Politics – Page 4 – A View to Hugh

A Spark of Greatness

I initially wanted to write a post for the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s campaign swing through North Carolina on 17 September 1960. The story behind Kennedy’s trip to the Tar Heel State fascinated me, however, so I launched into Triumph of Good Will, John Drescher’s account of the gubernatorial contest between Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake that preceded Kennedy’s visit. There’s an interesting story that photographs by Hugh Morton and other photographers in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, can help tell. In light of the silver anniversary of that momentous campaign, and during the anniversary month of Kennedy’s assassination, I’ll be contributing a series of posts touching on that pivotal time in North Carolina and the nation.

September 17th, 1960—just nine days before this country’s first televised presidential debate—found Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy campaigning in the Tar Heel State. Two months earlier, Kennedy had emerged victorious as the party’s nominee at the Democratic National Convention, held July 11th through 15th at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. The pivotal connection between these two events was North Carolina governor-elect Terry Sanford. The Kennedy–Sanford alliance crystallized during the Democratic National Convention, but first some back-story.

According to Drescher, the first time Terry Sanford spoke to John Kennedy was in early 1959, when the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce invited Kennedy to address its members. Kennedy agreed and, in return, asked the Chamber to invite delegates who attended the 1956 Democratic National Convention (DNC). Sanford had attended the DNC, but supported Estes Kefauver. Kennedy and Kefauver emerged as the two top candidates for veep after presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson decided that convention delegates would choose his running mate. Delegates select Kefauver by a final margin of 755.5 to 589, with the third place finisher Al Gore, Sr. receiving 13.5 delegates. North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges received 40 votes on the first ballot, but none after the final tally. Morton photographed Kennedy speaking to the North Carolina caucus as a candidate for vice president at the 1956 DNC, as Luther Hodges, seated to Kennedy’s right, watched and listened.

Morton Among the Movers and Shakers

Note from Elizabeth: I’m pleased to present the very first essay from Worth 1,000 Words project, written by journalist Rob Christensen. Rob has been writing about N.C. politics as a reporter and a columnist for 36 years for The News and Observer and The Charlotte Observer; his book The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics won the N.C. Literary and Historical Association’s Ragan Old North State Award for the best work of nonfiction in 2008.

Update 2/9/10: This post has now been converted into its own “page” under the Essays section of A View to Hugh.

Gen. Westmoreland: Keeper of the Hearth

Hugh Morton cultivated many relationships in his various roles as photographer, publicist, land developer, and civic pillar. He became friends with paragons of athleticism (Michael Jordan, Ted Williams), beloved celebrities (Charles Kuralt) and, in the instance that is relevant to this blog post, people of great geopolitical significance. One of these people, General William Westmoreland, first met Morton on November 11, 1963 during a Veterans Day Celebration for the USS North Carolina. A few months after, he was appointed by President Johnson as commander of the U.S. Military forces in Vietnam, a post that lasted until 1968.
Military Man

Westmoreland is known primarily as a military man, and his public image was a stern one—sharp features, piercing eyes, powerful eyebrows, and a visible discomfort in plainclothes. He is shown here looking as natural and imposing as a granite cliff in his formal military attire at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games. Given his military demeanor, then, it must have seemed a daunting task to Hugh Morton when he was asked by Westmoreland’s Public Relations firm to take pictures of him living an entirely domestic life. Westmoreland needed PR assistance with a $120 million libel suit he filed against CBS in response to their 1982 documentary, The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. This documentary, narrated by journalist Mike Wallace, accused Westmoreland of manipulating military intelligence to claim there were fewer communists in South Vietnam, thereby creating the impression that the war was being won. Westmoreland was upset at this assault on his character, and mounted a lawsuit against CBS and Mike Wallace.
Continue reading “Gen. Westmoreland: Keeper of the Hearth”

‘Rubbing Shoulders With History’

Note from Elizabeth: Today is University Day here at UNC-Chapel Hill, the oldest state university in the country. To help us celebrate, volunteer Jack Hilliard remembers some University Days past. (Further recollections of the Kennedy event and the full text of his speech can be found on the fabulous Chapel Hill Memories blog).

The TV viewing room on the first floor of Teague Dorm at UNC was small, but a dozen or so of us crowded our way inside. We had come to watch a speech by President John F. Kennedy, one that would be extremely important to several of us who were scheduled to graduate in less than six months. It was October 22, 1962, and we were being “recruited” by the big four—not Carolina, Duke State, and Wake, but the other big four—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. As I sat waiting for the address, my mind wandered back to one year and 10 days before, when I sat waiting for this same President to speak.

October 12, 1961 was a beautiful fall day in Chapel Hill. About 32,000 of us had gathered in Kenan Stadium to observe University Day 1961 — the University’s 168th birthday. The highlight of the morning was an address by President John Kennedy, scheduled for 11 AM. Thirty minutes before the President arrived, the official 40-person White House Press Corp arrived and joined the local media in scrambling for good viewing positions. Among those scramblers was a man who had covered University events for more than 20 years: Hugh Morton.

At 11:05 AM, President Kennedy’s caravan arrived at the west end of the stadium, having completed a journey down Highway 54, which had been closed and well guarded by 50 North Carolina Highway Patrolmen. The President, with Governor Terry Sanford at his side, rode in an open top limousine. At 11:12, the academic procession, led by Faculty Marshal John Coriden Lyons, started toward the east end of Kenan Stadium. Greensboro Record staff writer Charlie Hamilton described what he saw:

“A warm sun whose heat was cooled intermittently by soft breezes, beat down upon the scene, as the President, in cap and gown and flanked by state, national, and university officials, made his way beneath the west goal post and down the gridiron to the speaker’s rostrum.”

Continue reading “‘Rubbing Shoulders With History’”

Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009

We’ve been writing way too many of these memorial blog posts lately . . . Hugh Morton images of the “Lion of the Senate” are pretty few and far between, but there are some, mostly from the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach (see above).
I also found a few choice shots of Kennedy from the May 17, 1964 memorial for his brother, John Fitzgerald, held in UNC’s Kenan Stadium. The second image below shows Kennedy on stage with none other than Bill Friday. That’s Hugh Morton just visible at the right, so he could not have taken these photos. Wonder who did?

As I was preparing this blog post, I got the following email from library student assistant Kyla Sweet-Chavez:

Just thought you’d want to know that Morton saved the day today! UNC-TV was looking for some Ted Kennedy in NC footage, from a tribute service to JFK that the NC Film Board produced. Stephanie pulled the two copies from the collection and both were in pretty terrible shape, either no sound or lots of splices. I came up to work, saw what she was working on and remembered processing that film in the Morton collection. Pulled the film and lo and behold, it’s a really nice print with good color, sound and no splices. It’s been digitized to DigiBeta and is in the process of being sent off. Hurrah for Hugh and his collecting ways!

So, keep your eye out for that footage!

The “Stephanie” Kyla refers to above is the moving image archivist here in Wilson Library, and Kyla works for her — currently, on a project to process the Hugh Morton motion picture film. Kyla’s going to update us on that project in a separate blog post, coming very soon.

Hugh Morton’s Short Run For Governor

From Elizabeth: This is a second post from our indomitable volunteer Jack Hilliard. Note that Jack (a retired WFMY-TV employee) directed the January 18 and February 29, 1972 Morton appearances he mentions below! Note also that the pinback button above is from the North Carolina Collection Gallery’s collection of political memorabilia.

The 1972 race for governor in North Carolina was notable for a number of reasons. Twelve candidates at one time or another . . . a unique news conference . . . two primaries . . . and finally the election of James Holshouser as the first Republican governor of NC in the 20th century. Between December 1, 1971 and February 17, 1972, Hugh Morton was one of those 12 candidates.

At a reception and banquet in the Carolina Inn on June 7, 1996, Hugh MacRae Morton accepted the 1996 North Caroliniana Society Award for contributions to and preservation of North Carolina’s history, culture, and resources. CBS newsman Charles Kuralt was on hand that night to honor his friend Hugh Morton and in his remarks, Kuralt set the scene for Morton’s short run for governor.

“Hugh Morton is North Carolina’s greatest promoter . . . but he never promotes himself, well, with one exception. On December 1, 1971, in the shadow of the Capitol in Raleigh, surrounded on a chilly day by shivering pretty girls in shorts wearing Morton for Governor hats and carrying Morton for Governor signs, with Arthur Smith playing Guitar Boogie for the crowd, with Charlie Choo Choo Justice on hand to declare, ‘I have been on Hugh’s team all my life,’ Hugh Morton formally declared his candidacy for governor.”

The Morton campaign was off to a great start, but there were a couple of problems. By December 1 many of Hugh’s friends were already supporting Lt. Gov. Pat Taylor or State Senator Hargrove “Skipper” Bowles. And any time one runs for governor, money is a concern. But Hugh had already visited all 100 counties in North Carolina and he knew he wanted to vitalize and “professionalize” the Department of Travel and Tourism — to bring in more visitors to gaze upon what he truly regarded as the glories of the Tar Heel state. A headline in the Greensboro Daily News called him “A Low-Key Campaigner With Time For Everyone.”

On Tuesday, January 18, 1972, Hugh held a news conference at the WFMY-TV studios in Greensboro for the Triad media. In response to questions, he said, “the biggest challenge for the next governor will be public education.” The news conference was taped and played back the next night. Following the news conference, Morton told the gathered newsmen that they had been part of a first — a “live, open, news conference paid for by a candidate for governor.”
On February 17, 1972, about 300 people gathered in Raleigh to witness Hugh’s official filing. But instead of a filing celebration, Morton made a dramatic announcement. He said that he had learned the night before that funds available to him would not be sufficient to permit a victory. “It would not be fair to subject my friends to a campaign that couldn’t be won,” he said. Hugh Morton had become a victim of the high costs of politics. His surprise withdrawal inadvertently dramatized the need for campaign spending reform at the state level.

On Tuesday, February 29, 1972, in his first major television appearance since his withdrawal from the governor’s race, Hugh Morton appeared on the WFMY-TV News and Public Affairs Program, “Newsmaker.” News Director Charles Whitehurst and reporter Dave Wright questioned Morton about his withdrawal from the race. Said Morton, “I knew that money wasn’t going to be a problem for Skipper and it was for me, so the smart thing to do was get out and that’s what I did.”

Finally, in July of 1982, Gary Govert wrote a Hugh Morton profile in Carolina Lifestyle magazine. The article includes this quote from Hugh Morton’s friend, former Governor Terry Sanford: “I think he’s one of North Carolina’s most outstanding citizens. He ought to have been governor.”

Presidents' Day picks

Today, Monday, February 16, is Presidents’ Day (or “Washington’s Birthday,” in Virginia). Though most of America will be preoccupied with the Lincoln Bicentennial or stupefied by the great deals at their local auto dealerships, I would like to use this day to celebrate (or at least acknowledge) some Presidents who typically do not have bargains associated with them.

There are photos in the Morton Collection that depict Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. I have selected four to share.

First, one that I scanned last fall, and stored away for this very holiday. It was found between some images of athletes standing outside, and women posing with flowers — you just never know where this guy will show up.

It’s a young, barely-jowled Richard Nixon in a tent, eating an unidentifiable platter of food in a most aggressive fashion. His wife, Pat, sits beside him and appears characteristically patient. Why is he here, and what is he doing (besides aggressively eating)? Pat Nixon appears in many other pictures that are probably from the annual Azalea Festival, and we know that the Nixons attended the 1958 Rhododendron Festival at Roan Mountain, TN. Perhaps one of these events explains why this young, earnest couple is featured in this picture.

Here is a picture of another President, this time fully vested in the title of Commander in Chief, and in a more Presidential pose.

Yes, Dwight David Eisenhower, smiling grimly as the possibility of a national crisis looms: the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School and the subsequent unwillingness of Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. That’s why Hugh Morton’s friend and NC Governor Luther Hodges is there — the President summoned a crack team of five Southern Governors to try and uphold the ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education in Arkansas while preventing riots.
Besides Eisenhower, Hodges, and a man that is most likely Faubus himself (second row, far right), the identities of the other men are unconfirmed. Who wants to help identify them?

Here’s something more cheerful: a beaming President Jimmy Carter, on the 1980 re-election campaign trail in Winston-Salem’s Tanglewood Park hosted by the applauding Governor Jim Hunt. But all the good will couldn’t help Carter overcome the fuss over the Iran Hostage Crisis, a flagging economy, and a 28% approval rating . . .

. . . and Carter instead had to vacate his post in 1981 for this affable, handsome Californian. Ronald Reagan, seen here in April 1959 at the Azalea Festival with Love Me Tender actress and Azalea Queen Deborah Paget, was at the time on the payroll of General Electric, hired to make motivational pro-G.E. speeches at various venues.
These pictures, taken individually, provide explicit and implicit narratives, but as a whole, what do they say about the American Presidency and the people who held its office? It is easier, instead, to see the narrative they present regarding their photographer, Hugh Morton: that he had access available to few, and the photographic ability to make something of it.

Robert W. Scott, 1929-2009

Last Friday, Robert W. Scott, governor of North Carolina from 1969-1973, died in Alamance County, NC. He was 79. (See this memorial post from our partner blog, NC Miscellany).
As one of Hugh Morton’s many gubernatorial friends, he was photographed throughout the years in various outfits, scenes, and positions (you’ll see). In nearly all of the photographs, he wore a smile and often traded handshakes with many of North Carolina’s most prominent citizens.

Here Scott is administering one of these handshakes and laying on that trademark smile with none other than Hugh Morton, much to the crowd’s satisfaction.
Scott, famously the son of North Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator W. Kerr Scott, was one of the younger governors to have served in North Carolina, and presented the photographers who happened to be following him with photo opportunities a less vibrant occupant of the office would not.
Hugh Morton photographed Scott often, and featured him in a chapter of his 1988 book with Ed Rankin, Making a Difference in North Carolina (pages 222-227). As Morton/Rankin write, “Scott, a husky young man with boundless energy, enjoyed traveling across North Carolina and meeting its people. . . he had the ability to mix and mingle with average people and learned a great deal from their opinions and suggestions.”
Here Scott is mixing with some local young men outside a shop in Watauga County. Notice how he is able to blend in — one might even go so far as to say that he is ‘Hangin’ Around,’ in direct violation of the sign.

The picture below of Scott and a St. Bernard is another example of Scott’s youthful exuberance. Yet, this photograph also presents a minor archival mystery: according to an obituary of Boone-area photographer George Flowers, it was Flowers who took this famous image (or a very similar one), and was allowed by Scott to use it in print “as long as everyone knew it was a gag and if it was not run on a Sunday.” This is great context, but it doesn’t explain why the negative for this picture is in the Morton collection.

The following photograph (by Hugh Morton) of Scott signing copies of the contested photograph lends credence to the notion that Morton did take the photo, or at least had a strong connection to it through Scott. Perhaps multiple photographers were on the scene at the time? Whoever took the picture(s), though, they captured and preserved for posterity the accessibility and warmth of Scott’s personal and political style.

Chapel Hill's own Civil Rights trailblazer

Given a certain recent historic election, it seems quite timely to highlight another that undoubtedly helped pave the way — the 1969 election of Howard Lee (on right, above) as the first black mayor of a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction.
As the Daily Tar Heel reports, Lee has recently released a new memoir entitled The Courage to Lead: One Man’s Journey in Public Service, in which he describes the blatant discrimination he faced while campaigning in the South, e.g., being barred from from addressing white audiences. Certainly a different political climate than the one in which Barack Obama has risen, though there are some similarities in the grassroots nature of their campaigns.
From what I’ve seen so far, there are only a few photos of Lee in the Morton collection, such as the one above, in which he is pictured with Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham (L) and Congressman L. H. Fountain (center). Does anyone know what event this is? Why are some people wearing leis?
Lee’s 1969 campaign is heavily featured in the Billy Ebert Barnes Collection held by the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. (A digital collection of a selection of Barnes’s photographs is available, but because the Howard Lee photos are not part of his North Carolina Fund images, they are not represented online yet. Keep your eyes out for them!)
A small portion of the NCC Gallery’s current exhibit, “Soapboxes and Treestumps: Political Campaigning in NC,” is also devoted to Lee. The image below (a Billy Barnes photo) and text are drawn from that exhibit. Visit the Gallery to see the rest!

“Lee moved to Chapel Hill in 1964 to attend graduate school at the University of North Carolina. When he and his wife moved into the Colony Woods neighborhood, he found that many whites in the area were still uncomfortable living near blacks. He received harassing phone calls and a cross was burned on his lawn. These experiences encouraged him to become involved in local politics. Lee ran in and won the mayoral election over his opponent Chapel Hill Alderman Roland Giduz.
Lee’s campaign was successful because he generated support at the grassroots level. One of his supporters owned a Greyhound bus and drove voters to the polls, which resulted in a record turnout for Chapel Hill’s African American voters. Newspapers around the world covered the historic race, and both Newsweek and Time ran profiles on the the new mayor.
Lee ran unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Congress in 1972 and lieutenant governor in 1976. He served in the state senate from 1990 to 1994 and from 1996 to 2002. In 2003 he became the first African American elected as chair of the North Carolina Board of Education.”

Making a Difference in NC

Thus far, our student assistant David’s scanning efforts have been focused on what I call the “loose strips”—the unlabeled, unidentified masses of negatives that need to be inspected before we can decide what to do with them. (The inspecting, of course, becomes much easier when you can look at a positive on a computer screen versus a negative on a light box).
We decided recently, however, that since David is so darn good at scanning, we should probably have him work on some of the “good stuff” as well. (This term refers to Morton’s images of well-known people and events—it’s certainly not to say that the loose strips aren’t loaded with “good stuff”). So, I got David started on the images that were either considered for or used in Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin’s 1988 book, Making a Difference in North Carolina. As the book’s introduction reads:

The people, groups and events [depicted in the book] were chosen on the basis of the impact they have had, or are having, on life in North Carolina. Most of the photos have never been published before. And all have captions and text brimming with first-hand knowledge and experiences of the authors.

What could be better? Certainly a far cry from the jumble of “loose strips.” And the images themselves are beautiful. Take for example this portrait of Governor J. Melville Broughton, a cropped version of which appears on page 47 of the book (click the image to see the description):

I also love this image of the “Iron Major” Governor, R. Gregg Cherry, with a group of (Miss North Carolina?) pageant contestants. This one wasn’t used in the book, so I don’t know the details. But I do wish they still made swimsuits like these!

And then there’s that perennial Morton favorite, Luther Hodges (on crutches, below—this image wasn’t used in the book, either). That’s Grandfather Mountain in the background, and they appear to be on a golf course, so perhaps this image is somehow related to the Grandfather Golf and Country Club? Anyone know what’s wrong with Luther’s foot, or who these other men are? (Based on the IDs you lovely readers provided for this photo, I think that’s John Williams to the left of Hodges).