The Affable Journalist as Social Critic: Ben Robertson and the Early Twentieth-Century South

Essay The Affable Journalist as Social Critic: Ben Robertson and the Early Twentieth-Century South by Lacy K. Ford, Jr. In the summer of 1939, Ben Robertson, former White House correspondent for the Associated Press, traveled from Clemson to Atlanta hoping to write a feature on Margaret Mitchell, the newly famous author whose best-selling novel, Gone With The Wind, made its debut that year as an epic-length movie starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. Working as a free-lance journalist, Robertson bubbled with excitement about his prospective story. His timing seemed perfect, and he had friends in Atlanta's small but growing "smart set" who knew Peggy Mitchell. Over the course of his career, Robertson had developed a knack for the human interest story, and this one promised to be fun. Within two weeks, however, Robertson's excitement turned to frustration, even pique, unusual emotions for the normally affable South Carolinian. "Boy, oh, Boy, I stepped in where the angels fear to tread," Robertson complained to his New York editor. Mitchell eagerly cooperated with the easygoing Robertson at first, but her mood quickly soured when his interviews with her friends revealed less than flattering personal information. Mitchell "won't talk," Robertson explained, but her "friends will talk their heads off." Robertson reported that Mitchell had "written me a letter as long as GWTW calling me no gentleman and a betrayer of great authors in the homes of their intimate friends. She can take up a simple statement Margaret Mitchell is 34 years old and write a treatise on it as long as the Battle of Atlanta scene and make you think in the end no one is ever 34 and that there really is no Margaret Mitchell." Peggy Mitchell, Robertson concluded, "is the kind who keeps things from being printed ... by yelling . . . [that] she will be slandered and have to file suit. Nuts!" Journalistic valor yielded to legal discretion, and Robertson left Atlanta without a story.1 But Robertson's mild contretemps with Scarlett O'Hara's creator was an atypical episode in the personable journalist's remarkable career. Ben Robertson seldom rubbed anyone the wrong way. He never met a stranger. His network of friends was ecumenical and worldwide. Fellow journalist Ed Camp, editor of the Atlanta Journal in 1943, claimed that Robertson could "talk on equal terms with the rudest longshoreman of Sydney or the haughtiest functionary of No. 10 Downing Street."2 Among Robertson's famous friends was the esteemed broad- 354Southern Cultures cast Journalist Edward R. Murrow, who first earned fame with his memorable radio coverage of World War II and later added to his reputation with pioneering work in television news for William Paley and Fred Friendly at CBS. Late one evening in the 1950s, after an especially difficult meeting with producers at his New York City townhouse, a frustrated Murrow pressed a tattered and worn copy of Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory (1942), Robertson's precocious memoir , into one of his guests' hands. Imploring his coworkers to read the book, Murrow confided to them that "Ben Robertson was my best friend."3 A fond remembrance of the author's formative years in the Carolina foothills, Red Hills and Cotton impresses even the most casual reader with its stirring evocation of the roles played The elegiac tone that dominates by family, community, and church Red Hills and Cotton disguisedin shaping young lives in the timeRobertson 's restless curiosity, his less rural reaches of P^ndustrial considerable ambition, his keen America Robertsons soft-spoken .......... , personality translated on the printed critical mind, and his emotional. . .. „ . . page into gentle, colloquial prose. desire to see dramatic socialYet Ben Robertson was no senti_ improvements made in hismental southern traditionalist. The native South.elegiac tone that dominates Red Hills and Cotton disguised Robertson 's restless curiosity, his considerable ambition, his keen critical mind, and his emotional desire to see dramatic social improvements made in his native South.4 Though Ben Robertson was well known in South Carolina as a frequent visitor and sought-after public speaker during his lifetime, subsequent generations of southerners remain largely unfamiliar with the many accomplishments of the respected journalist.5 A member...