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“Termites in the Temple”: Fundamentalism and Anti-Liberal Politics in the Post–World War II South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf  and
Ken Fones-Wolf
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Abstract

From 1946 to 1950, East Tennessee was embroiled in a bitter campaign over the radio preacher and evangelist, J. Harold Smith. More than a curiosity, this confrontation helps us understand a much broader struggle that cut deeply through American society in the post-World War II era. It was a conflict that grew out of a conservative political effort to roll back the New Deal, the union-led regime of collective bargaining, and the tide of modernist religion. These issues overlapped with concerns about African-American equality and the Soviet Union’s threat to the nation’s security. Although recent scholarship has revealed the symbiotic relationship between postwar evangelicalism and free-enterprise ideology, we know little about how and why that message resonated for many middling and working-class individuals. Fortunately, supporters of Smith’s radio program wrote thousands of letters that illuminate what normally anonymous people were thinking about God, society, and politics in the postwar years.

In this paper, we use the events in Knoxville as a window into the broader contest over religion and politics in postwar America. Smith’s struggle in Knoxville occurred during an especially tumultuous time in the South. As such, it reveals one regional context for the unsettling political changes and religious conflicts that were occurring nationally. Finally, a study of the responses of Smith’s supporters affords a rare opportunity to analyze one base of postwar fundamentalism and what drew them to the politics and theology of men like J. Harold Smith.

Keywords

fundamentalismradioFederal Council of Churchesconservatism
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 167 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2018

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References

Notes

1. Harold Smith, J., Termites in the Temple (Knoxville: Radio Bible Hour, 1946), 6.Google Scholar

2. Carolina Watchman, May 1946; Knoxville News Sentinel, April 15, 1946; Knoxville Journal, April 15, 1946; James Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” Harpers, August 1949, 71.

3. Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 71.

4. Unpublished memo about Klan Public Meeting, Knoxville, Tenn., May 18, 1946 (nine-page typescript), Stetson Kennedy Papers, reel 1, New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.; Smith, Termites in the Temple; Knoxville Journal, April 15,1946.

5. Sutton, Matthew Avery, “New Trends in the Historiography of American Fundamentalism,” Journal of American Studies 51 (2017): 235-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, Sutton, Matthew Avery, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 16–18 Google Scholar; Carpenter, Joel A., Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 89–109 Google Scholar, for the importance of dispensational premillennialism in the apocalyptic elements of evangelicalism.

6. Our argument is not that the fundamentalism we found in the region is different in kind than what emerged elsewhere, but rather that East Tennessee and its surrounding region was experiencing a vigorously contested transformation of its economy and its politics. However, J. Harold Smith was part of, and tapped into, aspects of regional culture that might not have been present in other parts of the country. For arguments that southern and western fundamentalists were different, see Glass, William R., Strangers in Zion: Fundamentalists in the South, 1900-1950 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001), 275-82Google Scholar; Flynt, Wayne, “Religion for the Blues: Evangelicalism, Poor Whites, and the Great Depression,” Journal of Southern History 71 (February 2005): 3–38.Google Scholar

7. Kruse, Kevin M., One Nation under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015)Google Scholar; Moreton, Bethany, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Dochuk, Darren, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: Norton, 2011)Google Scholar; Grem, Darren, The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sutton, American Apocalypse.

8. Williams, Daniel K., God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 43–47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sarah Ruth Hammond, “'God's Businessmen': Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2010).

9. Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and Dogs of Sin,” 69-70; Manuscript census schedules, Greenville, S.C., 1930.

10. Harold Smith, J., The Time of My Life: The Autobiography of J. Harold Smith (Newport, Tenn.: Radio Bible Hour, 1981), 21–24 Google Scholar; Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 70.

11. Hall, Jacqueline D. et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 237-39, 258-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roscigno, Vincent J. and Danaher, William F., The Voice of Southern Labor: Radio, Music, and Textile Strikes, 1929-1934 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 26–31.Google Scholar

12. Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 71; Federal Communication Commission, Decisions and Reports of the Federal Communication Commission of the United States July 1, 1949, to June 30, 1950, vol. 14 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956), 75 (hereafter referred to as FCC, Decisions and Reports); Barnhart, Joe E., The Billy Graham Religion (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1972), 45.Google Scholar

13. Barnhart, The Billy Graham Religion, 46; FCC, Decisions and Reports, 76; Knoxville Journal, May 25, 1946, 12; Carolina Watchman, July 1946; Smith, The Time of My Life, 99. On the influence of premillenialism in the South, see Glass, Strangers in Zion, 18-23.

14. FCC, Decisions and Reports, 76-77.

15. Hangen, Tona, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 24–34 (quote 28).Google Scholar

16. Ibid., 112-22; Brown, James A., “Selling Airtime for Controversy: NAB Self-Regulation and Father Coughlin,” Journal of Broadcasting 24 (Spring 1980): 199–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 70; Boy er C. Peace to T. J. Slowie, October 4, 1947, box 3364, Docketed Case Files 8489, Federal Communications Commission Records, RG 173, National Archives and Records Center, College Park, Md. (hereafter referred to as FCC Records).

18. Paul R. Christopher to T. J. Slowie, Federal Communications Commission, September 29,1947, box 2589, FCC Records; Paul Christopher to Walter P. Reuther, June 4, 1953, AFL-CIO Region 8 Papers, box 1908, Special Collections and Archives, Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Ga. (hereafter referred to as SLA); Paul Christopher to Clark Foreman, May 7,1947, reel 44, Paul R. Christopher to David Burgess, reel 64, Operation Dixie Records, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C., microfilm edition (hereafter referred to as Operation Dixie Records). For other examples of Depression-era business ideology shaping conservative Christianity, see Grem, The Blessings of Business, chap. 1.

19. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board 24 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940), For more on textile industry organizing in the 1930s, see Simon, Bryant, A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of a South Carolina Millhand, 1910-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Hall et al., Like a Family; Clark, Daniel, Like Night and Day: Unionization in a Southern Mill Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. NLRB, Decisions and Orders; NLRB Alma Mills, Inc., and Textile Workers Organizing Committee, Limestone Mills, Inc., and Textile Workers Organizing Committee, Hamrick Mills, Inc., and Textile Workers Organizing Committee, Decision and Order Statement of the Case, May 29,1940, Formal and Informal Unfair Labor Practices and Representative Case Files, 1935-40, Box 2649, RG 25, National Labor Relations Board Records, National Archives and Records Center, College Park, Md. (hereafter referred to as NLRB Records).

21. Testimony of D. E. Parker, p. 591, NLRB, 1935-, Administrative Division Files and Dockets Sections, Transcripts and Exhibits, 1935-1945, box 1623, NLRB Records. For other examples of similar concerns about the New Deal usurping the sacred, see Greene, Alison Collis, No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 5.On the importance of premillennial prophecy in Depression-era fundamentalism, see Sutton, American Apocalypse, chap. 8.

22. Testimony of Carrie McClellan, 701, and Albert Poole, 1693, box 1623, NLRB Records.

23. Testimony of Jesse Hafner, 380-85, box 1622, NLRB Records.

24. Testimony of Jesse Hafter, 388-89; testimony of Lloyd Couch, 422, box 1622, NLRB Records; testimony of Ester Crawford, 807-09, box 1623, NLRB Records.

25. Testimony of J. L. Palmer, 73-74, box 1622; testimony of Minnie Huckabee, 1784-85, box 1623, NLRB Records.

26. In the Matter of Alma Mills, Inc. etc. and Textile Workers Organizing Committee, “Decision and Order,” May 29, 1940, box 1622, NLRB Records; Christopher to T. J. Slowie, September 29, 1947.27. See Hall, Like a Family, 220-21; Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth and Fones-Wolf, Ken, Strugglefor the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protestants and Operation Dixie (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 69–74.Google Scholar

28. Roger L. Peace to T. J. Slowie, October 4, 1947, Federal Communications Commission, Case file 8489, Box 3364, RG 173, Federal Communications Commission Records, NARA (hereafter FCC); Smith, Time of my Life, 34-42.

29. Smith, The Time of My Life, 34-42; Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin, 70; “Memo: Conversation between Mr. Brown (W. J. Brown), Harold Smith and Preachers,” December 12, 1940, Carolina Watchman, January 1941, Exhibit 30; Walter Brown to Federal Communication Commission, October 2, 1947, Exhibit 33, Case file 8489, box 3365, FCC Records.

30. Smith, The Time of My Life, 43-44; Carolina Watchman, August 1941, 1;March 1945,1.

31. Smith, The Time of My Life, 44-47.

32. Carolina Watchman, August 1941,1.

33. Culled from statistics available in the U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book 1952 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), 354-69; and Frank O. Leuthold, Population Changes in Tennessee Since 1930, Bulletin 403 of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station, May 1966.

34. This profile relies heavily on the excellent historical scholarship of Keith, Jeanette, Country People in the New South: Tennessee 's Upper Cumberland (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995);Google Scholar Lee, Tom, The Tennessee-Virginia Tri-Cities: Urbanization in Appalachia, 1900-1950 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and the oral histories that make up the impressive book by Walker, Melissa, Country Women Cope with Hard Times: A Collection of Oral Histories (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar. One can see the changing map of East Tennessee politics clearly by examining Clark Archer, J. et al., Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1788-2004 (Washington: CQ Press, 2006), maps 37–39.Google Scholar

35. Larson, Edward J., Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997)Google Scholar; and Glass, Strangers in Zion, 218-25.

36. Lee, The Tennessee-Virginia Tri-Cities, 246-47; Olwell, Russell B., At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004).Google Scholar

37. Carolina Watchman, August 1941, 3.

38. East Tennessee was a center of social gospel Christianity in the 1930s, one that sought to appeal to working-class people with a social gospel message. Especially important was the work of Alva W. Taylor and his disciples at Vanderbilt University, some of whom were instrumental in founding the left-wing Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee, just west of Chattanooga and Cleveland. See Dunbar, Anthony P., Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981)Google Scholar. For more on Webber, see Fones-Wolf and Fones-Wolf, Strugglefor the Soul of the Postwar South, 51-52,132-34.

39. “To Our Fellow Employees of the Goodall Company,” undated flyer; “Stop! Look—Listen—Think,” flyer dated May 16,1944; J. Harold Smith to “To Whom It May Concern,” May 19, 1944; and “Read Their Records—Think for Yourself,” undated flyer in case transcripts and exhibits, Goodall Case 10-K-1143, box 266, NLRB Records; Militant Truth, February 1944,1; April 1944,1.

40. J. Harold Smith to “To Whom it May Concern“; “Read Their Records Think for Yourself,” Goodall Case, 10-K-1143, box 266; Militant Truth, May 1944,1; Christopher to Slowie, September, 29,1947.

41. Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 72; Barnhart, The Billy Graham Religion, 46.

42. Federal Communications Commission, Reports, July 1, 1949-June 30, 1950 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1956), 87 (hereafter referred to as FCC, Reports); Carolina Watchman, November 1941,1.

43. FCC, Reports, 86-87; Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 70.

44. FCC, Reports, 86; Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 71.

45. Smith, Termites in the Temple, 6-9; Knoxville News-Sentinel, April 7, 1946, A-14; April 10, 1946, 10; April 12, 1946, 6, 20; April 13, 1946, N-5.

46. Knoxville Journal, April 11,1946,14; April 12,1946, 26.

47. Knoxville Journal, April 15,1946,1,5; Knoxville News-Sentinel, April 15,1946,1.

48. There is no evidence that Smith was affiliated with McIntire's American Council of Christian Churches or Springer's Independent Council of Christian Churches. He was, it appears, in sympathy with the fundamentalist Southern Baptist Fellowship, led by Lee Roberson. For the fellowship, see Glass, Strangers in Zion, 220-25. It is also interesting that the Smith controversy was not covered in the NAE's Evangelical Action, suggesting that the National Association of Religious Broadcasting was also not involved.

49. Knoxville Journal, May 6, 1946, 1-2; Knoxville News-Sentinel, May 6,1946,1, 8.

50. Memo about Klan Public Meeting, Knoxville, Tennessee, May 18, 1946 (nine-page typescript), Stetson Kennedy Papers, New York Public Library, reel 1.

51. Knoxville Journal, May 25,1946,12; FCC, Reports, 87-88; Carolina Watchman, July 1946.Also Knoxville Journal, April 15,1946,5; April 20, 1946, 7; May 6,1946, 2; May 2,1946, 2; May, 11,1946,12; May 18,1946,10.

52. “The Churches and the International Crisis,” Geneva, July 1939, excerpted in John S. Nurser, For All People and All Nations: The Ecumenical Church and Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 183. We thank Jane Dailey for calling this important change in the Federal Council's program to our attention. See, especially, Jane Dailey, “Of Theory and Practice: The Sacralization of Civil Rights in the United States,” unpublished paper given at a conference in honor of Michael Geyer, April 2015, in authors’ possession.

53. On the Columbia riot, see O'Brien, Gail Williams, The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. Pittsburgh Courier, June 29, 1946, 14; Kruse, Kevin M., White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 50–54.Google Scholar

55. Knoxville Journal, May 5,1946,1, 4; May 6,1946,1, 2,16.

56. Knoxville Journal, May 15, 1946, 3; May 23, 1946, 3; Stetson Kennedy to Paul Christopher, August 8,1946, in Operation Dixie Papers, reel 35; New York Times, May 15,1946,22; “Congress Is Asked to Force Stations to Sell Air Time to Religious Groups,” Broadcasting, May 20,1946,40; “McIntire Protests WNOX Rotation Plan Despite Denial of Writ in WPE Case,” Broadcasting, May 13,1946, 50.

57. FCC, Reports, 76-77.

58. “What Hath FCC Wrought,” Broadcasting, 54; Typescript report, “Rev. J. Harold Smith and Co., Knoxville,” July 22, 1946, in Stetson Kennedy Papers, reel 3; Kennedy to Paul Christopher, August 8,1946, and October, 17,1946, Operation Dixie Papers, reel 35.

59. Salmond, John A., The Conscience of a Lawyer: Clifford J. Durr and the American Civil Liberties, 1899-1975 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), chap. 5Google Scholar; FCC, Reports, 86, 89; Deaderick, Lucile, ed., Heart of the Valley (Knoxville: East Tennessee Historical Society, 1976), 312-13.Google Scholar

60. Paul Christopher to T. J. Slowie, September 29, 1947, box 2589, AFL-CIO Region 8 Papers, SLA; Paul Christopher to Clark Foreman, November 8,1947, Operation Dixie Papers, reel 44.

61. FCC, Reports, 90-94. The letters are in Federal Communications Commission, Docketed Case Files 8490, boxes 3366-3369, RG 173, FCC Records (hereafter referred to as Case 8490, FCC Records).

62. Knoxville News-Sentinel, April 15,1946, 2-3; Knoxville Journal, April 15,1946,1-2; Rorty, “J. Harold Smith and the Dogs of Sin,” 71, 73.

63. Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth and Fones-Wolf, Ken, “Sanctifying the Southern Organizing Campaign: Protestant Activists in the CIO's Operation Dixie,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 6 (Spring 2009): 5–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64. Miller, Robert Moats, “Methodism and American Society, 1900-1939,” in History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York: Abingdon Press, 1964), 3:328-06.Google Scholar

65. Harrell, David Edwin, Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1975).Google Scholar These beliefs, which Smith described as “independent and Baptist” in his convictions, are enumerated in Smith, The Time of My Life, 98-99.

66. Wacker, Grant, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 194-95, 253-61Google Scholar; “The Hidden Antichrist,” Pentecostal Evangel, March 9, 1946; “The Labor War,” Pentecostal Evangel, January 19, 1946; D. Shelby Corlett, “The Church and Labor,” Herald of Holiness, August 26,1946.

67. Mr. and Mrs. Le Roy Bogart to FCC, October 16,1947; James Chrisman to Sirs, October 16, 1947; Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan A. Miller and Son to FCC, undated; Mrs. Charles Carden to FCC, November 14, 1947; Pauline Lorch to Sir, October 14,1947, all in box 3367, FCC Records. Mrs. George Scott to Sir, October 16,1947, noted that WIBK is the only station “us Christians can hear the True gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ like it ought to be preached and here we don't hazt [sic.] to listen to beer adds. I aint going to listin to them and I don't wont my children to heard beer adds… that have tore up our home,” box 3367, FCC Records.

68. Mr. and Mrs. G.W. Kagley and Grandsons to Sir, October 17, 1947; Mr. and Mrs. Allen Ward to FCC, October 16,1947, box 3367, FCC Records; Mrs. D. J. Adkins to FCC, August 4,1948, box 3368, FCC Records. Rheva Love observed, “My Husband is a sinner and wont go to church but he will set down and listen to the preachers over W.I.B.K. and that may lead him to know the lord.” Rheva Love to Dear Sir, August 11,1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

69. Mrs. George Scott to Sir, October 16, 1947; Freida Bright to FCC, October 15, 1947; Joe L. Brooks, Helen and Nora to FCC, Oct. 15, 1947; Mr. and Mrs. H. W. Greene to Whom it May Concern, Oct. 16,1947, all in Box 3367, FCC Records. For more, see Mr. and Mrs. Ben Bright, Oct. 6,1947; Joe L. Brooks to FCC, October 15,1947; Dorotha Lee Trego to FCC, October 12,1947, box 3367, FCC Records.

70. Mrs. G.W. Parton to FCC, October 16,1947, box 3367, FCC Records. See also, Elmer M. Seal to FCC, n.d., box 3368, FCC Records.

71. Mrs. J. B. Beals to Gentlemen of the FCC, October 9, 1947; C. Michael Craig to FCC, October 14, 1947, box 3367, FCC Records. For similar letters, see Ival Jean Lyles to Dear Sir, c. October 16, 1947; Mrs. Robert J. Easter to Sir, October 9, 1947; Joe Snud to FCC, n.d.; Mrs. J. R. Brown to FCC, October 10, 1947, box 3367; and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Walters to Sirs, August 13,1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

72. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Walters to FCC, August 13, 1948 (postcard), box 3368, FCC Records. Fifteen-year-old Ival Jean Lyles warned members of the FCC that “you who are trying to get WIBK off the air are going to wake up in Hell some day, crying for a drop of cool water to cool your burning lips.” Ival Jean Lyles to Dear Sir, c. October 16, 1947, box 3367, FCC Records. Likewise, Frances R. Robinson warned, “Believe me you are going to wake up some day after it is too late and find that you've been persecuting Jesus Christ instead of J. Harold Smith…. If you don't repent youll find out when you wake up in a Devils Hill, to spend eternity in a Lake of Fire…. I believe Jesus is coming before long & I want to go meet him in the air, and I pray that the Lord will show you where youre wrong and make you repent.” Frances R. Robinson to FCC, July 24, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

73. Willis Williams to Sir, c. October 20,1947; Sarah Thompson to FCC, October 13, 1947, box 3367; Viola Luttrell to FCC, July 26, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

74. Peggy Ann Thompson to FCC, October 13,1947; W. A. Kyker to FCC, October 13, 1947, box 3367, Mrs. Youngblood to FCC, July 27, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records. Also see Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Keaton to To Whom It May Concern, October 15, 1947; Charles R. Graham to Sirs, October 12, 1947; Sam Lemons, Mrs. Artie Lemons, Miss Norma Jean Lemons, n.d., box 3367, FCC Records.

75. Julia Gruff to FCC, October 8, 1947; Nettie Bradshaw to My Dear People, October 14, 1947; Margaret Steed to Dear Sir, October 14, 1947, box 3367, FCC Records. The phrase “lost and dying world“ appears in numerous letters; see Mrs. A. B. Jones to FCC, n.d.; Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Keaton To whom it may concern, November 15, 1947, box 3367; Fannie B. McCoy to Commissioner of FCC, August 1, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

76. Allen F. Hall to FCC, October 16, 1947; Cora Lee White to FCC, October 16, 1947; Mr. and Mrs. George W. Sitzlar to FCC, October 16,1947, box 3367, FCC Records. Mr. and Mrs. Boyd McClanahan advised that “our boys went overseas to fight for our Christian freedom and if those Devils stop the preachers their fighting was all in vain.” Mr. and Mrs. Boyd McClanahan to Sirs, October 1,1947, box 3367, FCC Records. See also, Mrs. George Yount to FCC, July 23,1948, box 3368; and Luther Gibson to FCC, August 2,1948, box 3369, FCC Records.

77. W. C. Merrow to FCC, July 11,1948; William Avery Allen to FCC, October 16,1947; Mr. and Mrs. L. L. DeWitt to FCC, October 13,1947, Box 3367, FCC Records.

78. Knoxville Journal, June 15, 1946; August 11, 1946; Mrs. I. A. Allison to FCC, October 13, 1947, box 3367, FCC Records, was one of the few who blamed the Communists for seeking to remove WIBK from the air.

79. Ruby McClanahan to Dear Sirs, July 26,1948; Henry Lawson to FCC, August 6,1948, box 3368, FCC Records. For others, see Rebo Wilson to FCC, July 28, 1948; Mrs. Hazel Frost to Dear Sir, c. August 6, 1948; Hannah Brock to Sir, August 4, 1948; Gilbert E. Cox, August 9, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

80. J. R. Webb to FCC, July 27, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records. Mrs. M. M. Cruz to FCC, August 13,1948, warned that taking the station off air would “be unjust, unfair, un Christian and a death blow to private enterprise,” box 3368, FCC Records.

81. Hazel Frost to Dear Sirs, August 16, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records. For similar sentiments, see Mrs. J. A. Thomas and Mrs. Marion Carr to FCC, August 12, 1948; and Harlow Guiley to Sir, July 26, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

82. Ethel Thompson to FCC, August 11, 1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

83. Sutton, American Apocalypse; Greene, No Depression in Heaven.

84. Mrs. Claude Rhyne to FCC, August 8,1948, box 3369, FCC Records.

85. Ibid.

86. Herbert G. Jared to FCC, August 13, 1948, box 3369, FCC Records.

87. Deaderick, Heart of the Valley, 312-13.

88. Ray Marshall, F., Labor in the South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 298-99Google Scholar; Olwell, At Work in Atomic City, 100; Cotham, Perry C., Toil, Turmoil, and Triumph: A Portrait of the Tennessee Labor Movement (Franklin, Tenn.: Hillsboro Press, 1995), 177-79.Google Scholar

89. On Strevel, see Cotham, Toil, Turmoil, and Trouble, 181-82; and Nelson, Bruce, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Strugglefor Black Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 214—15.Google Scholar

90. Sullivan, Patricia, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 270.Google Scholar

91. See the entries on Kefauver and Reece in the on-line Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. For Reece: https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1115; for Kefauver, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=733. Also, see Gorman, Joseph Bruce, Kefauver: A Political Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and Bowers, Suzanne, Republican First, Last, and Always: A Biography of B. Carroll Reece (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010).Google Scholar

92. Reba Wilson to FCC, July 26,1948; Myrtle J. Collier to FCC, August 1,1948, box 3368, FCC Records.

93. Harrell, David E., Jr., “Religion: Symptom and Source of Change in Appalachia,” in Appalachia: Family Traditions in Transition, ed. Essin, Emmett M. III (Johnson City: East Tennessee State University, 1975), 46.Google Scholar

94. Deaderick, Heart of the Valley, 312-13.

95. Smith, The Time of My Life, 54-56, 65-68.