A great teacher teaches through books left behind | Featured Columnist

Pleasants has written or co-authored 10 books including “The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott: The Squire from Haw River” and “Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina”, the latter with Augustus M. Burns III. Pleasants detailed the divisive conflicts in North Carolina politics in the mid-20th century. His work has helped readers begin to understand the context of the political conflicts that divide us today.

In “The Political Career of W. Kerr Scott,” Pleasants described what may have been the greatest political upheaval in North Carolina, Kerr Scott’s victory in the Democratic primary for governor in 1948. The Producer Alamance County milkman defeated the party’s favorite Conservative wing candidate, Charles Johnson.

While in power, he adopted a liberal program of improving roads, improving public schools, and expanding government services. Hardworking and stubborn, outspoken and straightforward, he has appointed women and African Americans to government positions and has ignored criticism of his actions.

Future governors Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt were inspired by his success. Hunt says, “Without Kerr Scott, I would never have been running for governor. My family viewed Scott as our political savior.

In “Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 North Carolina Senate Race,” Pleasants described how, in 1949, Governor Scott appointed UNC President Graham to a vacant seat in the United States Senate. Graham was, at the time, a liberal on racial and social issues.

Conservative Democrats therefore recruited Willis Smith to run against him in the 1950 Democratic primary, the winner of which would face only symbolic Republican opposition in November. Smith was a prominent Raleigh lawyer who had served as president of the American Bar Association. At the start of the campaign, the two men enjoyed wide respect throughout the state.

Graham led the first primary in May 1950 with 48.9% of the vote. Smith had 40.5%. Smith’s supporters, including youngster Jesse Helms, orchestrated an impressive display of public support that persuaded Smith to call in the second round.

Smith’s campaign faced a huge challenge in the second round: how to persuade working-class Democrats to vote for a conservative, business-oriented lawyer.

In 1950, two things would persuade many whites in North Carolina to vote against their economic interests. They were race and communism.

Smith’s supporters have used both problems. Although Smith moved away from the tactics of his supporters, they “played the race card.” Flyers, newspaper ads and mail used foul, inflammatory language to claim Graham supported race mixing in the workplace and everywhere else. And to a lesser extent, Smith’s supporters highlighted Graham’s membership in organizations that were supposedly Communist “fronts.”

Graham declined to respond in kind. But his supporters tried, unsuccessfully, to inflame voters against Smith’s “big business” tendencies. In the end, the tactics of Smith’s supporters won their candidate’s second round.

Why does the Graham-Smith competition continue to be important? One reason is that several prominent recent political leaders have cut their teeth in this battle. For example, Jesse Helms worked vigorously on Graham’s Smith and Terry Sanford side. There are others, a few still alive, who made their debut in this campaign and still remember it. But many others are indirect followers of Graham or Smith, through political figures like Sanford and Helms.

This war between the Smith and Graham sides is not over. It’s still being fought, and it’s unclear which side will really win in the end.

Through his books and other works, Julian Pleasants will live, doing the things he loved to do, teaching and helping us understand the world we live in.