Evening star., 1946-08-28
Athens Ballot Battle
Had Origin in Split
Going Back 10 sos

Going Back 10 Sos
Continued From First Page.)
evangelist was preaching to white
audience on the courthouse benches.
1t was a peaceful scene. Children
were playing about. Indifferent to
the preaching, and a young woman
was nursing a 6-month-old child.
1he only metal I saw in the streets
were the multiple gadgets shame
lessly worn in the hair of the young
women on shopping leave from the
beauty establishments.
Town of 16 Churches.
Up the street large square plot
is occupied by Tennessee Wesleyan
University, a Junior college that used
to teach $50 and is now getting ready
for 500 students. Trinity Methodist
Church is on corner of the univer-
slty grounds. 1t is one of Athens
10 churches. Largest and most pros
porous is the First Baptist. The
Presbyterian Church, built in 1925.
has only 80 families in its member
ship and no preacher. The parson-
age is being used by the Chamber
of Commerce.
Athens is in the heart of the
Bible belt. Dayton, scene of the
battle between William Jennings
Bryan and Clarence Darrow in the
famous monkey" trial of a school,
master charged with teaching the
Darwinian theory, is only a few
miles west. While I was in Tennes-
see, the Knoxville Journal was con-
Quoting a daily campaign to keep
Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Ok
nam, president of the Council of
the Federation of Churches of Christ
in America, from speaking there
before a teachers group. The news
paper charged that Bishop Oman,
who Is not fundamentalist, is a
fellow traveller with the Communists.
Fifteen thousand people in Knox
vile had been praying daily because
j. Harold Smith, hill billy preacher
who made fortune passing the col
lection box over the radio, had been
refused a license by the Federal
Communications Commission to erect
a radio station.
Tolerant of Party Lines.
The young men back in Athens
from World War II consider them
selves typical Southerners. They ac-
cept without question that some of
their families are Democratic and
some Republican as they do that
some are Baptists and some Metho-
dists. They are as unaware of the
border background that caused the
political split as they are of the
doctrinal differences of the religious
divisions.
Their race attitude is Southern,
with some modification. White in
dlgnation over the shooting of a
colored voter was one of the causes
of the Athens riot. McMinn Countys
Negro population is only six per
cent. Athens is long way from
Columbia in the corn and cotton
patch country in middle Tennessee
where several whites and scores of |
Negroes were wounded in race
violence.
McMlnn County was an outpost |
of Union sentiment in the Civil |
War. East Tennessee provided
the Union Army with $4,000 men. |
At the start of the conflict there
was a plan to isolate East Tennes-
see by destruction of bridges, similar
to the isolation of the area between
the Loire and the Seine for the
Normandy landings A Union Army
was to take possession by marching
in from Kentucky. Some railroad
bridges went up in flames. Others
were too well guarded and one i'm
portant bridge survived because at
the last minute the bridge burners
lost their matches. The plan could
still have worked, but the Union
Army turned back on orders from
and left the conspira-
tors in danger of being hanged for
treason.
Hailed Liberation by Union.
When a Union Army marched
into Knoxville about two years later,
1t was greeted as an army of liberia
ton and flags long kept in hiding
were hung out of windows. Long
street, the Confederate hero of
Manassas, in response to one of the
military suggestions of
Jefferson Davis, marched from
Chattanooga into the Sweetwater
valley. There he scored one of his
last victories. destroying the cavalry
posted in advance of Burnside's
column, and chasing his army back
into Knoxville.
Earlier the local Federals had lost
Athens to the Confederates in
skirmish in which an older county
jail was strong point. Hill country
humor was the same in those days. |
The Confederates fired field piece. |
The solid shot hit farmers cart
as he was driving down a road and
threw the wheel over the defense
breastWorks. Duck. boys" said one
of the McMinn County FederaIs. |
the secesh are firing wagons at us.
1t was the newly f1edged Republi-
can party that prosecuted the Civil |
War and the descendants of the
Unlonists of East Tennessee have