Battling Nell: The Life of Southern Journalist Cornelia Battle Lewis, 1893--1956

Image Plates

Dr. Richard H. Lewis, Nell’s father, achieved national renown in the field of public health. Early in Nell’s career, her feminism and temperament sometimes created discord with Dr. Lewis, who held traditional views regarding women’s roles. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Ivey F. Lewis, Nell’s half brother, served as dean of the University of Virginia and helped furnish the “scientific” rationale for the commonwealth’s racial integrity movement. The prominent biologist later became Nell’s confidant during the South’s massive resistance to public school integration. (North Carolina Collection , University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill.) Kemp P. Lewis, Nell’s half brother, a leading textile executive, supported her throughout her many bouts of mental illness. The problems he and his elder brother, Richard Jr., faced with unionization likely contributed to Nell’s political reversal. (North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill.) Nell as a student at Raleigh’s St. Mary’s School, which she attended from 1907 through 1911. Her behavior did not always rise to the institution’s genteel standards. “I wasn’t very good,” she later confessed. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Nell, the editor-in-chief of St. Mary’s literary magazine and yearbook, meets with her staff in 1911. She is pictured at the head of the table. (Saint Mary’s School, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Nell as the wise and ironical fool Feste in Smith College’s 1917 production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. She returned to Raleigh from the northern school “filled with liberal ideas,” a niece later recalled. (Sophia Smith Collection and the College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.) Lewis, in her YMCA uniform, and her beau Lenoir Chambers in Nice, France, in 1919. Her father apparently, under mysterious circumstances, played a prominent role in ending her love affair. (Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.) The Gastonia defendants in 1929. Fred Beal stands in the front row, second from left. As the South’s leading female liberal journalist, Lewis crusaded on behalf of the imprisoned members of the communist-controlled union. She would later recant her progressive activism . (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Lewis, one of North Carolina’s pioneering female attorneys, prepares to argue for the Samarcand defendants, who were accused in 1931 of burning down two buildings at the state “detention home and industrial school for immoral , neglected, and wayward [white] girls.” (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Frank P. Graham (seated top left) confers—probably in 1947—with future Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace. Lewis, as the associate editor of the Raleigh Times, dubbed the former vice president “Red Hank” and lambasted him. (Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.) Lewis taught English, history, and Bible at St. Mary’s 1937 through 1944 and again in 1954. Despite her political metamorphosis , many students considered their teacher “quite avant-garde” because of her individuality and directness. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.) Senator Frank P. Graham campaigns during North Carolina’s bitterly contested 1950 Democratic Party primary. Lewis opposed her former liberal ally’s candidacy and stumped for one of his opponents, Willis Smith. (Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.) Jonathan Daniels (right) meeting with President Harry S. Truman. Daniels directed the Raleigh News and Observer after the death of his father, Josephus, in 1948. Lewis’s conservatism and her resentment of her liberal new editor must often have frustrated Jonathan, but he nevertheless afforded his opinionated columnist a high degree of autonomy. (Associated Press.) ...