'Neither Christian nor Nationalist in the true sense'

Father Twomey dings the Dixiecrats

“Hard for Him to Plow a Straight Furrow”: Cartoonist Clifford E. Berryman depicts President Truman’s travails in his Presidential-election campaign against the Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace and the States’ Rights Democratic Party (aka Dixicrats) candidate Sen. Strom Thurmond. Via Digital Public Library of America.

I can’t count the number of times when, in researching A Priest in Good Trouble, my biography-in-progress of Father Louis J. Twomey, S.J., I have discovered writings or speeches of Twomey’s that speak directly to our present cultural moment. One such occasion was during my first visit to the Twomey Papers at Loyola University New Orleans, when I found a furious letter that the Jesuit wrote on July 14, 1948, to Jonathan Ellsworth Perkins, a white-supremacist minister and antisemitic propagandist associated with Gerald L.K. Smith’s Christian Nationalist Crusade.

Father Twomey’s letter represents the culmination of a period of decision in his life and ministry, one which began when he arrived at Loyola a year earlier to found its labor school, the Institute of Industrial Relations. It was a time when he became increasingly determined to focus his energies upon undoing the evils of injustice in his native South, especially racial discrimination.

As I research his life, I’m discovering that Twomey’s desire to promote civil rights intensified in 1948 as Southern Democrats filibustered against President Truman’s efforts to pass civil-rights legislation. In fact, the day he wrote his poison-pen missive to Perkins, the headlines were full of stories about Southern Democrats’ fury over the civil-rights plank in the platform being proposed at the Democratic Party convention then underway in Philadelphia.

Immediately after the convention, many Southern Democratic delegates held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama, as the States Rights’ Democratic Party, though by then they were popularly known as the Dixiecrats. They nominated their own presidential candidate, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, who went on to carry several Southern states in the general election—including Louisiana, a victory that gives an idea of what Twomey was up against in trying to change hearts and minds there.

Twomey was, in fact, enormously frustrated with the mood of the times in the segregated South, which is probably why the sight of a piece of hate literature by Perkins on his desk unleashed within him a flood of pent-up anger. In years to come, he would refrain from responding to every sick supremacist broadside that crossed his line of sight. But on that July day, as the temperature in New Orleans approached 93 degrees and a thunderstorm broke outside, Twomey sat at his typewriter and banged out the following rebuke on stationery from his Institute of Industrial Relations. I’ve included a link to the tract to which he is responding; it’s really hateful, so be forewarned.

July 14, 1948

Mr. Jonathan E. Perkins
Oklahoma States Rights League
P.O. Box 4163
Tulsa 9, Oklahoma

Dear Sir:

Recently a copy of your pamphlet “Danger! Warning!” was brought to my attention. I have read this pamphlet together with the covering letter under the caption: “Oklahoma States Rights League.”

Before commenting on these items I should like to state that I am a Southerner, born and raised in the South and proud of most of our Southern traditions. Furthermore, I qualify as a Southerner on the added score that I had my great-grandfather and five great-uncles killed fighting for the South during the Civil War.¹ These credentials I should think entitle me to comment adversely upon your publication without the charge of being “a Yankee intruder.”

You claim to represent the Christian Nationalist Crusade. I tell you that this “crusade” is neither Christian nor nationalist in the true sense. It is not Christian because the very essence of Christianity is for us to love our fellow men as Christ loved us, whereas you are blatantly arousing crass hatred of our fellow men. It is not nationalist in the true sense, for to be nationalist in the true sense is to be an upholder of the principles of the Constitution. And in your campaign of hatred and of deliberate denial to a large group of American citizens of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, you are not being Christian, American, or democratic, and thus you expose yourselves to the charge of being Nationalist in a perverted sense.

The policies you are advocating are inspired evidently by those who have made Ku Klux Klanism an abomination in the minds of all decent Americans. You claim to be fighting Communism, and yet by your un-Christian and un-American tactics you are doing more to bring on Communism than members of the Communist Party themselves.²

Sincerely yours,

(Rev.) Louis J. Twomey, S.J.
Director

If Perkins responded, his reply has not been preserved in the Twomey Papers. In any case, his pamphlet gave Father Twomey an early opportunity to launch criticisms against fellow Christians whose racism made mockery of the faith.

Personal update

With the help of your prayers, I’m close to signing a contract with a highly regarded academic publisher for A Priest in Good Trouble. I’m grateful that my biography is on track towards landing with a publishing house whose reputation befits the importance of Father Twomey’s life and legacy.

Unfortunately, however, the publishing contract will not significantly improve my financial situation. I continue to search for a full-time position, preferably as a theology professor. Although I have been blessed to receive some donations from supporters of my Father Twomey research, including a grant from Loyola University New Orleans that covered one of my research trips, most of my income comes from freelance writing and editing assignments or the occasional canon-law client. (Sometimes I do receive a surprise windfall—like the three-figure check that arrived from BMI after the Anderson Council’s recording of “Times on the Thames,” which I wrote with Peter Horvath, became a hit on Little Steven’s Underground Garage.)

Right now, my savings, along with projected freelance income, are set to carry me through the end of October. But I can’t take on additional freelance work if I am to complete my Father Twomey biography in time for the publisher’s deadline of December 31. So, in late July, after I return from giving talks on my Father Edward Dowling, SJ, biography in Indianapolis during the National Eucharistic Congress, I plan to start a GoFundMe in hope of covering my living expenses for my final two months of work on A Priest in Good Trouble.

My gratitude goes out to you for reading this far, and to all who support my work on my Father Twomey biography with prayers and subscriptions. Please tell your friends about Matters Twomey, and if you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider supporting my work in that way too. I do my best work in cafes, so your monthly subscription literally treats me to the pot of tea that carries me through an afternoon of writing.

1. If you read my previous post, then you’re aware that the story Father Twomey heard from his grandmother about his five great-uncles was greatly exaggerated, to say the least. This letter is the only source I’ve found for the claim that his great-grandfather was killed in action. That too was likely a myth that was passed on to him by his grandmother, albeit one that he believed in good faith.

2. As I wrote in an earlier post, Father Twomey saw segregation as a dangerous anti-witness to the democratic principles that the United States was promoting to the unaligned world during the Cold War era.