Keener confusion about “rank injustice” in the 1920 NC gubernatorial primary
“African-Americans vote for Democrats, for the most part. Vast majority. They’ve been doing it for over a hundred years.” — Donald John Trump (May 29, 2018)*
By the start of the 20th century, Democrats in North Carolina had completely eliminated African Americans (33% of the state’s population) and their poor, uneducated white allies from the voter roles using literacy tests and poll taxes, and from the polls using “hand to hand conflict” sometimes “waged quietly and without visible excitement” —and sometimes not. Their campaign of white supremacy “had erased the image of the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians” and “destroy[ed] the conditions that had made for partisan competition and greater participation by poor and uneducated whites as well as blacks” (Gilmore, 1996).
However, as the gubernatorial primary in 1920 demonstrated, Democrats were not opposed to using racial demagoguery and outright electoral fraud against members of their own party. Supporters of Cameron Morrison distributed pamphlets that year showing Max Gardner, one of Morrison’s opponents in the Democratic primary, “advancing arm in arm with a black woman.” Morrison eventually won the primary after 11 days of vote “counting” in which “suspect mountain votes trickled in, each day eroding Gardner’s numbers” (News & Observer, 2008). Gardner would later serve as North Carolina’s governor from 1929 to 1933, sending the National Guard to Gastonia to put down the Loray Mill Strike during his first year in office.
According to The New Bern Sun Journal (July 2, 1920), “[o]n Friday preceding the first primary the Morrison forces of Craven County issued a half-page advertisement in both the New Bern papers making a [false]statement that the friends of Gardner had registered six hundred or seven hundred negroes in Wake County.” But Morrison’s campaign manager in Wake county was quoted on May 27 making the point that “it is contrary to all the principles and traditions of the Democratic party to encourage the entrance of negroes into the primary” and “invit[ing] other campaign managers to join him in challenging negro voters” in Wake county.
On July 1 the News & Observer published a notarized statement by J. W. Bailey and several other men who claimed that Bailey “challenged every negro that offered to vote in the primary, save one (and that one voted for O. Max Gardner).” According to Bailey, “at least two hundred negroes were registered in the said precinct” and “every one of them would have voted for O. Max Gardner had not the Morrison and Page representatives been at the polls to challenge them.”
The “Dixie Editor” (presumably) was not convinced of the “true facts about the negro vote in Raleigh” (as the News & Observer headline put it). Writing in the Durham Morning Herald on May 27, Walter Ney Keener opined about the “rank injustice” of what he believed were false charges against Gardner.
“The report coming out from Raleigh concerning charges that an unusually large number of negroes have been registered in Wake county for the coming primary, and carrying with it the veiled intimation connecting the Gardner workers, is a rank injustice to the Shelby man. It matters not whether we are for or against Gardner, we know him too well to think that he would for a fleeting moment countenance the registration of negroes to aid him; and would have no one connected with his campaign who would do such a thing. Gardner is clean as they make ’em so far as we know or ever heard, and would not stoop to questionable methods to secure the nomination. We do not believe that he had anything to do with the registration of negroes, if that was done, neither do we believe that either of the other candidates make such a charge. All are high-toned men, if we have sized them up correctly, to adopt underhand tricks to secure success. As stated above, we probably have a personal preference in the race for the governor, and if June 5 is not too good a day to go fishing may vote for one of the three men, that to be definitely decided later. But we do not believe that either of the candidates would do anything that was not square.” — Walter Ney Keener (presumably), Durham Morning Herald (May 27, 1920)
A few years later, Walter praised “[o]ne of the best examples of public speaking that has ever come to our attention” as part of the 1900 debate in the North Carolina General Assembly during the “famous constitutional amendment campaign which was waged in this state for the purpose of ridding politics of the larger part of the negro vote” (Durham Morning Herald, May 31, 1922). As I visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice almost 100 years later, on the same day as Walter’s 1920 editorial in defense of Gardner, I can’t help but reflect on my distant cousin’s support for the rank injustice of disenfranchising black voters in the 1920s. Or his evolution on the issue of lynchings, which I have documented previously.
All under a Christian flag of course…
Update (May 30): I sometimes use the news of the day as inspiration for what I write about. Other times (as in this example), the news of the day (or two) after I write something is directly related to what I just wrote. Funny how that works…
