The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott: The Squire from Haw River by Julian M. Pleasants (review)

Julian M. Pleasants traces populism in post–World War II North Carolina by providing the first political biography of W. Kerr Scott (1896–1958), the Democratic governor from 1949 to 1953. The lack of such a book until now is surprising given the importance of Scott’s tenure to North Carolina politics. The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott: The Squire from Haw River argues that Scott created a “New Deal” of sorts for North Carolina, pulling the state out of parochialism and stagnation and into modern postwar America. The vast majority of the book concentrates on Scott’s tenure as governor, but it also delves into his time in the U.S. Senate. Employing a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, Pleasants’s well-written book illuminates Scott’s progressive legislation and his interactions with future political leaders of the state. Where the book is slightly less successful is in its discussion of sex and gender and its grammatical references to race. This is a long overdue biography that adds to historians’ understanding of post– World War II North Carolina.

In 1948 Scott challenged “the Gardner machine,” the ruling political oligarchy of the state named for O. Max Gardner, for the governorship (p. 1). Scott’s populist “Go Forward” platform had several major prongs, including providing roads, telephones, and electricity to rural areas. Wielding a pugnacious, direct, and yet folksy bully pulpit, Scott managed to get many of his proposals enacted. However, Pleasants also shows that Scott often made mercurial and irrational statements and that, throughout his governorship, Scott made decisions about nominations and firings that needlessly created enemies. Nowhere is this characteristic better exemplified than in the fine chapter on Scott’s doomed backing of Frank Porter Graham for the Senate in 1950.

Regardless, Scott had a lot to be proud of at the end of his term in 1953. New roads, hospitals, and schools had been constructed throughout the state. Prison reform and environmental safeguards had been enacted. Pleasants also shows that Scott’s career influenced many others who became mainstays in North Carolina politics in later decades, including Jesse Helms, Duncan McLauchlin “Lauch” Faircloth, Terry Sanford, and James B. Hunt Jr. In 1954 Scott successfully ran for a seat in the Senate, but while in office he passed away due to a heart attack in 1958.

Where Pleasants’s work falls a little short is on its take on sex and, to an extent, race. Scott’s assistant manager in his 1948 campaign was a woman, and 15 percent of his appointments were women. Of these, undoubtedly the most significant was Susie Sharp, whom Scott made the first ever female superior court judge in North Carolina. Yet Pleasants never addresses whether Scott offered any programmatic efforts to help women in North Carolina, as he had done for the poor and for rural voters.

Pleasants does better analyzing race. He convincingly demonstrates that by white southern standards, Scott was a moderate on racial issues. Scott wanted improved conditions for black North Carolinians, but he strongly supported segregation. Disconcerting, however, is Pleasants’s repeated use of the word “Negro” when referring to black citizens. For example, the author writes, “Despite his overtures to Negroes and his earlier moderate position on race, Scott failed to promote the one thing that would have enhanced southern progress—greater equality for Negroes” (p. 320). Even with these misgivings, The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott is worthy of recommendation as a well-crafted and well-researched book on one of North Carolina’s most influential twentieth-century governors.