The South: Crisis in Civil Rights

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Latter-Day Crusader. Ironically, John Patterson built his political career in large part on a reputation for enforcing the law. He was raised in wide-open Phenix City, where the gamblers and the madams catered to soldiers from nearby Fort Benning. Patterson played the slot machines as a kid, drank his share of "wildcat" whisky and, with time out for Army service during World War II and in Korea, turned into just another easygoing Alabama lawyer. But in 1954 his father, Albert Patterson, was murdered by racketeers 17 days after winning the Democratic nomination for state attorney general on the promise to clean out Phenix City. Says John Patterson: "I was practicing law and going fishing and enjoying my days off, but when they shot down my daddy, I became a crusader."

At 33, Patterson was elected to his dead father's job, led the fight to mop up the mob in Phenix City. More important, he became a hero to many an Alabama voter by putting the N.A.A.C.P. out of business in the state for refusing to disclose membership lists. He fought Negro boycotts of stores in Tuskegee and of buses in Montgomery.

O.K. for the K.K.K. In 1958 Patterson started out way back in the pack in the race among the Democrats for the Governor's mansion. He gained ground fast. With no program of his own to speak of, Patterson made himself the chief critic of the clownish reign of James ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom, the outgoing Governor. Using his attorney general's stationery, Patterson sent out a letter to the Ku Klux Klan mailing list, which declared: "A mutual friend, Mr. R. N. Shelton, of ours, in Tuscaloosa, has suggested that I ask for your support." When it turned out that Shelton was the Grand Dragon of the state Ku Klux Klan, Patterson professed astonishment. Said the Advertiser: "If this innocent, this Fearless Fosdick, is so dense that he doesn't know that he is riding around with a Klan chief, how in the world can such a man investigate and bring to book the Folsom gang and the gangsters he talks about?"

A Favor Rewarded. John Patterson was elected Governor of Alabama, and he set right out to make a segregationist record. He expelled students from Alabama State College for Negroes who took part in sit-ins, promised to close down the University of Alabama if it accepted a Negro. If anyone pushed for school integration, Patterson said flatly, "I will be one of the ones leading the trouble."

In 1959 Patterson dropped by Jack Kennedy's Georgetown home for breakfast and emerged so impressed that 13 months before the convention he became the first Southern Governor to back the young Senator for President. Alabama still went for Lyndon Johnson in Los Angeles, but Patterson got his reward this spring when Charles M. Meriwether, his old campaign manager, was nominated by Kennedy as a director of the Export-Import Bank. Meriwether was eventually confirmed by the Senate despite reports of connections with the Klan.