“A bespectacled, priggish-looking former editor of the Biblical Recorder, [Sen. Josiah Bailey of North Carolina] had supported FDR in 1932 and 1936 but had recently soured on the New Deal, mainly because of its trespasses against states’ rights. He had been preparing this speech [against FDR's plan to "pack" the Supreme Court] for weeks, and as he rose to begin, senators summoned their colleagues from the cloakroom.

“Bailey held forth with his customary melodramatics, shouting his points, banging his desk, shaking a preacher’s finger. The Southerner was offering an argument calculated to appeal to his colleagues from the North  — that ‘the Negroes in the South feel secure tonight because they know there is a Constitution and an independent Court.’”

– From “FDR v. the Constitution” (2009) by Burt Solomon

In the financially intemperate 1840s no fewer than eight states, including North Carolina, defaulted on their bond obligations.

“The Constitution forbade the states to tear up their contracts,” Robert Wernick wrote in the December 1964 issue of American Heritage. “But to get their money back, bondholders would have to sue the states, and the Eleventh Amendment says a state may not be sued by a private citizen without its consent. None of the delinquent states has ever given its consent.

“Ingenious lawyers, glimpsing all those millions of dollars in perfectly valid obligations, have tried again and again to figure out a way of getting into that paradise. But the flaming sword of the Eleventh Amendment has always kept them out. Except once. In 1904 the state of South Dakota found itself in possession of North Carolina bonds left by a citizen for the use of the state university…. The Supreme Court held for the plaintiff, and North Carolina had to fork over $27,400. The shock was so great that North Carolina promptly made a deal with private holders in England to buy off their bonds  –  at a low price, but paid in hard cash.

“Other aggrieved parties have had no such luck. Private citizens tried deeding defaulted North Carolina bonds to, say, Massachusetts, since one sovereign state may sue another, but the Supreme Court held that this was only a dodge to get around the Eleventh Amendment and would hear nothing of it.”

“We had rights to ‘Ironside’ and ‘Marcus Welby,’ two shows highly regarded on their networks but which turned out to be duds in syndication. We swapped them [to WSOC-TV, another Charlotte station] for ‘The Andy Griffith Show’… a huge hit that really helped turn the station around (and made us a lot of money for years to come).”

– From “Call Me Ted,” Ted Turner’s 2008 autobiography. In 1970 Turner had bought a struggling Charlotte UHF station and renamed it WRET (from his initials). In 1980 he sold the now-lucrative station to Westinghouse and used the proceeds to launch CNN.

“[Secretary of War Edwin M.] Stanton had come armed with a plan, drawn up at the President’s request, for bringing the states that had been ‘abroad’ back into what Lincoln… called ‘their proper practical relation with the Union.’  The War Secretary’s notion was that military occupation should precede readmission, and in this connection he proposed that Virginia and North Carolina be combined in a single district to simplify the army’s task.

“[Secretary of the Navy Gideon] Welles took exception, on grounds that this last would destroy the individuality of both states and thus be ‘in conflict with the principles of self-government which I deem essential.’ So did Lincoln….

“[Lincoln] had reached certain bedrock conclusions: ‘We can’t undertake to run state governments in all these Southern states. Their own people must do that — though I reckon at first some of them may do it badly.’”

– From a recounting of President Lincoln’s last day in ”The Civil War: A Narrative” (1958-1974) by Shelby Foote

“The [Office of War Information's] propaganda operation even used and defanged Lange’s [Farm Security Administration] work. In one case, a 1939 photograph of a typical, run-down North Carolina country store/filling station with a group of young men goofing off on the porch was transformed into a World War II poster by cropping and superimposing a message: ‘This is America….  Where a fellow can start on the home team and wind up in the big league… Where there is always room at the top for the fellow who has it on the ball….This is your America!… Keep it free!’

“Lange had made five photographs of the scene, showing about a dozen figures, several in baseball uniforms, preparing to play with a local league; mugging for the camera, they began picking up and swinging one guy by his arms and legs. In the original context, these images signaled the economic backwardness, inactivity and racism of the rural South. At the far end of the porch, distinctly removed from the others, was a black man who did not participate in the roughhousing, but sat tight with a tense smile. In the poster both sides of the image were cropped, and it showed only young white men standing in manly, confident but relaxed postures, ready to play the quintessentially American game.”

– From “Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits” (2009) by Linda Gordon

The official caption on this Fourth of July image puts it “near Chapel Hill,” where Lange worked closely with Howard Odum’s Institute for Research in Social Science. The “Cedar Grove” modestly marking the players’ uniforms is a community in northwest Orange County.

[NCM note: The image above comes from the Library of Congress's American Memory website: http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/fsa/8b34000/8b34000/8b34021v.jpg]

Just how abusive was Eleanor Roosevelt in her comments on the South? In “Weep No More, My Lady” (Miscellany Sept. 17) W.E. Debnam rendered her as Carry Nation gone radically chic. But the archives of her “My Day” column (http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/) reveal a far gentler and more tolerant Mrs. Roosevelt. Three examples from her surprisingly frequent missives from North Carolina:

April 17, 1941: “We visited two housing projects on the outskirts of Charlotte; one for colored people and one for white people in the low income group. They were nice houses and very much appreciated by the tenants. The rents are reasonable and everyone seems very happy.

“The playground for Negroes had very little equipment, but I hope that this is only temporary and that it is going to be possible to give the colored children a similar opportunity for recreation.”

Nov. 19, 1941: “I went to the NYA [National Youth Administration] resident center in Greenville and was tremendously proud of what these North Carolina boys had achieved, for they built all of their own buildings! They have some excellent shops in wood-working, sheet metal work, radio, photography, etc.

“Much of their work is, of course, done for the Army, because NYA  training is with a view of making these young men valuable in defense industries as quickly as possible.

“The health program is stressed in North Carolina…. Every boy is given a complete physical examination, and I was appalled to hear that somewhere around 70 percent were found to be undernourished.”

Aug. 15, 1942: “Cannon Mills has evidently been enlightened in dealing with its [16,000] employees. I was told it encouraged ownership of house and land by employees. If work is slack, the building and loan fund does not collect any payments during the layoff period.

“[Charles] Cannon told me most of the work is done on a piecework basis, and outside of a few people in the day laborer class the average earning power of a woman is $22 a week… so I was surprised to find the mill was not unionized.”

Death noted: TV comedy pioneer Soupy Sales, born Milton Supman in Franklinton, where his parents Irving and Sadie ran a dry-goods store. According to today’s obituary in the New York Times, “His last name was pronounced ‘Soupman’ by neighbors, so he called himself Soupy as a youngster.” He was 83.

After joining the Navy, earning a journalism degree from Marshall College and working as a disc jockey, he found fame catching pies in the face and dodging paw swats from White Fang, “the biggest and meanest dog in the United States.” “The Soupy Sales Show,” first aired as “Soup’s On” on a Detroit station, made its network debut on ABC in 1955.

“If you read ‘Paradise Lost,’ they think you’re a demon-worshipper.”

– Bill Flowers, owner of the Milestone Club in Charlotte, describing (in 1982) his neighbors’ reaction to the New Wave scene

This week the Milestone, still gritty but and now venerated, celebrates its 40th anniversary. Saturday: Raleigh’s Birds of Avalon. Among past acts: R.E.M., Nirvana, Melissa Etheridge, the Violent Femmes, the Go-Gos and Bo Diddley.

On this day in 1928: Exemplifying the cigarette industry’s effort to win over women, a full-page ad in Progressive Farmer magazine offers this testimonial from Amelia Earhart:

“Lucky Strikes were the cigarettes carried on the Friendship when she crossed the Atlantic. They were smoked continuously from Trepassey
[Newfoundland] to Wales. I think nothing else helped so much to lessen the strain for all of us.”

Four months earlier Earhart had become celebrated as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, as a passenger in a Fokker tri-motor piloted by two men.

Until William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 campaign against William McKinley, presidential candidates seldom left home in search of votes. Stumping was left to surrogates. Although Bryan lost (and then lost and lost again), his willingness to hit the trail changed American politics forever.

This passage from American Heritage magazine (April/May 1980) suggests that Marion Butler, the North Carolina Populist leader, helped to establish another campaign precedent:

“Butler, who accompanied Bryan during part of his Southern tour, was appalled at his absorption in such trivia as checking train schedules, buying tickets and arranging for baggage and mail. Bryan rose in the middle of the night to make train changes and connections, toting his own heavy grips. At Butler’s recommendation, the national committee provided Bryan with a special car, known inappropriately as ‘The Idler,’  in which the press and local committees could travel comfortably along with the candidate.”