Appalachian History

William E. Brock's company wasn't the first to mass market the delightful French concoction in the US. That distinction goes to the New York City firm Cella's Confections, which began large scale production in 1929. But Brock Candy Company was well positioned to become a major competitor.

During the 1930s, Brock introduced its own chocolate covered cherries, which quickly became a nationwide favorite. That particular candy not only helped the company survive the lean Depression era but would remain one of its biggest sellers for the next 60 years.

By 1930, William E. Brock had already been in the candy making big leagues for more than two decades. Born in North Carolina, he’d been a traveling salesman for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. when, in 1906, he decided to settle down in Chattanooga, TN. He borrowed money and invested with some associates in a small wholesale grocery shop, which also held a candy shop, the Trigg Candy Company.

1952 photo of the Brock Candy Company in Chattanooga. Here chocolate covered cherries receive the bottom coat of chocolate.

Brock continued the candy making operation, which consisted of handmade penny and bulk candies, peanut brittle, peppermints, and fudge. Using the experience and connections he had made as a traveling salesman, he sold primarily through former clients in small country stores.

Three years later, he bought his partners out and reincorporated the company as Brock Candy Company.

Sugar rationing during World War I hampered the business, but in 1920 the company introduced a five-cent peanut stick that became a big seller. In the early part of that decade it modernized its factory, installing automatic moguls (a starch molding machine).

Next, Brock eliminated all slab confectionery items, such as peanut brittle and fudge, which were products already produced by many manufacturers, making that area extremely competitive. Instead, Brock concentrated on launching new lines of jelly and marshmallow candies, using the new automated moguls. Also during the 1920s, Brock worked with the DuPont Company to develop and test the packaging of candy in cellophane bags. His company was one of the first candy makers to use cellophane bags, and it influenced the entire candy industry.

Brock found innovative ways to deal with the problems presented by the Depression. When the bank moratorium of 1933 made it impossible for Brock workers to cash their paychecks, Brock collected his daily receipts from local retailers of his candies and paid his employees in cash.

In addition to his prosperous candy manufacturing, William E. Brock also had involvements in insurance and banking interests. He became a trustee of the former University of Chattanooga, now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Emory and Henry College, and also Martha Washington College.

Undoubtedly because of his high visibility in the public affairs of Chattanooga, Brock was appointed U.S. senator by Tennessee Gov. Henry Horton in September 1929, after the death of Sen. Lawrence D. Tyson in a Philadelphia sanitarium. Sen. Brock Sr. was elected for a short term in 1930 and served until March 1931. He was considered a Woodrow Wilson Democrat.

His son, William, Jr., succeeded him to head the company. By the time of his death in 1950, Brock Sr. had built his family-run company into the South's—and Appalachia's—largest candy maker.


sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=B088
http://utpress.org/appalachia/EntryDisplay.php?EntryID=017
www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Brach-and-Brock-Confections-Inc-Company-History.html



Brock+Candy+Company William+E.+Brock Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachia+history history+of+appalachia

"Why--it's taken for granted that women are gossips by nature, by instinct and by training," said the Sparrow.

"Women ought to deny that charge every time they hear it, too!" she exclaimed. "It's just one of the many accusations men have repeated over and over until they have come to believe it."

The birds are used to hearing warm debates spring up between the Sparrows, shriek and flutter and prance for a while, and die amicably away. Their part is usually to provide a fair field and no favor, but when it comes up they sometimes listen, knowing that no marital infelicities can be brought about among settled Bird couples.

"If you would listen better to street conversations," the Sparrow declared, "you would have found out long ago that it's the women who talk scandal and start idle rumors."

"They're not a bit worse than men! I tell you more than half the mischievous talk is retailed by some married woman, who heard it from her husband, who got it, of course, at his club."

"Nonsense! Men talk politics and business; it's the women who are always saying to each other, 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this,' and 'Isn't it terrible about Mrs. Wood Knott Wearen,' and 'Have you heard the story they are telling about Miss Geewotta Peeche'--huh! you can't deny it, women will gossip! Mind must have something mischievous to take up when they are idle."

"Then the thing to do is to give 'em something better to think about," said the arch-peacemaker, the White Pigeon. "Maybe the movies--"

Her little attempt was foredoomed to failure; the Sparrows were facing each other with open beaks and wings.

"I'll bet you a flaxseed there isn't a married man between here and the river that isn't full of exclusive information about his neighbors, unless his wife is deaf and dumb."

"How do you know that, I wonder! If their minds are so full of the weighty affairs of the city and the nation that they never gossip, how do you find out that they are full of scandalous information received from their wives?"

"Well----" The Sparrow was somewhat disconcerted. "They may occasionally help to spread a rumor, but --"

"They start them, too--by a turn of expression or a change of countenance; by a sneer or a gesture. And the man-gossip does vastly more harm than the woman; the malice of his tales is accented because it sounds smart."

The Sparrow seemed at last to have run out of replies, and the Gray Pigeon commented: "It is said that Wisconsin has a law against gossiping. Offenses are punishable with a fine of not more than $250, or imprisonment not to exceed a year in jail."

"All gossips ought to be jailed," said the Sparrow, perking up. "The everlasting 'Now don't you ever tell I told you this' ought to place the speaker on a level with a fellow that carries brass knucks or a sling-shot."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.





sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf


Emma+B.+Miles Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+history

Chattanooga Daily Times, December 12, 1915--

Mark Morrison, manager of Morrison’s, well known local drug firm, was arraigned yesterday before Esquire Kerby, charged with violating the child labor law, on a warrant sworn out by Mrs. O. D. Glenn, special investigator for the state. Mr. Morrison waived preliminary examination, and was bound over to the grand jury on a $250 bond.

In the warrant Mrs. Glenn charges that Page Zarley, a 12-year old boy, had been employed by the Morrison Drug company as table boy and had been required to work from noon until 11 at night, in violation of the state statutes prohibiting the employment of children after 6 in the evening.

Mrs. Glenn told a Times reporter that the Morrison company, as all other drug stores in the state, had been notified of the state laws in this respect in a bulletin sent out, and exhibited their receipt of same in a signed coupon which had been detached from the bulletin. She said that the Zarley boy had not been in school a day this year. Mrs. Glenn has a signed affidavit regarding the youngster’s age.

Young Zarley’s mother is a widow and has a boarding house at 216-1/2 Oak Street.

It was stated at the Morrison Drug company last night that the Zarley boy had been employed by the head soda dispenser, who he had told he was 14 years of age. William J. Morrison stated last night that the boy claimed he was needy, and in his position at their store was helping support his widowed mother. "We are always very careful," Mr. Morrison stated, "in employing boys in compliance with the labor law, and were told by young Zarley that he was 14, but neglected to get an affidavit. We have been compelled to refuse several deserving and needy boys employment on account of the laws governing these cases."

Esquire Kerby, when asked yesterday if he would take the case, said that under his oath of office he had no alternative. He said, however, that in the event it was shown that the boy was working to help support himself and mother, and had been given employment through kindness, he would dismiss the case. He said he took the position that when a minor has no other means of support he should be permitted to retain his employment even if his hours do conflict with the statutes in that connection.

"The people of Chattanooga do not seem to be in favor of regulating the employment of children and females, as is set forth in the statutes," said Mrs. Glenn last night. "They seem willing to allow them to work under any conditions, but I am here to enforce these laws, and I will make every effort to stop agues of the laws."

*Mrs. Glenn left last night for Knoxville where she will remain for several days before returning here.

About the photo by Lewis Hines: caption reads "Street Bretzau, who is a 'Tube bou' in mule-room [at Richmond Spinning Mills]. Mule is apparently more dangerous than ring spinning. (See bandaged finger.) Photo during working hours. Chattanooga, Tenn., 12/06/1910"

From 1908 until 1912 Hines (1874-1940) traveled across the U.S. photographing conditions of child labor in many different settings. His photos show the haunting images of children bound to work in factories, mills, and street trades, to name a few. These pictures encouraged labor law reform and the implementation of safety laws.


sources: http://snipurl.com/1v8m2
www.appstate.edu/~hindmanhd/lewishine.html


child+labor Lewis+Hines Chattanooga+TN appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history appalachia

Here's a letter written by one George A. Barrows to a Lewis ______ (perhaps Coleman) in Seattle, Washington, dated June 16, 1901. It's from the James B. Frazier Papers Collection in the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library. James Beriah Frazier (1856-1937) was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1881, and began his practice in Chattanooga. This partially explains the presence of this letter in Frazier's possession: Barrows (1863-1909) got his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1885, and during the next three years practiced law in Chattanooga. So they traveled in the same circles, and clearly were friends.

"[Barrows] was also largely interested in real estate matters in that city," says his obituary, "but with the decline in prices in 1888 disaster overtook him and many others, and he returned to Philadelphia."

Frazier & Barrows must have remained in contact after Barrows left Chattanooga in order for this letter to find its way back to Frazier after Barrows died. But we don't know the identity of 'Lewis,' the letter's recipient, and his connection to the other two men.

Why is this letter relevant to Appalachian history? It captures perfectly the gold fever that swept the region and the nation shortly after the yellow nuggets were discovered in Alaska's Yukon. News reached the United States in July 1897 at the height of a significant series of financial recessions and bank failures, and held out hope for adventurers willing to try their luck.

Barrows first lit out for the gold fields in May, 1899 with a government expedition, under Captain E. F. Glenn, to Cook Inlet, Alaska. By that point in his life he'd left the law, gone back to school and become a doctor. The following November he sailed for Nome as a surgeon on the Laurada. The ship sprang a leak in Bering Sea and went to pieces on St. George Island, but everyone on board was rescued.

-----

Dear Lewis: Many thanks for your long and very interesting letter. I am very glad the news personal to yourself is so good. A man of family, of position and of aldermanic proportions, you are certainly in luck. May all sorts of good fortune continue.

Klondike prospectors, no date.

I hardly know how to start to tell you of my very eventful career during the last few years. I have not time now to write a book, so will send you my diaries of '98 and '99 wherein you will see among other things how I was twice wrecked at sea, on one occasion being cast away on an island in Behring [sic] Sea.

As soon as I stopped keeping a diary I stopped getting ship wrecked. Last summer I was Ship Surgeon on a large Steamship--the "Oregon"--running between Seattle and Cape Nome. A great deal happened then but I have no record of it and it would take too long to tell.

Since last Fall I have been teaching Obstetrics and Diagnosis of diseases in an Institute here; but this job is now over - for the summer vacation - and we are "up against it" again almost as badly as when we struck Seattle. I hoped to get the "Oregon" again this summer - but a doctor who is a great friend of the owner has thus far euchered [sic] me out of it.

You see I am as far off as ever from my "Four Million," although the experience I have had may sometime help me to get it. I know Alaska pretty well and how they work the ropes there, very well. The country is full of gold and if we are ever so fixed that we could get there - with the means to stay a year or two - I believe the "Four" would be on the way.

One must winter there in order to get a chance at new diggings before news of them reaches the States. Before the rush of people to Nome got there every valuable claim had been taken up by men who had wintered up the Yukon.

The Laurada in 1896, courtesy of Illustrated American Magazine.

People who are not Capitalists who go in for the summer, invariably, are sorry -- others too, for that matter, who lack necessary knowledge and judgment. This is a great country out here. You ought to take a long vacation sometime and come out and see what God’s country really is like. Magnificent scenery and climate, living cheap, things civilized and a bracing move and get-up to affairs that would make the effete East hold its breath. Let me hear from you soon. No hurry about returning the diaries.

Your sincere friend Geo. A. Barrows. 16 June 1901.


Sources: James B. Frazier Papers / University of Tennessee Special Collections Library at http://idserver.utk.edu/?id=200800000003486

OBITUARY RECORD OF GRADUATES OF YALE UNIVERSITY DECEASED FROM JUNE, 1910, TO JULY, 1915, No. i of the Sixth Printed Series, and No. 70 of the whole Record at www.archive.org/stream/1910t15obituary00yaleuoft/1910t15obituary00yaleuoft_djvu.txt

“Look at the city--at any city built by man! They, the great last word of the century, a tremendous expression of the human intellect, grow up wild, according to no plan or intention, allowing nothing for expansion, discommoding everybody, causing intolerable civic growing-pains, and utterly upsetting any adventitious efforts toward beauty or dignity of proportion in the whole."

"They might, at least," agreed the White Pigeon, "take advantage of facilities close at hand for their own comfort. I see every day the waste of material and of opportunity in this ramshackle, helter-skelter civilization of theirs. It disturbs my rest at night when I think of the hundreds sweltering in trap-like rooms where the air is utterly still and seems to burn. They add to the heat of their closed-in dwellings by fires for cooking. How they must suffer!"

"Some of them go out in autos to cool off," said the Sparrow.

"How many can do so?--one in fifty?--and how much intelligence do they display in joy-riding? Gliding through the open country, breathing the sweet evening scents from the fields, is one good way of resting the overstrained system; but a mad rush is another thing--the unrestrained impulse to speed that rests nobody, and leads to fearful calamities."

"If more autos traveled tortoise," said the Sparrow, "there wouldn't be so many turning turtle. But let me tell you that some folks have learned how to sleep. More and more beds are made in the open air as old superstitions are overcome, superstitions about malaria and night air no less than about ghosts and wild beasts that might get you if you don't watch out. There are families in the suburbs who eat on one porch and sleep on another almost year round."

"There ought to be plenty of such families right in town, too," said the White Pigeon.

"Oh, yes; that proves what I said, or began to say," declared the Gray Pigeon. "That Man is capable of planning well enough for his own individual needs, but has never learnt to think collectively; for the good of all. Now, above these same sleepers, just over their heads, in fact, there are acres and acres of cool open space where hundreds might sleep in comfort under the stars if they only would, lifted clear of the noise and dust of the streets, continually filling their lungs with a sleeper's deep draughts of life-giving oxygen, and never missing the lightest breeze that stirs the night.

"But these broad roof spaces that might be such a blessing every night through the hot months to tired throngs of toilers, remain an undiscovered country, an utter desert. No one ever makes the slightest use of them, except when I walk across the gravel with which they are covered and choose a few for my crop."

"Not all cities so neglect this opportunity," said the White Pigeon. "The Swallow tells of splendid roof developments in some parts of the country. There are roof gardens, and hospital tents, and even schools for anemic or tubercular children of rich and poor who would perish in the ordinary confined schoolroom."

"Well, sometime it will be so here," said the Gray Pigeon. "Sometime when property becomes too valuable to let an inch of space go to waste. Overcrowding will go on as it has elsewhere, till the growing pressures causes an upward burst, and then the Overhead Country will be discovered, utilized, improved, and made the most of in all sorts of ways, to the benefit of everybody who lives or works in the crowded portion of the city."

*****

From April - June 1924 The Chattanooga News paid Emma Bell Miles $9.00 a week to write "Fountain Square Conversations." The "Conversations" cleverly combined her naturalist's knowledge and her social commentary. They featured birds and other creatures on the square conversing under the shadows of the human statues. Miles (1879-1919) is remembered primarily for "The Spirit of the Mountains" (1905), the first comprehensive study of Southern Appalachian culture.


sources: www.phoebeclaire.com/miles/fsc20.htm
http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/documents/pdf/fall_2005/emmabell_miles.pdf

"Garnet Carter was an entrepreneur, and he developed 300 acres here on top of Lookout Mountain as a resort community in 1928," says Bill Chapin, Carter's nephew. "With the Fairyland Inn as the cornerstone of his development, he had plans to continue development with a world class 18 hole golf course. The golf course construction went slowly. Uncle Garnet decided that they needed some entertainment for their guests at the Inn. He came up with the idea of miniature golf."

To his surprise the course was taken over by adults, who liked the fantasy setting and enjoyed the challenge of putting a ball through the miniaturized fairways. Carter soon began manufacturing courses for national distribution under the patented name Tom Thumb Golf to continue with the fairyland theme of elves and gnomes. By 1930 there were over 25,000 miniature golf courses in the U.S.

The earliest documented minigolf competitions were played in the United States. The first National Tom Thumb Open minigolf tournament was arranged in 1930, with a total cash purse $10,000 (the top prize being $2,000). Qualification play-offs were played in all of the 48 states. The final competition took place October 23, 1930 on Lookout Mountain. It attracted over 200 players representing thirty states.


sources: www.tennesseetreasures.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=109&Itemid=27
www.plamoradventuregolf.net/images/History%20of%20Miniature%20Golf/history.htm



National+Tom+Thumb+Open minigolf Chattanooga+TN Lookout+Mountain+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Leo Lambert (1895-1955), though trained as a chemist, was an avid cave enthusiast. He was the first person to explore the Tennessee Cave on Mount Aetna (now known as Raccoon Mountain Caverns), and at one time managed the Nickajack Caverns in Marion County, TN. He moved to Chattanooga because his fiancée Ruby Eugenia Losey moved there with her family; they were married in 1916.

It had been 11 years since the Southern Railway had built a railroad tunnel along the face of Lookout Mountain and through some portions of the mountain for one of its lines, a construction project that had permanently sealed a well known natural opening to Lookout Mountain Cave.

Given his knowledge of Tennessee caves, Lambert surely would have been aware of the cave’s colorful history: used first as a campsite by Native Americans, later a hideout for outlaws. During the Civil War, the caverns were used by both Confederate and Union troops. Many soldiers wrote their names and units on the walls. Southern Railway had left in its wake a business opportunity. Lambert decided in 1923 to drill open the cave and become a tour operator.

He formed Lookout Mountain Cave Company and purchased land above the cave. He planned to make an opening further up the mountain than the original natural opening and transport tourists to the cave via an elevator.

In 1928 Lambert selected a site for an elevator shaft into the original cave and began drilling. Midway into drilling the 400-foot elevator shaft, on December 28, a worker operating a jackhammer discovered a void in the rock and felt a gush of air. A small crevice was opened, about 18 inches high and five feet wide.

Lambert and other corporate officials immediately decided to investigate it and spent 17 hours on this first exploration trip. A passage opened into a falls cave. They came back with a description of a cave with beautiful formations and an amazing 145-foot waterfall, located 260 ft inside Lookout Mountain. The falls flow into a landing pool which drains into the Tennessee River. On his second trip Lambert was accompanied by his wife Ruby. On this trip he named the waterfall - after her - Ruby Falls.

Lambert decided to develop both caves and to offer two cave tours. After 92 days of work, day and night, the elevator shaft reached the original cave. The elevator was installed, paths were prepared, and the original cave opened to the public in 1929. The entrance building, Cavern Castle, looks like a 15th century Irish castle. It was constructed from limestone excavated from the elevator shaft. Development continued in the new cave and in 1930 the second tour to Ruby Falls was opened to the public.

At first the two caverns were shown on separate tours, but the popularity of the falls far exceeded that of the lower cave and that trip was discontinued in 1935.

After years of financial struggle during the Great Depression, the Lookout Mountain Cave Company declared bankruptcy. New ownership launched an aggressive advertising campaign, based on roadside signs, and made Ruby Falls into what is today one of Chattanooga's major tourist attractions.

Ruby Falls is the largest underground waterfall open to the public in the United States. It and the larger Lookout Mountain Caverns complex have been designated a National Historic Landmark.


Sources: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=R060
www.rubyfalls.com
www.showcaves.com/english/usa/showcaves/RubyFalls.html
www.lookoutmountain.com/pages/fun_sites.html



Chattanooga+TN Ruby+Falls Leo+Lambert Lookout+Mountain+Cave appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

This widow of the South accumulated at least 9 husbands & 10,000 pieces of glass! Chattanoogan Anna Safley Houston (1876-1951) single-handedly amassed thousands of pitchers, creamers, lamps, flasks, jugs, china, tea sets, platters and frilly art-glass baskets. Her collection of pitchers alone is thought to be the largest in the world. "Antique Annie," as she was called behind her back, kept the name Houston in honor of her favorite husband. None of her husbands were wealthy.

In 1904 Houston left her native Alabama to open a millinery store in Chattanooga. She had a brief stint as an antique dealer in the 1920's but ended up losing it in the Great Depression. Houston continued collecting glass throughout her retail career.

So what makes Annie so fascinating, a town character to the locals? Annie lived in a barn. After the Depression, the bank foreclosed on her home. Instead of selling her precious glassware, she let the house go and built a ramshackle barn in which to live and store her glassware. When there was a fire in the barn in the late 1940s, those valuable pitchers were used – bucket brigade-fashion – to pour water on the flames, and most of her possessions were saved.

During the last 15 years of her life she lived in virtual poverty, sleeping on a cot with only her dog for a companion. Annie Houston died of malnutrition --- her death certificate says obstructive jaundice--- rather than sell a single piece out of her collection to pay for treatment. Ironic that the glassware was worth a mint, yet its owner died a pauper rather than subject herself to letting go of the only company she kept. It is an art collection that she literally gave her life to preserve.

When, shortly before her death, she went before the city commission to try to give her collections to the city, she was laughed out of the room by commissioners, who thought she was trying to give them a lot of junk. Ultimately, the childless collector did make legal arrangements to leave her 50+ collections in trust to the people of Chattanooga. Today, a century-old Victorian home perched high above the Tennessee River in Chattanooga’s vibrant Bluff View Art District houses Annie Houston’s world.

The Houston Museum of Decorative Arts collection is indeed so impressive that only 10% of the entire collection is shown at the museum, the rest being in the basement. There are literally millions of dollars of glass inside the walls of the museum. The rare glass collections include amberina, plated amberina, Pomona, peachblow, Burmese, cameo, Steuben, Tiffany, cranberry, satin, Quezal, Durand, sandwich and cut glass as well as more than 600 patterns of Early American pressed glass.

There is also a variety of lustre and a large collection of the rarest examples of Staffordshire, Mettlach steins, Rockingham-Bennington pottery, bottles and flasks, original Toby jugs, Meissen, and Rose Canton pieces, mostly in the Rose Medallion and Rose Mandarin patterns. The Houston museum features a room where the glassware hangs from the ceiling, much like it did in that barn.


sources: www.antiquetrader.com/article/Antique_Annie_was_Houston_Museums_eccentric_founder/
www.epinions.com/trvl-review-645E-2F49252E-3A5236FE-prod2
www.thehoustonmuseum.com/history.html


Anna+Safley+Houston Antique+Annie Houston+Museum+of+Decorative+Arts Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

When Bessie Smith sang the blues she meant it. Smith (1894-1937) was the greatest and most influential classic blues singer of the 1920s. Dubbed "The Empress of the Blues," Smith embodied the blues feeling, while her songs, drawing from her sordid lifestyle, rang true with rural and urban audiences alike.

Smith was born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, TN. She spent her early years living in a one room shack in a small area of Chattanooga known as Blue Goose Hollow. These living quarters were shared by both of her parents and all of her siblings, which at the highest count could have been as many as seven.

Her father, a part time Baptist minister, died when Smith was an infant and by the time she reached the age of nine her mother Laura and at least two of her brothers had also passed away. Smith’s sister Viola moved the family into a tenement apartment in a section of Chattanooga known as Tannery Flats. She supported her sisters, brothers, and her own daughter mainly on the small wages she earned from taking in laundry, and was apparently very strict when it came to her siblings.

The family income was minimally supplemented by the odd jobs that Clarence, the eldest brother in the Smith family, took. By 1904, Clarence left town to join the Moses Stokes traveling show and his support left town with him.

Despite the abject poverty that consumed Bessie Smith's childhood, she is noted as having completed school at least to the eighth grade. During this time Bessie is also said to have started her entertainment career. Standing on the corner singing, accompanied by her younger brother Andrew on guitar; their preferred location was in front of the White Elephant Saloon at Thirteenth and Elm streets. They collected spare change that people passing by threw at them.

After hearing his sister perform at an amateur night at the Ivory Theatre, Clarence arranged an audition for Smith with the Moses Stokes Company, and she was hired as a dancer in 1912. She became friends with an older Moses Stokes veteran, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, who was called the Mother of the Blues and likely exercised some influence over the young singer.

Rainey is largely credited with moving the blues away from its traditionally male, country sounds to the more classical, city and women's style that is associated with the Harlem Renaissance, today. Smith had her own voice, however, and owed her success to no one. If anything, Ma Rainey taught her stage presence.

Bessie Smith’s heavy, throaty vocals were balanced by a delightful sense of timing. Her live shows were a blend of comedy and drama in song. She played on the road for eleven years before recording her first song in 1923. That record sold 780,000 copies, but only made her $125.

During her heyday, she sold hundreds of thousands of records and earned upwards of $2000 per week, which was a queenly sum in the 1920s. She routinely played to packed houses in the South as well as the North and Midwest. Alberta Hunter, a contemporary blues singer of Bessie Smith's, said of Smith, "I don't think anybody in the world will ever be able to get as much hurt into one song." There are some artists who don't have to do anything other than walk out on stage to create electricity in the air, and Bessie Smith was one of them.

sources: www.jerryjazzmusician.com/mainHTML.cfm?page=albertson.html
www.southernmusic.net/bessiesmith.htm
www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/bessie_smith.htm
xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/blues/bsa.html


Alberta Hunter, appalachia, appalachian history, mountains Bessie Smith, blues, Chattanooga TN, Ma Rainey

It is the privileged role of the Art Smiths, the William Pelleys, and the George Christians to lay only the cornerstone of fascism. It is in their rudimentary organizations that the petty bourgeoisie receives its first elementary schooling in dictatorship. It is from the Smiths and the Pelleys that it learns to scrap its democratic scruples, to hate the Jew as the Mephistopheles responsible for depressions and to detest the Communist as the companion creation of the Devil.

It is in their lecture rooms that the small shopkeeper and the petty officers avidly absorb the bombastic emotional rantings of the would be American Hitlers who intoxicate their listeners with glorious hallucinations of the past and still more glorious visions of the future under the aegis of fascism. Religious animosity is of course, stressed more than anything else.
--Class Struggle, Vol 4, No 3 March 1934 (http://www.weisbord.org/FourThree.htm)

Tennessean George W. Christians, chief officer of the fascist Crusader White Shirts, was an odd combination of comedian and sinister revolutionist. "Does our Commander in Chief have ideas," he asked, "or is he just the world's greatest humbug?" In another handbill, Christians wrote of the president: "Some neck—for a rope." He was characterized by one-time Roosevelt braintruster Raymond Moley as a 'harmless lunatic.'

"The Crusader White Shirts," Christians stated, "known as the American Fascists, is a military auxiliary of the Crusaders for Economic Liberty [CFEL]…. It embraces the Fascist idea of personal leadership, unity, force, drama and nationalism."

Christians once issued orders to seize control of the government: "The first- objective should be to take control of the local government in the following manner: March in military formation to and surround the government buildings. Then, by sheer numbers and a patriotic appeal, force the officials to accept and act under the direction of an economic adviser appointed by the President of the CFEL."

One night when FDR was scheduled to arrive in Chattanooga, TN, Christians threatened to cut off the city's electric power and warned grimly, "Lots of things can happen in the dark!" Followers took this as a veiled reference to consider lynching Roosevelt.

This protege of the American Liberty League was from then on kept under surveillance by the Secret Service. On March 27, 1942, Christians and Rudolph Fahl, onetime physical-education instructor at a Denver high school, were arrested for disseminating material that could demoralize the army. Christians was accused of violating the Smith Act by "communicating to soldiers statements designed to impair their morale."

In early April, five more seditionists were arrested. Meantime Christians, held in Chattanooga under $10,000 bond, said, "I consider myself a political prisoner rather than a criminal and should get better treatment." The President took pride in the operation during his "Fireside Chat" late in April: "this great war effort . . . must not be impeded by a few bogus patriots who use the sacred freedom of the press to echo the sentiments of the propagandists in Tokyo and Berlin." All of those from the March-April group were convicted by the end of the summer of 1942, except Fahl.


sources: www.csulb.edu/~crsmith/whitepapers/patriots.htm
Time magazine, Monday, Apr. 13, 1942 "Milquetoast Gets Muscles"
Time magazine, sidebar, Monday, May. 11, 1942
Free speech in the good war by Richard W. Steele, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

George+W.+Christians Crusader+White+Shirts American+fascists Chattanooga+TN appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history