attend Harvard he had the good fortune to meet another young

southerner, Wallace Walker of Atlanta, heading for the same destination. Walker became

his roommate and lifelong friend. During one rough period when his benefit checks were

delayed, Pepper could not pay his school obligations. However, Pepper writes, that, “I

would have had to drop out of school if not for Walker. His family was wealthy, so he

could lend me the money I needed until a half dozen or so checks arrived at once and I

was able to pay him back.”12 Pepper, with the aid of loans from the Camp Hill bank, his

government disability, and a helping hand from his friend Walker, was able to pay for

Harvard tuition and living expenses without taking on a job, thus allowing him more time

to concentrate on his studies full time. As Kabat noted, “This turn of fate reinforced

Pepper’s sympathy for governmental activism. If federal money had not been available,

10 Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 162. 11 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 32. 12 Ibid., 33.

8

he could not have attended Harvard Law School. Pepper later cited this as contributing to

his political liberalism.”13

Harvard exposed Pepper to some of the foremost legal minds of the era, and his

professors included future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who helped found

the American Civil Liberties Union. Pepper’s years at Harvard were formative in the

sense that it helped him develop the necessary skills to think critically and formulate

positions on the events and issues shaping his age. In 1950, when his opponent George

Smathers made reference to Pepper having studied law under the “crimson of Harvard,”

Pepper wrote:

An innuendo as contemptible as it is unanswerable. The truth is that Harvard’s official color, crimson, far predated the association of red and pink colors with communism. Also the truth is that Harvard did not provide me with a political philosophy of right, left or middle. … What Harvard Law School tried to influence was the thinking process, not the thoughts; the whole idea was to make students think, not impose leftist ideology upon them. Harvard taught me the difference between a broad and narrow mind; it freed me from many prejudices.14

Pepper’s first involvement in national politics came while attending Harvard. In 1922,

Henry Cabot Lodge was running for re-election to the U.S. Senate against Democratic

challenger, William A. Gaston. Pepper took exception to Senator Lodge’s position on the

League of Nations. Lodge was able to lead the Senate against ratification of the Treaty of

Versailles and the result was the formation of the League of Nations without participation

by the United States. Pepper joined the Democratic Speakers Bureau in Boston making

speeches on behalf of Gaston.15 Gaston lost the race; however, Pepper did gain valuable

experience as an orator.

13 Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 163. Pepper refers to this in the large print edition of Pepper, Eyewitness to a Century, on page 32, page 24 of the standard edition referenced by Kabat. 14 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 34-36. 15 There are discrepancies in Pepper’s account of this event, claiming it took place in 1924, after his graduation from Harvard and that Senator Lodge won easily, Pepper, 37-38. The election actually took

9

Pepper graduated from Harvard Law School in 1924 and headed to the University of

Arkansas to teach in the law school where one of his law students was William J.

Fulbright. Fulbright, a future senator from Arkansas, founded the Fulbright scholarships

and briefly served with Pepper on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1949.

Pepper found the experience of academia pleasant but he was still unsettled and a strong

desire to enter into politics continued to haunt his thoughts and mind. Pepper had a great

belief in fate and believed that fate, for the most part, was kind to the former plowboy

from Alabama. Pepper, convinced that fate had intervened again, befriended a young law

student named Donald Trumbo. Trumbo married without permission of his family. His

father, Arthur Cook (A.C.) Trumbo, angered by the impudence of his son, stopped paying

his law school tuition. At the bequest of the younger Trumbo, Pepper interceded on his

behalf and in concert with the charm of Trumbo’s new wife, was able to mend fences.

Donald soon returned to law school and Pepper became a friend of the family.

A.C. Trumbo was a wealthy financier and banker from Oklahoma and he had interests

in more than one million acres of land near Perry in Taylor County, Florida, calling it,

“the golden age of the future.” Trumbo wanted his son to share in the future of Florida, so

he asked Pepper to accompany him to Perry to establish a law office that Donald would

join once he finished his law studies. While mulling over the elder Trumbo’s offer,

Pepper and Donald, in June 1925, were asked to represent A.C. at a meeting where the

Hoover Syndicate would become The Florida West Coast Development Committee.16 At

that meeting Pepper met the syndicate’s attorney, former judge W.B. Davis, who was

place in 1922, Pepper’s second year at Harvard and according to the Senate Historian, the race was close due to Lodge’s position on the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations and was not “won easily” as Pepper recalled; see United States Senate; http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/People_Leaders_Lodge.htm. 16 Ibid., 44-45.

10

looking for an attorney to join him in Perry. Pepper accepted Davis’s offer and arrived in

Florida on 30 June 1925, Pepper noted, “Fate had pointed me in a new direction—to

Florida, ‘The Land of the Future’— Certainly it was the land of my future.”17

Shortly after Pepper’s arrival in Florida, the great land boom which brought him to

Florida collapsed, due in part to an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies that decimated

the citrus crop and to a major hurricane in South Florida in 1926. The prospect of great

wealth and prosperity for Pepper went with it. Pepper joined Judge Davis in practicing

law in Perry for the next two years and made enough money to support his family and

repay his debts. Clark writes, “Florida was a state of newcomers. Yesterday’s new arrival

could become an instant millionaire or be elected to office.”18 While wealth, instant or

otherwise eluded him, Pepper did have the opportunity to enter politics in 1928 when he

ran for the Taylor County seat in the Florida House against incumbent W. T. Hendry.

Hendry missed voting on a bill requiring the mandatory dipping of cattle to kill ticks

causing disease that decimated cattle herds and was easily spread. While there was a

heated debate on both sides of the dipping issue, Pepper focused his campaign solely on

the failure of Hendry to vote on important issues. It proved to be a winning tactic with

Pepper upsetting Hendry and going to the Florida statehouse.

Pepper’s tenure in the legislature was short lived as he was defeated for reelection in

1930. Clark, referring to Pepper’s failed reelection bid, noted, “He refused to rule out

support for a retail sales tax, while his opponent stressed opposition to any such measure.

But Pepper later blamed his defeat on his failure to support a resolution censuring the

wife of President Herbert Hoover for inviting the wife of a black congressman to the

17 Ibid., 42. 18 James C. Clark, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary (Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2011), 7.

11

White House.”19 The event, a tea held for the wives of congressional members and First

Lady Lou Hoover, included Jessie De Priest, the wife of Congressman Oscar De Priest of

Illinois, an African–American. 20 The issue set off a firestorm in the segregated South

where Florida was one of three states to hold formal votes to censure Mrs. Hoover. 21

Pepper, recalling the issue, wrote:

a resolution castigating the First Lady for weakening the tradition of segregation and endangering the concept of white supremacy, for encouraging the notion of racial equality and ‘polluting the stream of Southern citizenship. By no means was I as liberal on race as I since have become, but this resolution was more than I could handle.… I said, ‘I am a Southerner and a Democrat like my ancestors before me, but I consider this resolution out of place as an act of this body…. This was my first conspicuous vote on a civil rights matter and it contributed substantially to my defeat when I sought another term in 1930.22

On 29 October 1929 the U.S. stock market crashed and set off a chain reaction of

financial disasters that contributed to the largest economic loss and decline in the nation’s

history—the Great Depression. When Pepper left office in 1931, Florida, like the rest of

the country, was reeling from the effects of the economic crisis that included numerous

bank failures, businesses and manufacturing closures, and widespread unemployment.

Pepper realized that given the economic circumstances, he could not return to his law

practice in Perry; and furthermore, his heart lay in being involved in the political process.

Thus, he decided to move from Perry to Tallahassee and open a new law firm with his

19 Clark, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George, 8. 20 Oscar Stanton De Priest was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois 1st District in Chicago’s south and south west side. He served three terms from 1929–1935 and was the first African–American elected to Congress in the 20th century. 21 Texas and Georgia were the other states voting for the censure of Mrs. Hoover. 22 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 54-55.

12

friend Curtis L. Waller. During this period Pepper would meet his future wife, Mildred

Wheeler, a legislative worker from St. Petersburg, outside the governor’s office. 23

The developing economic catastrophe was larger and more ominous than anyone

expected. The ensuing economic crisis was global in scale and it impacted the collective

citizenry of the United States of America, urban and rural, wealthy and poor; and for the

first time, caused a majority of Americans to wonder if capitalism and American

democracy could survive.

President Hoover was optimistic that the economic crisis was temporary and that it

could be corrected by voluntary measures from the private sector rather than through the

use of regulatory or legislative measures. By 1932, Hoover had come to realize the depth

of the depression and the failure of his voluntary measures to stop the cascading collapse

of businesses, industry, and financial institutions. In his final State of the Union message

on 6 December1932, Hoover said that, “The basis of every other and every further effort

toward recovery is to reorganize at once our banking system. The shocks to our economic

system have undoubtedly multiplied by the weakness of our financial system.”24 Most

Americans came to believe that Hoover’s actions in 1932 were “too little, too late” and

fear came to grip the nation. In 1932, the Democratic challenger, Governor Franklin

Delano Roosevelt of New York promised Americans a “New Deal.” The nation ready for

change, looked to Roosevelt for direct, immediate action and sought solace and salvation

in his calm, commanding voice, as he spoke to the nation during his Inaugural Address

on 4 March 1933, “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will

23 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 56-57. 24 Herbert Hoover, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” December 6, 1932, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, researchers, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=23376. Accessed November 9, 2012.

13

prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is

fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to

convert retreat into advance.”25 Thus, FDR ushered in the New Deal, offering hope for

a better tomorrow and assurance that the nation can and will survive and gave rise to the

era of New Deal liberalism.

Claude Pepper said, “I was a New Dealer before there was a New Deal.”26 This is true

in the ideological sense, in that he embodied the belief that government intervention can

provide opportunities, allow many to overcome obstacles, and achieve a better quality of

life than their normal station or circumstance would allow. In a letter to Roosevelt on 22

December 1928, Pepper outlined his belief that the Democratic Party should become the

champion of liberalism in the nation and his belief that Roosevelt should lead the party

toward that goal. Pepper wrote,

I am convinced, however, that we shall not have our greatest success until we make more perfect in the public mind, the concept of what our party is and what it aims. For one, I want the Democratic Party genuinely to become the Liberal Party of the Nation. I want it not to compromise upon that matter, because we cannot go to the people with conviction in our eyes unless we are sincere in our liberalism…. 27

This was four years before Roosevelt would win the White House and eight years before

Pepper’s own arrival in the nation’s capital. As the New Deal began to unfold, it was

evident that Roosevelt shared this liberal vision with Pepper and giving credibility to

Pepper years later when he said that he and FDR were “ideological soul mates.” In 1934,

Pepper launched an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Park

25 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address,” Washington, D.C., March 4,1933, National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/fdr-inaugural/images/address-1.gif. Accessed November 12, 2012. 26 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, xvii. 27 Claude Pepper to Franklin Roosevelt, December 22, 1928, George A. Smathers Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

Hereafter referred to as the Smathers Papers.

14

Trammell. Regarding his loss, Pepper wrote, “The 1934 election left a bitter taste and

generated an enormous wave of goodwill for the loser. When the vote totals were

published, it became clear that the Trammel forces had beaten me with what was known

as the ‘hot vote’ in the Tampa area. Eleven precincts in West Tampa and Ybor City were

populated by naturalized Spaniards and Italians, who ordinarily would not vote but did

when powerful, monied interests paid the poll tax for them.”28 Pepper’s vote against the

censure measure of Mrs. Hoover in 1929 became, an issue and he was disappointed with

losing. However, Pepper was encouraged by his own showing in the hotly contested race

and by the “goodwill for the loser” he received. Clark noted that, “Around the state,

Pepper’s popularity increased as a result of his gracious acceptance of defeat. The

Orlando Morning Sentinel editorialized that ‘someday, in some election, the people of

Florida are going to give Pepper another break, or rather a new deal.’”29 This reinforced

Pepper’s belief in providence, that the fortunes of fate would again smile upon him and

that faith would be rewarded in 1936.

Pepper’s path to the Senate was ironic. On 8 May 1936, his 1934 opponent, Senator

Park Trammell died while in office and on 17 June, Florida’s other U.S. Senator, Duncan

Fletcher unexpectedly died in office as well. Regarding the opportunity this created for

Pepper, Clark wrote,

On May 8, 1936, Trammell died in Washington, creating an opening for Pepper. Newspapers also speculated that Judge Charles O. Andrews of Orlando and former governor Doyle Carlton of Tampa might be candidates. The State Democratic Executive Committee was responsible for deciding on whether or not to hold an open primary or have the committee select the nominee.

28 Ibid., 65. 29 Clark, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George, 11; Orlando Morning Sentinel, August 7, 1934.

15

Before they could decide, the state’s other senator, Duncan Fletcher had died. Pepper announced his candidacy for Fletcher’s seat while Carlton and Andrews competed for Trammell’s seat. Pepper went to the Senate without opposition. Andrews upset former governor Carlton 67,387 to 62,530.30

In November 1936, Pepper finally realized his boyhood dream of becoming a U.S.

Senator, running unopposed in the special election to fill the remainder of Fletcher’s

term. Pepper claimed his decision was based on an “unwritten rule” that Florida’s

senators would be split, with one from the northern and one from the southern part of the

state. However, it is more than plausible that Pepper saw an opportunity for political

success and took advantage of the unique situation to assure his election to the senate

rather than face a three way race for Trammell’s vacant seat, considering that Pepper

violated that same “unwritten rule” when he ran for Trammell’s seat in 1934. In addition

to his political prosperity, Pepper’s good fortune included a measure of personal success

as well. On 30 December Pepper married Mildred Wheeler and soon the couple would

embark for Washington. Pepper’s Senate term expired in 1938 while his Senate career

was still in its infancy. Nevertheless, he faced the task of getting reelected. Pepper had

the attention of President Roosevelt for his staunch support of the President’s New Deal

programs in the Senate. Freshman members traditionally refrain from making speeches

on the senate floor. However, Pepper’s belief in the necessity of these New Deal

programs, and his faith in FDR as a leader, ignored this unwritten rule and took to the

floor in support of the president. His tenacity in support of the New Deal gained Pepper

recognition in Washington as well as nationally. During his campaign for reelection, the

2 May 1938 issue of Time magazine did a story in the National Affairs section about the

30 Clark, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George, 11.

16

1938 primary race for U.S. Senate in Florida and Pepper appeared on the cover with the

line, “Florida Fighting Cock will be a White House Weather Vane.”31

Pepper’s victory in the 1938 primary election was indeed viewed as a litmus test for

FDR and the New Deal. Pepper pushed for anti–poll tax legislation, even though Florida

had repealed its poll tax, and came out in support of a New Deal measure close to

Roosevelt’s heart–the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). This act called for a mandatory

twenty–five cent minimum wage and with the anti–poll tax legislation, drew the ire of the

majority of conservative Southern Democrats. Pepper made support of the New Deal in

general, and, the FLSA in particular, a part of his reelection campaign platform. For his

support on FDR’s attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court in 1937, the president offered to

help Pepper’s reelection efforts in 1938. However, when the time to deliver came around

Pepper received little to no help from Roosevelt. When James Roosevelt, FDR’s son and

political advisor, came to Florida, Pepper went to remind him of FDR’s pledge of

support. James Roosevelt indicated that the president did not wish “to appear to be telling

the people of Florida how to vote.” “We certainly hope Senator Pepper is reelected.”

Several days after the meeting with James Roosevelt a similar statement appeared in the

Florida newspapers but fell short of a direct endorsement.32 With the help of the

president’s coattails, Pepper was able to win on the first ballot with 100,000 plus votes

more than Congressman James M. Wilcox, former Governor David Sholtz, and two other

opponents.33

The victory was impressive for a liberal Democrat in, for the most part, a Southern

conservative state. Pepper noted that his triumph was interpreted as a mandate for FDR

31 Time. May 2, 1938, cover. 32 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 92-93. 33 Ibid., 97.

17

and the New Deal, writing, “and the president could hardly wait to get me to the White

House to talk about it. My diary entry for May 18, 1938: “When I walked in the president

said, ‘Claude, if you were a woman I’d kiss you.’”34 Pepper’s margin of victory alarmed

other Southern congressmen and the stonewalling of the FLSA in committee ended three

days after the Florida primary results were in and a discharge petition, numbering 218

signatures, took only two hours and twenty minutes to execute. FLSA passed in the

House before the end of May. Once language suitable to both the House and Senate was

worked out, the bill was sent to Roosevelt who signed it into law on 25 June 1938.35

Pepper returned to the Senate and continued to be the standard–bearer for the New Deal.

In1939 political tensions grew and war broke out in Europe with the invasion of

Poland by Nazi Germany on 1 September, plunging the continent into war when Britain

and France entered into the conflict on the side of Poland. Italy and Japan aligned with

Germany to form the Axis Powers. FDR aided the British and French war effort through

the cash and carry program allowing the allies to purchase necessary supplies and war

materiels with hard currency. By 1940 Great Britain had run out of enough hard currency

to purchase materiel from the United States. Churchill sought assistance from Roosevelt.

Roosevelt came up with the idea of lend–lease, in which the U.S. would lend necessary

goods in exchange for an agreement to provide U.S. military access to specifically named

British bases. Pepper introduced the Lend–Lease bill when it came before the Senate

Committee on Foreign Relations. In a 4 March 1941 letter to one of his constituents and a

frequent confidant, Raymond Robins, Pepper wrote, “It is unfortunate that the opposition

34 Ibid., 96-97. 35 Roger K. Newman, “Fair Labor Standards Act (1938),” in, Major Acts of Congress, vol. 2 Brian K. Landsberg, ed. (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004), Gale Virtual Reference Library e book, 8.

.

18

is so militant to the Lease–Lend Bill. I am always saying to them what the Master said

about his crucifiers, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’.”36 Robins

had a more optimistic outlook on the prospects of Lend–Lease. On the topic of Lend–

Lease, Robins, writing to a friend in England, noted, “So soon as this —largely

propaganda — delay in the passage of the Lend–Lease Bill is over, which I am hopeful

may be in the next ten days if not earlier, supplies of all kinds, military and civil, will be

enroute to England in better quality and greater quantity than ever before in the history of

the two countries.”37

Robins’ calculations proved to be astute, as the Lend–Lease Bill was signed into law

by President Roosevelt on11 March 1941. Pepper demonstrated that he was not only an

avid New Dealer but a loyal advocate of the president and that he supported Roosevelt on

a host of domestic and foreign affairs issues, including the 1941 Lend–Lease Act that

provided planes, ships and munitions to Great Britain and the Soviet Union. One

problem that plagued Pepper throughout his early political career was the issue of civil

rights. Pepper wrote, “We are all molded by region, era, antecedents, and chance…. In

the postbellum rural South into which I was born, poverty, disdain—even hatred—for the

Negro were the pervasive forces.”38 In Alabama, as with the other states of the South,

white Southerners clung to segregation with pride and institutionalized it in the romantic

myth of a traditional and moral way of life embraced by all Southerners, white and

Negro, living in harmony with each “knowing their place.” As Kabat noted, “In race

relations Pepper showed few liberal convictions. The young Alabamian, like many white

36 Claude Pepper to Raymond Robins, Letter, March 4, 1941, Box 30, Folder 1–3, Raymond Robins Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, Wisconsin. Hereafter referred to as the Robins Papers. 37 Raymond Robins to Octavia Wilberforce, Letter, March 4, 1941, Box 30 Folder 1–3, Robins Papers. 38 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 1.

19

Southerners, believed in the inferiority of blacks.”39 A fervent belief in the inferiority of

blacks, a physical and psychological segregation of black–white society that was

permeated with hatred, injustice and violence best describes Alabama at the beginning of

the twentieth century, the region and era that molded Claude Pepper.

According to a record compiled by the Tuskegee Institute in 1921, during the

formative years of Pepper’s life, 1900–1920, a total of 108 lynchings occurred in

Alabama.40 Pepper appeared ambivalent, perhaps even ignorant, to the ills and

vicissitude of segregation, and was willing to accept the injustice and violence as a part of

Southern life. Pepper carried these beliefs with him to Harvard Law School in 1921,

prepared to vigorously defend Southern honor and tradition. Pepper wrote:

I knew all about the Civil War having heard firsthand from my grandfathers about Yankee treachery and having read every book I could lay my hands on. When those Harvard Yankees started arguments over which side was right and which side was wrong I would be ready…. At last I was in a position to hoist a banner in Yankee territory. But nobody was interested. What was still a bitter pill in the vanquished South was, by 1921, a closed chapter in the victorious North, which moved on to other matters. I was all primed to defend but no one attacked.41

Pepper’s predisposition in his racial attitudes eventually came into conflict with his

liberal ideology. His New Deal liberalism and support of the president increased his

exposure to a more urbane group of liberals while in Washington, like his Harvard

classmates, had moved beyond the antiquated thinking still prevalent in the segregated

South. However, during his senate career, on issues of civil rights, he demonstrated

duplicity in his thoughts, words and actions. In 1938, Pepper joined fellow Southerners

39 Kabat, “Camp Hill to Harvard Yard,” 169. 40 “Record of Lynching’s in Alabama from 1871 to 1920,” Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/voices/id/2516/rec/7, accessed October 30, 2012.

41 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 34.

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in the filibuster to prevent anti–lynching legislation from coming to a vote, although he

later wished that “he could expunge this sorry chapter of his record and his life.”42

He continually supported anti poll–tax legislation, because he was concerned with

how the law served to disenfranchise poor white voters while giving little, if any,

consideration to the impact upon African–American voters. His vote against the censure

of First Lady Lou Hoover during his term in the Florida House is an example of Pepper’s

ambiguousness on racial issues. Pepper recalled his reasoning for his nay vote on the

measure as he took to the floor of the Florida House, writing, “I consider this resolution

out of place as an act of this body.”43 Pepper’s concern centered more on a procedural

faux pas rather than any indignation regarding the plight of Negroes. However, Pepper’s

actions despite his suspect motives gave the appearance of a pro–civil rights stand and

many understood the compromises Southern candidates had to make regarding racial

issues in order to be elected.

Pepper would continually battle the demons of his racial prejudice throughout his

years in the senate and his conflicting views provided his opponents with an issue to

attack in campaigns. Pepper, for the most part, was able to appease both liberal

supporters and more conservative voters. However, the internal struggle to compromise

his Southern heritage with his liberal ideology remained difficult and influenced his

stance on civil rights matters. In 1944, both FDR’s third term as president and Pepper’s

first term in the Senate ended. FDR would seek an unprecedented fourth term, while

Pepper looked to return to the Senate. The war continued to rage on and the allied forces

were beginning to advance. The Red Army advanced into the Ukraine and later to

42 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 87. 43 Ibid., 55.

21

Poland. The British and American forces began the invasion of Italy in January. On 6

June, Operation Overlord, the largest invasion force in history, landed on the Normandy

beaches with the objective of liberating occupied France. In August 1944, a meeting was

held at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of creating the United

Nations. The production of war materiel was at a peak and had revitalized the American

economy. The recovery programs of the New Deal were beginning to lose significance

in the minds of American voters. However, the American public still looked to Roosevelt

for leadership in defeating the Axis and ending the war victorious. Yet, there was grave

concern by the Democratic Party over Vice President Henry Wallace and the chances of a

fourth term with Wallace on the ticket. FDR was convinced that he had to make a change

and the replacement on the ticket was a little known senator from Missouri, Harry S.

Truman. In the Florida U.S. Senate campaign, Pepper’s liberalism left him open to

criticism from conservatives. As Clark noted:

Pepper’s opposition also came from some business interests who were opposed to regulations and controls instituted by the New Deal. For many conservatives Pepper symbolized the New Deal and they attacked his progressive stand on labor, farm supports, higher taxes on business, relief programs for the needy, and the creation of additional government agencies. The anti–Pepper faction in Florida was led by Associated Industries, a branch of the National Association of Manufacturers, but the opposition was not united.44

Pepper, as a stalwart of the president and the New Deal, received the full backing of FDR

in his reelection bid. Both men campaigned for each other and both won another term in

Washington.

44 James C. Clark, “The 1944 Florida Democratic Senate Primary,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, 66, no.4 (April, 1988): 368. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1351704136551~121&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=fhq%20april%201988&adjacency=Y&application=DIGITOOL-3&. Accessed October 10, 2010.

22

Pepper continued in his support of the president even when it was to his own

determent. This was the case regarding the Revenue Bill of 1944, which put him at odds

with Ed Ball, administrator of the DuPont Trust and a powerful and influential force in

Florida politics. Ball managed numerous business and investment holdings in Florida

and had given Pepper financial support in his campaigns for the U.S. Senate. In 1944

Ball was continuing his attempt to acquire the Florida East Coast Railroad for the DuPont

Trust. The Revenue Bill, if enacted, would provide Ball with a substantial tax advantage

in the acquisition of the railroad. However, the bill ended up becoming a bitter point of

contention between FDR and Congress when a large number of provisions to the bill

were added before passing it. Roosevelt was livid and moved to veto the measure much

to the ire of Congress. The House overrode the veto on 24 February and sent it to the

Senate where majority leader Alben Barkley called for an override of the president’s

veto. Regarding Pepper’s assessment of the situation, Danse writes:

Predictably he sided with Roosevelt, although not immediately sure he would vote to sustain the veto. Referring to Barkley in a diary entry of the period, he said, ‘Bumbling Barkley has bumbled again’. The next day, almost with tones of pettiness, Pepper wrote, ‘FDR did not regard him [Barkley] as a strong enough leader to be fully trusted’. Contrary to that assessment, Barkley was widely viewed as a tried and faithful administration loyalist, one who subordinated his own political standing and well being to White House Directives. This is a good example of Pepper’s tendency to judge a situation wholly on the basis of his unswerving fidelity to Roosevelt and what he deemed to be the liberal cause.45

On February 25 the override measure came to a vote in the Senate. Barkley resigned

as majority leader in protest of Roosevelt’s comments that the bill “provided relief for the

greedy and not the needy,” responding that it was, “a calculated and deliberate assault

45 Tracy E. Danese, Claude Pepper and Ed Ball: Politics, Purpose and Power (Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 2000), 144; for excerpts from Pepper’s diary quoted in Danese, see, Claude Pepper, “Claude Pepper Diary Transcripts, 1944,” Series 439, Box 2, Folder 1, Claude Pepper Papers, Claude Pepper Library, Tallahassee, Florida. Hereafter referred to as the Pepper Papers.

23

upon the legislative integrity of every Member of Congress.” Pepper returned to

Washington and against the counsel of his colleagues and advisors, he supported

Roosevelt, voting to sustain the veto. In support of Barkley, the majority of the Senate

voted to override the veto 72–14.46 Pepper’s failure to support the body of which he was

a member would have a lasting, negative impact upon Pepper’s reputation in the Senate.

Moreover, his increasingly liberal position was creating political enemies for him in

Florida. Danese noted, “It illustrated how his ideological blind spot and almost slavish

loyalty to the president clouded his assessment of the collective attitudes of his

colleagues and, increasingly, the public as well.”47 In the process, Pepper’s support of

the Revenue Bill veto threatened Ed Ball’s Florida East Coast Railroad deal and created

an animosity that would cost Pepper in 1950.

Pepper returned to the senate in 1945 confident that Roosevelt would lead and the

nation would support the continued expansion of the New Deal social welfare programs.

However, the rapidity of change over the next five years faced by the nation and its

leaders was daunting. When Roosevelt died in April 1945, the New Deal liberalism that

marked the previous fourteen years lost its leader. Pepper, Wallace and other

progressives in the Democratic Party saw in Truman someone who was changing the

direction of the party and, in their opinion, lacked the ability to be the standard–bearer for

the liberalism they represented. The end of the war saw a decline in the relations between

the United States and the Soviet Union as both sides postured for a leading role in the

postwar world. Truman’s distrust of Soviet motives, intentions and actions was contrary

to the pro–Soviet beliefs held by Wallace and Pepper at the end of the war, leading them

46 Office of the Clerk, http://artandhistory.house.gov/highlights.aspx?action=view&intID=110, accessed October 31, 2012. 47 Danese, Claude Pepper and Ed Ball, 144-45.

24

to mount a “Dump Truman” campaign at the 1948 Democratic Convention. Pepper’s

ideological philosophy continued to shift farther left while the party, the nation, and the

voters of Florida shifted more to the right as the Cold War intensified. Pepper’s continued

support of advancing and expanding New Deal policies, his public support for a more

cooperative stand with the USSR, and his participation in the unsuccessful “political

coup” to unseat Truman in 1948 created numerous political enemies. Politically, the

death of Roosevelt left him more vulnerable and without major support for the1950

campaign.

After the war ended a number of returning veterans entered the political arena,

bringing with them a deep–seated disdain for communism combined with a mistrust of

Soviet intentions postwar, and their contempt blurred party lines. One of these young

veterans was George A. Smathers of Florida. Smathers was handsome, intelligent and

ambitious. He coordinated the Alachua County campaign for Pepper in 1938 while

attending law school at the University of Florida. Smathers was a highly successful

Federal prosecutor before the war and he emerged from the war seasoned and ready to

make his mark. He returned home in 1945, and by 1946 had defeated the Democratic

incumbent Pat Cannon for the seat in Miami’s 4th Congressional district. In 1949 he

planned to engage yet another incumbent, Sen. Claude Pepper. From Camp Hill,

Alabama to the floor of the U.S. Senate, Pepper had openly displayed his ideology, his

Southern character, and had forged a record; each of these would be called into question

as Pepper battled for his political life in 1950.

25

George Armistead Smathers: The Judge’s Son

George Armistead Smathers was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on 14 November

1913. He was one of four children born to Frank and Lura Jones Smathers. A brother

Frank, Jr. was born in 1909, sisters Virginia in 1911, and Lura in 1920. Lura died in an

automobile accident in 1930.

Smathers ancestors were early settlers in western North Carolina dating back to

colonial times. Their roots lie in the small mountain community of Waynesville, in

Haywood County, and the Smathers family had established a distinguished pedigree. As

Crispell writes, “The Smathers family had long been grounded in the professions. Frank

Smathers grew up the son of a medical doctor, the grandson of noted Methodist preacher,

Dr. D. Collins Howell, and the great–grandson of a member of the North Carolina

colonial assembly, Joseph Howell.”48 Political ambitions and aspirations also ran deep in

Smathers’ ancestry. His father’s uncle, George Henry Smathers, a Republican, was a

state senator representing Haywood and Jackson Counties. Wickman notes:

George had no son of his own, so he invited his favorite nephew, Frank (1881–1970), to accompany him and work as a Senate Page during the winter of 1896. Frank’s father, Benjamin Franklin, chose medicine as a profession, but young Frank was especially fond of his Uncle George and was excited at the opportunity to share personally in the powerful world of lawmaking. The young man fell in love with politics that year, and he never really got over it.49

Frank Smathers was a committed Democrat despite his uncle’s best efforts to change

that inclination. Like his Uncle George, Frank earned a law degree from the University

of North Carolina. He was also an exceptional athlete and excelled at baseball. After

graduation in 1903, he left North Carolina for New Jersey in pursuit of a professional

48 Brian Lewis Crispell, Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 1. 49 Patricia R. Wickman, The Uncommon Man: George Smathers of Florida (n.p., 1994), 3-4.

26

baseball career. However, as Crispell notes, “Chasing his dream to Newark, New Jersey,

Frank met with the disaster of many a ballplayer— the slow curve.”50 With his fledgling

baseball career over, Frank Smathers concentrated on getting his law career in motion.

After fulfilling a mandatory three year residency requirement, he took the bar exam,

passed, and established a law practice in Atlantic City. After establishing his

professional life in New Jersey, Frank returned home to Waynesville where he wed Lura

Jones in 1908. Smathers’ mother, Lura Jones Smathers, also came from strong Southern

pioneer stock. Her mother, Nannie Honaker, was born in Virginia and as a young

woman, traveled to the Florida frontier and met her husband, Silas Armistead Jones, in

Barstow. They moved to Abingdon, Virginia to raise their family, Lura was one of seven

children. Lura’s father, S.A. Jones was a Florida pioneer. As Wickman notes:

‘S.A.’ was a quintessential entrepreneur in the fashion of the nineteenth–century America. He had fought for the Confederacy, delivered mail, on horseback, on the St. Louis–California run. He crossed the Florida wilderness in a covered wagon; helped to build railroads in Florida and Georgia; became the first editor of the Tampa Times newspaper; built the Tampa Terrace Hotel (now a part of the University of Tampa) and discovered a gold mine in Dahlonega, Georgia.51

Smathers came from a hardy bloodline on both sides of his family, filled with examples

of strong, successful, and adventurous men and women.

After the wedding, Frank and Lura returned to New Jersey to resume his law practice

and start their family. One of the main reasons that Frank Smathers established his law

practice in Atlantic City was due to the lack of a Democratic presence in the

overwhelmingly Republican stronghold of Atlantic County.52 Frank’s zest for politics got

him interested in the 1910 gubernatorial race and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow

50 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 1. 51 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 9. 52 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 1.

27

Wilson. Wilson spent a great amount of time campaigning in Atlantic County in an effort

to sway voters to cross party lines and support him; and Frank Smathers spent a great

amount of time with Wilson and forged a powerful political friendship.

According to Wickman, “Frank personally chauffeured the candidate around as he

made eight to ten speeches a day; sat on the platforms with him at the rallies; and

‘hopped up and down for two full days and a night,’ shouting, ‘34 votes for Woodrow

Wilson,’ as chairman of the Atlantic Delegation at the State Convention.”53

When Wilson won the statehouse, he rewarded Frank with a district court judgeship.

Frank’s political aspirations proved to be short–lived due to his suffering from acute

rheumatoid arthritis. The cold, damp climate of New Jersey left him in extreme pain.

When Wilson became president, he remembered his old friend and hoped to appoint

Frank to a seat on the federal bench. However, Frank’s arthritis continued to worsen, and

he was unable to accept the appointment. He continued to serve on the New Jersey bench

until 1920. He recommended his brother, William Howell (Bill) Smathers, to replace him

on the district court bench. As Crispell notes, “Frank Smathers was advised by his

physician to move as far south as possible to combat a chronic arthritic condition. So in

January 1920 the Smathers family, including young sons Frank, Jr., George Armistead,

and his daughter Virginia, took Henry Flagler’s line as far south as it then went,

disembarking at the small community of Miami, Florida. George was six years old;

Miami, twenty-four.”54 Bill Smathers would go on to serve New Jersey in the U.S.

Senate in 1937; he joined another senate newcomer and fellow Democrat, Claude Pepper

of Florida. Frank Smathers arrival with his family in Miami soon coincided with the

53 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 7-8. 54 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 2.

28

great Florida land boom that brought the DuPonts, Ed Ball and Claude Pepper to Florida

in the mid 1920s. Frank took a year to rest and soothe the pain from his arthritis before

he established a law practice in Miami. When it came to their upbringing, Frank and Lura

had different approaches that complemented each other. Regarding the Smathers’

parenting approach, “George’s mother was a gentle nurturer…. ‘The Judge,’ on the other

hand, was a parent with strong ideas about the way in which children should be raised,

and his brand of parenting was both vigorous and stern.”55

Frank Smathers wanted his children to be tough, smart and prepared to face the

daunting challenges of life. The Judge’s stringent parenting style alienated Smathers’

brother Frank, Jr. and his sister Virginia. However, George always sought compromise

and tried to mediate on behalf of his siblings, displaying negotiation skills and political

ability. The Judge instilled a rigorous daily routine into his children, a combination of

physically and intellectually demanding tasks to prevent them from developing, “big

strong necks but weak little heads.”56 Judge Smathers was a demanding parent, but he

was also a brilliant, capable attorney and a shrewd and savvy investor. Wickman writes,

“Because of the Judge’s wise planning, however, the Smathers family was spared much

of the adversity which struck so many of their neighbors. Their livelihood, tied to

integral municipal services and some of the soundest banking interests in the state,

weathered the storm.”57

Financial stability in difficult economic times afforded Judge Smathers more options

to better prepare his sons for the challenging days ahead. Frank, Jr. attended the Culver

Military Academy in Culver, Indiana and George would follow his brother for a summer

55 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 14-15. 56 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 3, quoted in Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 15. 57 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 18.

29

school session in 1929. Frank, Jr. enjoyed the structure and discipline of the military

lifestyle. George, however, could not stand the rigidity of the program. He detested life

at Culver so much that he admitted to have “cried himself to sleep every night,” and,

furthermore, he asserted that he would have rather left home before having to return to

the rigors of Culver.58 Fortunately, Smathers never had to return to Culver, and remained

in Miami for the remainder of his secondary education.

In high school, Smathers was a proficient student and he was also talented athletically,

with the latter bringing him the most accolades and notoriety. Crispell, regarding

Smathers abilities, notes, “Maturing both physically and intellectually, Smathers—

growing to six feet two inches—excelled at basketball and track, boxed, and played on

the football team. His athletic pursuits won him Miami Senior’s Sigma Nu Trophy.”59

Frank Smathers passion for politics had not waned even though his physical limitations

prevented him from directly participating. If Judge Smathers could not personally

participate, perhaps he could live vicariously through his son, George. In George, he

sought to instill his immense love for politics, and it appeared that he was successful.

Crispell writes, that, “Away from the field and court, Smathers won his first election as

president of the student body.”60 George’s willingness to accept his father’s rigorous

teachings and advice even when contrary to his own inclinations motivated the elder

Smathers; he exerted all of his wisdom and influence into grooming George for a career

in either law, politics, or both. While Smathers deferred to his father’s wishes and heeded

his advice, the decisions he made occasionally came with great debate and difficulty.

This was most evident when the time came for young George to select a college to attend.

58 Ibid., 18-19, quoted in Smathers interview with the author. 59 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 3. 60 Ibid.

30

Due to his athletic prowess, Smathers had scholarship offers to several different

universities. The University of Illinois scholarship was the offer he wanted to accept.

However, Judge Smathers had a different choice for George’s education, and, like any

good attorney, he had prepared a strong argument to support his case against the

University of Illinois. In a 1989 oral history interview, Smathers, recalled how he arrived

at the decision of what college he should attend, saying:

I had an opportunity to go to the University of Illinois. Zepke was a very famous football coach. He had come down and watched me play a game or two, and offered what amounted to a scholarship. I really wanted to go. My ambition was to go to the University of Illinois at Champagne, Illinois. But my Dad kept saying, ‘No, that’s not the place to go.’ He said, ‘You will someday probably want to go into politics, (because I’d already been elected president of the student body in high school and that sort of thing). He said, ‘You’ll want to be in politics, and you’ll need to go to the state university so that you will know boys from all over this state. I’m not going to let you go to Illinois.’ Well we had quite heated discussions about that. I wanted to go to Illinois so badly. It sounded so far away and glamorous. Finally, I had to yield to my father’s insistent orders that I go to the University of Florida. So I went to the University of Florida, and had a very wonderful time, as a matter of fact, and was a pretty good athlete. I was captain of the basketball team, and was captain of the track team, and I played football for awhile but kind of had to give that up because I kept getting injured. I wasn’t very husky. I was elected president of the student body, president of my fraternity, and that sort of thing.61

Judge Smathers instincts regarding the importance of attending the University of

Florida to make influential connections were accurate. While at Florida, young George

became a member of the prestigious Blue Key Society and pledged the Sigma Phi

Epsilon fraternity, later becoming its president. His roommate was a fellow fraternity

brother named Phil Graham, who later became the publisher of the Washington Post and

Newsweek. In 1938, while attending Florida Law School, Smathers had the opportunity to

get his first experience in a political campaign after attending a stump speech by the U. S.

61 George A. Smathers, United States Senator, 1951-1969, “Oral History Interviews, Interview no. 1, August 1, 1989,” transcripts, interview by Donald A. Ritchie. Senate Historical Office, Washington, D.C., 3, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Smathers_interview_1.pdf. Accessed November 3, 2011.

31

Senator from Florida who was running for reelection—Claude Pepper. In his 1989

interview with Ritchie, Smathers recalled,

I went down to the county court house along with a whole bunch of other students to hear this rather famous senator. He made a brilliant speech…. Well, it so happened that the next day he came out to the campus at the university and I was introduced as president of the student body. He asked me, would I manage his campaign on the campus for reelection? I was so flattered that I immediately accepted his invitation. I was so involved that I began to take over the whole county, not only the city of Gainesville, where the university was, but the whole Alachua County.62

After graduating from law school, Smathers joined his father’s law firm in Miami.

Shortly after he began practicing in Miami, Smathers received a call from a former

classmate, Charlie Andrews. He was the son of the other senator from Florida Charles O.

Andrews. Senator Andrews went to the U.S. Senate with Claude Pepper in 1937 when he

defeated former governor Doyle Carlton in the special election for the vacancy following

Senator Park Trammell’s death. Charlie Andrews called his classmate to gage his interest

in an appointment as an assistant federal prosecutor in the Miami district. Smathers

recalled the conversation, “I got this call from Charlie, and he said, ‘George, would you

be interested in becoming assistant United States district attorney at Miami?’ … I said,

‘I’d love to take it.’ He said, ‘There is just one caveat. Can you get Senator Pepper to

okay it?’ ‘What we do,’ he said, ‘is we take turns whenever there is a vacancy in a

judgeship or in a U.S. attorney’s office.’… I said, ‘Surely, I can get him. I’m confident

that I can.’ I called Senator Pepper and he very graciously and very kindly said okay.”63

Attending the University of Illinois may have made Smathers happy, but, as his father

had predicted, the University of Florida provided him with a foundation for his

professional and political future. In fewer than two years after his graduation from the

62 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 3. 63 Ibid., 3-4.

32

University of Florida Law School, Smathers used two of his influential connections to

secure a position as an assistant U.S. district attorney. His experience and record while

serving in that capacity helped put Smathers on the path to a career in politics, as well as,

introduce him to other political allies that would help to further his career. The university

also provided him with a network of friends and connections throughout the state, a

network that would prove handy in mounting a statewide campaign. Smathers used these

connections to further his political career, and his Florida network would prove

invaluable in the 1950 primary campaign. By 1940 Smathers had already began his

journey into politics; and, most ironically, it came in part with the help of Claude Pepper

himself. Smathers was handsome, athletic, intelligent, and personable. Crispell writes

that, “Through his achievements, he established a statewide collection of loyal men who

supported him as their leader in Gainesville, as well as female acquaintances made on

forays to Tallahassee and the Florida State College for Women. They did not forget

him.”64 However, in the summer of 1938, Smathers made acquaintance with Rosemary

Townley.

At the time of their meeting in 1938, Townsley lived in Atlanta and was visiting her

brother and sister in Miami. Her father, John Townley was a speculator who chased

dreams of wealth in the oil fields of Oklahoma and the citrus groves of central Florida

before settling in Miami. An early pioneer of Miami, Townley, purchased vast amounts

of real estate and even established the first drug store in 1896. His arrival in Miami

predated Henry Flagler, whose railroad and hotels helped to grow Miami’s population as

well as its economy. John Townsley’s business ventures expanded beyond Florida and as

a result, he had to move his family. First to Ashville, North Carolina and then he settled

64 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 4.

33

in Atlanta, which was more central to his business interests. However, Townsley retained

his vast real estate holdings in Miami which provided him with wealth and financial

security for his family. He died of heart disease when Rosemary was thirteen, but he did

leave her well provided for financially.65 Smathers, while smitten with the heiress, did

not have plans for a commitment to anyone in the near future. Regarding their

relationship in the summer of 1938, Crispell writes:

During their ensuing courtship, Smathers informed her of his plans to delay marriage until age thirty and after accumulating five hundred dollars in the bank. Rosemary listened, then acted. Leaving on another cruise, she wrote Smathers letters, describing her experiences, including a new acquaintance made through a mutual friend—Cary Grant. George read, and then made up his mind: he married Rosemary on 10 March 1939. He was twenty–five and had yet to begin a career.66

Shortly after his marriage, Smathers was offered and took the appointment as the

assistant U.S. district attorney, beginning his career in the prosecutor’s office in 1940.

Miami of the 1940s experienced phenomenal growth. As Crispell points out, “By

1941 the city of Miami had recovered from a collapsed real estate bubble in the mid

1920s as well as the disastrous hurricane of 1925. Rather than disintegrating as some

feared it would, the community rebounded strongly, shifting into a period that witnessed

a doubling of its population every ten years. This expanding population necessitated

construction, resulting in Miami growing from just eight square miles in the 1920s to

forty–eight square miles by 1950.”67 The economic boom brought with it its share of

criminal enterprise. Smathers would prosecute hundreds of cases during his two years as

assistant federal district attorney; however, two cases brought him notoriety and a

reputation for being a hardnosed prosecutor. Both cases involved white slavery and

65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 5. This is from an unpublished interview with Rosemary Townley Smathers by Crispell on August 8, 1996. 67 Ibid., 5-6.

34

human trafficking across state lines. The first case took place in Key West and involved

Alice Reid Griffin, accused of bringing young girls into Florida from Georgia for

“immoral purposes.” Smathers faced noted Miami defense attorney Bart Riley. Smathers

presented a well argued case, resulting in the successful prosecution of Griffin. His

success in the Griffin case received a great deal of press and would lead to another

opportunity in another high–profile, human trafficking case and another chance to

enhance his reputation and his public image. The second case involved the prosecution

of Miami nightclub owners Al and Evelyn Youst. Like Griffin, they were charged with

conspiracy to violate the white slave act by bringing girls, in this case, five, from

Tennessee and Georgia to Florida for “immoral purposes” while employed at Youst’s La

Paloma club. Also involved in the case was the Dade County Solicitor, Fred Pine, who

was also charged with conspiracy to violate the white slave act. There was an almost

circus–like atmosphere in the court room with Al Youst arriving to court on a stretcher

due to suffering from tuberculosis and Evelyn constantly feeding her infant. However,

any attempts to gain the sympathy of the jurors failed, and they were convicted on ten

counts of conspiracy to transport minors across state lines for immoral purposes. Evelyn

received four years in prison, Al eight years. Pine received a separate trial and the case

resulted in a hung jury. Pine would be retried in 1942.68

However, there was a twist of irony involving Al Youst and his arrival in Miami

where he opened the La Paloma. Crispell writes, “Speaking to the press immediately

after his conviction, Al Youst revealed that he had originally come to Florida at the

behest of a New Jersey judge. Youst, convicted for breaking and entering, larceny, and

68 Crispell, Testing the Limits,7-8; “Fred Pine To Get Another Trial” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, March 27, 1942.

35

threatening to kill, had served a partial prison term. The sentencing judge …released

him, declaring that Youst had “learned [his] lesson”…but I want you out of this state….

Go to someplace like Florida.”69 The judge and future senator from New Jersey was

William H. Smathers, George’s uncle.

Despite his rather short tenure as an assistant federal district attorney, Smathers forged

his reputation as a tough, no nonsense prosecutor rooting out crime and corruption

throughout South Florida. He was young, ambitious, and powerful—determined to make

his mark. However, years later, Smathers would reflect on the course of his actions

during the two years with some measure of regret, saying,

It was the best job I ever had, just loved it. Putting everybody in jail. Nobody was safe. You know, I had the FBI working for me, and I was in charge of the whole South Florida. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Internal Revenue Service, you name it, Alcohol Tax Unit, they all worked for me. And they were always saying, ‘Hey George, we ought to prosecute this guy. We ought to prosecute this…. They were putting everybody in jail…. To make a long story short, we indicted people that I’ve thought about thirty years later, I think it was outrageous in a way. It scares me to death to think about it. Now that I’m mellowed and older I don’t know that I would have ever brought this kind of case against them.70

However, from 1940–42, Smathers was more than happy to bring high–profile cases to

court, in part seeking justice for the people of the United States and South Florida, and in

part, to enhance his reputation and gain recognition with the voting public. Whether it

was due to youthful exuberance, naiveté due to lack of life experience, or simply blind

ambition that motivated him, Smathers had managed to earn a great deal of political

capital during this two–year period. He was enjoying a measure of professional success,

and, he and Rosemary celebrated the birth of their first child, John, on 2 October 1941.

Smathers would soon find his career and family life interrupted by an event destined to

69 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 8. 70 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 9.

36

change the world—December 7, 1941. It was indeed as President Roosevelt noted, “a

date that will live in infamy.”

Smathers, like many American males of his generation, believed that he had to

contribute in the war effort and enlist in military service. His office in the federal

building was next door to the Marine Corps recruiting station. Wickman writes that

Smathers recalled telling recruiters as he walked by, “You guys save me a real soft job,

and as soon as I get through with these prosecutions, I’m going to join up. Well, one day

about six months later, they stopped me and said, ‘Say, Smathers have we got a job for

you.’”71 Smathers enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves in July 1942, and was sent to

Officer’s Candidate School at Quantico, Virginia and then assigned to Marine Corps

Headquarters in Washington at the rank of lieutenant. Smathers, however, did not want to

spend the duration of the war as an administrative lawyer in Washington, and he

preferred a combat unit. Smathers recalled how he managed to get a combat assignment:

I stayed here, and it looked like they were going to try and make a desk guy out of me and keep me here in Washington. But I thought as long as I’m going to be in the service I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around here pushing paper and being a lawyer for the Navy. So I feigned an appendicitis attack. They took me to the Naval Medical Center. They took my appendix out…. But it broke the umbilical cord with the administrative section of the Navy and I was back in the Marines.72

When Smathers left the Naval Medical Center he was reassigned to the new Marine Air

Station at Cherry Point, North Carolina and attached to the Marine Bomber Squadron

413. VMB 413 completed initial training at Cherry Point and then reassigned to Camp

Pendleton, California for deployment to the Pacific theater. 73 Smathers missed the birth

of his second son, Bruce, who was born on 3 October 1943. The squadron was deployed

71 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 28. 72 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 10. 73 VMB is an acronym for Volar Marine Bomber, volar is a Spanish verb meaning to fly and is the method used by the Marine Corps to designate bomber groups.

37

to the Solomon Islands and participated in the Bougainville campaign with newly

promoted Captain Smathers serving as the adjutant. Wickman notes, “George finally got

his fill of combat duty… on Guam and in the Solomon Islands, at Sterling Island, and

Bougainville, and in air raids on Vella Lavella and Munda. In one nearly fatal episode,

his plane was badly damaged by enemy fire.”74 Smathers did two combat rotations in the

Pacific, serving a total of eighteen months. Smathers was the last of the original officers

remaining—everyone else had rotated back to the States. He began writing letters to

Senator Pepper, Senator Holland and Attorney General Tom C. Clark asking for help in

getting out. Regarding Clark, Smathers recalled, “I wrote him a letter and he’s the fellow

that I soon discovered was the guy who talked to the Navy and said, ‘Look, you’ve got a

guy out there, he’s got a family, he’s been out there a year and ought to be rotated.’ He

was the fellow who arranged for me, actually, to come back.”75 Smathers arrived back in

the U.S. in San Francisco on 7 May 1945, VE Day.

Smathers said that he entered military service because he believed it was his duty to

defend his country. In the spring of 1945, it became more and more apparent that the

outcome of the war would be in favor of the Allied forces. Smathers used his influential

connections to return stateside, and he assumed he would be discharged from service.

However, the Marine Corps had different plans for Captain Smathers. Instead of being

discharged, he was, sent back to Cherry Hill in June 1945, greatly disappointed that his

plans for the future would be derailed. Immediately upon his arrival Smathers began

working his network of political friends in an effort to secure his release from active duty,

as Crispell notes, “Smathers capitalized on his political connections, appealing not only

74 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 30. 75 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 11.

38

to elected officials like Sen. Claude Pepper but more importantly to the U.S. Attorney

General’s office. It had been in the service of the attorney general that Smathers had

begun to make inroads politically before the war, and it was his intention to again begin a

campaign in the courtroom.”76

Smathers quickly reconnected with his friends in Miami who informed him that the

congressman from Miami’s 4th District, Pat Cannon, was ill and may not live. The

ambitious Smathers immediately began making plans for running for this seat at Cherry

Hill before he had secured his discharge from the Marine Corps; thus creating a sense of

urgency in getting his release from the military. In a letter to Pepper on 11 June 1945,

Smathers wrote, “Can’t possibly tell you how anxious I am to get out and start doing.’”77

Smathers was anxious regarding his future political aspirations, but, he was restless for a

far more mundane reason—his job did not challenge him; and he was simply—bored.

Just two days later, on 13 June, Smathers wrote to Pepper again:

I have been assigned and much sooner than I anticipated, as assistant provost-marshal of the Marine Corp Air Station here. It is equivalent to being 2nd Deputy Sheriff of Collier County.—Only I can’t wear a star or high top boots. Despite any statement as to my indispensability that may be forthcoming, the fact is, that it is now obvious they can get along without me. My services would be better utilized in the Justice Department. I thought possibly this fact may help Mr. Clarke, [sic] if when requesting me, he is told how badly the Marines need me. —Let me assure you of my gratitude in rescuing me from this mental Sahara.78

Smathers continued his correspondence to Pepper. On 17 June 1945 he sent two letters,

one to Sen. Pepper himself and the second to Bob Fokes, the Senator’s administrative

assistant. He wrote Pepper regarding the 4th District Congressional race, that he

76 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 11. 77 George Smathers to Claude Pepper, Letter, June 11, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 78 George Smathers to Claude Pepper, Letter, June 13, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers.

39

“Received several telephone calls from Miami, yesterday and the day before, relative to

Cannon’s illness and the possibility of an election taking place in the immediate future. I

advised them all that if necessary, I would let my friends RUN me ‘in absentia.’ I wanted

the job and was determined to see it through. I would be glad for any news as to how

things are going with Mr. C.”79 Smathers letter to Fokes revealed a note of frustration

and near desperation regarding his situation. In yet another attempt to expedite his

release from the Marines, Smathers asked Folkes to intervene with the senator on his

behalf, “Please, ask him to call Mr. C. I know both are busy as one–legged men in an ass

kicking contest, but I’m rotting on the vine here, and that one call might be the force that

clinches the whole deal. Trust I can return the favor someday.”80

Smathers was reassigned to the Navy JAG corps in Washington on 4 July 1945.

Smathers never gave up his efforts to get out of active military service. He received help

from fellow Floridian, William Paisley, an attorney in the Justice Department. Paisley

remembered Smathers’s work while an assistant district attorney and recommended him

to his boss, Attorney General Tom C. Clark. Soon, Smathers would become one of “the

most valuable members of his office.”81 Smathers perseverance paid off and in October

was placed on inactive duty and released from Marine Corps service. He returned to

Miami where he would serve Tom Clark as Special Assistant to the Attorney General and

put in motion his plan to defeat Pat Cannon in 1946. After securing the position of

special assistant, Smathers went to work in soliciting help in preparing for his campaign

for Cannon’s congressional seat. On 22 October 1945 Smathers sent a letter to Jim

79 George Smathers to Claude Pepper, Letter, June 17, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 80 George Smathers to Bob Fokes, Letter, June 17, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 81 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 11.

40

Clements, a member of Senator Pepper’s senior staff regarding Cannon. The letter

describes Cannon’s success in getting himself in the newspapers on a daily basis and

prominently in the public eye. Smathers is upset that Cannon is obtaining the names of

servicemen about to be discharged and then sending notifications to the families with the

particulars and taking credit for their discharges as a way to garner votes:

He then, at government expense, wires the family and advises them that through his efforts their son will be released on such and such a day and such and such a time. Isn’t there some method by which you could get the war department to level a blast at him or at least claim Pepper has had some hand in the securing of these discharges? Smathers concluded, adding, All else down this way seems to be moving along in good shape and if I am successful in getting assigned to the prosecution of a case which is now pending down here, things will look very bright.82

The case Smathers referred to was a prosecution involving the Office of Price

Administration, a war time agency that regulated rationing and price controls. Crispell

notes, “John Henry Colt stood accused of accepting bribes, as chairman of the OPA price

panel, in return for influencing ration board decisions.”83

The case fell under the direct jurisdiction of Smathers former boss, U.S. District

Attorney Herbert S. Phillips. The case was sure to be high–profile and receive muck of

public attention. Smathers helped present the case before the grand jury and realized its

star making potential. Again, he looked to enlist the aid of Attorney General Clark and

Smathers wrote a letter to Clark’s assistant Grace Stewart84— “I need advice and

82 George Smathers to Jim Clements, Letter, October 22, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 83 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 15. 84 The letter simply referred to Grace in the salutation. A source verified that Grace was Grace Stewart an assistant to Attorney General Tom C. Clark in 1945, in an oral history where she was referenced by name and title; see, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, Transcript, Oral History Interview XXI, August10-11, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, 33. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/Johnson-C/CTJ%2021.pdf. Accessed on November 7, 2012.

41

assistance! There is a case that I have just helped present to the grand jury that is exactly

what I need to get into a favorable position to do what is planned— come spring….

The U.S. attorney, Mr. Phillips I believe would let me handle the case but quite naturally

doesn’t want to offend his assistant, and so I think (Smathers’s emphasis) he would

welcome higher authority assigning the case.”85 There appeared to be some reluctance

on the part of Phillips in assigning the case outside of his office, even after some gentle

prodding from another high–ranking justice official, T. Lamar Caudle. As Smathers

explains to Stewart, “M(r) Caudle wrote a nice note to Phillips and said, ‘Smathers would

like to try the case and I hope that meets with your approval.’ It was not strong enough,

although I appreciated it. Possibly nothing can be done. However, if I’m going to do

what the close friends in Washington want me to do (i.e.–win) next spring I’ve got to get

back in the public eye and quick. This case is tailor made for that. Can you help?”86

Smathers was assigned the case and won a conviction of Colt on the bribery charges.

During this period, Smathers began assembling his senior campaign staff. He asked

his friend, FBI Special Agent Dick Danner to be his campaign chairman. Wickman

writes, “Dick was ready for a new challenge. So were old friends from high school,

members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and other ex–military friends who quickly

became the George Smathers campaign staff. Cannon referred to them derisively as

Smathers’s ‘goons,’ but they chose to take it positively.”87 In addition to Danner, the

core of Smathers “goon squad” was composed of Sloan Mc Crea, Bebe Rebozo, and

Grant Stockdale; and they began the task of getting Smathers elected. In addition to

Attorney General Clark, Smathers continued to call on Sen. Pepper and his staff for help

85 George Smathers to Grace Stewart, Letter, undated, Box 73, Tom C. Clark Papers, Truman Library. 86 Ibid. 87 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 33.

42

in his campaign. In a letter dated 14 November 1945, he asked Bob Folkes to aid his

associate, Crehore, in getting access to Cannon’s voting record and attendance, writing,

“He is having a good deal of difficulty in getting the record of his attendance and stated

in a letter to me that a brother congressman or senator could get the information easily

whereas it was inaccessible to an outsider.”88

There was an expansion of the Naval Air Station in Key West planned to take place in

1946. Smathers found out in late January that Cannon was preparing to announce the

expansion in Monroe County. Smathers immediately wrote Pepper, “I’ve decided to take

the plunge—In fact it’s made. Was in Munroe [sic] County over the week–end and if

things remain at the status quo it should fall into line in good style. Cannon has passed

the word that the populace there should look forward to an announcement about a new

Naval addition… If that happens it will ruin me there. Will you check into this and if

possible find out why it cannot be delayed at least until after May7th —?”89 Pepper sent a

reply on 2 February, writing, “I am trying to obtain the information about Munroe [sic]

County and Key West so I can make some announcement about it.”90 Miami’s 4th

congressional district in 1946 was expansive, encompassing all of Dade, Monroe and

Collier Counties, from Miami, south, to Key West and from Miami, east, to Naples. It

required a well organized network and, Smathers’ team was up to the task, as Wickman

writes:

The Goon Squad worked determinedly to carry its leader to victory in a district which included all of Dade, Munroe and Collier counties and a voting age population of

88 George Smathers to Robert Folkes, Letter, November 14, 1945, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 89 George Smathers to Claude Pepper, Letter, undated, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers. 90 Claude Pepper to George Smathers, Letter, February 2, 1946, Group 200, Series 201, Box 161A, Folder 7, Pepper Papers.

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almost 300,000….In the end, driving determination and exhausting work of the campaign paid off…. While politicians across the rest of the state were being returned to office with minimal opposition, in South Florida it was the challenger who was elected by almost a two-to-one margin over the incumbent.91

On 7 May 1946, Smathers won the prize he had so coveted, a seat in the 80th Congress of

the United States, where he would join others of his generation, as they began to shape

the face of American politics for the next four decades.

In retrospect, George Armistead Smathers came from strong pioneer roots and a

family that was well educated and well connected. His parents provided him and his

siblings with a comfortable life amid one of the worst economic periods in the nation’s

history. Judge Smathers set forth a demanding course for his children that encouraged

them to be competitive while growing both physically and intellectually. Smathers was

infused with a love of politics by his father, who did all within his power to prepare his

son to be successful in politics. Smathers seemed to possess an innate ability to lead

others. He readily displayed his penchant for leadership at college, in law school, as an

assistant federal district attorney, and the military. Smathers also proved that he was

quite resourceful. He developed a vast and powerful network of political connections and

he proved he was unabashed in using these connections time and again to his advantage.

His abilities placed him in the 80th Congress in 1946 where he would serve with one of

his benefactors, Sen. Claude Pepper.

Yet, Smathers was not altruistic in his professional and political career. As a

prosecutor, he manipulated and exploited his superiors to assign him newsworthy cases

that garnered a great deal of publicity. His goal was to increase his political capital and

gain the public trust to enhance his electability for higher office. When he joined the

91 Wickman, The Uncommon Man, 34-35.

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Marines his desire to contribute to the war effort was eclipsed by the “necessity” to get a

combat assignment in order to embellish his political resume. So much so, that he lied to

medical corps and underwent a medically unnecessary surgery in order to gain hi release

from his duties in Washington. Smathers recalled the event in an interview with Donald

Ritchie:

So I volunteered for the Marines and went through Parris Island, went through Quantico. Then I came to Washington--they put me here for a little while. That's when I saw Phil Graham, just before he was going overseas. I stayed here, and it looked like they were going to try to make a desk guy out of me and keep me here in Washington. But I thought as long as I'm going to be in the service I'll be damned if I'm going to sit around here pushing paper and being a lawyer for the Navy. So I feigned having an appendicitis attack. They took me to the Navy Medical Center. They took my appendix out, just on my representation as to where it was, and how badly it hurt. But that broke the umbilical cord with the administrative section of the Navy and put me back in the Marines. 92

Smathers exploited his network of powerful friends and colleagues to advance his

political career and he ran over anyone who got in his way. He was a segregationist who

openly supported maintaining Jim Crow in Florida and throughout the South. With a

mixture of Southern charm, an affable personality and well honed oratorical skills,

Smathers managed to gain the voter’s trust, favorable press and a network of powerful

friends in Florida and Washington.

Smathers proved to be capable and resourceful, as well as a ruthless and self–serving

politician, and in Congress was a rising star. This was in contrast to Pepper, who had

reached the pinnacle of his political power by 1945 and was becoming vulnerable to

defeat. Pepper’s ideology was steadily moving left of center and his alienation of

Truman, the standard–bearer of the Democratic Party, weakened his national base. The

far more conservative minded Smathers found himself increasingly at odds with Pepper’s

92 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 10.

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political philosophy, and Pepper’s vulnerability in Florida did not go unnoticed by

Smathers’ network. This set the stage for showdown, pitting Pepper’s increasingly

progressive liberalism versus Smathers, the “champion” of the new G.I. generation, in a

battle that would be waged in Florida’s Democratic Primary in 1950.

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Shifting Sands: The Cold War and the Dawn of a New World Order

A long, costly fight brought many changes to the face and geopolitical landscape of

the European continent. Victory in many cases was bittersweet. The enemy had been

defeated and surrendered, but it came at a tremendous cost in life and property. The end of

the war created a power vacuum in Europe and Great Britain, which, like the United States,

had a changing of the old order. On 26 July, Clement Atlee, following his Labour Party’s

victory in the national elections, succeeded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of Great

Britain. Atlee soon came to the realization that Great Britain could no longer maintain

control over its colonies and began the daunting task of decolonizing its vast empire. As

Lewis and Robinson noted, Atlee’s government faced devastating problems of economic

recovery in the period 1945–46, writing:

When American Lend–Lease ended, he protested that the very living conditions of people in the British Isles depended on the continuous flow ‘both of food and … raw materials’ from the United States…. There was no recourse but to go cap in hand for a dollar grant or loan. With or without the American loan, ministers had to choose between financing their domestic recovery and their imperial commitments. 1

The post–war collapse of the British Empire provided an impetus for the United States to

assume a more prevalent leadership role in global affairs. Yet, as John Louis Gaddis

observed, “The successful conclusion of the war had brought with it no guarantee of

lasting security…it was if the United States had finally assumed a decisive role in world

affairs and, we find that the price of preeminence is vulnerability.”2 The Soviet Union

looked to become more of a force on the international scene as well. The war took a

devastating toll on the Soviet people, with an estimated twenty million people lost. The

1 Wm. Roger Louis and Robert Robinson, “The Imperialism of Decolonization,” in Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization, Collected Essays, 2nd ed., Wm. Roger Louis (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 454-55. 2 John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 21.

47

German invasion left the villages and cities in the western Soviet Union in ruins. The

Soviets, like the rest of Europe had to face the enormous task of rebuilding their war torn

cities and their postwar economy. The Soviets also sought to gain hegemony along their

borders with Eastern Europe and the Middle East. From 4 February to 11 February 1945

the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met in Yalta on the Crimea to

discuss the coordination and implementation of the allied war effort, and to plan for the

surrender of Germany and the reorganization of the political landscape of postwar

Europe. At Yalta, the “Big Three” debated the partition of Germany, zones of

occupation, and whether France would participate in the occupation. There was also a

discussion of the future of Eastern Europe. The Department of State Office of the

Historian notes, “The Americans and the British generally agreed that future governments

of the Eastern European nations bordering the Soviet Union should be ‘friendly’ to the

Soviet regime while the Soviets pledged to allow free elections in all territories liberated

from Nazi Germany. Negotiators also released a declaration on Poland, providing for the

inclusion of Communists in the postwar national government.”3 However, Soviet

intrusions into Poland and Eastern Europe had already begun as early as August1939,

after the signing the Treaty of Non–Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union,

also referred to as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. While it was publically promoted as a

non–aggression pact between the Nazis and the USSR, it had a secret agenda as well.

The secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact provided the Soviet Union

time to better prepare the Red Army for conflict, it also afforded them the opportunity to

gain hegemony in the border regions through the acquisition of territory, and control

3 Department of State, Office of the Historian, “The Yalta Conference, 1945,” http://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/YaltaConf, accessed October 7, 2012.

48

through spheres of influence. Following the German invasion of Western Poland in

September 1939, the Soviet Union followed suit, invading and occupying Eastern Poland

several weeks later. In November 1939, the Soviets invaded Finland to acquire territory

for military bases along their borders. Stalin incurred more resistance from the Finns

than he had anticipated. The threat of intervention by British and French forces that

ostensibly would have interrupted a vital supply of iron ore for the German war effort left

Stalin in a perilous situation. So Stalin reached an accord, with Finland, allowing for the

presence of military bases in the border region while allowing the Finnish state to remain

independent and avoid entering the war. The Soviet NKVD invaded the Baltic States of

Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia in June 1940. The three small nations quickly capitulated

to Soviet demands to allow them to place military bases on their soil and each signed

mutual assistance pacts with the USSR. The Soviets also seized Bessarabia which was

included in the negotiation of the secret provisions of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with

Nazi Germany.4

On 22 June 1941 Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and launched

Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which negated the gains in

Eastern Poland and put Stalin’s plans for hegemony on hold until the latter days of the

war. However, as the Red Army turned the tide in 1945, and began its push toward

Germany, the Soviets filled the void left by the Nazi defeat in the occupied nations of

Eastern Europe. While “liberating” these nations, the USSR established pro–Soviet

4 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War-1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 45, NKVD — Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Security) was the predecessor to the Soviet KGB.

49

governments, like the PKWN in Poland.5 This was in accordance with the agreement

struck at Yalta in February 1945, as Berthon and Potts noted:

The Big Three had agreed that the provincial government would be widened to include all parties, including the representatives of the Polish government in exile in London; once this had happened, Churchill and Roosevelt would withdraw their recognition of the London Poles… However, Roosevelt instantly let Stalin off the hook in a private letter, hand–delivered at the conference, that ‘the United States will never lend its support in any way to any provisional government that would be inimical to your interests. 6

However, the death of Roosevelt in April 1945, the ascension of his successor Harry

Truman, and Churchill’s defeat to Clement Atlee in July 1945 all changed the dynamics

of the Big Three alliance and the postwar world. Later that month American forces from

the west and the Red Army from the east would come face to face in Germany. As

Keylor noted, “But the convergence of American and Russian military power at the

center of the devastated continent of Europe in the spring of 1945 signified something of

critical significance for the future of the world beyond the immediate reality of

Germany’s defeat.”7 When Truman joined the other members of the tripartite in

Potsdam in July 1945, Atlee was in attendance with Churchill. The allied victory in

Europe was complete—the decisions regarding how the postwar map of Europe was to be

drawn, both politically and geographically, however, were yet to be determined. Truman

kept personal notes of the events that transpired while attending the Potsdam Conference,

and after meeting with Stalin on the first day, he wrote, “I can deal with Stalin. He’s

5 PKWN — Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation) was a pro-Soviet provincial government established after the Nazi liberation that replaced the pre–war Polish government exiled in Britain during the war. 6 Simon Berthon and Johanna Potts, Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2006), 286. 7 William R. Keylor, The Twentieth Century World: An International History, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 251.

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honest—but smart as hell.”8 However, Stalin proved to be far more difficult to deal with

than Truman had anticipated during this early assessment of the Soviet leader.

The two major points of contention were reparations and Poland. The Soviets and the

PKWN had set new borders for Poland with the Soviets controlling the eastern portion

and the PKWN the western portion. The Soviet Union also claimed a large portion of

East Prussia. Stalin was demanding reparations from Germany, and Truman continued to

reiterate throughout the conference that the United States would not finance repartitions

as they did after World War I and that Germans did not have the economic capacity to

pay repartitions. During the 25 July meeting the subject of Poland came up and Truman

noted, “Russia helped herself to a slice of Poland and gave Poland a nice slice of

Germany taking also a good slice of East Prussia for herself.”9 Discussions on these two

issues continued, but to no avail. On 30 July Truman wrote, “We are at an impasse on

Poland and reparations. Russia and Poland have agreed on the Oder and West Neisse to

the Czecho [sic] Slovakian border. Just a unilateral arrangement without so much as a by

your leave. I don’t like it.” 10

Another matter discussed at the Potsdam Conference was the withdrawal of allied

troops from Iran. On 19 May 1945 the Iranian government under the terms of the 1942

Tripartite Agreement signed with Britain and the Soviet Union, called for the withdrawal

of allied occupation forces. However, the British and the Soviets were reluctant to

withdraw due to their own strategic interests in the oil rich region.

8 Harry S. Truman, “Personal Notes-Potsdam Conference,” July 17, 1945, PSF: 141, Truman Papers, Truman Library. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

51

As Hess noted:

At the Potsdam Conference, President Harry S. Truman promised that the remaining American troops (some 5,000 men servicing military instillations) would be withdrawn within sixty days. The British and Russian governments, however, committed themselves only to the immediate withdrawal of Teheran and postponed further discussion until the foreign ministers’ meeting in late September. Before that conference, the war against Japan suddenly ended. In the following months, a number of questions, including the Allied occupation of Iran, became more pressing and undermined the wartime coalition. Indeed the lines of the American–Russian over Iran took more definite shape. The Soviets tightened their grip on northern Iran, denying Iranian requests to dispatch gendarmes into the Soviet zone and ignoring the ensuing Iranian complaints.11

After Soviet assurances to withdraw on December 1945 and March 4, 1946 passed,

deadlines for withdrawal became arbitrary. The longer the Soviet occupation in the north

continued, the more tensions grew between all of the involved parties. On 5 March 1945,

former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College in Fulton,

Missouri delivering a speech called “The Sinews of Peace.” Churchill said:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.12

Churchill noted his respect for Stalin, his former ally, while bluntly and succinctly

summing up the situation in Europe and defining the rapidity of deterioration in the

relationship of the Tripartite Alliance.

Once again, the Soviets agreed to a withdrawal from Iran on 24 March, but failed to

do so. On 5 April 1946, General Walter Bedell Smith, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet

11 Gary R. Hess, “The Iranian Crisis and the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly 89, no.1 (March, 1974): 124-25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2148118. 12 Mark A. Kishlansky, ed., Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace” Quoted in Sources of World History, (New York, Harper Collins, 1995) pp. 298-302, http://www.historyguide.org/europe/churchill.html, accessed October 16, 2012.

52

Union, met with Stalin and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to deliver a

letter from Truman and discuss the situation in Iran. Along with Stalin’s reply, Smith

reported his discussions with Stalin and Molotov in a telegram to President Truman. In

this telegram Smith wrote, “I asked directly why the Generalissimo thought that any

power or powers were a threat to the USSR. To this he replied, Churchill—He tried to

instigate war against Russia and persuaded the U.S. to join him in armed occupation of

our territory in 1919, and lately he has been at it again. I then asked him categorically if

he really believed that the U.S. and Great Britain were in an alliance to thwart Russia. He

replied that he did so believe.”13 After continued pressure by the United States and the

United Nations, Stalin finally capitulated and removed the Red Army from Northern Iran.

Before the withdrawal, Stalin had negotiated with the Iranians for an agreement to control

the oil fields of Azerbaijan. Once the Red Army withdrew, the satellite communist

regime in Azerbaijan collapsed and so did his agreement with the Iranians, as Wettig

noted, “All Soviet attempts to extend power beyond the regions conquered by the Red

Army ended in failure.”14 The fundamental change in dynamics and the hard line

positions taken by both Stalin and Truman since the Potsdam Conference revealed major

cracks in the alliance of the war time tripartite. The Iranian crisis brought forth a new

level of mistrust of the United States and Great Britain by the Soviet Union, and vise

versa.

13 Walter Bedell Smith to Harry S. Truman, Letter, April 5, 1946, PSF: 69; Truman Papers, Truman Library. 14 Gerhard Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East-West Conflict, 1939-1953 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 77.

53

Mastny, examining the Soviet perspective of coming events, writes, “Could elite armed

conflict ensue instead from the unbridgeable differences between socialism and

capitalism, that is, from the growing rivalry between the two superpowers? The

conclusion they eventually reached was characteristically ambivalent: there was not a

“danger of war” but rather a “threat of a danger of war” Or, in the similarly ambivalent

Western terminology, there was now a Cold War.”15 With the line drawn in the sand, the

Iranian crisis was the first of many tests to come as war time allies became ideological

enemies, creating a bi–polar world and the ushering in the Cold War.

The events that unfolded in Iran created a greater mistrust of Soviet intentions by the

president and the State Department. On 22 February 1946, at the height of the crisis, the

charge d’ affaires in Moscow, George F. Kennan, sent to Secretary of State James F.

Byrnes his analysis of Soviet attitudes, goals, and agendas in the postwar world. This

analysis, destined to be known as the “Long Telegram,” essentially outlined what would

become the basic tenets of American Cold War policy adopted by Truman, and, executed

in one form or another by his successors up to George H.W. Bush. Kennan began by

examining the mindset of Stalin, as he understood it, and using Stalin’s own words as

evidence as to how it reflected Stalin’s perception of the socialist–capitalist world.

Kennan observed that:

USSR still lives in antagonistic “capitalist encirclement” with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence. As stated by Stalin in 1927 to a delegation of American Workers: In course of further development of international revolution there will emerge two centers of world significance: a socialist center, drawing to itself the countries which tend toward socialism, and a capitalist center, drawing to itself the countries that incline toward capitalism. Battle between these

15 Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and The Politics of Communism, 1941 – 1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 305-306.

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two centers for command of world economy will decide fate of capitalism and of communism in entire world.’16

It is most likely that Stalin was speaking abstractly, in accordance with Lenin–Marxist

philosophy, but his words eerily foreshadow the development of bi–polar centers of

power at odds ideologically. This, in part, explains the Stalin’s desire to establish Soviet

spheres of influence.

However, according to Kennan, in the minds of the Politburo, a simpler reason existed

driving the Soviet’s to attempt to buffer and insulate its borders—anxiety. Kennan

writes, that, “At the bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and

instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.”17 The fear of foreign intruders invading the soil

of the motherland also helps to explain the terms demanded by Stalin at Yalta and the

subsequent establishment of satellite communist regimes along the eastern and southern

borders of the USSR and their reluctance to capitulate on Iran. Yet, Kennan believed that

the Russian sense of insecurity did not, in fact, have any sound basis in reality. In

January 1947, Kennan prepared a report for Secretary of Defense James Forrestal titled,

“The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Kennan analyzed Stalin’s perception of a capitalist–

socialist battle and the perceived threat of foreign invasion, writing,

all internal opposition forces in Russia have consistently been portrayed as the agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic toward Soviet power. By the same token emphasis has been placed on the original communist thesis of a basic antagonism between the capitalist and Socialist worlds. It is clear from many indications, that this emphasis is not founded in reality…. But there is ample evidence that the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet society from the world outside its borders is founded not on the realities of

16 George F. Kennan to James F. Byrnes, Telegram, February 22, 1946, SMOF: 116, George M. Elsey Papers, Truman Library. 17 Ibid.

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foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.18

Kennan’s Long Telegram prompted President Truman to examine the Soviet

situation in even greater detail. In July 1946 he directed Special Counsel Clark Clifford

to gather information on the Soviet Union and to report back to him. Gaddis writes, “That

same day told his advisers that he was ‘tired of our being pushed around’, that ‘here little,

there a little, they're chiseling from us,’ and that, ‘now is [the] time to take[a] stand on

Russia.”19 On 18 July Clifford wrote a letter to Admiral William Leahy of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff to assess Soviet activities affecting the security of the United States and to

estimate the present and current military strength and present and future military policies

of the USSR. On 20 July 1946 Clifford wrote Soviet Ambassador William Bedell Smith

requesting him to review all agreements with the Soviets as to repartitions, violations by

the USSR of those agreements and recommend future U.S. policy in regard to

reparations.20 Clifford sought input from numerous high–level officials and the

culmination of his efforts was sent to the president on 24 September 1946 in a report

titled, “American Relations with the Soviet Union” that became more informally known

as the Clifford–Elsey report. The opening paragraph of the introduction summarizes the

widely held belief of the contributors, “The gravest problem facing the United States

today is that of American relations with the Soviet Union. The solution of that problem

may determine whether or not there will be a third World War. Soviet leaders appear to

be conducting their nation on a course of aggrandizement designed to lead to eventual

18 X, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” Foreign Affairs, 25, no. 4, (July 1947): 570. Note: X is the pseudonym used by George F. Kennan when publishing “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in Foreign Affairs, in July 1947. 19 John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace, 32. 20 Clark M. Clifford to Admiral William Leahy, Letter, July 18, 1946, SMOF: 116; George M. Elsey Papers, Truman Library; Clark M. Clifford to Ambassador William Bedell Smith, July 20, 1946. SMOF: 116, George M. Elsey Papers, Truman Library.

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world domination by the USSR. Their goal, and their policies to reach it, was in direct

conflict with American ideals.21 The report surmised that the Soviet Union was a threat

to world peace and outlined three methods for dealing with the Soviets. The first is to

persuade the Soviet Union to actively and honestly participate in the United Nations to

foster a spirit of world cooperation, secondly to maintain military strength powerful

enough to restrain, if necessary, Soviet aggression and finally, to foster cooperation

through cultural, intellectual and economic exchange.22 These methods were integrated

as part of the U. S. policy toward the Soviet Union and remained in effect throughout the

Cold War era. President Truman and many within his administration held a great deal of

mistrust of Soviet intentions, and it was reflected in the administration’s response as it

gradually developed its strategy in conducting Soviet foreign policy. As Gaddis points

out, “It was these manifestations of unilateralism that first set off alarm bells in the West

about Russian intentions; the resulting uneasiness in turn stimulated deeper more

profound anxieties.”23 These anxieties eventually led to Truman’s policy of taking a

hard–line in relations with the Soviet Union and the development of containment to

prevent the spread of communism throughout the world. Truman’s angst was a result of

his personal observations of Soviet behavior during his talks with Stalin the waning days

of the war.

As Gaddis noted, “Soviet actions in Eastern Europe in 1945, together with change in

tactics by the international Communist movement, convinced them that Moscow had

21 Clark Clifford, “American Relations with the Soviet Union” September 24, 1946, SMOF: 1; Rose A. Conway Papers, Truman Library. 22 Ibid. 23 Gaddis, The Long Peace, 32.

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embarked on a program of unlimited expansion which threatened the very survival of the

United States and its Western allies.”24

Even as the events of the Iranian Crisis were still unfolding, another threat appeared in

Greece and Turkey. There was a serious challenge by communists for control of the

governments in both nations. In Greece, the situation was serious as a civil war erupted in

March 1946, and after a year of fighting the situation in Greece became desperate. On 3

March 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall received a letter from Greek Foreign

Minister Paul Economou–Gouras requesting aid from the United States. Economou-

Gouras wrote:

The Greek Government and people are therefore compelled to appeal to the Government of the United States and through it to the American people for financial, economic and expert assistance…. The need is great. The determination of the Greek people to do all in their power to restore Greece as a self–supporting, self–respecting democracy is also great; but the destruction in Greece has been so complete as to rob the Greek people of their power to meet the situation by themselves…. It is the profound hope of the Greek Government that the Government of the United States will find a way to render to Greece without delay the assistance for which it now appeals.25

Truman was quick to respond. After analyzing the situation, the president was set to

address a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947. Truman summarized the situation

in both Greece and Turkey and outlined his vision of “containment” while asking

Congress to appropriate four–hundred million dollars in economic and military aid to

Greece and Turkey. The address, titled, “Recommendation for Assistance to Greece and

Turkey,” served as the declaration of Truman’s foreign policy initiatives and came to be

more widely known as the Truman Doctrine. The President set forth to contain the

24 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of The Cold War, 1941 – 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 284. 25 Paul Economou–Gouras to George C. Marshall, Letter, March 3, 1947, Subject File: 6; Joseph M. Jones Papers, Truman Library.

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spread of communism in Europe by providing aid to the Greek and Turkish governments,

assist in their efforts to defeat communist uprisings, and restore strength and stability to

the established governments of both nations in particular and the region as a whole. In

his address, Truman states that:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.26

Truman came to realize the totalitarianism that existed within the Soviet Union and was

determined to stop the USSR from spreading its influence and control any farther. As

Secretary of State Marshall observed during a Cabinet meeting, that, “Our policy, I think,

should be directed toward restoring a balance of power in Europe and Asia.”27

Marshall knew that the devastation and destruction caused by the war left the peoples

of Europe and Asia in despair and without basic necessities such as food, clothing and

shelter, a sufficient number of operating manufacturing facilities, and working

infrastructure to repair the mechanisms of economy, the result would be an infinite

number of living causalities without hope for the future. On 5 July 1947 Marshall

outlined his plan for action in a speech titled “European Initiative Essential to Economic

26 Harry S. Truman, “Recommendation for Assistance to Greece and Turkey” March 12, 1947, SMOF: 17; George M. Elsey Papers, Truman Library. 27 John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace, 57.

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Recovery” at Harvard University. Marshall summed up his vision for aiding Europe in

its economic recovery, saying:

It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.28

Following Marshall’s speech in June, work on creating a viable plan for assisting

European recovery began in earnest in July. Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder

sought input from Maurice Frere, Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements,

and the State Department prepared a report analyzing the problems associated

implementing a plan. The White House was also debating the issue and trying to establish

Truman’s role in the development of the plan. In a memorandum sent by Under–

Secretary of State Joseph M. Jones to Francis Russell, Director of the Office of Public

Affairs discussing his meeting with White House Special Assistant Clark Clifford on 2

July, 1947, Jones writes, that:

We got talking about the major lines of foreign policy, and I mentioned that in my opinion there was a great deal of confusion as to the relationship of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan…. He felt strongly that the President should issue some sort of clarification in an early speech or statement…. I detect on Clifford’s part a desire to have the President take more of a lead in foreign affairs and to be the chief spokesman in this field…. Perhaps it hasn’t gone as far as jealousy of the Secretary at the White House, but certainly there are tendencies in that direction.29

It took six months before a final draft of the bill was ready to be sent to Congress. On

19 December President Truman sent the bill to Congress for its consideration. On 3 April

28 George C. Marshall, “European Initiative Essential to Economic Recovery,” June 5, 1947, The Department of State Bulletin, Volume XVI, Number 415, pages 1159-1160. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/marshall/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=2&documentdate=1947-06-05&documentid=8-7. 29 Joseph M. Jones to Francis Russell, Memorandum, July 2, 1947, Subject File: 2, Joseph M. Jones Papers, Truman Library.

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1948, the president signed the European Recovery Act into law and the Marshall Plan

was implemented. One of the main provisions for participation was access and advisory

influence over the budgets of recipients to assure that funds were distributed as intended

and not diverted for military or political purposes. Thus the Organization for European

Economic Cooperation was created on 16 April 1948 to coordinate recovery efforts.

Initially, all of the nations of Europe, except Spain, were invited to participate including

the USSR.

However, the provisions proved to be too much for the Soviets. As Keylor writes,

regarding the Soviet objections to the plan, “But it was too much to expect of a victorious

great power, particularly one as secretive and suspicious as the Soviet Union, to open its

books to the prying eyes of American financial officials... the investigations of the

Marshall Plan administrators would doubtless have revealed how vulnerable the postwar

economy of the Soviet Union was, a circumstance the Kremlin was desperately trying to

conceal for reasons of Communist ideology as well as national pride.”30

Initially the Soviet’s participated in the Paris Conference for Marshall Plan recipients

because Stalin believed that he could manipulate the terms of participation and receive

the loans without the necessity of capitulating to the terms set forth by the United States

for participation. However, before the conference concluded Foreign Minister

Vyacheslav Molotov made it clear that the Soviet Union would not negotiate terms for

Marshall Plan assistance. Referring to Stalin’s response, Wettig notes that:

His confidence, however, that he would be capable of spoiling the enemy’s game was shattered when Molotov reported from Paris that the Anglo–Saxons insisted that the recovery program did not allow for major modification. Another source of concern was the Czechoslovak eagerness to accept the U.S. invitation, as well as indications of a similar Polish attitude. Stalin now suspected that

30 Keylor, The Twentieth Century World, 263.

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the client countries were willing to defy him by accepting U.S. conditions. He dreaded losing control of Eastern Europe more than anything else. On 7 July he called Molotov back.31

When the Paris meeting resumes on 12 July, the Soviet Union declined to attend and

pressured the Eastern Bloc into not attending as well. However, on 23 June the Soviets

took unilateral action that would serve to solidify the Cold War by initiating a blockade

of the western zone of Berlin. In January 1947 Great Britain and the United States

merged their individual zones of occupation into one to establish a common economic

zone. By March 1947 a central bank was established to service the Anglo–American and

French zones. After serious negotiations the French finally agreed to merge with the

Anglo–American zone on 18 June, and on 20 June they issued a new West German

currency, the deutsche mark.32 This rapidly occurring consolidation of economic

resources was of grave concern to Stalin and the Politburo as it threatened their own

ambitions for Germany. Also, it is plausible that Moscow felt isolated as the other

former allies were uniting without the Soviets, thus widening the growing fissure

between the east and west even further. As Keylor points out:

This process of economic integration in western Germany—the removal of all restrictions on the circulation of labor, capital, and products within the three zones, the formation of German–controlled trizonal economic bodies with broad decision–making powers, and the establishment of a trizonal central bank and currency backed by the American financial power of the Marshall Plan—can only have been interpreted by Moscow as what indeed it turned out to be: a prelude to the political integration of the three western zones in the form of a West German state dependent on and loyal to the United States.33

Given this development in Germany it is understandable why Moscow felt suspicious of

the motivation behind the Marshall Plan and even more wary in allowing their satellite

31 Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, 138. 32 Keylor, The Twentieth Century World, 270. 33 Ibid.

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nations to participate. Therefore the Soviet Union ultimately decided to decline

participation as well. Keylor astutely notes, that, “Since the newly consolidated western

occupation zones of Germany contained three quarters of that country’s population as

well as the most productive industrial region of prewar Europe (the Ruhr–Rhineland–

Westphalia complex), the prospect of a unified, economically advanced West German

state associated with the United States produced predictable uneasiness in the Kremlin.”34

As the western zone moved closer to creating a West German state in the summer of

1948, the Soviets fearful of the subversion of their East European clients and interruption

of their own goals in Germany withdrew from the Marshall Plan and looked for a way to

respond. Wettig writes that, “The Kremlin was determined to take no passive look at

economic and political consolidation of the Western zones. Given that the Germans had

failed to allow themselves to be persuaded by Eastern advocacy of unification and a

peace treaty, the Anglo–Saxon powers on whose backing they relied had to be exposed as

weak and unable to provide protection. This would teach people that they had no option

but to join the USSR.”35 Since Berlin lay one–hundred and ten miles inside the Russian

zone, their solution was to block off the western sector of Berlin from the western zones,

thus shutting off access by water, rail and roads. This would leave over two–million

inhabitants without a way to obtain basic necessities of life. The Soviets were willing to

induce starvation upon the inhabitants of West Berlin in a bold attempt to generate fear

and to force the capitulation of the United States, Great Britain, and France to abandon

the idea of a West German state and independent currency. In this game of international

34 Ibid., 271. 35 Wettig, Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, 166.

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chess, the West made the first move and the Soviets countered, now the board belonged

to the Western allies and it was again their move.

The Soviets had effectively sealed off access to Berlin by land and water. Thus the

only possible avenue left to the West was the airways. The United States and Great

Britain coordinated efforts and began airlifting supplies into Berlin beginning on 26 June

1948, just two days after the Soviet blockade went into effect. The aircraft brought in

food, clothing, sundries, fresh water, and coal for heating. At the outset of the airlift

there were two airports in the western sector, Gastow in the British sector and Tempelhof

in the U.S. sector. On 5 August 1948 construction began on a third airfield, Tegel, in the

French sector that opened on 5 November. The massive number of flights created a

logistics nightmare as well as dangerous flying conditions based on the sheer number of

aircraft coming in and out. At one point, on 7 April 1949, Tempelhof control handled the

takeoff and landing of 100 aircraft during one six and a half hour period that is a rate of

one plane every four minutes.36 The first month of the airlift operations a total of 1404

metric tons of supplies were flown in to Berlin on 500 sorties with the U.S. Air Force

flying 474 of those missions. At the airlift’s peak in July 1949 over 253,090 metric tons

was flown in on 27,592 flights. In total, 2,325,509 metric tons came into Berlin on 277,

569 flights.37 The airlift foiled Stalin’s plan to demoralize the population of West Berlin

and to embarrass and expose the “Trizonal” coalition as weak and Stalin’s bold attempt to

take a strong stand was a failure.

36 “The Berlin Airlift,” PBS American Experience, timeline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/airlift/timeline/timeline2.html. 37 Roger G Miller, To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949 (College Station, Texas: A&M University Press, Reprint, 2008), 201.

64

On 12 May 1949 Stalin reopened the road and rail access to West Berlin. The airlift

continued through 30 September when the final flight arrived in Berlin. Keylor notes,

that, “The Berlin Blockade accelerated the progressive involvement of the United States

in the defense of Western Europe that had begun on the rhetorical level with the

proclamation of the Truman Doctrine and the adoption of the containment policy during

the Greek and Turkish crises in 1947.”38 This was indeed the case as the United States

and Great Britain initiated talks that led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on 4

April 1949. The measure passed the Senate and was signed by Truman on 25 July. The

treaty pledged mutual defense of the other member nations should they come under

attack from an aggressor nation thus forming the NATO coalition.

On 23 May 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany was established in the western

occupation zones ending military rule. On 7 October the Soviets retaliated by

announcing the formation of the German Democratic Republic, effectively partitioning

Germany and dividing it east–west geographically, as well as ideologically and

politically. Both sides moved unilaterally, attempting to further their own security

interests while countering advances of their adversary. However, there were new

developments taking place resulting in a paradigm shift in East–West relations and the

Cold War. As President Truman announced on 23 September 1949, “I believe the

American people to the fullest extent consistent with the national security are entitled to

be informed of all developments in the field of atomic energy. That is my reason for

making public the following information. We have evidence that within recent weeks an

38 Keylor, The Twentieth Century World, 271.

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atomic explosion occurred in the U. S. S. R.”39 As the Cold War era became entrenched,

the nuclear era dawned on the horizon. However, there was opposition to the president’s

views and policy in regard to the Soviet Union. The opposition was vocal and much of it

came from the left within his own party—led by Henry Wallace and Claude Pepper. This

would create a political firestorm as battle for the hearts and minds of the American

electorate unfolded in 1948.

39 Department of State, Bulletin, October 3, 1949, 487; Subject File: 2, Joseph M. Jones Papers, Truman Library.

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Communism, Race and the Changing Landscape of the American Polity Henry Wallace came to Washington in 1933 as FDR’s Secretary of Agriculture. In

1940, as Roosevelt was positioning himself for a run at a third term, he and Vice

President, John Nance Gardner disagreed over the direction of the New Deal and the

administration’s policies.1 Roosevelt selected Wallace as his running mate on the

Democratic ticket in 1940, and following the election, he served as vice president during

World War II. Wallace was a loyal New Dealer and liberal. However, Wallace moved

farther left as the 1944 election approached and he made more conservative factions

within the Democratic Party nervous. Wallace, like his friend and fellow liberal Claude

Pepper, failed to take notice of the growing conservative tone within the party and the

nation at large. His increasingly idyllic views and his championing of a new world order

based on internationalism made him a liability, and forced FDR to remove him from the

ticket in 1944 in favor of Harry Truman. After FDR’s death, Wallace, along with other

New Deal contemporaries like Harold Ickes and James Roosevelt, became increasingly

disenchanted with the direction taken by President Truman, especially in regard to Soviet

foreign policy. In the August 1948 edition of The Atlantic, a ghost writer working with

Wallace described that being with him, “He gives me an eerie feeling that he really isn't

listening when I talk with him. He may be listening with his brain, but certainly not with

his guts. He doesn't seem to know how to have a belly–laugh—least of all at himself. He

gives me a strong impression of considering himself a man of destiny, a person

answering calls the rest of us don't hear.”2 Wallace was appointed by President

Roosevelt to serve as Secretary of Commerce on 2 March 1945, and continued to serve as

1 http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_John_Garner.htm 2 Gardner Jackson, “Henry Wallace: A Divided Mind” Atlantic Monthly, 182, August 1948, 27.

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Secretary under President Truman. The end of the war in Europe coupled with the

rapidity of deterioration in U.S.–Soviet relations as the Cold War developed revealed

deep convictions and differences held by Secretary Wallace and President Truman

regarding the course of American foreign policy. During the first year, the relationship

remained cordial with Wallace supporting the president and the Administration in public.

Privately, however, Wallace shared his disagreements with the direction of the

Administration’s foreign policy with the president in a letter dated 23 July 1946. Wallace

wrote, “Our basic distrust of the Russians, which has been greatly intensified in recent

months by the playing up of conflict in the press, stems from differences in political and

economic organization. . . . I am convinced that we can meet that challenge as we have in

the past by demonstrating that economic abundance can be achieved without sacrificing

personal, political and religious liberties. We cannot meet it as Hitler tried to by an anti–

Comintern alliance.”3 However, that would change when Wallace accepted an invitation

to speak at a major political rally being held in Madison Square Garden in September.

Hamby, in discussing the topic of Wallace’s speech, noted that:

Early midsummer, Wallace accepted an invitation to speak at a major political rally sponsored by the ICCASP and NCPAC and scheduled for New York on September 12. Since the meeting was to provide a major kickoff for the liberal effort in the congressional campaign, Wallace initially planned to attack the way the conservatives have blocked domestic progress in the 79th Congress. However, one of Wallace's junior aides in the Commerce Department leaked a July 23 letter on Soviet–American relations to Beanie Baldwin. Baldwin persuaded Wallace to switch his topic to foreign policy and base his speech on the letter…. Perhaps he thought Wallace’s enunciation of principles of Soviet-American friendship could reverse American foreign policy.4

3 Henry A. Wallace to Harry S. Truman, Letter, July 23, 1946, WHCF: OF 1585; Truman Papers, Truman Library. 4 Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 127-129.

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Whether Wallace sought destiny, as Jackson suggests, or had destiny thrust upon him

is questionable; and to say that Baldwin “persuaded” Wallace to change tack and focus in

his address on foreign policy is generous. Wallace, by all accounts an intelligent man,

must have known that taking a public stand against Truman’s foreign policy while

serving in the administration would annoy the president and suggests that he had made up

his mind to abandon Truman and work toward undermining his credibility going forward.

Wallace brought a copy of the speech to the President for his review, but there was a

controversy surrounding what the President saw and approved and the speech that

Wallace actually delivered. According to Margaret Truman, “Henry Wallace had cajoled

him into this generous but inaccurate remark. I'm trying to be objective when I say this;

perhaps I'm being too hard on my father. When I discussed this bit of history with Matt

Connolly, only recently, Matt said bluntly: ‘it was nothing but a double cross. Wallace

showed the President one speech and made a different one.’ There's some truth to those

words. Listeners that night heard Mr. Wallace make a bitter attack on the foreign–policy

of the Truman administration.”5

The speech Wallace delivered that evening was titled, “The Way to Peace: A Division

of World Between Russia and the United States.” Wallace’s words echoed the angst and

ire of many American liberals to the tone set by Churchill in his “Sinews of Peace”

Speech in Fulton, Missouri earlier in March. Wallace said:

Make no mistake about it—the British imperialistic policy in the Near East alone, combined with Russian retaliation, would lead the United States straight to war unless

Note: Calvin Benham “Beanie” Baldwin, 1902-1975, served as assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace from 1933-1940. In 1945, he became Executive Vice–Chairman of NCPAC which later merged with several other liberal front organizations to form the Progressive Citizens of America, PCA. The PCA was the foundation for the Progressive Party that ran Wallace for president in 1948. 5 Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1973), 316.

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we have a clearly–defined and realistic policy of our own. Neither of these two great powers wants war now, but the danger is that whatever their intentions may be, their current policies may eventually lead to war. To prevent war and insure our survival in a stable world, it is essential that we look abroad through our own American eyes and not through the eyes of either the British Foreign Office or a pro–British or anti–Russian press. In this connection, I want one thing clearly understood. I am neither anti–British nor pro–British—neither anti–Russian nor pro–Russian. And just two days ago, when President Truman read these words, he said that they represented the policy of his administration.6

Wallace spoke with impudence, expressing his own his own deep–seated convictions

regarding the future of world peace, diplomacy and the role of U.S. foreign policy in that

process.

In doing so, Wallace represented and expressed the mindset of progressive liberals. He

distanced himself from the administration’s foreign policy agenda, while positioning

himself to represent an alternative to President Truman in 1948. Wallace, in concluding

his speech, revealed his assessment of the current situation while outlining his vision for

the future, saying, “In brief, as I see it today, the World Order is bankrupt—and the

United States, Russia, and England are the receivers. These are the hard facts of power

politics on which we have to build a functioning, powerful United Nations and a body of

international law…. I believe that peace—the kind of peace I have outlined tonight—is

the basic issue, both in the Congressional campaign this fall and right on through the

Presidential election of 1948.”7 In Wallace’s speech, there were no apparent ambiguities

as far as the White House was concerned and his views as well as his motives were clear.

Truman waited for the dust to settle and on 20 September 1946, eight days after the

speech, he asked for and received Wallace’s resignation as Secretary of Commerce. The

6 Henry A. Wallace, “The Way to Peace: A Division of the World between Russia and the United States,” September 12, 1946, sponsored by the ICCASP/NCPAC, Vital Speeches of the Day (October 1, 1946), v. 12, n. 24, p. 738. 7 Ibid., 740-741.

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stage was set for a showdown in 1948 with Henry Wallace as one of the star players in

the unfolding drama. However, Wallace was not alone in his stand against Truman’s

foreign policy, and the other major player to emerge was Claude Pepper.

Pepper, like Wallace, held pro–Soviet views. On 22 June 1944 at Madison Square

Garden in New York, Pepper spoke at a Russian War Relief Rally on the third

anniversary of the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. Pepper told the crowd on that

Thursday evening:

Upon the old lands of ancient Russia freedom has not only had a new birth but found a new savior…. No tribute upon our landing from the West upon the coast of France has been more gracious than that of Joseph Stalin, the world’s greatest general… What is the meaning of the willingness of senators to denounce in this day, when we are fighting shoulder to shoulder, Joseph Stalin a great enemy? Why do great newspapers still disseminate vicious and false propaganda against the Soviet Union and strive to fan the flames of prejudice against such an Ally, such a friend? 8

Pepper became an outspoken supporter of the Soviet Union before Truman took office.

Pepper confided in one of his influential constituents, Colonel Raymond Robins. Robins

was an economist and a social reformer. In 1917 he led an American Red Cross mission

to Russia, where he became a frontline witness to the Russian Revolution and a defacto

representative between the American ambassador and Lenin. Robins believed it was

crucial that the United States establish relations with the Soviets. Referring to Robins’

efforts in Russia, Salzman writes, that, “he tried to convince the Bolsheviks of the

wisdom of Soviet–American cooperation. Far more difficult, however, was his attempt to

persuade Washington that Lenin and Trotsky were not criminal agents in the pay of the

German enemy. Robins’s aim was to demonstrate that Russian–American cooperation

8 Claude Pepper, Speech, “In Observance of the Third Anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Entry Into the War,” June 22, 1944, sponsored by Russian War Relief, Box 34, Folder 3-2, Robins Papers.

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was critical, not only for long–range American self–interest but for the immediate war

effort as well.”9

Robins continued to champion the cause of formal recognition of the Soviet Union

after returning to the United States and continually kept in touch with Soviet officials in

the United States—often attending various diplomatic events. He remained a friend of

the Soviet Union. Pepper forwarded a copy of his address at Madison Square Garden on

22 June 1944 to Robins, after receiving word of Robins’s enthusiasm for its content,

writing, that, “Colonel, you are one of the finest friends I have. I am not only immensely

grateful to you as a friend, and if I am not presumptive, a kindred spirit, and I implore

you not to desist from writing me and giving me from time to time the information and

inspiration of your great mind and spirit.”10 Pepper, as Wallace did, shared Roosevelt’s

Wilsonian vision of a world body to promote peace and the necessity for a strong

international organization to arbitrate and mediate international disputes. He became an

outspoken supporter for the signing of the United Nations charter in the U.S. Senate.

Clark notes that, “Just seven weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Pepper

began to think about the postwar period. He wrote to his friend Raymond Robins, ‘I am

doing what I can to foster an appreciation of the necessity of some kind of a world

governmental structure to be built upon the Post War wreckage’.”11 Pepper’s faith in the

UN was strong and a belief supported by his friends Robins and Wallace. However, after

9 Neil V. Salzman, Reform and Revolution: The Life and Times of Raymond Robins (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 3. 10 Claude Pepper to Colonel Raymond Robins, Letter, June 26, 1944, Box 34, Folder 3-2, Robins Papers. 11 James C. Clark, “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of His 1950 Defeat, 1944–1948” The Florida Historical Quarterly, 74, no.1 (Summer, 1995): 2; also see Claude Pepper to Raymond Robins, Letter, January 28, 1942, Pepper Papers, Series 201, Box 130, Folder 4.

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Roosevelt’s death, Pepper came to view the signing of the UN Charter as a legacy to the

life and career of FDR.

In August 1945, the necessity for the United Nations took on a whole new meaning

for Pepper, for he believed it to be the only hope for the salvation of humanity itself. In

an informal press release titled “Very Truly Yours,” Pepper routinely dispensed his views

on important issues of the day. On 16 August, Pepper began this issue, writing, “The

Charter and the Bomb” as his opening piece. Just ten days after the second atomic bomb

fell on Nagasaki, Pepper wrote, “Instantaneously, terrifyingly, the atomic bomb has

smashed nationalism, isolationism, international war–making, into as fine a vapor of

nothingness as were the factories, the homes, and the human beings of Hiroshima. War

can no longer be thought of as an instrument of national policy. From this day on out, the

charter of the United Nations must work.”12 Pepper, as did many of his liberal

contemporaries, came to view the rapid disintegration of relations between the United

States and the Soviet Union as a threat to their internationalist vision and laid the blame

directly on of President Truman. Without the leadership of Roosevelt to cohesively hold

the party together, the Democrats began to fractionalize among the ultra–liberal

progressives, moderates, and the more conservative factions of the party. Whether

blinded by his martyrdom of Roosevelt or his own hubris, Pepper overtly refused to stand

with Truman when he needed it most. Instead of supporting the new president during a

crucial period of adjustment, Pepper simply advanced his opinion that Truman was not up

to the task.

12 Claude Pepper, “Very Truly Yours: The Charter and the Bomb,” August 16, 1945, Box 36, Folder 1-3, Robins Papers.

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When the Iranian crisis was at its peak, Pepper went to the senate floor in defense of

the Soviet Union. Time reported on Pepper’s speech in the 1April 1946 edition in the

Foreign Relations column, writing that, “Florida’s Senator Claude Pepper, fervent New

Dealer and able, if not popular, member of the potent Foreign Relations Committee, rose

in the Senate to make a cool defense of the Soviet Union and a fiery attack on Harry

Truman’s policy of getting tough with Russia.”13 Pepper believed that the United States

should share its nuclear technology with the United Nations and like Wallace, looked

upon Great Britain as the root cause of the discourse between the U.S. and the USSR.

The Time article noted, that, “New Dealer Pepper had only praise and apology for Russia.

Said he, It comes with ill grace from certain world powers whose troops are stationed in

every nation from Egypt to Singapore to make a world conflagration out of the movement

of a few troops a few miles into a neighboring territory to resist an oil monopoly.”14

Wallace and Pepper would continue to attack the president’s foreign policy.

Pepper would again be at odds with the president on the issue of the Truman Doctrine.

Pepper in a 9 April 1947 letter to Colonel Robins regarding an upcoming visit to Florida,

wrote that, “And there is considerable probability that I will have to cancel out the whole

trip on account of the imperative necessity of my being in the fight here against this

‘Truman Doctrine’. Colonel, I may have erred in the announcement that I would vote for

the bill in the final form, although I am going to do everything in my power to change it

and I am going to spare nothing in my attack upon it in the Senate.”15

13 Time, “Red Pepper,” 47, no. 1(April 1, 1946), 21. 14 Ibid. 15 Claude Pepper to Colonel Raymond Robins, Letter, April 9, 1947, Box 38, Folder 6–1, Robins Papers.

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Wallace and Pepper formed the base for the emerging far–left tendencies of

progressive Democrats within the party. Both were staunch in their displeasure with the

course of U.S. foreign policy and Truman’s ability to lead. However, Wallace, albeit not

in any official capacity, was leaning toward becoming the candidate of a third party that

would be decidedly to the left. As Hamby noted:

The large crowds that greeted Wallace on his return to the United States led to talk of a new political party, and he did nothing to discourage the speculation. Throughout his subsequent speaking tours, he tossed out hints of a third party and even made a couple of indirect overtures. Speaking in North Dakota on May 30, he warned that he might ‘take a vacation’ in 1948. Then he added: ‘If the cause of peace can be helped, I shall do more than take a vacation. The day is coming when labor will agree on a real labor party.16

The changing dynamics within the Democratic Party became more apparent heading into

the midterm elections of 1946 and this change was reflected within the various front

groups outside of the party proper. The largest and most influential of these groups were

the labor driven CIO–PAC, NCPAC, ADA and the ICCASP, which was comprised of

actors, artists, writers, performers, and musicians. Most formed to support FDR’s 1944

reelection campaign and remained active in supporting Roosevelt and liberalism

afterward. However, Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 shook the liberal factions of the

party to its foundations and the apparent liberal united front was more a mirage than

reality. Brock notes that James Loeb Jr., referring to the power of Roosevelt and his

ability to provide cohesiveness to the liberal factions, said that, “From March, 1933, until

mid–April 1945, American liberals clung to the illusion that they had ‘achieved power’…

throughout this long and significant era of the ascendency of progressive ideas in

16 Hamby, Beyond the New Deal, 199.

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government, however, there never existed an authentic liberal coalition which could

survive the loss of Roosevelt.”17

The progressives inside and outside the administration had been in a position of

influence and power for twelve years and were not looking to surrendering it in favor of

an “outsider,” whom they believed to be a pretender to the throne. When it became more

and more apparent that Truman was going in a different direction than the old New

Dealers, significant changes within the administration occurred. Brock writes that, “By

the fall of 1946 all… were gone, their places taken by men from outside the ranks of

liberalism. The liberals and progressives were leaving Washington as they had come in

1933—by the trainloads.”18

The Democratic Party was in a state of flux and the political mystique of the New

Deal came and went with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The political landscape was in

transition. The American voters went to the polls with change in mind, and on 5

November 1946, the American electorate for the first time in over a decade sent a

Republican majority to the U.S. Congress. In the House of Representatives, the

Republicans’ gained fifty–five seats for a total of 256 and gained 12 seats in the Senate

for a total of 51.19 The midterm election of 1946 weakened the liberal power base even

further.

After the 1946 election, the liberals became even further divided on what direction to

take. Two of the leading Democratic front organizations, the NCPAC and ICCASP were

17 Clifton Brock, Americans for Democratic Action: It’s Role in National Politics (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 39. 18 Ibid.; 43. 19 William Graf and John Andrews, “Statistics of the Congressional Election of 1946,” (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1947), 43-45, http://history.house.gov/Institution/Election-Statistics/Election-Statistics/.

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profoundly weakened and in early January 1947 they decided to merge and form the

Progressive Citizens of America, with founders Frank Kingdon and Jo Davidson serving

as co–chairs. The 6 January 1947 issue of Time noted the event in the National Affairs

section writing that former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia said, “I have never

been in any party more than 15 minutes… We [liberals] are just a bunch of political

prima donnas… If everything doesn’t go our way we bolt… let’s not fool ourselves—we

have more than 57 varieties.”20 The other major front organization, the Union for

Democratic Action was also in turmoil meeting in January 1947 in Washington D.C. in

an effort to regroup and reorganize. The membership debating whether or not to disband

decided instead to try and create an organization that was independent of communist

influence and decided to inaugurate the new spirit of the organization by changing the

name to Americans for Democratic Action.

The ADA broke ranks with the PCA over the issue of communism and the role of

communists within the progressive movement. As early as 1944, Republicans began

accusing the NCPAC and the ICCASP of being dominated by Communist influence.

Brock writes that, “Hannah Dorner, publicity agent for the ICCASP, when asked about

communist influence within the organization replied, ‘Says who and so what? If the ICC

program is like the Communist line, that is purely coincidental.’”21 However,

Republicans made communist influence a hot bed issue in the midterm campaigns. As

Brock notes, “In 1946, the Republican campaign orators hit this unwieldy coalition at its

most vulnerable point. Capitalizing upon growing public apprehension over the postwar

intransigence of Russia, they painted a picture of a liberal movement darkly shadowed

20 National Affairs, “Merger,” Time vol. XLIX, no. 1, March 6, 1947, accessed online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0.971.853003.00.html. 21 Brock, Americans for Democratic Action, 44.

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with overtones of communism or pro–communism.”22 While the newly formed PCA and

its former incarnations did not object to communist participation within its ranks and

vehemently opposed Truman’s “get tough” policy with the Soviet Union, the ADA took a

different view. As Brock noted, “It was clear immediately, however, that the two groups

would clash directly over the question which had recently begun to agitate the whole

liberal front—what attitude liberals should take toward Russia and domestic

Communists… The liberal movement, under Roosevelt an essentially united political

force, was now divided… The leaders of the liberal movement had chosen sides, and ‘the

battle for supremacy in that movement’ was on.”23

Truman entered his1948 bid for reelection with a divided liberal base and a Republican

controlled Congress. Truman, however, would take on an issue that would serve to

further divide his own party and that issue was the issue of civil rights. During the war,

African–Americans were called upon, albeit reluctantly, to contribute to the war effort.

As John Hope Franklin noted:

Thus did the United States struggle in the early days of the European war when it was called upon by the enemies of the Axis powers to be the arsenal of democracy. It experienced a major difficulty in attempting to serve as the arsenal of democracy and, at the same time, hold fast to its pattern of a free economy in which labor had the right to strike and management had the right to hire only persons of a certain color. The inability of the United States to enunciate a strong position on democracy that stemmed from honest practices doubtless had the effect of weakening its position as the arsenal of democracy.24

The United States could ill afford to waste any resources at their disposal if victory was

to be achieved.

22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 55. 24 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 427-428.

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During the State of the Union Address to Congress on 6 January 1941, President

Roosevelt said that:

For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all. I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause. In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.25

The “four freedoms” became one of many rallying cries used to induce patriotic

sentiment, boost morale, and encourage support for the war effort. During the war

African–Americans contributed on the home front and the front lines, fighting for the

“four freedoms,” however, those basic freedoms outlined by FDR in 1941 would prove

elusive to African–Americans once victory was achieved.26 African–Americans were

among the first to lose employment once the war ended. Many who migrated from the

South to the North suffered economic discrimination and segregation in jobs and housing.

Following the end of the war there was an eruption of violence directed at the African–

American population and included a number of returning African–American veterans.

25 Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union," January 6, 1941. John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, researchers, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16092#axzz2h40PsONM, accessed October 7, 2013. 26 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom 5th ed., 422-449.

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These veterans came home changed by their experiences during the war; and they

discovered a world existed beyond the United States where they were treated with human

dignity and respect. They also witnessed the devastating toll in human life and suffering

at the hands of Fascist totalitarianism. Upon returning home, African–American veterans

were expected to abide, as always, by the status quo. Tyson writes that, “Though

unemployment in the late 1950s may have fed the Klan revival, black activism in the

decades following World War II had already infused the nightrider legacy with new

fervor.”27

However, the majority of these veterans did not wish to return to the same old Jim

Crow segregation and second class citizenry that they left behind to defend American

freedom. As Watkins noted, “The Civil Rights Movement, fortified now by the injection

of veterans who believed that they had earned a new place in the American scheme,

showed signs for the first time of becoming a national force whose power would change

the face of politics and already was helping to disturb the always fragile alliance between

northern and southern Democrats.”28 These veterans believed they were owed something

and were intent on collecting it. As resistance to Jim Crow mounted, mob violence

continued to escalate, prompting leaders from the NAACP, the Urban League, the A F of

L and others to form the National Emergency Committee Against Mob Violence. On 19

September 1946, President Truman met with Walter White, Executive Director of the

NAACP, and members of the National Emergency Committee. White came to the White

House to inform President Truman about the heinous nature of the mob violence

27 Timothy B. Tyson, “Dynamite and “The Silent South’: A Story from the Second Reconstruction in South Carolina” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from the Civil War to Civil Rights edited by Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Bryant Simon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 278. 28 T.H. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874–1952 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1990.), 838.

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occurring across the South and asks the president to take some type of action to quell it.

It was at this time that Truman’s administrative assistant, David K. Niles advanced the

idea for a committee on civil rights. As Berman writes, “Here was an ingenious solution

that would serve Truman’s needs by allowing him through symbolic action to improve

his standing among northern liberals while, conversely, not alienating the South.”29

On 5 December 1946 Truman issued Executive Order 9808, establishing the

President’s Committee on Civil Rights. This committee was instructed to study current

law and practices and look for methods and procedures to strengthen federal, state and

local governments’ ability to protect the civil rights of the citizens of the United States.

He included civil rights as the first of five goals he outlined for the nation in his State of

the Union Address on 8 January 1948. Truman told Congress:

The United States has always had a deep concern for human rights. Religious freedom, free speech, and freedom of thought are cherished realities in our land. Any denial of human rights is a denial of the basic beliefs of democracy and of our regard for the worth of each individual. Today, however, some of our citizens are still denied equal opportunity for education, for jobs and economic advancement, and for the expression of their views at the polls. Most serious of all, some are denied equal protection under laws. Whether discrimination is based on race, or creed, or color, or land of origin, it is utterly contrary to American ideals of democracy.30

The committee’s report titled “To Secure These Rights” had been delivered to the

president for his review in October 1947. The committee found that minorities were

discriminated against in nearly all sectors of society including hiring, education, health

care, and availability and use of public services and accommodations. The report

29 William C. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1970), 51-52. 30 Harry S. Truman: “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 7, 1948. John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, researchers, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13005.

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recognized the enforcement of legal segregation throughout the South but noted that

segregation existed in the North as well. 31

The legal segregation practiced in the South had been vigorously defended by

Southerners as an issue of states’ rights, while socio–economic segregation had been

tolerated in the North since the end of Reconstruction. The issue, except for a handful of

brave voices in the wilderness, had largely been ignored by the populace in general.

Thus, it was surprising that the committee provided such a frank assessment of

segregation as it existed in the United States, and noted the devastating toll that it claimed

upon American society at large. The committee gave this assessment of segregation

writing:

Segregation has become the cornerstone of the elaborate structure of discrimination against some American citizens. Theoretically this system simply duplicates educational, recreational and other public services, according facilities to the two races which are “separate but equal.” In the Committee's opinion this is one of the outstanding myths of American history for it is almost always true that while indeed separate, these facilities are far from equal. Throughout the segregated public institutions, Negroes have been denied an equal share of tax–supported services and facilities. So far as private institutions are concerned, there is no specific legal disability on the right of Negroes to develop equal institutions of their own. However, the economic, social, and indirect legal obstacles to this course are staggering.32

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the precedence of legal segregation under the

principle of “separate but equal.” 33 The Committee on Civil Rights concluded that

public institutions failed to meet the criteria of the law, because equal facilities were

simply a contrived fallacy of white society in order to maintain the status quo of

segregation and discrimination of the African–American population. By the report of the

committee’s findings there was a case to be made that segregation was unconstitutional.

Later this idea of constitutionally would be applied to education and lead to the landmark

31 “To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights,” The President’s Committee on Civil Rights, October 1947, Chap 2, Truman Library, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/civilrights/srights2.htm#58. 32 Ibid. 33 Plessey v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

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decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954) that served to legally invalidate

the separate but equal doctrine. 34 Whether or not Truman was using the issue of civil

rights symbolically for political expediency or was genuine in his convictions can be

argued, however, he did move forward in advancing the committee’s recommendations

before the 80th Congress. Gardner writes that, “With legislation like the Marshall Plan

pending before the Congress, Truman’s antagonism of the Southern Democrats and

states’ rights GOP leaders in the Congress by insisting on the enactment of a

comprehensive federal civil rights bill was a high risk move.”35

Truman actually had a firmer grasp of the political landscape than given credit for, and

as such knew to expect that the proposal would not be well–received by the majority of

Congress and that asking is not the same as receiving, knowing full well that it could

easily and most likely would become bottled up in committee and never see the light of

day. On 2 February 1948 Truman addressed a Special Session of Congress. In his address

he advanced his plan asking Congress to draft comprehensive civil rights legislation that

included creation of a permanent Civil Rights Commission and create a Civil Rights

Division in the Department of Justice, strengthen existing civil rights statutes, provide

federal protection against lynching, better protect the right to vote, establish a permanent

FEPC to prevent discrimination in the workplace, prohibit discrimination in interstate

travel facilities, allow home rule and suffrage rights to the citizens residing in the District

of Columbia, grant statehood to Alaska and Hawaii, and settle all Japanese–American

34 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 35 Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risk (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.), 72.

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evacuation claims.36 President Truman outlined the most comprehensive civil rights plan

since the end of the Civil War, and it received the expected response—Southern–led

threats, hostility, and inaction. With threats to abandon the Marshall Plan and other

legislative initiatives key to Truman’s postwar strategy, the White House did not push the

measure further. Truman’s civil rights agenda had irritated and offended the sensibilities

of Southern Democrats. The seeds of dissention had been sewn and would come to bear

fruit in July 1948 at the Democratic National Convention.

If Truman’s motives for the civil rights agenda were for political expediency and an

attempt to pacify both the left and right factions of the Democratic Party—he failed.

When the Democratic Convention convened on 12 July 1948 the liberals made sure civil

rights was a major part of the Party’s platform much to the ire and angst of the Southern

delegations. Truman and his staff were aware of the tension created by the civil rights

program and set forth to appease Southern delegates by toning down the rhetoric and

attempting to water down the proposal. However, the die had been cast by the president

and now even he was powerless to stop the liberal enclave from pressing the issue. The

initiative led by Congressman Andrew Biemiller of Wisconsin and Minneapolis Mayor

Hubert Humphrey calls for more radical reform continued despite the best efforts of

Truman’s camp. As Gardner writes:

The battle lines were drawn on this volatile issue as it became clear that there was growing support for the radical Biemiller plank—a plank that would further rupture the already fragmenting Democratic Party. However, because Truman had already

36 Harry S. Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on Civil Rights,” February 2, 1948, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, researchers, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13006.

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publicly taken his party so far down the public policy road for radical federal civil rights reform, the outcome of the fight over the civil rights plank was predestined.37

The facade of a united party and all hopes for reconciliation were shattered the night that

Humphrey appeared before the delegates. The far–right faction of Southern Democrats

met in May in Jackson, Mississippi, led by Governors Ben T. Laney of Arkansas and J.

Strom Thurmond of South Carolina had rudimentary plans for a “Rump Convention” in

place as John N. Popham of the New York Times noted that, “The States Rights

Democrats, a group stemming largely from Southern disapproval of proposals to

eliminate racial discrimination, unanimously voted today to hold their own convention on

July 17 if the national convention nominated President Truman or failed to repudiate his

civil rights program.”38 The pleas from the Truman campaign toward adopting a more

moderate civil rights plank were ignored while Southern Democrats, from the far–right,

came to Philadelphia looking for a duel with the liberals and waited for someone from the

left to throw down the gauntlet. Hubert Humphrey was more than happy to

accommodate them. As Frederickson noted:

Rising to address the hot and weary delegates on the last evening of the convention, Hubert Humphrey, the young liberal mayor from Minneapolis, made an emotional plea on behalf of racial equality. ‘I ask this Convention to say in unmistakable terms that we proudly hail and courageously support our President and leader, Harry Truman, in his great fight for civil rights’.… Suddenly rejuvenated, the Democratic conventioneers overwhelmingly approved the civil rights plank put forth by the party’s liberal wing. 39

The States Rights Democrats, more commonly referred to as Dixiecrats, refused to

accept any civil rights agenda and made good on their threat to walk out of the

convention. Gardner noted, “As Truman expected, immediately after the July 14 vote on

37 Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights, 98. 38 John N. Popham, “Southerners Set ‘Rump’ Convention If Party Backs Truman, Rights Plan,” New York Times, May 11, 1948. 39 Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.), 118-119.

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the civil rights plank, protests from Southern delegations erupted on the crowded

convention floor, and walkouts were lead by members of the Mississippi and Alabama

delegations.”40 However, it did little to interrupt the momentum of the convention.

Despite the efforts of Henry Wallace, Claude Pepper and Southern Democrats to dump

him from the ticket, Truman came away as the nominee, and civil rights reform was a

major plank in the Party’s platform. The Dixiecrats held their convention that August in

Houston nominating Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Fielding Wright of

Mississippi as their presidential ticket. Truman, with the nomination in hand, bolstered

by the addition of a solid civil rights plank to the Democratic platform and the extent of

Southern defections from the Party known, decided that the time to take action was

sooner rather than later. On 26 July, the president issued two executive orders, E.O. 9980

and E.O. 9981, designed to make the federal system more equitable in hiring and

employment practices and to desegregate the U. S. armed forces. Desegregation met with

a great deal of reluctance and resistance within the military establishment but was finally

completed before the end of Truman’s presidency. These orders established the federal

government as a leader by example, but still they fell far short of addressing the vast

problem of segregation and white supremacy, however, it was a beginning.

Truman recognized both the scope and depth of responsibility of the United States in

the postwar world. He saw the communist regime of the Soviet Union as a threat to free

peoples, and, if left unchecked, a danger to the security of the United States and its allies.

In this light, Truman realized that it was no longer permissible to champion the cause of

freedom and democracy abroad while the stigma of segregation restricted the freedom of

millions of American citizens at home. The liberals within the Democratic Party divided

40 Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights, 99.

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over the issue of Soviet relations and the level of participation of known communists

within the progressive movement. The once “Solid South” fractured over the issue of

secession from the Democratic Party and the creation of a third party. Both sides

weakened their power base and as a result failed to build enough support to be successful,

leaving Truman with the ability to build a small coalition of support that in the end

carried him and the Democratic Party back to the White House.

Yet, the biggest loser was Claude Pepper. He conspired in a “coup d’état” and lost.

Pepper, like many of the progressives, failed to see the change coming. The liberal base

was shifting toward a moderate position, led by the G.I. Generation whom had

experienced the face of fascism first hand while forging a deep seated mistrust of

totalitarianism in any form. Liberals who advocated fiscal responsibility and a foreign

policy that took a hard–line in dealing with the Soviet Union. Democrats like George

Smathers, who supported the Taft–Hartley Act and called for fiscal restraint in social

spending. Pepper and Wallace misread the American body politic and stood steadfast in

advocating a more conciliatory approach to U.S.–Soviet relations. a position contrary to

that of a growing majority of the voting public. In but three years, Pepper had lost his

ideological soul mate, aligned himself with pro–Soviet factions, and alienated the

President of the United States along with the emerging power Truman’s base of his party.

In the process, he built a liberal record that would be hard to defend in his own state of

Florida where the political demographics were changing as the state became infused with

transplants from the North. Winsboro writes that, “A recent generation of historians, to

include Jason Soros, Joseph Crespino and Matthew D. Lassiter, has added insight to the

issue by establishing that the economic boom of the post–World War II South brought

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both fiscally and socially conservative corporations and traditional suburban republicans

to Dixie—by relocating their segregated communities and schools with them, they

actually contributed to a tide of neo–conservatism in southern states like Florida.”41 In

1950 Pepper would face a bid for reelection without the long coattails of FDR,

advocating an ideology that was quickly moving away from the mainstream, and with a

host of powerful enemies looking to aid in his political demise.

41 Irvin D.S. Winsboro, “Image, Illusion, And Reality: Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement” in Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement, ed. Irvin D.S. Winsboro (Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 2009), 3.

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“Red Pepper” “Gorgeous George” and the 1950 Primary Campaign in Florida

Entering 1950, Claude Pepper was struggling for relevance and to maintain his

grassroots political base in his own home state of Florida. Following Roosevelt’s death,

Pepper immediately began his campaign against his successor Harry Truman, in

challenging the president’s foreign policy by taking a pro–Soviet stand and, in 1948,

attempting to supplant him as the Democratic nominee. Failing in this attempt, Pepper

set his sights on returning to the senate. As Clark observed, “Pepper thought he could

advance his political career by advancing the issue of world peace. Unfortunately, for

Pepper, world events shattered his dream for world peace. Instead of political

advancement, Pepper endured five years of negative publicity that few politicians could

have survived.”1

Pepper, for the most part, had singularly focused his energies on national and foreign

policy issues and given little more than lip service to issues within his home state.

Pepper’s 1945 fact finding trip to Europe caused controversy in Florida. The trip became

a political liability on several fronts. During this trip, he met with Stalin in Moscow and

began advocating a more cooperative approach to Soviet foreign policy, thus earning the

label, apologist for Stalin. Pepper had also engaged in an effort to block the DuPont Trust

from gaining control of the bankrupt Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC). Pepper had

requested a hearing to reverse the Interstate Commerce Commission’s support on the

basis that DuPont control would be detrimental to the public interest. The hearing was

scheduled during the period when Pepper would be in Europe. Despite advice from his

own staffers to abandon the trip and focus on matters in Florida, Pepper refused to cancel.

1 Clark, “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of His 1950 Defeat,” 1-2.

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Clark writes that, “Pepper thought his trip could, ‘make a greater contribution to future

peace… and even if defeat should be the price still I would have no complaint.’ He said

he thought constituents ‘are going to complain always when I don’t devote my whole

time to their petty personal matters.’”2 Pepper knowingly and willingly abandoned his

handpicked fight with Ed Ball and what he claimed to be contrary to the public interest of

Floridians in order to advance his own standing on the national and international stage. In

doing so, he risked achieving reelection to the U.S. Senate. Clark observed that, “Not

only had Pepper become a target for both conservative and mainstream newspapers and

magazines, but they began to make fun of him and see how many ways they could work

the word ‘Red’ into stories about Pepper.”3 The opponent’s arsenal was becoming well

stocked, and there was one man eager and willing to fire the first salvo—George A.

Smathers.

In 1945, as the war was winding down, Captain Smathers, after serving eighteen

months in the South Pacific Theater, was reassigned stateside. Upon his return home,

Smathers planned to run for a congressional seat in Miami’s Fourth District, thus he was

anxious to return to civilian life. He sent several letters to Pepper and other officials in

Washington asking for their help in securing his release. Upon receiving his discharge

from active duty, Smathers, using contacts from his days at the University of Florida,

quickly put together a network and built an organization, referred to as the “goon squad,”

to take on the incumbent Congressman, Pat Cannon, in the Fourth District. Smathers

successfully attacked Cannon’s poor voting record and frequent absences during crucial

2 Ibid., 5-6.; excerpts from Claude Pepper to Moorman Parrish, Letter, Series 401B, Box 23, Folder 7 Pepper Papers, Moorman Parrish was a Gainesville, Florida realtor and supporter of Pepper. 3 Clark, “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of His 1950 Defeat,” 11.

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votes. As a result, Smathers out–polled Cannon nearly two to one to win the Democratic

Primary and easily won election to Congress in 1946. During the course of his two terms

in the House of Representatives, Smathers developed a cordial relationship with Harry

Truman. As a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, he supported the

president’s foreign policy initiatives and his “get tough” approach to the Soviet Union.

He broke ranks over parts of the Truman domestic agenda, opposing the civil rights

program, and in supporting of the pro–business Taft–Hartley Act. Smathers supported

Truman from the outset and he campaigned for Democratic ticket throughout Florida in

1948 contrary to Pepper’s efforts to “Dump Truman” at the convention and campaigning

for him only after he failed in removing him from the ticket.

Truman, following his victory over Dewey, travelled to Key West to unwind and

relax. He received a letter from Smathers’s mother, Lura, congratulating the president on

his victory. Smathers noted that Truman took time to reply to his mother’s letter and

stated that the president added a postscript to the letter, writing, “Had a good visit with

George at Key West. He’s the only public official I invited to see me. The others invited

themselves.”4 The friendship continued to grow between Truman and Smathers.

Smathers noted that, “We began liking each other very much. That’s when I got called

over to the White House one day… This was 1949, long about the latter summer or early

fall, I go in, and Harry Vaughn says, ‘Go on into the Oval Office’…. Truman looks over

at me and says, ‘George, I want you to do me a favor…. I want you to beat that son of a

bitch Claude Pepper.’ Smathers said, ‘It was at that point that I really seriously began to

think about running against Claude…. I could see that somebody was going to beat him.

4 Smathers, “Oral History Interviews,” no. 1, 25.

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So I thought, well I think I’ll just go ahead and do it.’”5 Pepper discounted the Smathers

account believing he and Truman had gotten past their differences. Pepper wrote, “It

seems odd that Smathers would wait thirty three years to tell this story. To my face,

Truman always insisted that he did not hold my support of Eisenhower in 1948 against

me, and he even raised a little money for me in 1950.”6 Whatever the truth is regarding

Truman’s alleged statement, it was apparent that the line was drawn in the sands of

Florida and the war for Pepper’s Senate seat would be declared in Orlando on 12 January

1950.

However, Smathers’s campaign began unofficially months earlier as he started

organizing and preparing himself for the upcoming showdown with Pepper. If Smathers

intended to keep his challenge clandestine, he failed. As Crispell noted, “After the

completion of the first session of the 81st Congress, it quickly became general knowledge

that George Smathers was an unannounced candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1950.”7

Smathers began receiving letters of support as early as October 1949. A prominent Ft.

Lauderdale attorney, Norman Abbott, sent Smathers a letter on 25 October, “I was

delighted to learn that at long last you had, unofficially at least, finally decided to pitch

your hat in the ring against our esteemed senior Senator…. I want you to know that you

can count on me to aid your campaign in any way I possibly can.”8 Around the same

time, Smathers contacted Tom Connolly at the White House requesting an urgent

meeting with the president and was invited to see Truman in the Oval Office, where he

received the nod to run against Pepper. By November, Smathers organization was at

5 Ibid. 6 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 221. 7 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 47. 8 Norman Abbott to George Smathers, Letter, October 25, 1949, Smathers Papers.

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work trying to disrupt labor support for Pepper within the state. On 29 November two

members of Smathers University of Florida network corresponded to put the wheels in

motion. L.K. Walrath in a letter to Randolph Y. Matheny, wrote, “Allen Poucher, who as

you know is one of us, suggested to me the other day that if we could establish that any

CIO money was being furnished for Pepper that the AF of L people, who predominate in

Florida, particularly in Jacksonville would be against the idea and we might get a real

break with labor if the situation were properly handled.”9 The wheels were set in motion

and the next stop was Orlando.

As Smathers set forth to Orlando to further his political ambitions, he knew he would

be facing a skilled orator and veteran politician with a national identity. On the surface it

appeared to be a bold and courageous move to run against an incumbent senator, for in

the previous one hundred and five year history of Florida, there had never been an

incumbent U.S. senator defeated for reelection. However, Pepper by virtue of his own

ideals and ambitions had created doubt, mistrust, and numerous enemies looking to help

anyone willing to exploit his political weaknesses and make a solid effort to unseat him.

Referring to Pepper, Crispell observed, “While he had handicapped himself through his

rigid ideological stands, effectively canceling support from either President Truman or

Florida business, Claude Pepper made an even more glaring error, allowing an attractive,

aggressive, and equally effective politician to attack first…. Claude Pepper never

recovered from the blows suffered one Thursday night in Orlando.”10

Smathers was ready and willing to show Florida and the nation that he was up to the

task. Smathers’s campaign made sure its candidate’s arrival in Orlando was greeted with

9 L.K. Walrath to Randolph Y. Matheny, Letter, November 29, 2013, Smathers Papers. 10 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 51.

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a great deal of fanfare. Crispell noted that, “The charged atmosphere in the Orlando

Coliseum on 12 January 1950 caused comparisons to a national convention, replete with

bunting, noise makers, and live music. Adding to this perception was the excitement of a

crowd three times what had been forecast, arriving motorcades from throughout the state

and an ensuing parade in the city.”11 Smathers entered the Coliseum energized and

enthusiastic. He strode to the podium with conviction and possessed an air of confidence

befitting a man who was well prepared. Smathers spoke for thirty minutes with a direct

yet personable oratory and with a measured cadence that came from his experience as a

prosecutor and in a prosecutorial demeanor, set forth his opening remarks in “the trial of

Claude Pepper.”12

Smathers’s address to the Orlando rally struck the chords of patriotic fervor and made

a call to the citizens of Florida and the nation to unite against the growing menace of

communism before it destroyed the very foundations of American society. The prevalent

and resounding theme was the danger presented by those politicians and fellow–travelers

whom as apologists for Stalin and Soviet Communism presented the greatest threat to

freedom and democracy at home. The question is why did this theme strike a chord

within both Florida and the national electorate? First, there was a historical precedent of

fear of communists and socialists dating back to the end of World War I. The success of

the Bolshevik Revolution and the advancement of the Marxist–Leninist theory of

worldwide revolution coupled with a strong socialist presence in the American labor

movement were equated with the violence perpetrated by anarchists following the end of

the war. This “Red Scare” gradually subsided in the mid–1920s but left a residual fear

11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 54. The Trial of Claude Pepper is the title of chapter 5 of Crispell’s, Testing the Limits.

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that remained for the most part an undercurrent in American society until the end of

World War II. The Soviet actions to establish hegemony at the end of the war coupled

with the growing animosity between the two former allies over Iran, Germany, and

Poland leading to the creation of the Iron Curtain; and these events re–ignited within the

American public old fears, serving to create new animosity toward the Soviet Union.

Many communists and socialists had joined the liberal progressive ranks of the

Democratic Party during the Great Depression, and given the renewed distrust of the

Soviets at the end of the war, fostered concerns that subterfuge and fifth column

activities. Such methods had been employed by the Nazis during the war and many

Americans were concerned that this tactic may be used by the Soviets to strengthen the

efforts of domestic communists and socialists toward communist revolution at home. In

fact, it led Smathers to define exactly what a “liberal” is. Smathers told the assembled

crowd in Orlando, that, “Unfortunately, the name ‘liberal’ has been adopted by the

radical left–wingers, and they have twisted and disgraced its meaning. We must reawaken

to the true meaning of liberalism. Liberalism comes from the word “liberty.” It means

the right to think, to work, to worship as one chooses so long as the rights of others are

not trespassed upon.”13

Smathers’s definition of a “liberal” implied, even though he did not directly name his

opponent, that he meant Pepper defined the type of left–wing “radical” that usurped and

corrupted the “true” meaning of liberal. Pepper had virtually ignored the growing

criticism and believed he could overcome it where it mattered most, at home in Florida.

William G. Carleton, a professor of history and political science at the University of

13 George A. Smathers, Speech, “Announcing Candidacy for the U.S. Senate,” January 12, 1950, Smathers Papers.

95

Florida was a friend of Pepper and a fellow liberal. In 1944, he was asked by a reporter

from the Miami Daily News to provide some insight into Pepper. Carleton wrote, that,

“Whatever one may say of Pepper, he has political imagination and a feel for the

masses.”14 Yet, it appears that Carleton’s assessment of Pepper made in 1944 no longer

rang true by1950. Pepper’s shift farther to the left began as he returned to the Senate in

January 1945, became more pronounced after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 and

following his meeting with Stalin during his fact finding trip to Europe in September

1945. Even when the Soviet Union appeared to be less than cooperative he continued to

advance the pro–Soviet position. He failed to acknowledge the ever–growing sentiment

against the Soviet Union by the American public as evidenced in Time in the 3 March

1947 issue citing a Gallop Poll revealing that 70 percent favored a firm stand toward

Russia. Of those polled, Time reported, that, “19 percent of the people approved a

continuation of Jimmy Byrnes’s firmness–with–patience approach to Russia, but that an

additional 51percent hoped that Secretary Marshall would be even firmer. Only 5 percent

wanted softer tactics.”15 Pepper became more obsessed with advancing his idealism and

ideology than with practicing practical politics, and Smathers capitalized upon this fact.

As Smathers spoke before the gathering of supporters, well wishers and curiosity seekers

he was tenacious in going for the political jugular of Pepper. Smathers told the large

crowd:

…talking with you the citizens, about the dangers to our democracy from those who would assassinate Americanism, and I know that the false philosophy of communism and socialism, the people of Florida utterly reject! … The people of our state will no longer tolerate the advocates of treason. Never before in Florida’s political history

14 William G. Carleton to Phil Locke, Letter, March 14, 1944, William Grave Carleton Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 15 Time, National Affairs, “Firmer,” March 3, 1947, accessed on–line at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,854617,00.html.

96

has the issue been so clear–cut…. In the name of freedom, liberty and the democratic principles of America, I George Smathers, join hands with you and pledge—with all of the earnestness at my command—to give my utmost as your candidate for the United States Senate.16

Smathers did step away from his central theme and primary campaign issue to outline

the other major issues of his campaign, fiscal responsibility in government spending, civil

rights, and business and labor relations. Smathers highlighted some of his thoughts on

each topic with the promise to state his position in greater detail during the coming days

of the campaign. Smathers began by stating, “As a liberal Democrat I am opposed to

monopoly, either of big business, big labor or big government.”17 He consistently

advocated a conservative approach to fiscal matters and government spending on social

welfare programs while advocating increased spending for the military. Smathers

eloquently stated his case to his supporters saying, “Let us feel, but let us also think. By

the adoption of the Hoover Commission recommendations, let us eliminate the waste,

duplication of services, and extravagance of a government whose hands are in your

pocket right this moment. Let us strengthen our system of economic opportunity and

individual freedom which has given us the best living ever experienced by any people on

the face of the earth.”18

The issue of segregation and civil rights was a controversial subject since the end of

Reconstruction, and continued to be a dividing and festering problem; and gaining more

and more prominence due to the efforts of the NAACP in the nation’s courts, President

16 Smathers, “Announcing Candidacy,” Smathers Papers. 17 Ibid. Note: The Hoover Commission or officially, the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, was appointed by President Truman in 1947 and chaired by former President Herbert Hoover. The purpose was to come up with recommendations as how to best streamline administrative functions within the executive branch. It was dissolved in 1949 after a report of its findings were forwarded to Congress. 18 Smathers, “Announcing Candidacy,” Smathers Papers.

97

Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces and to introduce a comprehensive

civil rights program in the Congress. Smathers was a true Southerner, and while

carefully choosing his words, let it be known where his sympathies lay, “We in the South,

of which I am proud to be a part, know it to be a peculiar and difficult problem. We have

made remarkable progress in recent years in the conditions of the Negro, and we must

strive to accelerate that process. All of us know that better relations will not be achieved

by the adoption of any laws which seek to coerce association between the races.”19

Smathers was smooth and circumspect in letting the people of Florida know that he

favored maintaining the status quo of segregation and white supremacy and did not

support Truman’s civil rights program. Regarding the effort in Congress to deny FHA

loans to segregated housing subdivisions, Smathers added, “We must not allow the

misguided zealots who, by rulings such as this, seek to destroy the harmonious

relationship and leave in its place discord, strife and hate. What the problem of racial

relations needs is the best efforts of men who have the best interests of both the white and

Negro at heart, not politicians who demagogue the issue first from one side of the

political fence and then the other.”20

Smathers lightly touched upon his position toward labor–management relations. A

great deal of tension existed between labor and management of American industry

immediately following the war—as the economy and industry made the transition from

war to peace–time production. There was a rash of strikes by various labor unions during

1946. The National Labor Relations Act, known as the Wagner Act, was passed in 1935

and provided labor with more freedom to initiate work stoppages. In 1947 Republican

19 Ibid. 20 Smathers, “Announcing Candidacy,” Smathers Papers.

98

Sen. Robert Taft and Republican Rep. Fred Hartley introduced a joint bill to amend the

Wagner Act and place restrictions on labor’s right to strike. The amended act became

known as the Taft–Hartley Act, and it was enacted when the Republican–controlled

Congress overturned President Truman’s veto. Pepper fought its passage in the Senate.

Smathers shared neither the president’s nor Pepper’s opposition to Taft–Hartley, saying,

“As for the question of labor and management relations, I believe in unions and in

collective bargaining. I think they have done a great good; I believe they have a useful

future…. I voted for the Taft–Hartley Bill as a temperate measure which would add

balance and fairness to labor–management relationships. It is a law which protects the

average laboring man as well as the general public.”21

Smathers re–emphasized his theme of the dangers of communism and he concluded

his opening remarks with prosecutorial precision and pointed statements, though still

careful to avoid directly mentioning Pepper’s name.

Smathers stated emphatically that:

You will not find me a senator who would brazenly advocate the destroying our atomic bombs and giving the secret to the Soviet Union. You will not find me an apologist for Stalin nor an associate of fellow–travelers, nor a sponsor of Communist front organizations. At a time when communism is the greatest of all threats to our freedom and democracy, it does not make sense, nor answer the call of prudence, to place in a position of power a voice that has defended Stalin, spoke out for fellow–travelers and echoed the beliefs of communist front organizations. In the next few months the entire trend of national events can be decided here in Florida, where the leader of the radicals and extremists is now on trial.22

It was evident that Smathers intended on running an offensive campaign. His

announcement address served to put forth his views on the issues while at the same time,

framing the issues in such a manner as to attack Pepper’s position and credibility. As

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

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Crispell noted, “Smathers’s address in Orlando was inflammatory and provocative as was

its intent. Setting the tone for the race, Smathers succinctly and fully defined the issues

that separated him from Pepper in terms designed to draw a response as well as control

the debate in the campaign.”23 Smathers’s strategy was to vigorously and relentlessly

challenge and attack Pepper—on his record, associations and his ideological

underpinnings without giving him time to figuratively “catch his breath”. It was evident

that Pepper was being persecuted and prosecuted on his record by Smathers—thus the

question became can Pepper mount an adequate defense to counteract Smathers’

prosecution?

Pepper, appeared to be surprised by the vociferous and ferocious attack by Smathers

in Orlando. Outwardly, he maintained a calm demeanor and had not gained any sense of

urgency to officially declare his own candidacy. However, privately, Pepper was

incensed at Smathers. He fired off a memo in which he angrily refuted Smathers charges

and accused Smathers of being the shrill of his enemies in order to defeat him. Pepper

wrote:

The George Smathers who, in his announcement speech at Orlando, without having the courage to call my name, charged me with treason and belonging to the ‘Reds’ and being a friend of Stalin, and an advocate of Stalinism and Communism, knew at the time he made such charges that they were untrue….and now he speaks the voice of his masters who are the enemies of Claude Pepper. Charging, in effect, that I would sell my country to Stalin, or turn over to Stalin the instrumentalities by which this Government might defend itself, or that I would have destroyed all the instrumentalities of war that would be our means of defense should we be attacked by Stalin, is ridiculous, absurd and untrue as he well knows. 24

Yet, Pepper was caught in a web of his own creation and his own words were being used

against him. Although Smathers framed Pepper’s record in a context designed to provide

23 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 54. 24 Claude Pepper, Memorandum, undated, Series 204D Box 2, Folder 1A, Pepper Papers.

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him the most political mileage, his statements were not untrue. In a speech before the

Russian War Relief, Pepper said in essence that Stalin and the Soviet Union were friends,

saying “What is the meaning of the willingness of senators to denounce in this day, when

we are fighting shoulder to shoulder, Joseph Stalin is a great enemy? Why do great

newspapers still disseminate vicious and false propaganda against the Soviet Union and

strive to fan the flames of prejudice against such an Ally, such a friend.”25

Smathers was not the first to call Pepper an apologist for the Soviet Union, nor call

him to task on his statements toward U.S. policies and responsibilities in regard to the

atomic bomb. On 20 March 1946, Pepper made a speech on the floor of the Senate,

where he said he believed the United States should, “destroy every atomic bomb which

we have, and smash every facility we possess capable of producing only destructive

forms of atomic energy.”26 The senator’s speech was noted in the Foreign Relations

section of the 1 April 1946 issue of Time. The article also noted that, “In all of his 10,000

words, New Dealer Pepper had only praise and apology for Russia.” Fellow Senator

Joseph Ball of Minnesota replied that, “The Pepper speech was right down the

communist line, he added, What the Senator from Florida proposes is that we strip

ourselves of the only real military power we still possess, the atomic bomb, and then

confer with Russia about security and peace.”27

While the confidential memo showed the degree of angst, hurt and displeasure Pepper

felt toward the Smathers announcement, it became evident that the shock disoriented him.

Four days after his Orlando rally, Smathers met with his network of campaign chairmen

25 Claude Pepper, Speech, “In Observance of the Third Anniversary of the Soviet Union’s Entry into the War,” Box 34 Folder 3-2, Robins Papers. 26 Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., 1946, 92:2463. 27 Time, Foreign Relations, “Red Pepper,” 47, no. 1(April 1, 1946), 21.

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from across the state to lay out the strategy for the next phase of the campaign. However,

Pepper appeared to be stuck in neutral, as Allen Morris of the Miami Sunday News,

observed, “Just as always, Sen. Claude Pepper has started his reelection campaign like a

man who doesn’t know a ballot from a bustle. A full week after his opponent, Rep.

George Smathers, had launched his campaign with a rousing Orlando rally, the veteran

Pepper had yet to assemble the essential elements of a statewide campaign.”28 However,

Pepper had a unique ability to command and compel fellow Floridians to support him at

the polls. The same combination of fiery and eloquent oratory that he employed to draw

the angst of his opponents also had the ability to soothe and smooth over bruised egos

and bring Pepper back within the good graces of Democratic voters. The St. Petersburg

Times called it a, “uncanny knack for landing on his feet by showing up at the eleventh

hour to do and say exactly the right thing.”29

However, Smathers put Pepper on the defensive and his typical slow to act and react

style of campaigning had never faced such a well organized and aggressive challenge. In

an article for the Saturday Evening Post, Ralph McGill noted that, “Senator Pepper’s

organization, while admittedly working harder than ever before and running a scared race

is confident their man’s genius for campaigning will pull him through.”30 Pepper in his

autobiography, written thirty–seven years after the 1950 campaign, said that he knew that

there was an organized, concerted plot to defeat him and he continued to maintain that

others and not Smathers conspired, planned, and succeeded in ending his senate career.

Pepper noted, that, “The strategy was not devised by Smathers. Six years earlier, Ed Ball

and a group of Florida businessmen had determined to defeat me and had plenty of time

28 Allen Morris, “Pepper Lags In Campaigning,” Miami Sunday News, January 22, 1950. 29 St. Petersburg Times, January 14, 1950, n.p. 30 Ralph McGill, “Can He Purge Senator Pepper?” Saturday Evening Post, April 22, 1950, 143.

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to do it.”31 He underestimated the amount of dissention his positions on labor, civil

rights, foreign policy, nuclear weapons, and his lack of attention created within the

Florida political hierarchy. In addition, he grossly underestimated the ability of Smathers

to run a relentless onslaught on his record, tie him to support for the FEPC and just how

effective the “Red Pepper” strategy would resound with Floridians. Finally, he failed to

recognize how his ongoing feud with Ed Ball could impact his campaign and his political

career, as Tebeau and Marina noted, “Even before Smathers challenged Pepper for the

Democratic nomination, Pepper’s continued attacks on Ed Ball and the DuPont business

interests in the state since 1944 had motivated Ball to work behind the scenes to defeat

the incumbent regardless of who ran against him.”32

Both Ball and Pepper arrived in Florida during the early 1920s land boom. Pepper on

borrowed money with the promise of a lucrative position as a lawyer for a land

development concern, and Ball arrived with his brother–in–law Alfred I DuPont, who

was looking to escape the corporate politics of the family business and increase his vast

personal fortune investing in Florida. When the boom went bust in 1926, Pepper found

himself out of a job and scrambling to make ends meet, while Ball, in charge of the

DuPont investments, began investing in foreclosed properties and bankrupt companies.

One of the companies acquired was the St. Joe Paper Company, which became his base

of operations. When Alfred DuPont died in 1935, Ball was placed in control of the

DuPont Trust, managing its assets. Ball had given financial support to Pepper in his 1938

reelection campaign. However, Pepper’s continued move to the left and support for labor

interests did not mesh with Ball’s business interests.

31 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 262. 32 Charlton W. Tebeau and William Marina, A History of Florida, 3rd ed. (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1999), 421.

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Growing up poor and in financial distress most of his adult life, Pepper knew what it

meant to struggle. His experience working in an Alabama steel mill had left him a

certain disdain for wealthy business interests, like Ball, that exploited labor and whom he

believed put profits ahead of people. The division between Ball and Pepper occurred

when Pepper defended Roosevelt’s veto of a tax bill that would have provided tax relief

for investors engaged in speculation and purchasing bonds which was exactly what Ball

was doing with FEC. Ball immediately began raising money to try to defeat Pepper’s

reelection bid in 1944. However, he did not have enough time and opponents were not

strong enough to overcome Roosevelt’s coattails. The growing feud between Pepper and

Ball would erupt again over the DuPont Trust’s attempt to acquire controlling rights over

the bankrupt Florida East Coast Railroad founded by Florida pioneer Henry Flagler. The

rival Atlantic Coast Line (ACL) was also interested in gaining a controlling interest;

however, Ball had been purchasing FEC bonds to become the majority bondholder and

increase his leverage to gain control. Ball used St. Joe Paper as his front to acquire FEC.

The squabbling had been going on since Ball became involved in 1941. However, by

1945, Ball had worked to make a solid case for control of FEC and the Interstate

Commerce Commission (ICC) held a hearing on the matter. On January 8, 1945 the ICC

conceded that DuPont would gain control of the reorganized FEC.33

It appeared that Ball had won the day and the battle was over however the other player

involved, the ACL, refused to go down gracefully. Danese writes that, “‘Champ’ Davis,

as the ACL president was called, considered Pepper vital to exerting the necessary

33 Alexander R. Stoesen, “Road from Receivership: Claude Pepper, The DuPont Trust, And The Florida East Coast Railway,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 52, no. 2, (October, 1973):137-139.

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pressure to have the case reopened.”34 Davis and the ACL found a willing ally in Claude

Pepper. Pepper spent the next several months in using the full scope and power of his

office to influence the ICC to have the FEC case reopened. Pepper had a chance to get

back at Ball and a rare opportunity to champion a liberal cause back home. In June 1945

Pepper announced in his serial press release, “Very Truly Yours,” that, “Some other

members of the Florida delegation in Congress and I have thought it in the public interest

to intervene in the Florida East Coast Railway reorganization…”35 However, when

Pepper took his trip to Europe in 1945, his absence allowed the DuPont forces to gather

and concentrate their resources to go on the offensive without any defense from Pepper.

As Stoesen noted, “Absence was an error of considerable proportion on Pepper’s part,

and seemed to indicate that he had misjudged the ability of the DuPont interests to

marshal support. The matter was building up into a Pepper–Ball feud and the opposition

took advantage of every chance it had.”36 The fight over the FEC injected venom into an

already cantankerous relationship. While Pepper may have advanced some valid

concerns over Ball’s control of the FEC, Pepper’s loathing of Ball and what he

represented was thinly veiled at best; and Ball’s animosity toward Pepper continued to

grow. Pepper’s involvement in the fight over control of FEC not only alienated him from

powerful business interests in Florida but it also interfered with part of his traditional

power base—labor. Danse points out, that, although Pepper had the support of the

broad–based Railway Labor Executives Association, “It was a far different matter with

34 Danese, Claude Pepper and Ed Ball, 174. 35 Claude Pepper, Press Release, “Very Truly Yours,” Box 35, Folder 6-1, Robins Papers. 36 Stoesen, “Road from Receivership,” 142.

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the officials of the unions representing employees of the FEC in Florida. They

vehemently opposed the ACL takeover and Pepper’s support of it.”37

The issue of Pepper’s involvement with the FEC case became a minor issue in the

1950 campaign. Smathers used it to illustrate Pepper’s willingness to put outside

interests ahead of the best interests of Floridians, saying, that, “It also seems strange that

this man—my opponent—who claims to be a champion of the little man should take time

off from his senatorial duties to make four appearances before the Interstate Commerce

Commission and other government bureaus, and submit briefs, all in behalf of the

world’s second largest railroad, the Atlantic Coast Line.38 However, the firestorm that

erupted as a result of his attack against Ball would have major repercussions for Pepper’s

campaign and would ultimately aid Smathers in his, as Stoesen points out, “American

business was claiming a major share in winning the war and was offering promises of a

better life in the postwar era. However, Pepper refused to accept the idea that the

operations of the DuPont Trust, or any other large business organization for that matter

were beneficial to the people of Florida. He chose to attack the DuPont Trust with full

force at the peak of prosperity. It coincided with the beginning of his own political

demise.”39 Ball’s connections to and within the political network of Florida were vast

and the influence of Ball’s deep pockets was immeasurable. While there is no tangible

evidence of Smathers and Ball conspiring to defeat Pepper in 1950, it was widely known

that Ball had been working to defeat Pepper since 1944, when Smathers was still serving

in the Marine Corps; however, it is certain that the resources Ball brought to bear upon

37 Danese, Claude Pepper and Ed Ball, 175. 38 “Foe’s Help to ACL Hurt Florida, Says Smathers,” Miami Daily News, April 1, 1950. 39 Stoesen, “Road from Receivership”, 138.

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Pepper aided Smathers efforts and proved to be another in the continuing series of

miscalculations made by Pepper enroute to his 1950 defeat.

Besides the issue of communist ties two other issues in the campaign centered on race

relations and civil rights. Florida was a part of the “Solid South” and segregation was a

way of life. When President Truman desegregated the armed forces and put before

Congress his proposal for drafting and passing a comprehensive civil rights program, the

reverberations throughout the South were loud and clear. Ironically, the issue of race is

where Pepper and Smathers shared the most common ground. Smathers, in the veiled yet

succinct style of his Orlando address, used the word “peculiar” in referring to the society

of segregation and white supremacy and his desire to maintain the status quo. Peculiar, a

term mined from the antebellum South where slavery was often referred to as the

“peculiar institution.” He went on record as opposed to the Truman civil rights program.

Pepper frequently referred to himself as a true “son of the South.” Pepper in his

autobiography referenced the time he set out for Harvard and was prepared to “hoist a

Southern banner on “Yankee soil” but found that such a debate no longer concerned

Northerner’s whom had moved on to other pressing matters. Early in his political career,

Pepper, while a representative in the Florida House, had to vote on a bill to censure First

Lady Lou Hoover for having the wife of a Negro congressman as part of a group of

women to tea at the White House. When the measure came to the floor Pepper voted

against censure. Pepper referred to this gesture as proof of his stand on civil rights.

However, Pepper’s concern had been more about the dignity and character of Mrs.

Hoover and her rights as the official hostess of the nation than it was about the right of

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the congressman’s wife to attend. When Pepper first arrived in the senate he made his

view on race well known when he stood in opposition to an anti–lynching bill, saying:

Whatever may be written into the Constitution, whatever may be placed upon the statute books of this nation, however many soldiers may be stationed about the ballot boxes of the Southland, the colored race will not vote, because in doing so under present circumstances they endanger the supremacy of a race to which God has committed the destiny of a continent, perhaps a world.40

However, Pepper always managed to put a positive face on the racial issue, especially

in his later career when he became increasing leftward in his ideology. Pepper may never

have encouraged it, but he never rejected being photographed with persons of color. In

1944, he sponsored legislation to repeal the poll tax, a move that would seem bold and

indicate a shifting of position in terms of race. However, in reality, it served to bolster

Pepper’s liberal ideals in the North and did not harm him politically in Florida because

Florida had already eliminated the poll tax in 1938. Thanks to the efforts of Harry T.

Moore, a state organizer of the NAACP in Florida and founder of the Progressive Voter’s

League and Phillip Weightman, of the CIO–PAC, the number of registered Democratic

black voters grew exponentially, from zero in 1944 to 32, 280 in 1946, and to 106,420 by

1950.41 The involvement of the CIO in the registration effort in Florida was not solicited

directly by Pepper, however, it was intended to give him a pool of votes likely to be loyal

to him, but Smathers was able to use CIO involvement against him. When it came to the

issue of race, Clark observed that, “Smathers was a racial moderate by the standards of

the 1940s. He avoided the whole Dixiecrat platform of 1948 by endorsing Truman

whole–heartedly, and he took the political middle ground by rejecting any call for civil

40 Claude Pepper, Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 2nd sess., 1937, 8757, quoted in, Clark, Red Pepper, 127. 41 Hugh Douglas Price, “The Negro and Florida Politics, 1944-1954,” Journal of Politics, 17, no. 2 (May, 1955): 200.

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rights legislation with the argument that it was not a federal matter and should be left to

the states. Although Pepper was the more moderate of the two, he was constantly forced

to issue racist statements to defend himself.”42 Smathers wanted to find one area where

he could distinguish his record on race from Pepper, and he was able to accomplish it by

connecting Pepper to support of the Fair Employment Practices Commission, (FEPC).

The FEPC began as a war time committee, instituted by Roosevelt, to help encourage fair

practices in labor strapped war industries; and Pepper supported the president in the

senate by voting for it in 1944. As part of his civil rights proposal Truman called for the

creation of a permanent FEPC to be instituted and Pepper voted against the measure. As

Crispell noted:

The FEPC, as Smathers cleverly couched it, was a matter of individual rights. However, as the forensically talented candidate well knew, it was more exactly and fully, a matter of federal intervention in race relations and the protection of all individual rights involved….for surely Pepper and his staff were aware of the politically fatal implications of a liberal record on any legislation threatening an entrenched Jim Crow. Seemingly Pepper’s record on the FEPC was simply too tempting for a challenger determined to hit as hard as possible and as early and as often as possible….43

Pepper’s record on the FEPC was a political liability that Smathers was more than

happy to exploit. Despite Pepper’s votes against a permanent FEPC, Smathers was able

to use his support for the war time measure to make Pepper appear to be a traitor to the

South and its “peculiarities.” The continual attacks by Smathers over the FEPC, like his

Red Pepper accusations, kept Pepper on the defensive, and Pepper was finding it difficult

to overcome the perception that he supported FEPC, despite his fervent denials to the

contrary. Clark writes that, “The dangerous political game that Pepper played with the

race issue was coming back in 1950 to haunt him. He could not moderate his racial

42 Clark, Red Pepper, 133. 43 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 58.

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views enough to become a national political candidate and still retain his seat as a

southern senator. As the rising tide of civil rights spurred both blacks and whites to

action, Pepper could no longer merely say he was against equal rights for blacks; white

voters expected him to come up with plans to battle civil rights.”44 Smathers was able to

drive Pepper into a trap of his own making, caught between lofty national ambitions and

the political reality of a Southern politician; and it was looking more and more like there

would be no way to escape.

Pepper tried to set the tone for his own campaign by running on his tried and true style

of advancing and perfecting the New Deal, supporting President Truman and the Fair

Deal, and invoking the name of Roosevelt. In a Miami address, Pepper stated that, “The

issue in this campaign is whether this state and this nation will continue to drive toward

even more prosperity and toward a lasting peace, or whether we will turn back to the

dismal days of the depression.” He went on to add, “… I submit we have not yet realized

the American dream, even though we have come a long way toward it since that chill

March day in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt was first inaugurated….This campaign is

simply the old Roosevelt fight all over again. The same selfish forces that fought him are

fighting me today.”45 Pepper’s deep admiration and belief in Roosevelt and the New

Deal kept him in an idealistic rut. Americans have always been more inclined to be

forward thinking without dwelling too long on or in the past. The New Deal was

designed to provide hope and some relief to a nation in dire economic straits. In 1950,

the depression was over, the war had ended, and the United States was emerging as a

superpower, Roosevelt had been gone five years; and, as Crispell observed, “What

44 Clark, Red Pepper, 135. 45 Claude Pepper, Speech, Bayfront Park, Miami, March 30, 1950, Series 204D, Box 2, Folder 1A, Pepper Papers.

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Smathers did was pin Pepper down on the issues of FEPC and Soviet–American policy.

Forcing Pepper to explain his positions proved embarrassing enough to seek refuge

behind two administrations. Unfortunately, for Claude Pepper, the coattails of FDR were

worn indeed by 1950, and Truman acted as if the harried incumbent did not exist. Still

Pepper invoked the names of the Democratic tandem with limited effect.”46

In addition, Smathers tapped into timely issues that concerned voters—fiscal

responsibility in managing labor, social welfare spending and support for a strong

military while opposing national health insurance and socialized medicine. He also

awakened predominant fears of forced racial integration and the threat of communism

both externally and internally and exploited these fears to his advantage. He used his

youthful looks, natural charm and poignant oratory, crafted in the federal courtrooms of

Miami, delivering a vociferous and relentless attack on Pepper’s character and record. On

14 April, in an address in St. Petersburg, Pepper reiterated his views on the issues; and

then addressing Smathers’s attacks, he, finally, tried to refute them. Addressing the

charges of supporting the FEPC, Pepper said, “The people know my background of birth

in Alabama, my unbroken Southern lineage for two centuries. The people know me.

They know my family. They know these attacks for what they are.” Regarding the

alleged ties to communists and fellow–travelers, Pepper replied, “Had I not wanted to

answer in every detail,…the charges made against me, I would have ignored what my

opponent has said and insinuated about my being a communist or sympathetic to

communism, as too despicable to require any public statement on my part.”47 Pepper

tried to maintain the high road in his campaign but the power of Smathers message and

46 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 63. 47 Claude Pepper, Speech, St. Petersburg, April 14, 1950, Series 204D, Box 2, Folder 1A, Pepper Papers.

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his ability to sell it was getting a great deal of ink in the local press across the state; and

the nature of the campaign being waged and the clash of ideologies between the old and

new generation of American politicians had peaked the interest of the nation at large.

The campaign began heating up during March and April, the final two months before the

May 3 vote. Across Florida, coverage was found in about every newspaper, small and

large, from Pensacola, to Jacksonville and Jacksonville to Key West. Many of the

smaller papers would pick up stories from the wire services such as the Associated Press

or from the larger newspapers in Miami, Orlando and Tampa. One of the earliest pieces

of significance was written by Pepper’s friend William G. Carleton. Carlton writes, that,

“Florida’s spring primary, in which Senator Claude Pepper is a candidate for reelection,

is the most important election in the South this year and one of the most important in the

nation. The issues are taking shape in such a way as to make this an important test for the

Fair Deal.”48 One article in the New York Times drew the angst of Sen. Pepper enough to

mention it in his speech in St. Petersburg. W.H. Lawrence noted that, “Paraphrasing that

old adage that an apple a day will keep the doctor away, Representative George A.

Smathers of Florida believes, that naming a ‘communist front organization’ a day will

keep Claude Pepper away from the United States Senate….Every day as Mr. Smathers

travels up and down the peninsula of Florida, in his campaign to win the Democratic

Senatorial nomination, he comes up with a new organization…”49 The battle for the

hearts and minds of Florida Democrats was being waged on multiple fronts with

Smathers on the offensive and leaving Pepper little, if any, room for retreat.

48 William G. Carleton, “Can Pepper Hold Florida?” The Nation, 170, (March 4, 1950): 198. 49 W.H. Lawrence, “Smathers Echoes Dewey’s Campaign”, New York Times, April 8, 1950.

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Some of the most vicious infighting took place in Orange County and in the county

seat of Orlando and the pages of the Orlando Daily Sentinel. Orange County was a

center of Ku Klux Klan activity that was often violent and sometimes fatal and served as

a textbook definition of the white supremacist, racially segregated Old South. Martin

Andersen, editor of the Sentinel, working from the Smathers campaign platform took

Pepper to task on a daily basis. He began referring to the senator as I, Claudius and

explained why, “Some of our friends have wondered why we branded the senior Senator

I, Claudius. Well he won that title hands down for himself….when he was kicking his

dear friend, the little necktie salesman, Harry Truman in the teeth.” Andersen continues

with a vicious attack of Pepper on the meaning of FEPC, writing, that, “It means Negro

clerks dictating to white stenographers. It means Negros and whites working in the same

restaurants and Negros applying for the same jobs, along with white men and white

women, and the job giver going to jail if he doesn’t give due consideration to both….We

may as well understand that I, Claudius, the man who would be president by his own

admission and even though he couldn’t find anyone to nominate him and had to nominate

himself, is the colored man’s friend.”50

While Smathers’s attacks were scathing, the onslaught of attacks via the print medium

was especially venomous. One item that was particularly harsh was a forty–nine page

pamphlet titled, The Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper. Compiled by Jacksonville

attorney and former FBI Special Agent Lloyd Leemis, it received a fairly wide circulation

across Florida during the campaign. Leemis’s pamphlet reproduced photostats of

documents, articles, and a wide array of photographs as to make a case that Pepper

50 Martin Andersen, “Claude’s Next Job, Why The I, Claudius, Claude And The Negros,” Orlando Daily Sentinel, March 15, 1950.

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associated with known communists and fellow–travelers. The layout makes the

documents look ominous and the photographs of Pepper are unflattering and used to cast

doubt and suspicion; and it is presented in a manner that suggests a covert operation to

uncover the truth despite Leemis’s disclaimer that all of the documents and photographs

are of public record and within the public domain. Leemis noted in the forward that,

“However, the author’s sole purpose and only desire is to share with the people of Florida

certain indisputable facts and information in his possession which he believes the people

of Florida are entitled to have in order they may not be confused by the many charges,

denials, and countercharges now being hurled about in the heat of a political

campaign.”51 Leemis took full credit for compiling, publishing, and distributing the item,

however, a more likely scenario is that Leemis was hired to create the pamphlet and the

identity of the person or entities responsible is based purely on conjecture. However, the

article judged by the local press to be the most damaging came in the form of an

endorsement for Pepper, published in the Communist Party newspaper the Daily Worker.

Charles Hessner, in the Miami Daily News, writes that, “Florida’ political waters were

still as ‘hot’ as Bikini lagoon after the second A–bomb test. As echoes of the article in

the Communist Daily Worker hit with the impact of an atomic bomb.”52

In the final month of the campaign, both candidates traveled across the state speaking

to the people and making a final push for votes. Pepper, who had practically mastered the

art of eleventh hour campaign miracles, found his abilities lacking when he needed them

most. The Democratic voters of Florida went to the polls on 3 May 1950. Despite all of

the attention the campaign received approximately twenty–five percent of registered

51 Lloyd C. Leemis, “The Red Record of Senator Claude Pepper,” n.d., n.p., Smathers Papers. 52 Charles Hesser, “Red Endorsement Hit Pepper with the Impact of an Atom Bomb,” Miami Daily News, April 11, 1950.

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Democrats actually cast a ballot. Smathers received 387,215 votes and Pepper 319,719.

By 61,461 votes George Armistead Smathers had defeated, for the first time in Florida

history, an incumbent senator and for the first time in fourteen years, Claude Denison

Pepper would become a private citizen. Pepper had fallen victim to his own idealism, his

own words and most assuredly his own hubris; failing to recognize the changing political

tide and relying on the well worn and outdated New Deal. In the final analysis, his

actions resulted in making far too many enemies, underestimating the effectiveness of his

opponent and believing that, in the what have you done for me lately world of politics, he

could stand on his past accomplishments alone.

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Conclusion

The 1950 Senate primary between George Smathers and Claude Pepper was one of the

most ruthless and dirty campaigns of the century. Crispell observed that:

Political campaigns often reveal quite a bit about both the candidates and the society they seek to represent. This was the case of the 1950 Florida Democratic senatorial primary. George Smathers and Claude Pepper participated in what was instantly a vicious, bitter affair illustrating the dark heart of American society in the early 1950s, an unreconstructed America still haunted by racial injustice and a Cold War America willing to believe even a Joe McCarthy.1

Indeed, the campaign revealed the scope and depth of racial tensions that preceded the

civil rights movement, but, at the same time, the campaign was influenced by the

growing sentiment within the U.S. to begin righting wrongs and to begin healing old

wounds. Moreover, it exposes the callousness of those ready and willing to defend the

legality and morality of the “peculiar” society as well as the cruelty of those willing to

commit violence and murder to maintain its existence. White Florida in 1950 embraced

segregation, demonstrated a willingness to resist change, and exemplified the alarming

ease in which one race of people believed they were endowed, by providence, with racial

superiority in all strata of American and, especially, Southern society. Winsboro notes

that, “…a generally recurring assumption in both academic as well as popular discourse

that Florida has always been more progressive in race relations than its southern

neighbors. Such finite views are no longer justified. In addition to violence…that white

Floridians fought as hard as their Dixie neighbors to maintain segregated schools,

communities, and unequal political and employment opportunities.”2 The historical

1 Crispell, Testing the Limits, 56. 2 Irvin D.S. Winsboro, “Image, Illusion, And Reality: Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement” in Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement, ed. I.D.S. Winsboro, (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2009), 2.

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legacy of both Smathers and Pepper has to bear the stigma attached to those believing in

the validity of a white supremacist segregated society and promoting its continuation.

There was a distinct, underlying fear of Marxist–Leninist world domination that had

been lying on the periphery of American society since the first days of the Russian

Revolution. The economic collapse of the 1930s followed by the rapidity in which the

Soviet Union gained in strength and position on the world stage following the war re–

awoke that fear. Mutual distrust of one another and postwar ambitions on both sides

fueled the Cold War, and, as Theoharis noted, “The changed rhetoric of postwar foreign

policy begat a popular obsession for achieving total victory over communism—or, what

was much the same thing in the eyes of most Americans, the Soviet Union.”3

Progressives like Pepper and Henry Wallace advocated treating the Soviets as honest

brokers and establishing a more cordial tone in U.S. – Soviet relations. While pragmatists

like Truman and Smathers did not view the Soviets as honest brokers, distrusted Stalin,

and favored a foreign policy that took a hard–line approach in dealing with Stalin and the

Soviets. Pepper failed to comprehend that a growing majority of Americans, including

returning veterans like Smathers, agreed with the president. Smathers disagreed with

Pepper’s views on foreign policy, Soviet relations, as well as his views on business and

labor relations. Smathers’s political ambitions led him to challenge Pepper for his seat in

the U.S. Senate and he built his campaign upon his differences with Pepper regarding

these issues.

Pepper and Smathers came from different backgrounds. Pepper, grew up poor in rural

Alabama and knew firsthand the meaning of need, sacrifice, and hard work. His life

3 Athan Theoharis, Seed of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1977), 98.

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experiences taught him that with a little help and a great deal of effort could overcome

hardship and alter one’s destiny. Smathers grew up in a family of professionals that

included attorneys, judges, physicians and a U.S. Senator. Born in New Jersey, but with

deep roots in the North Carolina mountains, his family was well–to–do and thus afforded

him an easy path to an education and career. He was raised by a strict but loving father,

who demanded effort and excellence as well the improvement of both mind and body as

the path to a well–rounded life. Pepper’s primary goals were to earn enough money to

help support his family, attend college and become a U. S. Senator. Smathers always

admired his Uncle William, the senator, and he too envisioned a political career which his

father’s instincts helped him achieve. Both men were ambitious, and products of their

upbringing and life experiences. Pepper and Smathers first met in 1938 when Pepper

came to Gainesville to speak during his senate campaign.

As a young, wide–eyed student, Smathers was energized by Pepper’s oratory and

idealistic vision of the New Deal so much so, that he became Pepper’s campaign manager

in Alachua County. Pepper would later intervene on Smathers’s behalf when he sought a

job as the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Miami. However, over time, Pepper and Smathers

embarked upon divergent political paths and their differences, by 1950, appeared to

eliminate any common ground. The campaign of 1950 left both men disillusioned with

one another, and they did not speak to each other for nearly thirty years. Even after

“burying the hatchet,” both men held a residual resentment toward the other for the rest

of their lives. Pepper took a pro–Soviet stand from the end of the war until Stalin’s

actions and the deepening Cold War forced him to reevaluate his position. Smathers took

advantage of Pepper’s record and exploited it by sensationalizing Pepper’s rhetoric and

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associations, while painting Pepper as Stalin’s apologist and a fellow–traveler connected

to both known communists and communist front –organizations. Yet, he drew upon the

vast amount of negative press that Pepper had been amassing since 1944 and while he put

“Red Pepper” on trial he did not give him that moniker. Smathers effective use of “red

baiting” predated McCarthy’s infamous list of 205 names. While there is no tangible

evidence, it is possible that McCarthy’s assault on the State Department in February 1950

may have drawn inspiration from Smathers tactics. Pepper wrote that, “Richard Nixon

had been elected to the House of Representatives by pinning the “Red” label on his

opponent, Jerry Voorhis.”4 It is almost certain that Smathers friend, Nixon, revisited the

strategy in 1950 during his successful Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas,

whom he nicknamed the “Pink Lady,” in California. Pepper noted, “Anti–Communist

fervor had a grip on America. The fear was disproportionate to the threat. The words left

and liberal began to take on ominous connotations.”5 The communist paranoia that was

to unfold during the 1950s unleashed a panic from within where everybody saw

conspiracies where none existed and communists peering around every corner, with

accusations, coming from and toward, people in nearly every walk of life—including

education, the entertainment industry, print and broadcast media, government, and even

religious leaders. As Pepper observed, “Citizens became leery of each other without

reason and watched what they said and wrote lest they be suspected of “leftist” leanings.

Liberal politicians scrambled toward the center or even to the right. The climate was

perfect for a demagogue to pin labels on decent, honorable people, and soon Joe

McCarthy came along to fulfill that role. McCarthyism, however, preceded Joe

4 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 262-263. 5 Ibid., 263.

119

McCarthy.”6 One religious leader, Catholic Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, took his anti–

communist views to the airways. Winsboro and Epple noted that, “Sheen effectively

interlaced religious themes in his broadcasts to attract millions of viewers in his quest to

cast communism as the epicenter of moral decay, un–American activities, and the major

foreign policy issues of the era. The record indicates that his message not only alarmed

Americans about Soviet–style communism, but also contained a popular ecumenical

thrust placing Bible–waving on par with the flag–waving mania of the times.”7 Sheen’s

anti–communist message was a result of his own deep personal convictions about the

“evils” of the communist ideology. During the 1950s, Sheen had a bully pulpit that

allowed him to share his personal views with millions of Americans and thus contributed

to the promulgation of fear and anti–communist fervor in the United States during the

early days of the Cold War.

McCarthy also believed that communism would destroy American society and way of

life if given the chance. He used his position as a U.S. Senator to launch an

unprecedented assault on thousands of Americans in an attempt to “identify” and

eliminate communist threats from within and created a climate of paranoia among

millions of American citizens either fearing the “communist” hiding in their midst or

afraid they may be named next. Smathers’s use of “red baiting” as a campaign tactic

received a great deal of statewide and national media attention. While Smathers may not

have fanned the flames of this promulgation of fear, it is reasonable to believe that he

provided the spark that ignited it. Merriam–Webster defines McCarthyism as, “a mid-

6 Ibid. 7 Irvin D. S. Winsboro and Michael Epple, “Religion, Culture, And the Cold War: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and America’s Anti–Communist Crusade of the 1950s,” The Historian 71, no. 2, (Summer, 2009): 233.

120

20th century political attitude characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be

subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of

widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated

charges; broadly : defamation of character or reputation through such tactics.”8 Thus

Smathers, in the context of this definition, is guilty of McCarthyism. The 1950

Democratic Primary held significance beyond the borders of Florida. Bell observed that,

“Florida forms a useful case study for an examination the political landscape of the

United States at mid–century precisely because it formed a political meeting ground

between the South and the metropolitan locus of liberal thought in the north–east of the

country.”9 Indeed, Florida experienced a significant growth in postwar population due to

retirees flocking to the state to enjoy their golden years, basking in the warm sun while

lying upon the sand–swept beaches.

The Smathers–Pepper campaign gained notoriety for the raucous mudslinging, red

baiting nature of the campaign. More significantly, it marked a shift to the right from the

New Deal progressive liberalism that had dominated the American political scene since

1932, and rejected one of its greatest standard–bearers, Claude Pepper. Pepper’s defeat

suggested that a paradigm shift in the American body politic had taken place, with the

American public looking forward, seeking prosperity and ready to lead the world in

business and industry, while maintaining security and fighting the scourge of communism

both at home and abroad. Politically, Pepper had “outlived” his time. Smathers

represented the new breed of American politician that drew from their experience in the

8 Merriam–Webster OnLine, s.v. “McCarthyism,” accessed October 10, 2013, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mccarthyism. 9 Jonathan W. Bell, “Conceptualising Southern Liberalism: Ideology and the Pepper–Smathers 1950 Primary in Florida,” Journal of American Studies 37, (2003): 20. DOI 10.1017/S0021875803006984.

121

fight to save America and the world from fascist tyranny and believed they were destined

to continue the battle against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The election proved to

be a state–level bellwether for the changing tone of American politics and those of the

G.I. generation that would lead it for the next four decades.

The early post–mortem of the campaign in the press pointed a critical eye toward the

FEPC and the question of race as the deciding factors in the Smathers victory and decried

the demagoguery. Commonweal concluded, “Mr. Smathers made the most of these

issues in a rather nasty way. Mr. Pepper on the defensive all the way, replied in kind,

hitting Smathers as a reactionary and a tool of big money….A liberal candidate in the

South is most vulnerable to a ruthless opponent on the very issues that make his

candidacy worthwhile.” “The cry of the demagogue is shrill and deafening, but, blessing

in disguise, nobody’s nerves can stand it forever.”10 James Lyons of the Christian

Science Monitor had a frank assessment, writing that, “The eyes of United States and the

world were focused on Florida this week for the windup of a highly significant senatorial

race. More than a clash of colorful personalities, the election in the nature of a statewide

showdown— and a trial balloon on the ideological concept of the welfare state….but the

central fact, no matter who the winner, is that a virulent political contest has cost Florida

heavily in the poise and progress of its social thinking—so fortuitously attained since the

betrayal of Osceola a century ago.”11 The Christian Century surmised, “In large

measure, it became, before it was decided, a contest in demagoguery….Each tried to

outdo the other in proclaiming his devotion to white rule and his abhorrence of President

10 “Mr. Smathers and Mr. Pepper,” Commonweal, May 19, 1950, 142. 11 James Lyons, “Florida Upset: Half Proofs and Half–Truths,” Christian Science Monitor, May 6, 1950.

122

Truman’s civil rights program. We believe both Mr. Smathers and Mr. Pepper to be

better men than their campaigning indicated.”12

The initial analysis from the early post-mortem of the campaign is essentially

correct—racial undertones and use of demagoguery were rampant throughout the

campaign on both sides. As Pepper noted,

From the moment I read Smathers’s first campaign speech, I had believed that his tactics would boomerang, that voters would be turned off by his total lack of restraint. After allowing themselves to be mesmerized by a Joe McCarthy for a few years the American people finally saw though him. But in a brief political campaign, such simple and easily understood labels as “Red” and “nigger–lover” caught on quickly, in part because they were fortified by my visit to Moscow in 1945 and by half–page newspaper photographs of me shaking hands with blacks.13

The campaign exposed the baser instincts of politicians either seeking power or trying to

hold onto power and the rather seedy nature of political campaigning. However, the

perspective from the current view also reveals the toll in human suffering and loss that

occurred as a result of the fear mongering rhetoric of McCarthyism. Where a simple

accusation made without merit or any tangible evidence of subversion or of having

communist ties could destroy ones personal and professional reputation.

Even more shameful, was the willingness of white society to tolerate and perpetuate

the discrimination and violence of the Jim Crow South—and the role that both men

played in promulgating white supremacy, fear, and paranoia in 1950. The painful legacy

of the segregationist’s fears was an increase in Klan activity across Florida, and a wave of

violence perpetrated by those radical elements willing to commit murder and mayhem in

defending the “peculiar” society. The violence included a series of bombings, a total of

eleven across Florida in 1951, including the 25 December bombing of the home of

12 “Must Demagoguery Be the Price of Office?” The Christian Century, May 17, 1950, 605. 13 Pepper and Gorey, Pepper, 264.

123

former president of the Florida conference of the NAACP, Harry T. Moore—killing

Moore and his wife Harriette. Moore was the founder of the Florida Progressive Voter’s

League and organized attempts to register Negro voters throughout Florida. Lempel notes

that, “The Allwright decision and Truman’s election bid gave impetus to the massive

voter registration drive organized by the Florida Progressive Voter’s League (FPVL), a

statewide black political association. Major partners of the FPVL voter registration drive

included the Florida conference of the NAACP branches and the Florida Negro Elks

Association.”14 The efforts of Moore and others produced a significant rise in the

number of registered Democratic black voters which grew exponentially, from zero in

1944 to 32, 280 in 1946, and to 106,420 by 1950.15 Lempel using data from Daytona

Beach, illustrates this increase, noting that, “Albert Bethune’s involvement in the

Democratic voter registration drive, together with Moore’s close attachment to Daytona

Beach (he and his two daughters graduated from Bethune–Cookman College and the

Moore’s frequently visited the city) help to explain the nearly total conversion of

Daytona’s black electorate to the Democrats in 1948. The voter registration drive also

revitalized African–American political activity in the city.”16 Moore and the FPVL’s

continued efforts and successes in registering black voters within Florida’s Democratic

Party threatened segregationists for whom the party served as their base of political

power. The number of black voters registering as Democrats between 1950 and 1954

only increased by 13,555, approximately a 92.8 percent difference from the previous four

14 Leonard R. Lempel, “Toms and Bombs: The Civil Rights Struggle in Daytona Beach” in Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement, ed. Irvin D.S. Winsboro, Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 93. 15 Hugh Douglas Price, “The Negro and Florida Politics, 1944-1954,” Journal of Politics, 17, no. 2 (May, 1955): 200. 16 Ibid.

124

years and may in part reflect the loss of Moore’s efforts in the registration of black voters

due to the racially motivated violence that resulted in his death and that of his wife.

George Smathers went on to serve the state of Florida in the U. S. Senate for three

terms, retiring to a quiet, private life in 1969. During his senate career, he continued

supporting the Southern racial position, by opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Bill as well as

Thurgood Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court. He also focused his attention on

U.S.–Latin American relations. Smathers died on 20 January 2007 at the age of 93.

Claude Pepper relocated to Miami from Tallahassee to engage in the practice of law. In

1958, he made another failed bid for the senate. Pepper managed a rebirth of his political

career in 1961, when he was successful in winning a congressional seat in Miami’s 3rd

District. As a congressman, Pepper championed the causes of senior citizens, helped to

strengthen Social Security, and served his district and the nation until his death on 30

May 1989 at age 88.

Of Smathers and Pepper, it can be said that they were both men of great passion and

great ambition. They were not great men, but men flawed by their acceptance and

promulgation of discrimination and segregation. However, they lived and served in one

of the most tumultuous and turbulent periods in American history. Both remained

steadfast in support of their individual positions and convictions. Both men should be

noted for their contributions, as well as be held accountable for their shortcomings. In the

final analysis, historians continue to analyze and debate the legacy of one of America’s

most sensational and controversial campaigns, and, in the annals of history, that legacy

has yet to be fully determined.

Bibliography

I. Documents

Carleton, William Graves Papers. Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. Clark, Tom C. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Clifford, Clark Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Elsey, George M. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. Pepper, Claude D. Papers. Claude Pepper Library in the Claude Pepper Center, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. Robins, Raymond Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, Wisconsin. Smathers, George A. Papers. Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. Truman, Harry S. Papers. Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. II. Books Berman, William C. The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1970. Berthon, Simon and Joanna Potts. Warlords: An Extraordinary Recreation of World War II Through the eyes of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2006. Brock, Clifton. Americans for Democratic Action: Its Role in National Politics. Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1962. Crispell, Brian, Lewis. Testing the Limits: George Armistead Smathers and Cold War America. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1999. Clark, James, C. Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: Claude Pepper's Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 2011. Danese, Tracy, E. Claude Pepper and Ed Ball: Politics, Purpose and Power. The Florida History and Culture Series, edited by Raymond Arsenault and Gary R. Mormino. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press, 2000. Fredrickson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Gaddis, John Lewis. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. ______. The Long Peace: Inquires Into the History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Gardner, Michael R. Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Hamby, Alonzo, L. Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Herman, Arthur. Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press, 2000. Kennedy, David, M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929 – 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Google Library e-book.

Keylor, William R. The Twentieth—Century World: An International History.3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Louis, Wm. Roger and Robert Robinson. Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez And Decolonization, Collected Essays. 2nd ed. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. Mastny, Vojtech. Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare and the Politics of Communism, 1941-1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Miller, Roger G. To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, Reprint, 2008. Morgan, Ted. Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth Century America. New York: Random House, 2003. Newman, Roger K. “Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)” in, Major Acts of Congress. edited by Brian K. Landsberg, vol. 2. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004, Gale Virtual Reference Library e book. Olson, James Stuart. Saving Capitalism: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933-1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Pepper, Claude, Denson. Pepper: Eyewitness to a Century. With Hays Gorey. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987. Rauchway, Eric. The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Saltzman, Neil V. Reform and Revolution: The Life and Times of Raymond Robins. Kent, Ohio: Kent University Press, 1991. Schmidt, Karl M. Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade 1948. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1960. Sorensen, Theodore, C, ed. “Let The Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy. New York: Delacorte Press, 1988. Tebeau, Charlton, W. and William Marina. A History of Florida. 3rd ed. Miami, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1999. Theoharis, Athan. Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism. New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971. Truman, Margaret. Harry S. Truman. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1973. Tyson, Timothy B. “Dynamite and “The Silent South’: A Story from the Second Reconstruction in South Carolina” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from the Civil War to Civil Rights. ed. Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Bryant Simon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Watkins, T.H. Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold L. Ickes, 1874-1952. New York: Henry Holt &Co, 1990. Wettig, Gerhard. Stalin and the Cold War in Europe: The Emergence and Development of East-West Conflict, 1939-1953. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Wickman, Patricia, R. The Uncommon Man: George Smathers of Florida. Panama City, Florida: n.p., 1994. Winsboro, Irvin D.S. ed. Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida And The Modern Civil Rights Movement. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2009.

III. Journals Bell, Jonathan, W. “Conceptualizing Southern Liberalism: Ideology and the Pepper – Smathers 1950 Primary in Florida.” Journal of American Studies 37, no.1 (April, 2003): 17 – 45. Carleton, William G. “The Southern Politician—1900 and 1950.” Journal of Politics 13, no.2 (May, 1951): 215–231. Clark, James, C. “Claude Pepper and the Seeds of His 1950 Defeat, 1944 – 1948.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 74, no. 1 (Summer, 1995): 1 – 22. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1351704401120~594&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=fhq%20april%20.1988&adjacency=Y&application=DIGITOOL-3&frameId=1&usePid1. Accessed October 10, 2010. ______. “The 1944 Florida Democratic Senate Primary.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 66, No.4 (April, 1988): 365-384. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1351704136551~121&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=fhq%20april%201988&adjacency=Y&application=DIGITOOL-3&. Accessed October 10, 2010. Hess, Gary, R. “The Iranian Crisis of 1945-46 and the Cold War.” Political Science Quarterly 89 no. 1(March, 1974): 117 – 146, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2148118. Accessed April 9, 2012. Kabat, Ric, A. “From Camp Hill to Harvard Yard: the Early Years Claude D Pepper.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 72, no. 2 (October, 1993): 155 – 179. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1350864924923~150&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=fhq%20vol%2072%20no%202&adjacency=Y&application=DIGIT. Accessed August 21, 2010. Price, Hugh, Douglas. “The Negro in Florida Politics, 1944 – 1954.” The Journal of Politics 17, no. 2 (May, 1955): 198 – 220, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2126464. Accessed May13, 2010. Stoesen, Alexander R. “Road from Receivership: Claude Pepper, the DuPont Trust, and the Florida East Coast Railway.” The Florida Historical Quarterly 52, no.2 (October, 1973): 132-156. http://digitool.fcla.edu/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1351704783258~4&locale=en_US&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=7&search_terms=october%201973&adjacency=N&application=DIGITOOL-3&frame. Accessed October 10, 2012. Winsboro, Irvin D. S., and Michael Epple. “Religion, Culture, And the Cold War: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in America's Anti-Communist Crusade of the 1950s.” The Historian 71, no. 2 (Summer, 2009): 209 – 233. X (Kennan, George F). “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (1947): 566–582.

IV. Oral History Interviews Johnson, Claudia "Lady Bird." Oral History Interview XXI, August10-11, 1981, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, 33. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/Johnson– C/CTJ%2021.pdf. Accessed on November 7, 2012. Pepper, Claude. Interview by Jack Bass and Walter Devries, interviewA-0056, transcript Southern Oral History Program Collection no. 4007, February 1, 1974, http://docsouth.unc.edu/soph/A-0056/A-0056.html. Smathers, George A. “George A. Smathers, United States Senator, 1951-1969.” interview by Donald A. Ritchie, Oral History Interviews, Senate Historical Office, Washington, D.C., Interview no. 1: “The Road to Congress,” August 1, 1989. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Smathers_interview_1.pdf.

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