The Allen situation stood at a standstill until mid-December with neither the University officials nor the State Board of Education changing their positions. But on December 17th, Bishop Bonner met with the Governor in the latter’s office, at his own request so he said, for a “cordial” talk and the fat was again in the fire. According to Bonner, Timmerman maintained that the controversy over the three professors was “non-political” and “non-racial” and then proceeded to tell him “what was wrong.” Just what was wrong the Bishop did not reveal.[381]
Two days later Bishop Bonner notified Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins that he would recommend their dismissal when the trustees’ board of control would be called for a special meeting on January 10, 1958. He further informed them that they would receive their salaries for the remainder of the year if they resigned and departed quietly but that if they fought their dismissals, they would get nothing. The professors declined to take any action pending the meeting of the trustees on January 10th.
Meanwhile the American Association of University Professors entered into the picture. General Secretary of the Association Dr. Robert K. Carr wired Governor Timmerman requesting that he provide the AAUP with information regarding the grounds on which the State Board of Education had voted to withhold teacher accreditation approval of Allen graduates. Carr at the same time told reporters that his organization viewed with alarm the apparent relationship of the question of academic tenure at Allen with that of political interference “with the internal operations of private institutions.” “We are concerned,” he said, “lest there be direct connection between the two matters—the dismissal of the faculty members and the withholding of teacher certificates.” The AAUP, he added, would support the professors to the hilt. Carr was satisfied that the presence of the Hungarian white student on the Allen campus was in no way related to the certification question.
Timmerman’s response to Carr’s request was completely in character. He told the AAUP that the Allen affair was none of its business. “Our state is concerned with protecting all of its people,” the governor wired Carr, “and your authority to question its official actions is without recognition. The resolution [of the State Board of Education] speaks for itself.”
Carr expressed dismay at the brusque tone of the governor’s telegram. “Governor Timmerman’s reaction is most unfortunate,” he declared. “Our queries are usually received by state officials and institutions respectfully and answered if possible.” For his part Timmerman, clearly annoyed, replied that Carr’s “political whimpering” confirmed his suspicion as to the motive behind the former’s telegram. Timmerman said that Carr should “seek the answer to his questions from his own files” thus implying that prejudicial information against the three professors was at the disposal of the AAUP.[382]
The show-down on the Allen affair came at the board of trustees meeting on January 10th and the results gratified all persons who still believe in academic freedom. Bishop Bonner, who probably hoped to dominate the meeting, found the spotlight taken away from him by Dr. R. A. Mance, a former Columbia physician who lives in Washington, D.C. Mance, a member of the Allen Board of Trustees, is also treasurer of the national African Methodist Episcopal Church. When Mance spoke out in defense of the three professors, those present at the meeting which was open to the public were very much aware that he was voicing the sentiments of the national church organization on which Allen heavily depends.
Bishop Bonner tried to defend his demand for the ouster of Wiggins, Rideout and Hoffman in the face of an audience which booed him when he said that Governor Timmerman impressed him as being “a very fine man.” According to Bonner, who was demonstrably angry at the hostile audience, Timmerman had told him that the State Board of Education believed “that the three men could not possibly exert a good influence on the university in view of their refusal to resign at the request of the president following the recommendation by the dean of the faculty.” The Bishop, disregarding all questions of intimidation and of civil rights, based his position squarely on the ground that the most important thing for Allen to consider was the certification of its graduates by the state.
In the face of needling questions by Dr. Mance and other trustees, the Bishop turned to President Veal for support. It was on Veal’s request, according to Bonner, that the meeting had been called. But here the Bishop was in for a rude awakening as Veal, not unmindful that an investigation committee from the national AME church was present at the meeting, suddenly announced that he would definitely not recommend dismissal of the three professors “at this time.” Veal, who could hardly deny that he had asked for the resignations of Rideout, Wiggins, and Hoffman, said that any decision either to retain or to dismiss them would be arrived at according to academic procedures. Bonner, left out on a limb, accused Veal of having “backed out” on him. The meeting broke up without any action being taken and with the parting comment of Bishop Bonner that failure to dismiss the three controversial professors “could mean death to Allen University.” But Allen’s student body clearly did not share Bonner’s pessimism. A few hours after the meeting had adjourned nearly three hundred students gathered in front of Veal’s home and serenaded him. For the first time in months the harassed president found himself genuinely popular amongst the students.
In the Allen battle, which as the trustee Reverend F. C. James of Sumter pointed out “affects every private institution in America” as well as the issues of “civil liberties and civil rights,” the old “Uncle Tom” leadership, as personified in Bishop Bonner and his supporters, went down to defeat before the new generation of American Negroes. Whether the defeat will be thorough and permanent, only the future will tell. But administrators of private colleges throughout America owe a debt of gratitude to the courageous stand taken by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the face of political intimidation.[383]
On January 15 Governor Timmerman officially spelled out to the people of South Carolina why the State Board of Education had withdrawn its approval of Allen for teacher training. In his annual message to the state legislature he warned of the “communist menace” in South Carolina [as of 1951 the Federal Bureau of Investigation could count only seventeen alleged Communists in the State!] and pointed his finger directly at Allen as a center of possible subversion. Borrowing a trick from the late senator from Wisconsin, the chief executive proceeded to read to the members of the legislature the “party-line” records of the three Allen professors; he mentioned none of them by name. The records, he said, had been procured from administration officials at Allen and from “other” sources of information [the files of the Un-American Activities Committee supplied through the office of Congressman John Riley]. According to the Governor, the chairman of the board of trustees at Allen, Bishop Bonner, was anxious to protect the University’s student body from the noxious influences of “atheism” and “communism” and it was for this reason that he had requested the resignations of the three professors. The State Board of Education was seeking to cooperate with Allen officials toward this end.