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Dissertation Information for Joann Deakin Carpenter

NAME:
- Joann Deakin Carpenter

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1987)

ADVISORS:
- Dan T. Carter

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- James L Roark
- Douglas A. Unfug

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: OLIN D. JOHNSTON, THE NEW DEAL AND THE POLITICS OF CLASS IN SOUTH CAROLINA, 1934-1938

Abstract: The dissertation uses the 1935-1939 gubernatorial administration of Olin D. Johnston to illuminate the socio-political atmosphere in South Carolina during the New Deal era. Born into the South Carolina lower white class as the son of upcountry tenant farmers and mill workers in 1896, Johnston acquired a political heritage based on a post-Reconstruction social hierarchy which simultaneously emphasized white unity as the key to maintaining black submission and white disparity as the key to preserving the social dominance of the white elite. Ironically, as a young man, Johnston became the beneficiary of a certain progressive sector of the conservative elite which favored the promotion of white unity at the expense of white disparity by encouraging the education of mill operatives in order to hasten the assimilation of the mill population into the established conservative society. Johnston's education boosted him into a political career by his late twenties, and in 1934, he became the state's governor.

The dissertation examines the subsequent dichotomy in which a national liberal trend, generated by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, encouraged elitist tolerance of Johnston's "radical" labor-oriented politics, while a persistent determination to preserve the traditional social hierarchy delayed and, at times, aborted efforts to establish social reform within the state. Events surrounding this battle between reform and tradition included the state highway controversy, Johnston's fight to establish meaningful labor legislation for state workers and the governor's support of efforts by the UTW and the CIO to unionize the state textile industry.

Finally, the dissertation uses Johnston's unsuccessful 1938 senatorial campaign to illuminate growing Southern elitist disappointment in the New Deal after 1936 and the devastating effect which elitist rejection of New Deal liberalism had on Johnston's political career. His gubernatorial campaign had demonstrated that while the lower white class had enjoyed a certain political maturation during the early twentieth century, the white elite maintained a role of social and political dominance which determined the state's political development and guaranteed the survival of the state's social hierarchy.

MPACT Scores for Joann Deakin Carpenter

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-06-02 10:51:40

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Students under Joann Deakin Carpenter

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None