THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA
Schools, Desegregation, Civil Rights
Economic development is understandably a highly valued policy area by state/local policy systems in the nation’s poorest region. Consequently, emphasis on other policy areas will be justified in terms of economic development impact, and ED strategies will value “upgrading” of other policy areas as legitimate ED strategies. Moreover, a counter-intuitive effect of the South’s attraction/promotion strategy was that southern states had to deal with what others thought of them if advertising was to be effective. Low wages was one thing—racial repression was another. If low taxes translated into poor services, incapable government and inadequate infrastructure, that mattered to firms considering relocation. There was a “flip side” to a strategy of selling the South.
The poor image of the South by outsiders strengthened “liberal” and Modernist elements within southern states and municipal policy systems. War production industry decentralization introduced northern firms into the decision-making fabric of southern policy systems, and resulted in a disproportionate prominence in municipal economic bases. The South was not as isolated as it once was, and the older Redeemer mentality, still strong, challenged in ways it had never previously been. In that context, economic development policy-making, almost necessarily, expanded into policy areas outside its “traditional” focus. Postwar southern race relations, nationally watched and in great flux after the mid-1950s, became a critical southern economic development concern. Race relations became a companion policy area in the selling of the South (Cobb, 1993a, p. 148).
Having observed this flip side of an attraction strategy, the actual link between industrial promotion and desegregation is “complicated”. What is not complicated is that in almost every southern state and major city the link between industrial promotion, segregation and racial violence figured prominently. Chambers and industrial development corporations, home ground for the southern promotional strategy, focused on the negative impact that racial change had on campaigns: “One lynching and we’ve wasted two hundred thousand dollars on magazine advertising” (Ashmore, 1958, p. 119). The motivation behind EDO involvement in desegregation was seldom moral or ethical, but much more practical. Winthrop Rockefeller, future governor but at the time head of Arkansas’s Industrial Development Commission, observed “the industrial prospect doesn’t give a hoot whether our schools are segregated or not, but he wants no part of disorder and violence” (Cobb, 1993a, p. 146) Ashmore summarizes the perspective of most southern industrial promoters during this period:
It is not that … the local Chambers … or … state Industrial Development Commissions are particularly concerned with race as a moral problem; on the contrary, many privately share the views of [segregationists] and the Klux. But they also recognize that sustained racial disorder would be fatal to their effort to lure new industries and new capital from the non-South, and that the existing level of tension isn’t doing their handsomely mounted promotional campaigns any good. (Ashmore, 1958, p. 118)
The impact on promotional campaigns flowed from the “Little Rock lesson”. In 1957
Governor Orval Faubus used National Guardsmen to block integration of Little Rock’s Central High School. “Torrid” rhetoric and violence followed, and Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the 1954 (and 1955) Brown v. Board of Education decisions. Faubus closed the schools rather than desegregate. During the crisis, the chamber urged moderation and led a successful effort to oust segregationists from the School Board—stalemate followed, however. By the end of 1958, however, the impact of the crisis on industrial promotion was felt. In 1957 Little Rock attracted eight firms, but it failed to capture a single firm over the next four years. The state attracted 1400 fewer jobs in 1958 (Cobb, 1993a, p. 125). From 1959 on, the Little Rock Chamber led an integration initiative that resulted in the integration of six students, but sent representatives through the South counseling moderation and providing physical evidence from firms that rejected their offers.
Atlanta under Mayor William Hartsfield and his successor, Ivan Allen Jr., is a model of New South efforts to desegregate schools. Hartsdale had assembled over the course of his many years as mayor a loose but functional coalition of business, the chamber and key African-American leaders. The capstone of this Progressive coalition was not urban renewal. It was school desegregation. The coalition, with its last hurrah from Hartsfield, negotiated in the last years of the fifties a peaceful, gradual, school desegregation that became the “pacesetter” for the South and an enormous public image boost in an era of frightening civil rights confrontation. “It was Atlanta’s finest hour”. Hartsfield retired in 1961; he was replaced by the chamber president, Ivan Allen Jr., who supported school desegregation and, in 1961, proposed “an ambitious agenda of redevelopment” (Stone, 1989, p. 49) after defeating Lester Maddox for the office.
Atlanta provided a stiff spine for those chambers and cities that were so inclined. Charlotte, when facing its turn at the desegregation wheel in 1963, publicly debated how to respond; and the promotional record of the chamber, which had brought 50 firms into Charlotte in 1962, produced a consensus among business elites that “this was too good a town to have it ruined”. Joining with the chamber’s pro-desegregation position, they took pride in being called the South’s “little Atlanta”. Their efforts were well rewarded as they quickly attracted the Eastern Airlines computer center—Eastern’s VP publicly announced that the way Charlotte handled its race relations was instrumental in the company’s decision (Cobb, 1993a, pp. 130–31). The famous, should we say infamous, Dallas Citizens Council also successfully led the city’s desegregation effort—and violence and disorder did not characterize that city’s integration.
School desegregation intruded into Norfolk politics as well. The Norfolk City Council followed the Byrd machine’s direction and bitterly contested court orders to desegregate. They closed down the school system for part of a year (1959). The city council supported and participated actively in the resistance. Edward R. Murrow and CBS vividly reported on Norfolk’s belligerence. The Progressive business community came back to life. Taking an ad in the main newspaper, “one hundred leading business and professional men” opposed the city’s position and urged compromise to keep the schools open—and desegregated. The schools opened a week later, desegregated.
In local historiography the Committee of 100 is giving major credit for resolving the school crisis and pointing Norfolk back towards its primary goal of economic development. Certainly the men who recruited the signers of the advertisement represented the Norfolk establishment … director of the National Bank of Commerce … chairman of the Redevelopment and Housing Authority … publisher of the two major papers [and VP of radio and TV stations] … Lewis Powell [future US Supreme Court Justice] … [and president] of the Norfolk and Western Railroad … Most of the businesses represented on the Committee of 100 shared a chamber of commerce orientation toward Norfolk markets and the health of Norfolk real estate. (Abbott, 1981, pp. 130–31)
For every Atlanta, there were cities and governors who took the opposite tack. New Orleans was among the worst: its business community initially uninvolved with integration; its chamber fired its PR chief for supporting the Brown decision publicly; it rejected advice from the Little Rock chamber. After a year of tumult and disorder, the chamber finally backed a desegregation initiative. Mississippi and Alabama were bedrock segregationists—and aggressive BAWI-style prospectors. George C. Wallace (Alabama), an aggressive “prospector” for his state’s attraction program, best demonstrates the uncertain relationship of industrial promotion and desegregation. Birmingham earned a reputation early on for hard-line anti-integration—its economy dominated by Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, its chamber “built on its cluster” and aggressively recruited steel-related northern firms. On the verge of landing a major steel-related firm (1962), “Freedom Riders” arrived in town; riots, church bombings and brutality, all reported by the national media, broke the deal—and the firm accepted a more expensive site in Tennessee.
The chamber reacted: “Let a carload of riffraff throw a stick of dynamite and— boom—we’re set back another five years”. Business leaders organized a reform campaign that replaced the old commission form of government with a mayor-council. A “moderate” segregationist defeated Sheriff “Bull” Conner—and Martin Luther King arrived in town. Police dogs and firehoses followed. Fifty businessmen met with King and the mayor and negotiated a phased desegregation plan accepted by all parties— except the mayor. The chamber, however, aggressively opposed desegregation, complaining: “these Yankee corporations [put] pressure on third-rate Babbitts in the [Chamber] to surrender to these Negroes”. Further violence ensued. In September, court-ordered desegregation at the University of Alabama involved Governor George Wallace, whose blocking the door to one black person put him, Alabama and Birmingham in the world’s spotlight (Cobb, 1993a, pp. 137–8).
Wallace was pressured by top Birmingham business elites who claimed they were segregationists, but they believed Wallace’s strategy would effectively close down their attraction programs. Wallace refused to change course, saying, among other things, that he envisioned “no major problem in bringing industry into the state of Alabama” (Cobb, 1993a, pp. 137–8). That proved optimistic, especially when Wallace ran in the 1964 presidential state primaries. The governor’s northern “prospecting” met with opposition and minimal success.
The matter came to a head in 1965 when the Hammermill Paper Company announced its decision to relocate to Selma, Alabama—one of the very worst scenes of racial conflict to that point. Civil rights groups pressured Hammermill not to move; so did Martin Luther King, and pickets showed up at their doors. The incentive package (Selma Industrial Development Board)—including a state-built bridge bond, 50 percent tax abatement and expedited code and plan regulation—sealed the deal and the move occurred. Hammermill, however, received national attention, and while successful from Alabama’s view, was probably a pyrrhic victory in these sense that other states, cities—and potential relocating firms—took note. Hammermill does, however, reveal the rather torturous relationship between selling the South attraction, civil rights and desegregation. Cobb concludes that while business and chamber involvement in desegregation often produced “token” integration at best, and was probably done for the “wrong” reasons, it “did help their communities and states take their all-important [positive] first steps” toward integration (Cobb, 1993a, p. 149).
Civic Improvements, Political Reform, and Education
Selling the South affected other policy areas such as advancement of civic improvements, political reform and recognition that education and human capital were assets that could no longer be ignored. The problem encountered by southern industrial promoters was both widespread and frequent. Site selectors and companies told recruiters companies were rejecting their site because “There is nothing wrong with your city that a good city government couldn’t cure” (Cobb, 1993a, p. 151). Once again, even as early as the 1950s, low costs, low taxes, low wages plus ample incentives were only part of an attraction strategy—image and community “capacity” also mattered greatly.
This was a bit of a shock to a region that had based its strategy purely on the former. In the postwar atmosphere, where industrial jobs required more than simple stamina and reliable work values, better-paying jobs required more education—and that became an important factor in recruitment programs (Cobb, 1993a, p. 161) More spending on public schools necessarily came at the expense of low taxes, and so there were limits to chamber spending advocacy. But getting behind better schools and adding weight to the local debate in favor of improved local education was common.
The most important, in my opinion, educational initiative associated with selling the South was “vocational education.” It is by no means clear who established the first vocational training institute, but it is very clear that southern states were the first to incorporate a state-supported vocational training program geared toward their industrial attraction programs. Through southern innovation specialized training intended for economic development became common in the South during the 1950s and was prevalent by the 1960s. Southern training programs developed curricula (welding, metal-working, draftsmanship and “factory-oriented pursuits”) beyond those associated with agricultural extension, and made them available for relocated firms during the postwar era. Florida is credited by Cobb as being the state that first recognized (mid-1950s) its potential in economic development—as a consequence of its climate-related attraction of the early space/missile industries. Neighboring Georgia developed state-supported vocational training by 1960. After 1960 southern states afforded a high priority in education budgets to regional vocational schools to ensure their access to all areas within their states. Four-year colleges were also encouraged to provide vocation and training programs (Cobb, 1993a, pp. 163–6).
It was in this period that “customized training”, easily accessible and affordable, became a prime tool for southern attraction packages. Led by Governor Hollings of South Carolina, who aggressively pursued higher-wage jobs to replace the lost textile industry jobs, in 1961 a “quick-response training program [was] designed to respond to the needs of incoming industry through a system of special schools … The plan operated at state expense”. Companies like Firestone Steel, Smith-Corona, Marchant and Lockheed took advantage of it. Between 1961 and 1977 this program served 485 companies and trained over 59,000 workers (Cobb, 1993a, pp. 166–7, 169).
Physical improvements came more natural to chambers and industrial promoters. Many southern states, like Georgia, adopted community certification programs. Sponsored by the Georgia Power Company, the Georgia Municipal Association and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Engineering Experiment Station, with industrial recruitment an acknowledged goal, a process was established by which a community could demonstrate its commitment “to win recognition as a superior location for industry and business”. Items on its list included physical attractiveness, fire protection, education, planning and recreation opportunities. Mississippi set up its “Measure Needs-Establish Priorities-Recruit Manpower-Initiate Action-To Build Tomorrow’s Community” (M-E-R-I-T) program, which attracted many communities, resulting in a laundry list of civic improvements on sewers, attractiveness and parks.
State-level industrial development agencies aggressively supported these efforts as well. The advantages of civic improvements were not restricted to the larger urban areas, but often were picked up on by small, rural communities as well. Local economic development initiatives reached into policies and initiatives not conventionally considered “economic development” (such as roadside clean-up, fire departments and recreation). As will be demonstrated in a future chapter, business leaders shifted southern urban renewal programs away from “people” focuses, (i.e. housing and neighborhood renewal) into commercial projects, CBD modernization and transportation access—what we shall label as 1950s’s City Beautiful.
Political reform, long a northern chamber favorite, became more common in the South as a consequence of its attraction strategy. Some reform initiatives, such as Augusta Georgia’s GI Revolt of 1946, were not linked to attraction directly; but old county court house gangs couldn’t cut it in the slowing emerging New South. Examples of really bad government, for example Huey Long’s Louisiana, vividly displayed to other southern states how bad government hurt economic development. Long had made a point in 1940 to reorganize and focus his Department of Commerce and Industry to bring in outside firms, and by the 1950s its failure was evident—ranking last in the nation during 1954-60 growth in manufacturing employment. Companies (such as Schlitz Brewing) publicly commented in choosing Texas over Louisiana that Louisiana’s state and local government was the key factor. In these years, the key was to reform state legislatures to break the hold of rural legislators on state governance. Southern political reform seldom lacked appeal to northern liberals, as southern reform “preached fiscal conservatism” but advocated services and other improvements that would appeal to investors and the middle class, yet avoided social welfare programs aimed at blacks or low-income whites.
“Selling the South” attraction strategy carried with it ancillary initiatives, even strategies, that significantly broadened the activities and interests of economic developers in the South. This observation may well be timeless in that attraction works best when the product advertised is of high quality and its advantages useful to the consumer. The South had issues in both regards, and that required southern economic developers to move into policy areas and initiatives that their northern counterparts were not involved in. Elements of southern economic development were indeed proceeding down a different path from the North—not only in strategies, but also in the definition of what economic development included.
Ron W. Coan 