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representing the Progressive Voters League: “This young man explained the purpose of the Voters League to ‘intelligize’ negro citizens on their responsibilities and rights and to help them qualify to vote” (Heard 1947b). It is dif- ficult to know what purpose was served by including this gaffe, other than to diminish the speaker. Also addressing this particular meeting was a CIO organizer, whom the interviewer described as “a huge negro . . . one of the blackest men I have ever seen,” whose “histrionics reminded me of the negro preachers we used to see when going to negro churches on Sunday night in Savannah to hear the singing” (Heard 1947b). In recounting his meeting with a South Carolina political activist, Key’s assistant noted that the interview was held “at the ‘news offices’ of his [the subject’s] newspaper, the typical Negro office quarters upstairs over a commercial establishment below.” The placement of the words “news offices” in quotation marks diminishes the professional credentials of the subject, as does the interviewer’s dismissive description of the office as resembling “the typical Negro office quarters.” The interviewer noted that the subject possessed a college degree but later remarked that the subject “enjoyed immensely the role of discourser and relished in an occasional authoritative tone, commanding gesture, and a fair number of unnecessarily complex sentences” (Heard 1948). A few states to the west, in Alabama, one African American activist was described as being “a bit carried away with the importance of his own activity” (Heard 1947a). The interviewers’ main concern, however, was politics. In the course of their conversation, one African American subject related a story that illustrates the intense interest among southern blacks in rural areas despite tremendous obstacles: [The interview subject] says he was asked to speak at a country church to a group of Negroes one night. He noticed when they came in that each had a bundle under his arm. He asked about the bundles. It turned out they contained the work clothes of the people. They had been picking cotton all day and had no time to go home before the meeting so when they left home in the morning, they had taken clean clothes with them and had changed after work. He said he talked 35 minutes to these people and then stopped and said he wouldn’t continue so that they would have a chance to ask him questions. ‘Go on, son, tell us all about it.’ He said he did go on and when he finished a lengthy talk they asked questions for over an hour. They were very simple, very elementary questions , such as how do you go about registering, what do you do if the registrar asks you such and such, but it indicated the people were trying to learn—and that is his religion: helping them learn. (Heard 1948) 50 ■ Kari Frederickson Another South Carolina activist likewise detailed political activity in that state, reporting that “some of the ‘most militant leadership’ comes out of the rural, heavily Negro counties and areas” (Heard 1948). The Jackson meeting mentioned earlier lasted over two hours and attracted over two hundred people. But stories of political determination such as these rarely found their way into Southern Politics. With his strong belief in widespread political apathy among African Americans in the South, Key did not see much hope for expanded or sustained black political activity for the near future. He was critical of black leadership and hoped that eventually, and gradually, a “responsible Negro leadership” would emerge (Key 1949, 654). But a new leadership was already emerging in parts of the South in the immediate postwar era. Motivated by their wartime service and determined to bring about change at home, black veterans in his midst struggled to provide new leadership. He either did not see it or did not see it as significant. Key writes that in the municipal elections in Savannah, Georgia, in 1946, black ministers (whom he would consider the irresponsible, traditional leadership) sold out to the established political machine but that black voters did not follow suit. What he misses here, though, is that the voters were following the lead of a bi-racial “good government ” organization created by black and white World War II veterans (Key 1949, 654; Brooks 2004, 125–33). Revolts of veterans in “good government” movements in the immediate postwar era in Arkansas receive some attention from Key, but the veterans he focuses on, led by...

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