Lynching in Georgia

Not since the Tennessee monkey trial had there been such clownish witch-hunting as went on in Georgia last week. Cigar-chewing, red-suspendered Gene Talmadge ran amok through Georgia colleges, chasing furriners (i.e. non-Georgians) and Negro-befrienders. "There was a lynching in . . . the Capitol of Georgia Monday," said the Atlanta Journal, describing the ouster of Walter Dewey Cocking as dean of University of Georgia's College of Education (TIME, July 21). At week's end the Governor had knocked out two more important Georgia educators and provoked serious retaliation.

Dean Cocking, a furriner born in Iowa, had been accused of proposing a graduate school where Negroes and whites might study together. He had also been messing around with a "subversive" organization --the Julius Rosenwald Fund (which has spent some $15,000,000 supporting education of Negroes and whites in the South).

Last week, in a packed hall in the Capitol, the Board of Regents held a hearing. The Governor, himself a regent, was there, munching his lunch and prompting his fellow board members. Regent James S. Peters waved a copy of Brown America, a book by the Rosenwald Fund's President Edwin Rogers Embree, charged it preached Negro-white equality. Cried he: "Negroes will ride in the same railroad cars, sit in the same schools, go to the same lavatories as white men."

"They won't do it," shouted Talmadge.

Regent Peters added that Dean Cocking had helped spend Rosenwald Funds in Georgia (the State University system got $325,000 of Rosenwald money in the last five years), therefore was guilty of disseminating Embree ideas.

Said Talmadge to Peters: "Hit the chair and holler." Peters hit, hollered. Cried Talmadge: "Tell 'em about the niggers from Tuskegee visitin' the college [Georgia Teachers] at Statesboro." Peters related that Negroes had munched sandwiches on the campus with whites.

Hearing over, the board voted 10-to-5 to fire not only Dean Cocking but "Furriner" (Mississippi-born) Marvin S. Pittman, president of Georgia State Teachers College and Georgia-born J. Curtis Dixon, vice chancellor of the State University system. Said Talmadge: "Dixon was just as much tied up with the Rosenwald Fund as Cocking was." Next day, with pixie logic, Talmadge chose as Cocking's successor a furriner from Maryland, Dr. Edwin Pusey, who is also a trustee of a Negro school in Georgia (Fort Valley) supported by Rosenwald Funds.

Educators, North and South, lost no time in rebuking Talmadge. The General Education Board, which has contributed $25,000 a year to the University of Georgia and last year pledged $2,500,000 for building a university center in Atlanta, rejected a Georgia application for $74,000 for the next three years. The Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools began an investigation of "political interference" in the university. If the association dropped Georgia from its accredited list, its degrees would not be recognized in other States and enrollment would decline.

Unruffled, Governor Talmadge retorted: "We credit our own schools down here." At week's end he was in hot pursuit of furrin textbooks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.