An honorable defeat: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the radical prehistory of the Civil Rights movement.

The Civil Rights Movement unsurprisingly serves as the twentieth century’s most-discussed attempt toward racial and social equality in the American south. It seems appropriate that this is so, considering the scope of the movement’s achievements; the revolutionary struggle for Civil Rights between 1954 and 1968 culminated in federal legislation outlawing racial segregation, racial discrimination in regards to voting, and the refusal to provide housing to persons based upon their ethnicity. Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement inexorably altered the political and social culture of the south. While the scope of the movement’s achievements were unprecedented, the same cannot be said for its aim to end racism and segregation within the south. Between 1938 and 1948, a group of prominent Southern Liberals comprised the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, which pledged to extend the reform-minded policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal to the south, whose social and economic paradigms had remained inadequately affected by the national reforms. Along with these economic reforms, the Conference also actively campaigned for integration and the organization of African-American labor. During its ten-year existence, the SCHW suffered from ideological and structural disorganization, inconsistent monetary funding, and a sustained reactionary assault from anti-communist groups, all of which contributed to its demise. In spite of its downfall, the SCHW not only constituted a radical movement for social and economic reform in the south during the 1930’s and 1940’s, but also predicted the ideological goals of the Civil Rights Movement that succeeded it. Thus, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare paradoxically served both as a failure in its time and a radically necessary precursor to the paradigm-shattering nature of the Civil Rights Movement.

Considering the accusations of radical infiltration that would be leveled at the Conference throughout its existence, the origins of the SCHW appear fairly moderate. The Conference was conceived not as a revolutionary movement for societal change, but as a pragmatic political attempt by President Roosevelt to extend the top-down economic reforms within the New Deal to the south. Unsurprisingly, this necessitated the establishment and maintenance of political control within the region. To this end, Roosevelt realized that the success of his policies in the south relied upon liberal victories over the conservative opposition in southern elections. The SCHW is thus rooted in the President’s vested interest in the political weakening of the opposition. In the spring of 1938, Roosevelt inquired to a member of the Public Works Administration named Clark Foreman as to a possible liberal candidate that could defeat Walter George, a Democratic New-Deal opponent, in Georgia’s upcoming Senatorial primary. Foreman, a native Georgian, declined to recommend a potential opponent but instead advised Roosevelt to authorize a legitimate report on the economic conditions of the south. Foreman asserted that such a report could be used during the Georgia primary to present to a southern audience the purported benefits of the New Deal, well-aware that New Deal organizations had contributed greatly to Gainsville’s recovery from a devastating 1936 tornado. Interested, the President referred Foreman to National Emergency Council (NEC) Director Lowell Mellett to produce the study.

The ensuing NEC report, titled The Economic Conditions of the South, bluntly characterized the state of affairs as such: “…the South presents right now the Nation’s №1 economic problem-the Nation’s problem, not merely the South’s. For we have an economic unbalance in the Nation as a whole, due to this very condition of the South.” Citing the incongruity between the south’s natural resources and large poverty rate, the NEC reported that “the paradox of the South is that while it is blessed by Nature with immense wealth, its people as a whole are the poorest in the country.” The report thus wove a narrative arguing that the south’s economic problems resulted from the region’s own institutional deficiencies. On August 11th, 1938, Roosevelt spoke in Barnesville, Georgia and cited the NEC’s report to publicly declare his opposition to the reelection of Senator George. Shortly thereafter, an Alabaman labor activist named Joseph Gelders met the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, to propose a conference on civil liberties in the south. It might be attributed to the overwhelming influence of the NEC’s document that Gelders, a committed Marxist intellectual who had been brutally assaulted in 1936 by an anti-Union mob, was met with warm enthusiasm by Mrs. Roosevelt, who embraced the idea of a conference but strongly suggested extending its focus to the broader economic problems within the south. Gelders then met with the President, who strongly urged that the conference should lead a sustained attack on the national poll tax, a cause dear to the radical demeanor of Gelders as well as Roosevelt’s political intentions to further liberalize the southern Democratic party. By September, Gelders and the Alabama Policy Committee had decided on a name and location for the first conference; the first meeting of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare would be held in Birmingham.

In spite of the initial vigilance with which Roosevelt fought to establish an economic and political New Deal-centric paradigm in the south, as well as the successful creation of the NEC report and subsequent birth of the SCHW, in the short term the President’s efforts failed in multiple respects. Roosevelt’s public, confrontational opposition to Walter George yielded little in the way of immediate positive results as George easily won the 1938 primary, while Roosevelt’s endorsed candidate Lawrence Camp failed to even place second in the primary; Camp’s paltry support from less than twenty percent of Georgia Democratic voters left him well behind both the incumbent Senator and Eugene Talmadge. Although unprecedented in its boldness, Roosevelt’s attempt to draw first blood in Barnesville, as well as his broader attempt to purge the Democratic party in the south of anti-New Deal conservatism had failed in the short term. Scholars such as Patricia Sullivan have blamed the direct negative effect of the poll tax on black and poorer white voter turnout for Roosevelt’s failure in ousting Walter George and other southern Senators from office. Indeed, the poll tax prohibited roughly forty-two thousand blacks in the Works Progress Administration from voting in the 1938 primary. Walter George would go on to win his reelection bid unopposed. This likely played an intensive role in the SCHW’s subsequent aggressive campaign against the poll tax. Despite (and perhaps emboldened by) the failure of the 1938 purge, the NEC report became an essential document for southern liberals, and facilitated the organization of a coalition of New Deal supporters in the South. The initial battle was lost, but the message had been sent: the Southern liberal movement was armed with legitimacy due to Roosevelt’s 1938 gambit, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare seemed an essential weapon in the fight for a more-progressive South.

The first SCHW meeting convened on November 20th, 1938, and was attended by a dense body of southern liberals and leftists. This included at least six avowed Communist Party members and twenty-seven Socialists from organizations such as the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, the Southern Workers’ Defense League, and the Southern branch of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Along with (and included within) the radical contingent, the first conference was attended by a substantial number of black activists and lobbyists. Other attendees included prominent liberals such as Senator Hugo Black, Virginia Durr, the Works Progress Administration’s Aubrey Williams, the aforementioned Clark Foreman, Governor Bibbs Graves, and Mary Mcleod Bethune. In a provocative statement against southern racial policies, the Conference’s first day saw an integrated seating arrangement for blacks and whites. On the second day, however, the Conference was interrupted by Birmingham police, led by the infamous Commissioner Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor, who enforced the city’s mandatory segregation. In spite of this early controversy, the SCHW had already set an innovative precedent in its attitudes towards race relations, and while blacks and whites were thereafter seated on separate sides of the Municipal Auditorium, the Conference proceeded without further issues with police.

Although a palpable struggle for Civil Rights had existed in Birmingham (as well as the rest of the South) before the Conference, the first meeting provided a centralized platform for like-minded progressives and leftists to begin to openly espouse anti-racist and early integrationist views. Clark Foreman noted that Mrs. Roosevelt, in response to the previously-mentioned police enforcement of segregated seating, placed her seat in the center aisle meant to separate whites from blacks. “By doing so,” Foreman reflected, “she symbolized the determined opposition of the Conference to the practice of segregation.” Hugo Black was awarded at the Conference the Thomas Jefferson Award, Frank P. Graham and H.C. Nixon were appointed as President and Executive Secretary of the conference, respectively, and a Civil Rights Committee headed by Joseph Gelders was established whose primary aim was the end of the poll tax, which was viewed as discriminatory towards blacks. In spite of this promising beginning, many politicians who attended the Birmingham meeting would resign from the SCHW shortly thereafter due to strong conservative backlash to the perceived integrationist and radical nature of the Birmingham convention.

Despite the backlash, the remaining members of the Conference seemingly viewed the first convention with a kind of cautious optimism. Frank Graham withstood immense political pressure and remained for the time being as the Conference President. Graham expressed the wary resolve of the southern liberal movement in the aftermath of the first convention when he confided in Clark Foreman that “despite some misunderstanding, much and bitter misrepresentation, some resignations, and even some mistakes we must carry on.” Perhaps more problematic than the reactionary attacks, however, were the monetary shortages that manifested early in the Conference’s life and would remain until the end. As a mostly voluntary organization, the SCHW depended mostly on private donations for its funding. From this end, the Conference raised a mere $1,936.48 in the entirety of 1939. This severely limited the monetary amount the Conference could allot towards its employees’ wages; H.C. Nixon would resign as Executive Secretary due to the wage cuts and until October 1939, Joseph Gelders would serve as the only full-time employee of the Conference. Still, the Gelders and the other remaining members of the SCHW continued to actively pursue the Conference’s economic and social goals. Gelders would spend this period relentlessly attacking the poll-tax, as promised, and younger members of the Conference would begin to openly espouse explicit integrationist sentiment (the official SCHW policy at this point had only condemned the specific segregation ordinance of the city of Birmingham). In spite of the funding issues and backlash, the Conference secured Chattanooga, Tennessee as the site of its second meeting due to its substantial union contingent and the promise by the city’s officials to not interfere with the integrated nature of the meetings. In October, Howard Lee was appointed the Executive Secretary, finally filling the void left by Nixon. In a tenuous financial situation and still dealing with reactionary backlash, the SCHW nonetheless stood poised to meet for the second time on April 14th, 1940.

The second meeting of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare dealt mostly with economic issues, continuing its campaign against the poll tax and establishing a larger focus on the rural south. Mrs. Roosevelt again spoke, asserting that the adequate education for all southern children constituted a fundamental issue for any true liberal. The second convention made clear the SCHW’s particular focus on the advancement of southern farmers, the labor movement, and perhaps to a more-vague extent the plight of African-Americans in the south. Regarding the race issue, the conference here mostly restated its initial support for Civil Rights, condemning those “who seek to maintain or attain power and privileges through dissemination of racial and religious prejudice” but declining to officially oppose segregation. As Thomas Krueger summarizes this point, “The Conference wished…to refurbish Jim Crow’s cage until it resembled the white dove’s aviary.” In spite of the fairly-measured nature of its campaign for black rights, the SCHW’s stance on racial issues were made quite clear here, with its bestowing of the second Thomas Jefferson Award upon former Commission on Interracial Cooperation director Will Alexander reflecting the Conference’s public stance in favor of civil rights. In spite of its economically humble roots in comparison to the Birmingham meeting, the second SCHW convention appeared to be, at least domestically, a successful attempt to present a centralized voice for the south’s progressive movements.

A central SCHW stance regarding foreign policy, particularly in response to the onset of the second World War, would be much harder to come by, however, than the apparent unity of the Conference’s delegates’ stances on domestic issues. The Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland brought about an early rift between moderate liberals and Communists within the Conference. A sizeable pacifist contingent within the Conference opposed American involvement in the European war, and Socialists followed the then-party line of isolationism rebuffed the notion of the redistribution of the SCHW’s already-paltry funds from domestic reforms to an international war-effort. There appeared an implicit demand within the Conference for a unanimous condemnation of the Soviet Union’s pact with Germany and its Finnish invasion. When he offered a restrained argument in mild defense of the Soviets, Joseph Gelders was accused of being a Communist and many called for his expulsion from the Conference. Under immense pressure from his ostensible allies, Gelders vehemently (and most likely dishonestly) denied any involvement with Communist organizations and any rigorous interest in Marxism. Howard Lee found himself the subject of similar scrutiny. In spite of this “little Red scare,” other moderate delegates, such as Clark Foreman and Virginia Durr, rebuffed the notion of an aggressive reactionary measure barring outright any suspected Communist from the Conference. These liberal members, likely due to their strong integrationist sentiment, found ideological solidarity on that front with many domestic Communist groups. Foreman would later argue that the Communist party during the early 20th century had “fought for Negro rights…more consistently than any other group.” In its way, this ambivalence toward Communist inclusion in the Conference would serve as a radical aspect of the SCHW, and would for better or worse remain an integral role in the Conference’s life and death.

Although the SCHW’s moderate and liberal contingent recognized, to varying degrees, the validity of the radical and Communist contributions to southern progressive causes, the relationship between the two groups contained a kind of nuanced tension. Communist attitudes toward the NEC and the Conference varied at least as much as the moderates’ attitudes toward Communist participation therein. Initially, the Communist Party spoke of the Conference in public with measured praise, with New South editor Paul Crouch praising the Birmingham meeting as “the beginning of a road to a better…more prosperous South…” However, a number of Communists criticized the SCHW’s policies toward blacks as paternalistic and patronizing, thus failing to adequately account for blacks as an autonomous group with its own potential to enact progressive change in the south. Of great concern to many radicals and Communist was the SCHW’s reservations regarding openly opposing segregation, and many were disillusioned by what they perceived as the Conference leaders’ tepid response to Bull Connor’s enforcement of the city’s segregationist ordinance. Conversely, Ernest Moorer of the Daily Worker praised the Conference’s “free and easy association of white and Negro delegates…” As evidenced by the “little Red scare,” their repeated calls for more-radical SCHW policies on issues such as desegregation facilitated conservative accusations of the Communist Party’s domination and infiltration of the Conference. To their credit, many moderate or centrist liberal participants refused to outright bar radical leftists from the Conference, instead enacting a resolution banning members who belonged to organizations calling for a violent overthrow of the American government .

This attempt at compromise notwithstanding, numerous liberal SCHW members cited the democratic nature of the organization as a reason against banning radicals from attending, in spite of the mounting pressure to do so. Clark Foreman criticized the idea of forcing “a democratic organization to exclude ‘political intruders.’” To ban dissenting leftist ideologies from having a platform, Foreman believed, would equate to adopting “a red-baiting, negative, undemocratic policy…” Foreman’s aforementioned comments regarding the relevance and effectiveness of the Communist Party’s campaign against racism also likely affected his judgment of them as allies worth retaining within the Conference. Virginia Durr, co-chair of the SCHW’s Virginia division, expressed similar views of the prospect of barring Communist participation, stating that they “represent the extreme left of the political circuit, and I often disagree with their program…but I see so clearly that when one group of people are made untouchable the liberties of all suffer…” Other high-profile SCHW participants, however, viewed the implied parity between themselves and members of the Communist party as highly problematic. By the post-war period, the tide had shifted dramatically towards a dominant anti-Communist view within and outside of the Conference. Notably, Eleanor Roosevelt expressed in late-1946 her support for measures banning participants affiliated with the American Communist party. Roosevelt went so far as to accuse Foreman of being incapable of identifying a Communist when he saw one, and asserted to Beanie Baldwin that many Conference members were afraid of “openly expressing the feeling one has about the American Communists…”

While the Communist participants in the SCHW aroused suspicion and caution from the more-moderate of the southern liberals and drew fire from the reactionary conservative opposition to the movement, they received some of their most vehement criticism from other members of the radical left within the Conference. Howard Kester and H.L. Mitchell, from the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union, accused the SCHW of falling under Communist control. One of the loudest voices calling for a Communist purge from the Conference came from Frank McAllister, a Socialist member of the SCHW. As Virginia Durr later recalled in 1991: “Well, the socialists hated the Communists and vice versa. If they ever got together, it was bound to be a fight.” These tensions manifested in the third SCHW gathering, held in Nashville on April 19th, 1942.

The Nashville Conference met with the preconceived focus of discussing the south’s role in the war effort, and despite wartime limitations on travel again saw attendance by prominent Progressive figures, including a returning Eleanor Roosevelt. The third Conference also served as the site of Paul Robeson’s first performance in the south. Robeson’s presence in Nashville inadvertently stoked the flames of factionalist conflict within the SCHW due to the singer’s appeal for the release of Earl Browder, the leader of the Communist Party of the United States, who had been imprisoned in Atlanta for passport fraud. This was enough for Frank McAllister to again allege that the Conference had been appropriated for overt Communist causes, and called for a resolution prohibiting Communists from attending or joining the SCHW. McAllister intensified his campaign by specifically naming individual members of the Conference that he alleged were Communists, including National Negro Congress director John P. Davis. McAllister, a member of the Socialist Worker’s Party and the American Civil Liberties Union, undertook an aggressive polemical attack on alleged-Communists that would come to resemble similar efforts by the American Right in ensuing years. However, this anti-Communist attack from the Left was not without precedent, as the ACLU had barred Communist participation in 1940. The hostility of this attack concerned many democratically-minded leaders of the Conference, including the aforementioned reservations against a Communist purge by Foreman and Durr as well as similar sentiments against such a ban by James Dombrowski.

The Nashville Conference exacerbated extant tensions, both between radicals and moderate liberals and between those Progressives who supported or repudiated the notion of purging Communists from the SCHW. However, this increasing factional divide constituted one among many facets and implications of the third meeting. The dispute overshadowed the Conference’s primary topic of discourse, which concerned the relevance of the Southern Conference’s efforts to the second World War. As Clark Foreman wrote, addressing the south’s democratic, racial, and economic deficiencies constituted a crucial role in the effort “to mobilize the South fully behind the war against fascism.” Regarding the racial issue, this reflected the “Double V” campaign, which stressed the importance of the domestic effort against African-American discrimination to the fight against global persecution, and vice versa. On this issue the Conference sentiment seemed unanimous, and the Nashville meeting resulted in a consensus among participants recognizing the maintenance of a sound democratic domestic policy as a sound wartime policy. President Roosevelt, speaking at the meeting, asserted that winning the war would require and result in democracy being “maintained as a vital strengthening force.” That this unity coincided with the aforementioned fractional tension within the Conference reflects both the SCHW’s shortcomings and its potential as an agent of reform.

Also of chief importance was the emergence of Clark Foreman and James Dombrowski as the principal leaders of the SCHW during and after its third meeting. Shortly before the Nashville meeting, Dombrowski was appointed executive secretary, and Foreman would be hired as Conference chairman two months after the meeting in June 1942. Foreman’s ascent seemed inevitable, considering his instrumental role in the solicitation of the original NEC report on southern economic conditions from which the SCHW was born. As a native-Georgian who also exhibited a superlative academic adeptitude and a liberal ideological pedigree, Foreman fit much of the criterion expected of a leader of a southern liberal movement. As an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, Foreman witnessed a lynching; this event apparently triggered within him a life-long motivation to fight such barbarism in the south. He would later characterize this experience as a formative one, undoubtedly influencing his support for the SCHW’s fight to criminalize lynchings. Having previously worked for the Commission on Interracial Co-operation and later finding prominent work in Washington as Advisor on the Economic Status of Negroes, Foreman’s employment in the SCHW was almost obligatory after his suggestion that Roosevelt commission the NEC report indirectly led to the organization’s formation. Beginning as treasurer, Foreman’s eventual promotion to Conference Chairman would last until the SCHW’s demise.

Dombrowski, a Tampa native, found a passion for southern progressive causes that developed from his religious conviction; his Christian background fused with his intense interest in social justice and caused him to ideologically transfer from Methodism to Christian Socialism after he attended an influential Harry Ward lecture on the merit of radicalism. Though they were both equally as passionate and skilled in their eventual leadership roles in the SCHW, Dombrowski and Foreman had decidedly different personalities and faced considerable difficulty overcoming this incongruity for the sake of the Conference. The task of mediating between the relentlessly meticulous Dombrowski and the impatient, motivated Foreman often fell upon the shoulders of Virginia Durr, who later characterized the clash of personalities between the two as a “very trying period…you couldn’t have had two people that were more different than they were…Jim was the most meticulous human being that I have ever known [and] Clark was a very impetuous, quick person. He would have a bright idea and he wanted to put it in action right that minute and he wanted to get the money…” In spite of these differences, the SCHW’s tenuous financial stability and the urgency of the south’s economic and social issues demanded that Dombrowski and Foreman work together to keep the Conference afloat amidst a myriad of monetary and ideological issues.

Dombrowski’s meticulous, careful disposition initially served the Conference very well, as he improved its monetary situation in 1942. The total income of the SCHW in 1942 amounted to $14,983.66 in 1942, nearly twice the amount of the SCHW’s previous annual income. However, the financial improvement still failed to cover both operating expenses and the enactment of many Conference policies. By 1943, the SCHW generated less than eight thousand dollars in income, mostly from private donors and foundations. The Nashville Conference had made it clear that the SCHW’s survival depended on its mobilization as a united campaign for the expansion and maintenance of democracy; essentially, the Conference’s success depended on its effectiveness during the war. To this end, Foreman and Dombrowski realized that the SCHW needed a platform to express itself as useful not only to the disenfranchised and exploited southern masses, but to the American war effort as well. For this purpose, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare began the monthly publication of a newspaper called “The Southern Patriot” in late 1942. Dombrowski expressed to Foreman his motives behind the publication: “the paper is to be directed to the mass of unconverted Southerners who economically and patriotically have every reason to support a liberal war policy, but whose ideas have been distorted by sentiment and prejudice.” This constituted a brilliant exercise in public relations and propaganda; if southerners could be convinced that the Southern Conference’s aims directly converged with the American democratic ideal in the fight against European fascism, then the SCHW might achieve mainstream acceptance beyond the southern left-wing movement. It seems as if the reformulation of the Conference’s agenda as one of American unity against European fascism allowed it to more-aggressively campaign for southern reform. The Conference could now espouse their aims through the lens of wartime patriotism. “The Southern Patriot” not only offered an outlet for a reimagining of the SCHW’s image, but also briefly seemed to reinforce its potential as the leading organization for reform in the south.

The apparent stabilization and mobilization of the SCHW during the War period continued through 1944 when the first convention of the newly-created Congress of Industrial Organizations saw a resolution introduced that endorsed the Conference as the preeminent southern progressive organization; the resolution was swiftly maintained by the C.I.O. The advent of the C.I.O. and its subsequent alliance with the SCHW suggested that organized labor was finally ready to mobilize as a relevant political effort in the south, and that the Conference would act as the ostensible leaders in this mobilization. In spite of the charges of Communist control, a factionalist threat, and nagging funding issues, the Conference seemed to steadily gain momentum during the war. The momentum continued as the apparent support from organized labor coincided with the repeal of the poll tax in Georgia. Conference leaders viewed this growing political support with enthusiasm, and began to rethink the original status of the SCHW as primarily an educational organization; the initial charter for the organization’s creation would not be enough to adequately provide for the kind of political reforms the Conference now found itself in a position to undertake. The leaders thus decided to split the organization into two different committees: The Southern Conference Educational Fund would continue working towards the study of southern economic problems and The Southern Conference for Human Welfare constituted a solely-political organization dedicated to the advancement of reform policies. Foreman and Dombrowski maintained leadership roles in both organizations. The latter years of the war and the immediate postwar period served as the peak of the Conference’s success; in 1946 the SCHW generated $116,844.97 in revenue, an enormous improvement over previous years.

In what would be the final large-scale meeting among Conference members, the fourth SCHW congress convened on November 28th, 1946 in New Orleans. The end of the war and death of Roosevelt saw sweeping implications on the political presence at and attitudes toward the conference; neither President Truman nor former New Deal representatives attended the New Orleans meeting. Perhaps more disappointing was the absence of Eleanor Roosevelt, whose aforementioned opposition to the SCHW’s association with Communists and fellow travelers resulted in the former First Lady’s wane in enthusiasm for the movement. The fourth meeting would prove to be the least-attended of the large Conference gatherings, both in terms of general participation and the absence of a formidable political contingent. Conference leaders also struggled, like in the 1938 meeting, with local city ordinances that demanded the New Orleans gathering be segregated; as a result, the Conference was abruptly moved from the city auditorium to Carpenters Hall. Nevertheless, those who did attend the Conference found a relatively peaceful, amicable meeting. Clark Foreman summated the mood as such: “It was as if the members had learned something vital from the fight against fascism. The resolutions were confined to domestic issues and were adopted unanimously.”

Foreman’s optimistic view here belied a litany of problems currently facing the Conference, in terms both of policy and vitality. The aforementioned decline in participation coincided with a steep drop in revenue, resulting in an inability for the SCHW to pay its local committees. Furthermore, the increasing ideological tensions between the different factions within the Conference resulted in the lack of a defined Cold War policy. The SCHW’s ability to frame its aims during the second World War in a way that transcended their domestic implications was matched by its inability to do the same during peacetime and the emerging split between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a response to the mounting problems, in a well intentioned (and perhaps necessary) move, Clark Foreman successfully petitioned for the removal of James Dombrowski as the Conference’s executive secretary, citing the increasingly complicated responsibility of presiding over both the Educational and Human Welfare organizations. Dombrowski was re-assigned a position as the administrator for the Educational Fund. Leaders appointed Branson Price as the SCHW’s new administrator. Other than substantially insulting Dombrowski, who had dedicated most of his energy into the SCHW’s efforts since 1941, this move also left Foreman solely responsible for the Conference’s aims and actions. The move was quickly reversed, however, as Dombrowski successfully appealed the executive board, citing the undemocratic nature of the decision, and was reinstated as the SCHW’s administrator, though now as a part of a three-man committee constituting himself, Foreman (who remained Conference president) and the Educational Fund administrator.

The state of affairs for the SCHW rapidly deteriorated following the New Orleans meeting and subsequent internal conflict between Foreman and Dombrowski. Because of the SCHW’s absence of a position on the Cold War, several disillusioned Conference members resigned. The SCHW’s financial situation quickly worsened; by the beginning of 1947, the Conference was $23,000 in debt and would only raise $30,000 in revenue that year. This necessitated an internal reformulation of Conference leadership. Dombrowski stepped down from his administrative position and took on the lesser role of the Educational Fund’s executive secretary, and Clark Foreman ceased working for salary. The Conference suffered a major blow when the C.I.O. ceased its support for the movement in a vast effort to narrow the organized labor movement’s relationship with controversial political groups; Truman’s election and subsequent status as the first Cold War president facilitated the end of the relationship between the two organizations. Foreman later characterized the split between the C.I.O and the SCHW as an opportunistic move, part of a larger movement called “Operation Dixie” that sought to establish the C.I.O as a respectable southern organization without any problematic ties. The loss of labor organizations and unions, Foreman later wrote, amounted to casualties in a war against the Conference being mounted by corporate leaders and anti-Communist opportunists. Foreman finally characterized the ideological softening of the union groups as such: “the decline of militancy on the part of the unions was followed unavoidably by a decline in the strength of the Southern Conference.”

Signaling the beginning of the end, the House Committee on Un-American Activities issued a report on the Conference on June 12th, 1948 that seized upon both the extant issues of Communist participation and the SCHW’s neutral stance on the Cold War to level charges of anti-Americanism and Soviet collusion on the organization. The absurdity of the HUAC’s charges of Conference collusion with an anti-American Marxist agenda reflected the relentless chaos of the early Cold War era that would peak and crest with the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy. Still, the Conference was suffering not only due to this pressure, but from its own complacency and inability to decisively deal one way or the other with the Communist issue, and furthermore its neutral policy regarding United States-Soviet relations. It did not help matters that many Conference leaders, including Foreman, openly supported Henry Wallace against Truman in the 1948 election; this at the very least left Truman with less-than tender feelings toward the Conference and its survival. Chaotically, still other Conference members supported Truman in the election, which led to even more ideological tensions from within the organization. The SCHW was completely unable to resolve this issue, and effectively ceased operating as a political organization in the midst of the 1948 election; the bulk of the SCHW’s moderate liberal leaders left in opposition to Foreman’s open support for the more-radical Wallace. Thus, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare had lost nearly all of its administrative personnel, was rapidly descending further into debt, and found itself under insurmountable pressure from the Right without support from the organized labor movement. On November 20th, 1948, a small gathering of southern liberals convened in Monticello, Virginia. Here, a resolution was passed reformulating the only remaining working body of the Conference movement, the Educational Fund, as an organization decisively committed solely to the ending of segregation in the south. The next day, Conference leaders voted to disband the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. Having been declared obsolete in comparison to the relevant integrationist activism of an organization it birthed, the SCHW’s demise reflects the frustrations and paradoxes that plagued the organization from its inception.

Though intense hostility from reactionary anti-Communism, opportunistic corporate enemies of the labor movement, and southern white supremacists certainly played a role in its demise, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare contained unresolvable deficiencies that facilitated its own end. First, the SCHW suffered greatly from its failure to find a cohesive identity as either a radical or moderate liberal organization. Often presented with an opportunity to explicitly campaign for radical or revolutionary change in the south, the Conference often opted out of a bold challenge to the southern paradigm. The SCHW’s stated policy on racial issues offers an especially cogent example of this. At the Birmingham conference, even after being assailed by Bull Connor’s segregationist police army, Conference leaders opted out of a possible resolution condemning segregation as an institution, instead impotently resolving to “instruct its officers in arranging future meetings to avoid a similar situation…” and focusing on the easier poll-tax and lynching-related issues. Conversely, when offered a chance to ingratiate themselves with moderates and more-conservative activists within the establishment, Conference leaders refused to decisively act on the issue of Communist participation; this did little to placate the actual, paltry presence of Communist party members in the Conference and alienated moderate, well-respected activists whose support might have attained for the SCHW the kind of mainstream acceptance it nearly received during the war. By 1948, the Conference’s failure to boldly condemn segregation caused many members to jump ship to the Educational Fund, whose radical integrationist aims belied its origins as an offshoot of the SCHW. Simultaneously, its failure to adequately distance itself from radicalism cost it the support from the organized labor movement and subjected itself to intense (if undeserved) attacks from the HUAC. In the end, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare failed in its mission to take an inarguable leadership role in ending inequality and exploitation in the American south.

The dysfunctional nature of the SCHW in action fail to dispel the radical authenticity of its intentions. In a time and place besieged by economic exploitation, white supremacy, and increasingly little economic stability, an institution was created with the sole purpose (beyond initially extending Roosevelt’s political dynasty to the south) of studying and combating these issues. Perhaps most radical about the SCHW was its regional nature. One of the first movements to combat southern racism and exploitation came not from Washington, but from a distinctly southern organization, comprised of southerners who truly believed in the region’s potential. Though it proved too arrogant ideologically and too impotent pragmatically, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare constituted a necessary movement in southern history’s teleological movement, and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement find themselves bound at the very least to the lessons learned from the SCHW’s brief existence and death. Regarding this, it appears appropriate to award the last word to Clark Foreman, instrumental in its beginning and with it until the end, who characterized the chief lesson learned from the Conference Movement: “Prejudice and hate in the south are amply subsidized from within and without. If the decent elements of the South are to win against such forces the democratically-minded people of the rest of the country must help.”

Primary Sources

Carlton, David L. “Southern Liberals Respond to the Report: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare Birmingham, Alabama November 20–23, 1938.” In Confronting Southern Poverty in the Great Depression: The Report on Economic Conditions of the South with Related Documents. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Foreman, Clark. “The Decade of Hope.” Phylon (1940–1956): 137.

Report on Economic Conditions of the South. Washington: [U.S. G.P.O.], 1938.

Oral History Interview with Clark Foreman, November 16, 1974. Interview B-0003. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, March 13, 14, 15, 1975. Interview G-0023–2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Oral History Interview with Virginia Foster Durr, February 6, 1991. Interview A-0337. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Secondary Sources

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Krueger, Thomas. And Promises To Keep: The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, 1938–1948. Nashville, Tennessee: Library of Congress, 1967.

Sullivan, Patricia. Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Telfeyan, Brad. The 1938 Georgia Democratic Senatorial Primary: The Repudiation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘Purge Campaign’. Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.