Ferrel Guillory - On the Temper of the Times: Jack Bass: An article from Southern Cultures 18:3, Fall 2012: The Politics Issue

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Southern Cultures 2012 Center for the Study of the American South

Published by the University of North Carolina Press

Voices from the Southern Oral History Program
On the Temper of the Times

Jack Bass

INTERVIEWED BY FERREL GUILLORY

Jack Basss unplanned life brings insights about the Southern Strategy and the colorful and not-so-secret lives of Strom Thurmond, as well as memories of working with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, interviewing Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and much more. Thurmond and Reagan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In 2011, Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life, sat down with his friend and colleague Jack Bass, a distinguished journalist and the author of several books on the South, including the influential The Transformation of Southern Politics. Bass discussed the advantages of his small-town roots, finding a career in journalism that coincided with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and even his own short-lived foray into politics. His unplanned life brought insights about the Southern Strategy and the colorful and not-so-secret lives of Strom Thurmond, as well as memories of working with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, interviewing Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and much more. He also previewed his next book, which provides a historical context for the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, the Supreme Courts landmark ruling that has allowed corporations to make large contributions as independent expenditures in the 2012 campaign.

A SMALL TOWN CALLED NORTH

Ferrel Guillory: Tell me about North, South Carolina.

Jack Bass: I grew up in North. North was named for Colonel John North, who was one of three men who gave most of the land for the town, and he had been a lance corporal in the Civil War. He was no doubt a colonel in the Confederate Veterans Association, and his granddaughter worked in my fathers store.

I was the youngest of seven. My father, Nathan Bass, was an immigrant from Lithuania. He was quite successful until the boll weevil came through in the 1920s. Then he left and stayed for a little while in Morristown, New Jersey, then Lowell, Massachusetts, where my youngest sister, whos four years older than I am, was born, and then got a letter from someone back in North saying they thought North could support another store again. North was in a majority-black county, and it was small, 700800 people, but it was a shopping center for an area probably about eight miles in circumference.

My father was sort of the prototypical archetype of the small-town southern Jewish merchant, a big FDR Democrat, big New Deal Democrat, and stayed well-informed. But he was part of the Masonic Lodge, and all the stores in town would close on Wednesday afternoon, and theyd all get together for a fish fry. Well, the fish fry was a poker game.

My mother, Ester Cohen, came to this country with her whole family, when she was two, from Poland. She had, I think, only about six years of education. She had a minor health problem, but it was sufficient that she didnt finish school.

What was the experience of your family?

I took my nephew from Chicago once to North, maybe fifteen years ago, and we went by a barber shop where I knew the guy, and as he put it, We treated your father just like he was one of us. My son is just completing a family history, so I explained to him that everybody else would call somebody Mr. Joe, Mr. Bob, but they always called my father Mr. Bass, not Mr. Nathanslight differences. Essentially, if you were Jewish in a small southern town, with the Baptists and Methodists, so being a person of the Old Testament, you were fully accepted. Plus the fact you were white, so you were accepted as white.

I lived in North until I stayed in college. I was the sixth member of my family to go to University of South Carolina. Graduated in 56. I was editor of The Game-cock, the student newspaper.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Is there an incident, something that galvanized your interest in southern politics, that propelled you into your career?

In 1960 things were just beginning to turn in the South. Id been back on the East Coast for two months the previous fall, a Navy special thing, and you could feel it in the air. People would talk about it. So I ended up coming back. Id worked two summers for the Charleston News and Courier in college in the sports department. They gave me a two-month extension in the Navy, because my wife was expecting that December, and I got out in February of 1960.

I worked five days [a week for the News and Courier]. Then, I went to work for the Columbia Record, which was an afternoon paper. After about a year and a half, I moved over to The State, which was the largest newspaper in South Carolina, on governmental affairs staff.

And even when we had the West Ashley Journal, we had a fairly strong editorial page. We werent at odds with the Post and Courier, then the News and Courier, but we had a different point of view. In fact, we got a second-class mailing permit and ended up with a 2,300 paid circulation and won second place in the state press association contest for weeklies.

Your career in journalism coincided with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement and the white resistance in South Carolina. What are your perceptions of the temper of those times?

Well, it was the beginning of the rise of the Republican Party. I recall vividly, after Fritz Hollings completed his term as governor, in 63, and he ran [for Senate and won] the primary. Hollings had supported Jack Kennedy. I remember the next day talking to five different people while I was trying to sell ads, and they said, Well, I voted for Fritz Hollings yesterday, and Im going to vote for Bill Workman in November. Workman was a former journalist who was the Republican candidate for Senate. You could tell the political change coming onthe reaction of white voters to the Democrats, who they perceived as being the proCivil Rights party.

I recall vividly staying up until about 5:00 a.m. on the weeklywe would do that on the final night, the paste-ups and alland listening to the radio until about three oclock, the time when Ole Miss was desegregated, and writing an editorial about it. When James Meredith entered, they had the riots at Ole Miss. I forget what we now said, but in the context of Charleston, South Carolina, at the time, it would have been a progressive statement and something about the law needs to be obeyed. And interestingly enough, most of the weeklies in the state similarly expressed themselves. There was a strong group of weekly newspapers throughout the state.

You had Jimmy Carter of Georgia, of course, and he was still governor. I remember after we interviewed him, Walter De Vries said, That guy could go all the way. I felt that way about Clinton after we interviewed him. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale at the Democratic National Convention, New York, 1976, photographed by Warren K. Leffler, courtesy of the collections of the Library of Congress.

THE ORANGEBURG MASSACRE

Your first book, The Orangeburg Massacre, with Jack Nelson, emerges out of this time too. How did you and Nelson come to do that book?

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