Irreverent Crusader

If the South had forty editors like W. 0. Sounders, it could be rid of most of its problems in five years.

--H. L. Mencken

William Oscar Saunders was in the old tradition: a personal journalist, a high-horsed crusader, a one-man crowd. For 30 years, as editor-publisher of a rural North Carolina weekly, he unremittingly fought graft, corruption, red-neck segregationists, pharisees of all kinds--and some 60 libel suits. Last week, in a book entitled The Independent Man, Saunders' only son, Keith, 52, now an aviation writer in Washington, recalls the turbulent career of one of the last of an all but vanished American journalistic breed. The Elizabeth City Independent, which Saunders launched in 1908 on a borrowed $300, ran head-on into trouble from the start, and stayed there. Saunders offended the town, which was deeply religious, with some of the most irreverent news coverage ever committed to print. BRIDE OF THREE WEEK'S BEATS ASS OFF HUSBAND went one typical Independent headline above a story telling how a young farm wife in neighboring Camden County had bravely rescued her husband from an aggressive jackass. Even the clergy was not immune from attack. After one Baptist preacher denounced him from the pulpit, Saunders discovered and published the fact that the preacher owned the only bawdyhouse in town. Another Independent editorial volley, aimed at an anti-Semitic evangelist named Mordecai Ham, blew down the revivalist's tent.

Retracting a Libel. Saunders reserved his most withering fire for more vulnerable targets: corrupt politicians, indolence in public office, the outmoded mores and traditions of the Old South. "E. F. Aydlett." read one two-line item about an Elizabeth City attorney who controlled the town, "was seen in the courthouse one day last week with his hands in his own pockets." Aydlett tried to bribe Saunders into silence, with no more effect than those who resorted to threats, legal action and even violence. Walter L. Cohoon, editor of a competitive paper, twice thrashed Saunders on Main Street and also sued him for libel. But under the state's liberal libel laws, Cohoon had to drop the suit when Saunders printed this impenitent retraction, WALTER COHOON IS NOT A BRAYING ASS. Subsequent Independent exposures of Cohoon's shenanigans led to his conviction as an embezzler. "The trouble with the Independent," its editor once wrote, "is that it has always been 15 to 20 years ahead of its time.'' The paper scoffed at Woodrow Wilson's illusions about "a war to end all war,'' called for diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia in 1917, and advocated birth control--in an area whose champion father sired 34 offspring. It badgered local officials into passing and enforcing some of the most stringent pure milk, water and meat ordinances in the state.

Averting a Lynching. On the touchy issue of race relations, the Independent was remarkably outspoken for its time. "The Jew and the Negro are not unlike our own people." said the Bank Clerk, a front-page character who held weekly colloquies with the Soda Jerker. "We have our own ignorant, vulgar, loudmouthed, swaggering, chiseling white Christian Nordics." Soda Jerker: "Yes, but with this difference: the Jew and the Negro are minorities and we are in the majority. Our own breed of jackasses so far outnumber us that we long ago gave up the idea of handling them." When a twelve-year-old white girl accused a Negro of rape, Saunders rushed proof of the man's innocence into print in time to avert a lynching.

Although such forthrightness helped reduce race trouble in northeast North Carolina--it remains remarkably free of it to this day--it only heightened the Independent's unpopularity. In a backhanded compliment, the State Port Pilot over in Brunswick County raised this brag to its masthead: "Most Cussed Newspaper in North Carolina, Outside of Elizabeth City" The Independent ultimately commanded a paid audience of 6,000 spread over 30 states, but it went virtually adless for years at a stretch, fought a losing lifelong battle against financial failure. In 1937, after Editor Saunders tried unsuccessfully to convert the Independent to a daily, the paper died of chronic malnutrition. Three years later, without a cause to fight or a crook to cuss, its proprietor followed it to the grave.

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