"Fourteen karat son of a bitch with spare parts"

    Furman great Marshall Frady's last review in the New York Review of Books was of Steve Oney's And the Dead Shall Rise, about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank in Cobb County Georgia. The lynching was in a meadow now under the south bound lane of I 75 about the water park where you can look out Hwy 20 and see the Big Chicken.

    Yesterday I talked to Patrick Phillips, author of the riveting new book Blood at the Root, about the 1912 lynchings in Forsyth County Georgia, resurrected to national attention in 1987 by a young Oprah Wynfrey and one of the last hurrahs of Gary Hart. The quote above Phillips uses from Oney's book to describe Newt Morris, a judge in a bowtie in a pic with the hanging body of Frank, who was also key in the earlier lynchings in Forsyth.

    What follows is an imaginative historical analysis with suppositions of how Frady would treat Trey Gowdy in this Trump, Billy Graham, Ben Ghazi, Fox News Moment in the South Carolina US 4th Congressional District.

    Gowdy was onstage last night at Frady and my alma mater, Furman, for a conversation with his challenger Chris Fedalei. Later those two joined in a roundtable conversation with SC's first Black Republican Senator Tim Scott.

   Scott has ties to Chic Fil A. CFA CEO Dan Cathy was in my religion class at Furman fall of 71. Small world.

    But continuing.

    Whether or not Frady would name Gowdy another "14 karat son of a bith with spare parts" we may never know. But Frady's familiarity with such language from southern pols, his insights in his biography of George Wallace and on to Billy Graham not hard to believe Frady would see a lot of Gowdy in the pattern.

   In his bio of Graham, Frady compared him to the penultimate American Innocent,Billy Budd of Melville's Moby Dick. Said Graham saw the world through "welkin eyes".

     Gowdy I don't think is that innocent. Gowdy to me carries all the weight and evil machinations of the worst of Nixon and the insidious Lee Atwater and Governor Carroll Campbell, Campbell as Nordic blue eyed and blonde as Gowdy, though never quite slicked his air that gelly.

    Gowdy swims in the world of the dark money of the Koch Brothers, the NRA and Fox News. Investigate that world. How he maintains good standing in FBC Spartanburg with Billy Graham I don't know.

   Gowdy when he reads and I hope he will, will be taken by the title of the chapter in which the Newt Morris quote appears, The chapter titled "The Majesty of the Law". Bama Senator Sessions should like that title as well. Quote of 14 karats from the mouth of a Cobb County resident, a Mr Willingham.

    FBC Spartanburg every couple years or so sponsors an event, Truth for a New Generation. I've never been able to darken the door of one of those events, keep hoping George Singleton will do the honors and report in the Oxford American but that hasn't happened yet.

   I think it fair to say not many of the proffs or administration of the folks I knew at Furman would find much in common with the values and ideological compulsions of TFNG and liberal arts vision of Furman; nor Wofford nor Converse for that matter.

    So Trey Gowdy continues to pull off a hat trick with the Downtown Destination City Republicans of Main Street Greenville SC.

    Take a look at Phillips book. Find Marshall Frady's collection Southerners. Google Rebecca West Greenville Opera from the 1946 New Yorker on the lynching of Willie Earl and see if there in Strom Thurmond's America you don't find the charlatan Trey Gowdy.

  Post script. Taylor Branch has a sterling blurb on the inside front fly cover of Blood at the Root. Pulitzer Prize Winner Branch was in Texas with Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1972 working on the Clinton Campaign. With detours here and there Hillary Clinton's north Star and inner circle has been of the best of our generation. Trey Gowdy is a darling of Fox News and the underbelly of right wing fundamentalism in this country.

   Here are more blurbs and links for Phillips grand book which also comes with endorsement of Bryan Stevenson of the Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama

    http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Blood-at-the-Root/

And Billy Graham's North Carolina. What does Trey Gowdy say about this at FBC Spartanburg:

  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-battle-for-north-carolina/501257/

Voters for Hillary Clinton in Dekalb County, Alabama

  Okay I may make a few friends and I may lose a few but following is a list of folks with connections to DeKalb County Alabama, most of them Christians, who I know or have strong suspicions will be voting for Hillary Clinton. We are a minority as there are only about 20 percent of us in this county. Some don't live in the county but grew up here or have strong family ties.

1 Stephen M Fox, myself whose Momma was born and baptized her and my great grandfather Jordan was born in 1841 and fought in the Civil War.

2. My sister who lives in South Carolina.

3. Cousin Dixie who lives in Pelham

4. Claire Chandler of the Influential Coker family, Home Ec teacher at Collinsville HS who said as much last week at Don Chicos

5. Mary Katherine Reed. Quite conservative woman, a Reagan Republican but I cant see the first woman in the county to earn a doctorate, my Mother's HS classmate, voting for Trump. She is deceased but I want folks to know where Im comin from.

6. Martha Barksdale. Lifelong Republican and conscience of the town. God Help us All if she votes for Trump.

7. Peggy Coplin Weaver. Hall of Fame Math Teacher at Collinsville, native of Guntersville, lifelong Methodist like Hillary, perfect on the ACT in Math in 1965. She hasn't told me as much but can't see her voting for Trump.

8 Rebecca Kennedy. CHS grad 83. Chaplain at Baylor University.

9 Susan Weaver. Peggy's daughter, smart enough herself and regular Sunday School student of President Jimmy Carter.

10 Her husband John, UVA grad, both friends of St Moats of Americus who will vote for Hillary as well because he is a Furman grad which makes him literate. Ha

11 Matthew Morgan, CHS grand, UVA and Yale Div

12 Mark Morgan, weak in many areas but smart enough to graduate from Duke and befriend Chaplain Willimon there. Like Martha, God help us if he votes Trump

13. Jennifer Cunningham Barber, Danny's wife. Lawyer and too smart to vote for Trump.

14 Samuel Russell Beene. According to Mark Morgan the brightest grad in the history of Collinsville High School. Beene applied to Cornell

15 His Mother Lynn Gilbreath Beene, a not too distant cousin of Martha Barksdale.

16 Her granddaughter Kaylur and her friend Sharon in the 7th grade. They will win the state softball championship in 2022 in Alabama. They cant vote yet but if they could they would vote Hillary. Sharon of the China House has a first cousin Jose Bailey at Furman with Mike Hubbard's son Clayte. Jose is majoring in political science and will cast a vote in North Carolina. He worked one summer at the China House. May be smarter than Russ Beene.

17 Amy Arthur. With her Aunt in Texas Alicea may be the only Arthur in the county not to vote Trump. Countin on Amy

18 Hillary Beard. With a name like that how could she not. Bham Southern Grad on staff with Congresswoman Terri Sewell in DC. Hillary's Father was longtime associate pastor at FBC Ft Payne and friend of Crowe above in same church. Crowe is a graduate of Vanderbilt and on staff at Baptist Joint Committee in DC which opposes Casey Mattox and every thing he stands for ideologically and church state matters. Crowe is in the George Truett tradition of Baptist life. Casey in the tradition of the right wing fundamentalism of Jesse Helms and reactionaries in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention from Mississippi.

Hillary's brother Jay

20. Todd Heifner, Frequent traveler of I 59 and former president of the Samford SGA and assistant to President Tom Corts.

21. Jon Appleton, cousin of Hank Appleton and Jill Appleton Tidmore. Their GGG Grandfather was a founder of Collinsville Baptist Church and Jon is pastor emeritus of FBC Athens, Ga. He was special guest of FBC Ft. Payne May 2010 on their 150th or so anniversary. Hank's son an Albertville, Al QB has gotten serious looks from Yale football program and Hank was a roommate at Auburn of Campbell, QB who handed the ball off to Bo Jackson so the family's influence is wide.


Rest without number. Rev Bynum of Lebanon. Natasha Jones. Donnie Mack and Jackie Myers. Wellington Hope. Raymond Weaver, Cherilynne Crowe, Dr. Steve Isbell though I could be wrong on that one, Mike Mitchell. Tara George, Laqata Bowers, Maria Moreno, Teresa Guerroro, Tony and Edgar Padilla and the wife and daughter, Mark Wilson of the Auburn Democracy Project and the four students he has sponsored under the auspices of Jennifer Wilkins.

Clarification on Collinsville grad Casey Mattox now with the right wing single issue Alliance Defending Freedom. He is part of the Never Trump Train according to sources and quite adamant about it. His classmate Mark Morgan of CHS 93 who befriended Willimon texts he Morgan remains on the fence. Consensus view is the Rev Morgan and Gloria if vote at all for Prez will do so with little enthusiasm or may write in.

There are more but something to think about and it is lunchtime.

"Stiffnecked"; One more insight into the Southern White Male Mind of 1930s through Sixties

       Booktv and the Nashville Southern Book festival featured two great authors and books over the weekend in edition to a panel of three on We Are Charleston.


     Patrick Phillips whose parents were raised in Birmingham and he in Forsyth Co Georgia where his parents became Methodist ministers, Patrick in the presentation of his new book Blood at the Root drew attention to a teacher at Chestatee Elementary school in the county who got national fame for a viral facebook post where she likened Michelle Obama to a gorilla.


    Phillips books is about the 1912 lynchings in the County about 25 miles north of downtown Atlanta that made Cumming Ga and the county Sundown territory until Oprah came to town in 1987. Phillips used the reference about the Chestatee teacher to say there are pockets of white privilege as virulent as Birmingham in the mid 60s.


     I think the book is coming to the Ft Payne Library in NE Bama. I hope leadership of the Collinsville Historical Association as well as likely new School supe Jason Barnett and his school trustees take the implications to heart and make sure our county high schools get away from the foolishness of the Daughters of the Confederacy History of the Civil War.


     More striking than Phillips presentation was a lesser known author and likely less selling book about the man widely assumed to be the prototype for Harper Lee's Atticus Finch. Foster Beck's son tells the story of his Dad and a case in Enterprise Alabama in 1939 when my Momma woulda been 16 and on the eve of her last year of High school.


     Beck comes to an interesting conclusion about how South Alabama dismissed the nobility of his father's failed cause to save an innocent black man from capital punishment. He attributes it to working and lower class whites ideas about being a stiffnecked. The culture had worked and his Dad had lost but pursued justice.


   Here is how the son interpreted it all, kind of a gnarled analysis but quite poignant, one that registers with me as I've tried to understand similar mindsets and dismissals over the years. The panel is easily googled. I hope some of you find both and watch in entirety on booktv.org    


   Mr. Beck the son, Quoting: 
 




     THERE ARE NOW, OF COURSE, THERE REALLY WERE PEOPLE ALL OVER THE LOT FROM THE KLAN TO PEOPLE WHO WERE COWARDS AND PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO DO THE RIGHT THING BUT I THINK THE FACT THAT HE LOST THIS CASE WHEN HE WAS APPOINTED WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCEPTABLE HAD HE NOT CONTINUE TODAY FIGHT AND HERE IS WHAT I WROTE. THE PASSED DOWN MEMORY OF THE LOST CAUSE SHAPED THE SPIRIT OF THE WHITE SOUTH FAR INTO THE 20TH CENTURY. AS THE YEARS WENT BY THE PRINCIPLE REASON TO PRESERVE SLAVERY GRADUALLY BECAME AN UNACCEPTABLE REASON FOR THE WAR AND THE LOSS OF SUCH A WAR ALL THE MORE UNACCEPTABLE AND ACCEPTABLE REASON FOR THE WAR HAD TO BE FOUND, REBELLION AGAINST AN ECONOMIC TYRANNY RUTHLESSLY IMPOSED THROUGH PUNITIVE TARIFFS BECAME THAT REASON. LOSS OF SUCH A WAR BY A MAN WHO WAS VASTLY OUTNUMBERED AND LOST TO CULTURE BECAME AN ACCEPTABLE KIND OF LOSS. AMONG THE BETTER CLASS THE MODEL FOR ACCEPTANCE OF LOSS WAS ROBERT E LEE'S SURRENDER. MOST OF THEM BORN LOSERS AND DESTINED TO REMAIN LOSERS COMPARED TO SHORT AND VIOLENT LIVES LOST IN THIS LIFE WAS NATURAL AND BECAUSE IT WAS UNAVOIDABLE IT HAD TO BE ACCEPTED.

Gaffney High Class of 1971 Celebrates 45th

       I've gotten a little surprisingly maudlin near sappy on occasion the last ten days thinking of my High School class Reunion. I didn't make it, thought it was gonna be too hot and I can't run up to Upstate South Carolina every weekend. My family loves me but need the distance.

     Not many of us still have a parent still living and I can think of only one classmate who has both parents still here on the earth. And since the last reunion three noble folks of our class have left us, just in last five years.

     In 15 to twenty years there will be just a few of us left.

      On occasion over the last decade when I take out an annual I know to twist the Rolling Stones a little Time is No Longer on My side. The Fall of my Freshman year, Claude Fort spoke at the Homecoming Assembly--Gaffney had great Homecoming Assemblies, knocked off the entire morning every fall right up until first lunch period. Claude Fort was of the class of 1907, born in 1890 five years before my Grandfather Fox.

     http://law.sc.edu/memory/1981/fortjc.shtml

    And here we Freshmen are on the edge of the third decade of the 21st Century.

     Our Class was historic as we were the last to be freshman at Gaffney High and the first in Gaffney to have three years in High School of full integration. There is an ominous photo in the 68 annual of a hundred or so white kids gathered around four black girls at lunchtime. It was innocent enough it looks as it appears the girls were singing or doing chants from Granard, their school of just a year before, but when you put those years of Strom Thurmond's Freedom of Choice and read Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America we were an experiment in the making for sure.

   It wasn't all about race. Academic goals were serious at Gaffney High. Consider this sentence from the 68 annual I'm convinced came from Margaret Callison one of the co-editors:  "The teacher that involves a student with Thoreau, that excites a student with the thought of Flemming or Darwin is a teacher that has taken a student beyond a mere academic credit and given him an awareness of ideas that are infinitely more valuable"

   If you got a better sentence from your HS Annual I'd like to see it.

   As an aside I have to say about Darwin--well save that for later, from the Movie Ironweed. I was just surprised we good Baptists and the other less numerous denominations at Gaffney High had Darwins name in the annual.

   We had our stars, though quite frankly I thought the class of 68 and 72 were more gifted on the whole. No diss on us. Charles Foster was in the Olympics in 76, Chip Sheffield got a solid look from the Cowboys and Tampa Bay as a receiver, Ronnie Smiley got a look from Kansas City Royals best I remember and if not for a knee injury Danny Parker coulda been a pitcher for the Clemson Tigers. I agree with Robb Sartor on that one.

  And Barry Denton who is a perennial or a quarterly for the Reunions has the great story of when a crow tried to assault him in Left Field on a leisurely inning in the spring of 71, playing Woodruff or some pretender. Denton swatted and killed the bird with his glove. I wanted to hear that story one more time.

     At Furman in the hardest proffs class,
Jan Palmer made the first Freshman A intro Psyche Class in the history of the school; Anne Fuller became an outstanding church organist and played some of the best cathedrals in greater NYC and her sons were in acclaimed Boys Choirs there. Lillian Ashley got a master in Library science from Vanderbilt and Rajesh Mehra and Frankie Barnhill and Walter Frye have solid practices in the medical field.

      Bill Moyers wrote me a note in 88 that Said People like you make a difference and in my mind I collaborated on what shoulda been an Oscar winning screenplay if I just coulda got Brad Pitt to pick up the phone. After all he was raised Baptist just like me......Joke on me.

     At the 1991 twenty year Reunion, I found myself sitting beside Arthur Frady. I hadn't thought about Frady since tenth grade when Coach Whiteside drove a golf ball into the visitors stand on a morning that I swear was below freezing.

     Frady said Stephen, you were the smartest in our class weren't you. I said the vote came out that way though Walter Frye and Mark Poole always thought they were smarter than me. They coulda been and for sure Teresa Cline and Jan and Lillian and Diane Sarratt brought more to the table than I did; and Mike Francis SAT score was higher than mine. I rose steadily in the class as Francis left after the ninth grade, Lillian after the tenth and Jan went to LaGrange Georgia before our Senior year. And the Clary girls were ready to get on with life and went to Winthrop early.

   I got sidetracked. Frady Said, Stephen how much did you make last year. I said I have enough after taxes to make a down payment on a good bicycle since I'm wearing out the ten speed I got in Rome Georgia ten years ago. Frady said I made a hundred thousand dollars last year in my heatin and air Business. I said I thought you were with Sanders Brothers. Frady said I left them several years ago and got my own business and doing fine.

   I told him I was proud of him and I am. He was back for the 45th and I woulda love to have seen him. In a good picture with Charles Edwards who went on to Furman with me and Donnie Clary and Mac Middleton.

   Luc Sante, a consultant to Gangs of New York, said we are each of us our own archaeological sites. And lookin at the pic of my classmates the registry hardened.

   From a Review of a novel in the New Yorker a few years ago:  The hero imagines his body from above jeering at him: "For all your higher plane and beloved evolution....you want the old comforts and narratives....the great words repeated in the dark and over the heads of newborns and the bodies of the dead."

    That's about where I am.

    God Bless the Class of 1971 Gaffney High School.

   

Wofford and the Case against Trey Gowdy; Willimon on Immgration

        If LD Johnson is the Abraham Lincoln of Baptist Identity at Furman the laft half century, then Will Willimon is the Methodist Lincoln for Wofford.  A native of Greenville and the Buncombe Street UMC, Willimon is a late 60s Wofford Grad, longtime trustee and was a finalist to become Wofford President a decade ago.

    For several decades Willimon was the Chaplain at Duke University and is well known internationally in Christian Circles. I've read all the sermons in his Anthology from the Duke Chapel, the 1967 Homecoming sermon and the contributions of Fleming Rutledge and Will Campbell among the most memorable.

    For seven years ending roughly 2012 Willimon was Bishop for North Alabama Methodists. He wrote a book about his experience in Alabama.

   While Willimon was taking a prophetic stance about Alabama's draconian immigration law that made national news, Spartanburg's Trey Gowdy was whistling Dixie and becoming the Darling of Fox News with his distractions on the Ben Ghazi Committee and other playgrounds of the Koch Brothers and Anne Coulters whims.

    Let's get to the heart of America for What Trey Gowdy means for the extended families of Marcus Lattimore, Sidney Rice and our Latino friends in the Upstate:  If Martin Luther King were with us today he would be marching in Berea and writing letters from the Spartanburg County Jail to Gowdy and the staff and members of First Baptist Church Spartanburg including Billy and Franklin Graham!

     Read this, Willimon on "fugitive slave law" and matters that had Gowdy Struck Mute!

       http://www.ethicsdaily.com/methodist-bishop-repents-on-immigration-calls-for-action-cms-18965

     So where is the Christian Conscience of Gowdy's base in the Upstate.

    I hope that is one question explored in the "Conversation" at Furman in a few weeks.