Ralph McGill and Lillian Smith: Two Intellectuals in the Service of President Lyndon B. Johnson

Dominic D’Amour is a doctoral candidate in Social and Presidential History at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. He is a 2024 Visiting Research Fellow for Political & Social Movements.

I had a very wonderful and productive experience diving into the archives of the Rose Library at Emory University. This magnificent library houses the complete collection of the life and works of Ralph McGill who was one of the most prolific editor/writers for three decades. I went in search of critical information for my studies as a doctoral candidate in Social and Presidential History at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I’m currently finishing my thesis on the intellectuals who supported President Lyndon B. Johnson and his “Great Society” whom I call “The Johnsonists.” This inner circle of genius became his “Éminence grise” (Grey Eminence), his shadow advisers.

At the Rose Library, I focused on McGill, and the writer Lillian Smith, as two of the Johnsonist intellectuals. Accessing the McGill archives was the most essential aspect of my journey due to the fact that McGill was editor/journalist of the Atlanta Constitution. Indeed, I excavated many buried articles that he wrote in favor of integration. I found out that McGill’s life was threatened for being a liberal pro-integrationist. KKK members even held demonstration in front of the Atlanta Constitution to intimate him[1]. McGill published in May 1963 in the New York Herald Tribune an article praising Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his non-violent strategy. According to McGill, “ If a real hater – a Black Muslim – had come along with Dr. King’s power of speech and personality, the South long ago would have been bloodstained. The South is lucky to have Dr. King.”[2] In another article one month later in the same newspaper, he wrote that the NAACP was a good organization that promotes rights for African-Americans to end segregation, as well as CORE and other non-violent organizations, but they needed to be multi-minded.  McGill went further when he said,

“If there is no legal and social planning for what comes after Jim Crow, then there will no victory.  There must be a legislative push behind employment laws, adequate, low rental housing, and job opportunity- to name but three areas with which the future must contend.”[3]

After Kennedy was shot on November 22^nd 1963, McGill praised an unified nation with Johnson as Head of the State. In an article in December 1963 in the Saturday Evening Post, McGill discussed how violence against those marching for civil rights had been happening in USA for a couple of years. The violence expanded to include President Kennedy, the attorney general Robert Kennedy as well as the increased riots by the White supremacists in Little Rock, in Arkansas, in 1957 and in 1962 when James Meredith enrolled in University of Mississippi to oppose integration of Black youth in schools. In these articles, McGill was denouncing the rise of the extreme right and left in the country warning where hatred could lead[4]. He wrote in March 1964, in another positive article on Kennedy, that he was a modern man who could inspire the youth: “Jack Kennedy symbolized ideals, belief, commitment and association with principles.”  He also added the words of Nathan Pusey, then President of Harvard University, who remarked that many people abroad only had negative thoughts about the USA: broken homes, juvenile delinquency or drunkenness. However, McGill specified that he went to Africa for 3 months in 1963 and he only heard good words about his country. It was only the Communists again, who were discussing these negative views.[5]

 The most revealing discovery I had during my visit at the Rose Library was regarding McGill’s mission to Vietnam during the war. I already knew he had traveled there several weeks in September and October 1966 to report about it, but I found out he was there because he had a personal reason for doing it: his son was there as a Marine. Secondly, he said that “there has not been a balanced picture of American involvement or American participation put into the record.”[6] I also discovered that after his mission to Vietnam, McGill wrote an article saying that the Marines in Vietnam were courageous, noble and had a high morale. He specifically mentioned the vocational teaching they were doing, helping Vietnamese to build a new nation, starting with the construction of schools. He added that the Viet Congs did not hesitate to destroy schools to prevent the building of a new and stronger nation in South Vietnam.[7] McGill also published a touching article about an orphanage he visited in Vietnam run by American military doctors. He wrote that nuns and children 10 to 14 years old were taking care of “lucky babies.”[8] He wanted to show how US troops were vital in this conflict that also targeted children.

During my visit at the Rose Library, I also found several exceptional documents in the papers of Lillian Smith. For instance, in an essay published three years after her death in 1966, Smith discussed how life experience could shape education. She read books on psychiatry to prepare herself to be the director of a summer camp for girls.[10] Smith found it more effective to talk to the children to learn about them. Furthermore, as a White woman in the segregated South, she only learned about Negroes by inviting them to her house and meeting them in theirs.[11] In my opinion, by doing so, Lillian Smith proved herself to be an authentic intellectual and not an armchair intellectual like many others who preferred to learn only through books. In another essay written before she died in 1966, and published in 1974, she criticized those who were attacking Johnson:

“insisting like children that he do something he simply cannot do. Hating him (and Rusk) largely because they are Southern (I find myself thinking this). I simply cannot sign those statements against the Viet Nam war partly because of the shallowness and simplistic suggestions on what should be done. So: I am not agreeing with those who criticize harshly much less those who want to burn their draft cards.”

On the other hand, she understood that Blacks could be lost and wrong and lose faith while supporting Black Power. She said:

“I can see why the young Negroes have accepted the advice of men like Staughton Lynd and others who came South and infiltrated the movement. […] They’ve been listening for three years now to a mixed mess of 19^th century anarchism and 1930’s communism (several of their most popular young northern helpers are children of the old Commies well-known in the 30’s). I’ve warned them but they don’t listen.”

 Smith had hoped, though, that Black people would have followed her advice given in her book Our Faces, Our Words to join and stay in non-violent groups favoring integration. She praised Johnson by saying:

“I am an admirer of Johnson’s; I think he is a genius of a man; he has great virtues, also big faults; but this time I think he is earnestly trying to find the right way; and I want us to speak against war, to urge negotiations but to respect his efforts to bring these matters about. Neither SNCC nor the Georgia legislature is helping Johnson to bring us closer to peace.”[12]

In short, I had access to many beneficial documents during my research at the Rose Library. These two Johnsonist intellectuals became more fleshed out. Now, I can build a stronger thesis with relevant additional information to fulfill some of the gaps in my studies.

 

Footnotes:

[1] See a letter from a person identified as “Minute Men and Women” to Ralph McGill, September 8, 1959, Box 56 Folder 23 and Celestine Sibley, “They Don’t Scare McGill”, unknown source, unknown date and page, Box OP7, Folder 4 and “Editor Ralph McGill of Atlanta- A Man Who Doesn’t Scare Easily”, Kansas City Star, 1959, Page unknown, Box OP7, Folder 4, Ralph McGill Collection, Emory University

[2] Ralph McGill, “A Sensitive Southerner’s View of a Smoking City,” New York Herald Tribune, May 14^th, 1963, Box 36, Folder 4, Ralph McGill Collection, Emory University

[3] Ralph McGill, “Disunity and Unity in Negro Equality Fight,” New York Herald Tribune, June 23^rd, 1963, Box 36, Folder 3, Ralph McGill Collection,  Emory University

[4] Ralph McGill,  “Hate Knows No Direction,” The Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1963, Box 36, Folder 11, Ralph McGill Collection,  Emory University

[5] Ralph McGill, “ Notes to a Freshman Class,” Orientation 1964, 1964, Box 36, Folder 20, Ralph McGill Collection,  Emory University

[6] Letter from Ralph McGill to Joseph Johnson, September 5, 1967, Box 72, Folder 23, Ralph McGill Collection, Emory University.

[7] Ralph McGill, article sent to Marine William Fields, 4 pages, November 1966, Box 37, Folder 2, Ralph McGill Collection,  Emory University

[8] Ralph McGill, “Lucky Babies Come to Orphanage,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 29, 1967, p. 9 and 22, Box 37, Folder 8, Ralph McGill Collection,  Emory University

[9] Ralph McGill with Jack Stuart, IV Marine Corps, September 25^th, 1966, Box 90, Folder 35, Ralph McGill Collection, Emory University

[10] Lillian Smith managed the Laurel Falls Camp in Clayton, Georgia from 1925 to 1946. Web Site: Arrendale Library, Piedmont University, Laurel Leaf mid-summer 1946 – Lillian Smith Studies – Arrendale Library at Piedmont University Library

[11] Lillian Smith, “Bridges to Other People,” Redbook, 1969, p. 91-93, Box 2, Folder 2, Lillian Smith Collection, Emory University

[12] Lillian Smith, “Old Dreams, New Killers,” (unknown magazine), May 1974, p. 45, Atlanta, Box 2, Folder 2, Lillian Smith Collection, Emory University

[13] Lillian Smith, in “Miss Smith Looks to the Future”, Atlantic, 22^nd November, 1964, box 1, folder 6, Lillian Smith Collection, Emory University.