The New Southern University: Academic Freedom and Liberalism at UNC

1. "Race Was a Delicate Matter": The Academic Study of Race Relations

25 1 “Race Was a Delicate Matter” The Academic Study of Race Relations In January 1921, the Ku Klux Klan came to Chapel Hill. They burned no crosses and administered no beatings. The UNC student newspaper, the Tar Heel, reported that a “Mr. Smith” had arrived in town with the purpose of starting up a Klan chapter in Chapel Hill, having recently launched one in Durham. The “mysterious” Smith spoke to a meeting of “students and the town people” at the local schoolhouse, introduced by Jesse Harper Erwin Jr. of Durham. But, the story continued, “very little enthusiasm” greeted the Klan leader. Skeptics in the audience included the local chief of police, the principal of the local high school, and UNC drama professor Frederick Koch. Smith explained that the Klan’s purpose was “to assist, not to take the place of law and order.” Without elaboration , he singled out for special mention “the malicious activities of certain Catholics and Japanese among the negroes.” At one point Smith reached into his handbag for reading material, “disclosing as he did the mystical red-crossed white robe and helmet which are the insignia of the Order.” After finishing his address, Smith then asked those interested in forming a Chapel Hill klavern to stand. When, as the Tar Heel reported, there were “very many remaining seated,” the Klansman “became rather warm under the collar.” Revealingly, however, the student paper then contrasted the lackluster interest in this new Klan with the “glorious history of the old Ku Klux Klan” that “did so much to restore 26 The New Southern University peace and prosperity to the South in the troubled times of the ‘carpetbag ’ government.”1 Elsewhere the Tar Heel reported at least some campus support for the Klan. The university’s Philanthropic Assembly debated the recently failed attempt by the state legislature to pass an “anti-mask” law meant to discourage Klan activity.2 According to the student paper, the Phi Assembly included a handful of staunch defenders of the Klan, members “especially favorable toward the robed fraternal order’s stand in regard to Jews, Catholics, and colored peoples.” But at the end of the meeting, the group voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill that the state legislators had rejected.3 The next week, another debating society, the Dialectic Society, emerged from a lively debate to go on record as being opposed to the Klan.4 The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s gave the university a timely opportunity to demonstrate the importance of the university mission of academic freedom and expert leadership to the South. To people like Harry Chase, Howard Odum, and sociologist Guy B. Johnson, the rise of the Klan represented just the opposite of UNC’s self-image. The Klan’s popularity rested on emotion rather than the intellect ; it represented a case of bad, thoughtless leadership instead of the calm, informed direction UNC offered. The Klan’s efforts would make life in the South worse by inflaming hatreds and suspicions, while UNC dedicated its own efforts to promulgating wisdom and light, to make life better for all southerners. The university’s ability to treat southern race relations as an academic issue with real-life implications allowed UNC scholars to invoke their expertise and kept them relatively free to look more closely into the reality of segregation. The analyses coming from UNC leaders and students during the decade increasingly reflected modern ideas on “race” emerging from the academy, with an emphasis on environmental factors determining behavior, health, and intelligence. Research by university faculty such as Guy Johnson criticized the Klan at a time when the organization was reaching its peak nationwide. UNC faculty members subjected the Klan to tests of scholarly investigation to uncover the true “facts” behind the organization’s frantic claims. Also, as a result of new levels of interaction with the black community, some university officials and students embraced the work of African American leaders and writers. Exposure to the work of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance encouraged some to question the assumptions upon which The Academic Study of Race Relations 27 segregation was based. By the end of the decade, UNC’s willingness to examine race issues as a legitimate category of academic inquiry had produced a much more critical stance on segregation. As an institution, however, UNC was still far from disavowing segregation any time soon. As Guy...