The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  The trouble for James Dombrowski was that the South was not ready for a person with his particular genius, because he became focused on helping the laboring man and the African-Americans.

  The SCEF had been a branch of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare which was established in the South in 1938. This organization was a sort of bridge from the New Deal enlightenment in civil rights to the post-war beginnings of grass roots civil rights movements in the South.

  Dombrowski had begun his career affiliated with the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Grundy County, Tennessee, which had been founded in 1932. Even at the date of this writing, there are signs around Moneagle denoting the location of this famous institution as one passes through Tennessee on Interstate 24. The school was modeled after similar schools in Scandinavia. Amazing as this sounds today, the Highlander School’s curriculum was geared to teaching children about labor organizing from the time they were young. Today, such a school would not survive for very long, but back in the 1930’s and 1940’s it succeeded fairly significantly and was well-known. Dombrowski’s teaching there was on the subject of “Union Problems.”

  On December 12, 1941, Dombrowski telephoned a woman named Virginia Durr. She was the sister-in-law of Hugo Black of Alabama who later became a Supreme Court Justice. Dombrowski wanted to apply for a job with the Southern Conference on Human Welfare (SCHW) and Virginia Durr was the leader of that organization.

  Dombrowski was hired and his employment proved to be good for him and for the SCHW. He had powerful allies in the progressive community. On January 3, 1942 Dombrowski left the Highlander School and moved to Nashville, the headquarters of the SCHW.

  Dombrowski had a special relationship with a New York heiress named Ethel Clyde. She lived in luxury at a Manhattan apartment and used her substantial inherited wealth to further liberal causes such as Dombrowski’s pro-labor and pro-African American efforts in the South. As we shall see, she also socialized with alleged Communist mole Alger Hiss.

  The major patron of the SCHW was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its guiding force was Virginia Durr and its most famous member was Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

  The first meeting of SCHW was on November 29, 1938 in Birmingham, Alabama. Another original supporter was Eleanor Roosevelt.

  The biggest complaint against James Dombrowski was that he was soft on Communists. This criticism followed him his entire life and wound up placing him in the clutches of James O. Eastland and even into the vortex of the assassination plot in New Orleans in October, 1963. Although Dombrowski was nowhere near to being a Communist, he insisted that anyone should be entitled to believe in Communism if he so choose. America is a free country, Dombrowski believed. So, you can’t persecute someone for their beliefs, no matter how unpopular they might be.

  The FBI began a file on Dombrowski from the very beginning. The FBI noted that Dombrowski was classified by his draft board as “someone deserving custodial attention in case of a national emergency.” Scary!

  Noteworthy throughout this discussion, is the participation and commentary on these activities emanating from famous Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal. It is noted elsewhere in another chapter that Walt W. Rostow (who was most likely one of the JFK assassination plotters) and a staff member of the National Security council for a time, had also worked for Myrdal in Europe as a young man. FDR’s advisor Dr. Ralph Bunche was an assistant to Myrdal during the research phase for Myrdal’s nationally famous book, An American Dilemma.

  Bunche was involved with the group that was promoting the SCHW.

  In 1943, Dombrowski conceived the idea for an SCHW periodical called The Southern Patriot. This periodical would be the main platform for Dombrowsky from that early date up to 1963 and beyond.

  In 1945, the segregationist Senator from Mississippi, Theordore Bilbo, denounced SCHW from the Senate floor. While Dobrowski had been concentrating on the finances of SCHW, it elected a new president, Clark Foreman, who was the New Deal specialist on civil rights. Foreman blasted back in print against Bilbo. In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) began a campaign to organize unions in the South. Unlike the rival American Federation of Labor (AFL), the CIO had leaders who in some cases were openly Communist.

  At this time, the SCHW was under pressure from the IRS because of their political acitivity. This threatened their tax status as a charity. So for tax purposes, the SCEF was formed as a charitable foundation and James Dombrowki became the leader of SCEF. In a fateful decision, Dombrowski changed the residence of the SCEF from Nashville to New Orleans because a large convention was going to be held in New Orleans. That was where the headquarters of SCEF was to remain.

  In June of 1947, the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC) under its chairman J. Parnell Thomas condemned SCEF as a Communist front. From this time Dombrowski became tainted for being Communist, simply because he refused to exclude Communists from SCEF activities. Personally, he was not Communist or even socialist, although he did join the Socialist Party for a time when he was in Divinity School.

  In May of 1948, the old SCHW was terminated. In 1947, Dombrowski headed north. He visited the University of Chicago where Chancellor Robert M. Hutchings had grant money available. Then he went to New York. There, public relations genius Edward L. Bernays gave him some public relations advice which carried SCEF for many years. He said to concentrate on schools, housing, courts, recreation, health care and other social institutions. Dombrowski also met with his long-term financial backer Ethel Clyde. Back in New Orleans, Dombrowski began to focus on the issues of schools.

  Adding to the public relations advice from Edward L. Bernays, Dombrowski felt that SCEF should agitate and organize. He began hammering away at segregated schools and segregated health care. The SCEF was often referred to as “the conscience of the troubled South.” Following advice from his former teacher, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Dombrowski began to advocate non-violent resistance.

  In November, 1950, the IRS threatened to revoke the 501(c)(3) status of the SCEF. The decision on that matter went up to the Chief Counsel of the IRS. In January, 1952, in his Southern Patriot newsletter, Dombrowski published a picture of a Coca-Cola machine with a “white” spigot and a “colored” spigot. This picture was reproduced and published around the world, even as far away as India.

  It was at this point that SCEF began to enter the world of the JFK assassination conspiracy. On March 5, 1954, SCEF officer Aubrey Williams was working on his Alabama farm when he was served with a subpoena to appear before SISS, then chaired by Senator William Jenner of Indiana, an extreme right-wing Republican. Also subpoenaed were Dombrowski, Virginia Durr (sister-in-law to Hugo Black of the Supreme Court), and even Miles Horton of the Highlander School in Tennessee got a subpoena. In the past, James Dombrowski had been cooperative in testifying before the Dies Committee. It was announced that these hearings would be chaired by Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland, a member of the Democratic minority. SCEF officer Aubrey Williams had a lot of friends. As a result of his contacts in Congress, not a single Repubican member of SISS came south for the hearings with Eastland.

  Senator Eastland arrived in New Orleans with counsel Richard Arens along with two paid informants, both claiming to be ex-Communists. New Orleans became, for the first time, a SCEF battleground. The defendants had excellent volunteer lawyers. Both Virginia Durr and her husband Clifford (who was a top-flight lawyer himself) were in New Orleans as was heiress and Dombrowski backer Ethel Clyde. James O. Eastland announced that cross-examination of witnesses would not be allowed.

  Local witnesses from New Orleans denounced Dombrowski as a Communist. When Eastland asked Dombrowski for a members list, Dombrowski replied that SCEF had no members, only subscribers to the Southern Patriot as well as contributors. When James O. Eastland demanded the list of contributors, Dombrowski refused, pointing out that the list had not been included in the subpoena. The two argued for an hour on that issue. At one point, Dombrowski was questioned for five
straight hours.

  During lunch, Dombrowski’s financial angel Ethyl Clyde was sitting next to Virginia Durr’s lawyer. She told him he should join the Communist Party, because it had been good for her own health. Two different witnesses claimed Clifford Durr was a Communist. James O. Eastland was happy to link Durr and his brother-in-law Justice Hugo Black (who was from Alabama) to Communism. When an informant by the name of Paul Crouch labeled Virginia Durr to be a Communist, her husband (an attorney) Clifford Durr lunged at him, threatening to kill him and had to be restrained.

  Back in Washington, the friends of SCEF officer Aubrey Williams went into action. Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas, both Northern Democratic Senators wrote letters of support. In the Senate, minority leader Lyndon Johnson devoted an hour of his time to “go into detail about the issues” in the hearings.

  Then on May 17, 1954 a bombshell fell. The Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. Soon, Dombrowski traveled the South organizing compliance conferences following up on the Brown decision. The FBI and their legion of informants also traveled the South. White Citizen’s Councils sprung up all over the South. By the end of 1956, they claimed 300,000 members.

  However, all was not great for the SCEF at that time. In the bus boycott in Birmingham, Alabama led by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1956, King decided to exclude the SCEF. Quoting King, “the SCEF was supposed to be Red.”

  Not only had the NAACP excluded the SCEF but the recently formed AFL-CIO maintained a list of subversives and the SCEF was on it. Dombrowski wrote at the time that he would welcome a showdown (which could be in hearings in Washington D.C.) to clear up the record. He felt that the SCEF had been “put out on the street” by the Eastland-SISS hearings.

  In March 1956, SISS, under its chairman James O. Eastland, again visited New Orleans to hold hearings. The topic was “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States.” The first witness was Herman Liveright, a program director for WDSU in New Orleans. Liveright was questioned on March 10, 1956 by the ever-present Judge Robert Morris who we have discussed in a number of prior chapters. Morris asked Liveright “Are you a Communist?” Liveright took the Fifth Amendment. Later, the wife of Liveright was called as a witness and browbeaten when she refused to say if she was a Communist. (On February 6, 1957, Robert Morris told a Federal Court that Liveright had been sent to New Orleans to take over the direction of Communist activity in New Orleans). Liveright was sentenced on 14 counts of contempt of Congress, but the Supreme Court of the U.S. overturned the conviction on May 21, 1962.

  Following these hearings, Mayor de Lesseps Morrison of New Orleans ordered Police Superintendent Guy Banister to conduct an investigation of Communist activity. Morrison arranged a meeting between James O. Eastland, Guy Banister and himself in 1956. At the meeting which was held in Greenwood, Mississippi, the three men conferred for over three hours. They discussed cooperation between SISS and the City of New Orleans to investigate subversion. Louisiana “Godfather” Leander Perez offered his assistance. Perez was a wealthy former judge and virtual dictator of Plaquemines Parish, a rural backwater southeast of New Orleans.

  Leander Perez requested to James O. Eastland that he investigate James Dombrowski as well as the NAACP. On April 6, 1956, more hearings were held. Despite most or all of the witnesses pleading the Fifth Amendment, issues arose which were sent to the FBI in Washington for further investigation. Eastland’s most desireable target for his hearings was Hunter Pitts O’Dell, a civil rights leader and admitted Communist. Police Assistant Superintendent Guy Banister ordered Sergeant Hubert Badeaux to arrest O’Dell, but O’Dell was not to be found. So they searched his apartment and found a trove of Communist literature.

  O’Dell was questioned by SISS in Washington on April 12, 1956 by counsel Robert Morris. He was interrogated again on July 30, 1958 by HUAC. After the finale of his New Orleans hearings, James O. Eastland published the report entitled “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, 1956” in which there was no evidence at all of any such activity. Next, in 1957, James O. Eastland began more hearings for SISS in the South, this time in Memphis, Tennessee. SCEF was the most important subject. He also held hearings in Miami and Charlotte, North Carolina in 1957.

  The states began to set up “little FBI’s” such as the Louisiana and Mississipi Sovereignty Commissions and the Louisiana Legislative Committee on Segregation. On March 6-9, the State of Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee held public hearings on subversion. They used files from SISS and HUAC as well as other information. Guy Banister testified. Banister claimed to be an expert on the Communist Party, citing his experience with the FBI. Banister also claimed to have set up the intelligence unit of the New Orleans Police Deparment. Manning Johnson testified on Communism. Johnson had been a Communist and had lived in the Soviet Union. Another ex-Communist witness who had lived in the USSR was Joseph Kornfeder, who testified to the Joint Legislative Committeee on March 7, 1957. These witnesses made outlandish claims that, basically, the civil rights movement was entirely Communist. Kornfeder claimed that half of the Communist agents trained in the Soviet union over the last 30 years were black.

  Author Jeffrey Caulfield believes evidence proves that Hubert Badeaux, a member of the Louisiana segregationists, was grooming Lee Harvey Oswald as in infiltrator and informant before, during and after his military career and defection to the Soviet Union. While this could have been possible, there are two problems with Dr. Caulfield’s theory. First, would a police official put all his eggs in the basket of Oswald who would have been 15 years old when he was in the Civil Air Patrol and when he began to write letters to Communists? It’s possible, but it would me more credible if Badeaux would have recruited multiple teenagers to become informants in the future.

  Caulfield cites a letter written April 27, 1957 from Hubert Badeaux to right-wing legislator Willie Rainach which said, “I have been in contact with an out-of-town person, which I have been grooming to come here to take over the establishment of infiltration into the University and intellectual groups, I will tell you in detail about that when I see you in person.”

  Oswald had enlisted in the military on October 24, 1956. So Badeaux would be waiting until June 1, 1962 when Oswald returned from the Soviet Union. Even then, Oswald first went to Fort Worth, Texas, not New Orleans. He didn’t return to New Orleans until April 24, 1963. So Badeaux would have waited 9 years for Oswald to ripen into an informant in New Orleans. Badeaux could have generated hundreds of informants during that time period. There was nothing special about Oswald in that regard. If Badeaux had been grooming someone long-distance for a future role as an informant in New Orleans, how much would Badeaux be able to pay an informant? $50 per month? Would Oswald want to spend 9 years grooming himself for a $50 per month job? What if Oswald found a better job for more money and decided to do something entirely different?

  Where would that have left Badeaux?

  The second problem is that Dr. Caulfield believes what every other assassination researcher believes; i.e. that Oswald was only pretending to be a Communist. That just isn’t the case. If one reads the book Brothers in Arms by Guy Russo and Stephen Molton, the authors prove beyond doubt that Oswald was a real Communist. Oswald wrote manuscripts on the subject of Communism. Assassination authors virtually never claim to have read any of them. Russo and Molton demonstrate that Oswald could not have devoted all the obvious time that would be necessary to master the subject of Communism just to be a fake Communist. This is in addition to the fact that he began writing letters to Communist groups at age 15. That kind of double-dealing is beyond the mental capabilities of even a very bright 15-year-old which Oswald was not.

  In 1957, looking to build more depth in SCEF, it welcomed Carl and Anne Braden to its staff. Carl Braden had been sentenced to 15 years in prison on sedition charges for helping a black person buy a home in a white neighborhood. He was saved from that fate by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1958, Dombrowski and SCEF officer Aubrey Williams were
in Washington meeting with the Civil Rights Commission, the Justice Department and a group of Congressmen.

  In 1958, HUAC announced hearings to investigate Communist infiltration in the South. Both Carl and Anne Braden were subpoenaed for hearings on July 38, 1958. At this time there was a group called The Committee To Abolish HUAC. The anti-Communist right felt that this group was essentially Communist, although the group was actually interested in freedoms of speech, beliefs and association along the lines of the ACLU. The Chairman of HUAC at the time was Congressman Edwin Willis. In her book Me & Lee, the lover of Lee Harvey Oswald, Judyth Vary Baker presented circumstantial evidence that Congressman Edwin Willis was involved with the horrendous weaponized cancer project along with Baker, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dr. Alton Ochsner and the others.

  At the HUAC hearing, both Carl Braden and Fred Wilkinson appeared to testify. Wilkinson was head of the “abolish HUAC” association. When Wilkinson began to challenge the legality of HUAC, the hearings quickly adjourned. But things were getting more serious in Washington. On August 12, 1958, the full House of Representatives voted to hold Carl Braden and Fred Wilkinson in contempt of Congress. Federal Judge Boyd Sloan sentenced both to one year in jail, but they were freed based on their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But on February 27, 1961, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their convictions.

  James O. Eastland held a SISS hearing on March 18, 1959 on the subject of Red propaganda going through the Port of New Orleans, destined for Latin America. This was the third set of hearings on Communism that had been held in New Orleans; two by SISS and one by HUAC in 1957. Meanwhile, Judge Leander Perez testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington on the subject of Communism and civil rights. Eastland was also Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which was the “parent” committee of SISS.

  Dr. Caulfield discovered a very important connection regarding SCEF. In a Guy Banister file dated August 27, 1959; there was proof that Banister had infiltrated Dombrowki’s SCEF office in New Orleans. A man named Allen Campbell burglarized the SCEF office under instructions from Banister. LUAC (the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee) held hearings in 1961 that resulted in the firing of an English professor at LSU who wrote a letter in support of civil rights and was a member of the ACLU and the NAACP.