Wallace, King, Bryant: Who's the greatest?

Who's the greatest Southerner born during the 20th century?

09/27/00
By GENE OWENS
Staff Columnist

Who is the greatest person born in the South during the 20th century?

I pose this question because Bassett Day is coming up Monday, and the question becomes pertinent.

James Lutzweiler, my Jamestown, N.C., correspondent, introduced me to Bassett Day.

"Every year for the past five years," he wrote, "several scholars and businessmen/women have met together for lunch early in October to celebrate the life of John Spencer Bassett and the academic freedom for which he is remembered.

"It was in October of 1903 that Bassett, a history professor at Trinity College (now Duke University) in Durham wrote an essay in which he said, 'Outside of Robert E. Lee, the greatest man born in the South in the last 100 years is Booker T. Washington.'"

At this mention of a former slave and a revered Confederate general, "all hell and Heeliana broke loose," wrote Lutz. (Heeliana is Greek for North Carolina, being a derived from "Taurus Helot," meaning "a lot of bull," later Anglicized to "Tar Heel.")

Trinity College and its benefactor James B. Duke stood behind him, Lutz tells me, "and the 'Bassett Affair' has been recalled by Duke historian ... Robert Durden as 'Duke's finest hour,' notwithstanding that Durden is aware of several singular hours spent by the Blue Devils on NCAA championship courts."

Bassett Day this year will also honor other champions of academic freedom. Among them is the late Jack Perdue, who drew national attention with a course at North Carolina's Randolph County Community College titled "North Carolina History: Our Part in the War for Southern Independence."

The national press portrayed the course as teaching that African Americans were contented in their roles as slaves and that tens of thousands of them served voluntarily in the Confederate army. The course was canceled in the wake of negative publicity. Lutz thinks Perdue got a bum rap.

Another honoree is Christina Jeffrey, whom Newt Gingrich fired as historian for the U.S. House of Representatives. Asked to review for the Department of Education the proposed Holocaust curriculum for public schools, she maintained that, no matter how distasteful it might seem, the Nazi viewpoint on the Holocaust should be presented for the sake of balance. Her suggestion infuriated Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who called it anti-Semitic. He prevailed upon Newt to give her the ax.

When it comes to any issue involving parties perceived as the villains of history, it's never safe to be balanced.

Getting back to the honoree of the day:

"Bassett was wrong about R.E. Lee and Booker T. both," wrote Lutz. "Scott Joplin was the greatest born in the South when Bassett made that remark in 1903, though maybe it was Poe. ... But he had the right to be wrong. Who would you say is the greatest born in the South in the last 100 years?"

Bassett, of course, spoke a decade before the Virginia-born president of Princeton University became President Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Maybe Wilson's role during and after World War I would have changed his estimate; maybe not. He obviously didn't reckon Theodore Roosevelt to be the peer of Booker T. Washington. Nor could he have anticipated the rise to prominence of Texan Dwight D. Eisenhower, born late in the 19th century.

But how about the sons of the 20th century? Who would be the greatest?

The list of Southern presidents is short, thanks to the lingering legacy of the War Between the States. Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson (well, Texas was in the Confederacy) and Bill Clinton exhaust the list. Maybe one or all of them will grow on us as the 21st century wears on, but thus far, none of them wears the aura of greatness.

Among others in government, South Carolina's James F. Byrnes, who served in all four branches of government and was Roosevelt's domestic czar during World War II, comes to mind. But Byrnes was tainted by association with the segregationist Dixiecrats.

Georgia's Dean Rusk, secretary of state under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, played a role in globally significant events from the Marshall Plan to Vietnam, but few schoolchildren study about him today.

In the literary field there are Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor and Tennessee Williams. In music, there's Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Elvis and Count Basie.

But if you look at people who transformed society, perhaps the two greatest luminaries are two formidable opponents: Martin Luther King Jr. and George Wallace.

I'd pick MLK, but I'm open to suggestions. Bear Bryant, maybe?