Georgia: Out of the Battle

In Southerner, a recently published book in which he excoriated the stultifying influence of racism on the South, Georgia Congressman Charles Longstreet Weltner warned: “The South can lose again, just as we have lost for the past century. If Jim Crow is our goal, and equal justice our enemy, the South will lose.”

To Democrat Weltner, 38, the victory of White Supremacist Lester Maddox in Georgia’s Democratic runoff primary last month signaled a crushing setback for racial moderation—and for the South. Rather than support Maddox for Governor in the November election, Weltner last week jettisoned his promising career in Congress.

“New Breed.” Though he had handily won renomination to a third term only three weeks earlier, Weltner explained at an Atlanta press conference that he was withdrawing from his campaign for re-election because he could not honor the loyalty oath that requires all Georgia Democratic candidates to support the state party ticket. Declared Weltner: “Today the one man in our state who exists as the very symbol of violence and oppression is the Democratic nominee for the highest office in Georgia. His entire public career is directly contrary to my deepest convictions and beliefs. And while I cannot violate my oath, neither can I violate my principles. I cannot compromise with hate.” Atlanta’s Democratic county committee nominated in Weltner’s place an old-line local politician, Real Estate Man Archie Lindsey, 55, who announced that he would support Maddox.

Weltner, a handsome, fiercely independent lawyer of distinguished Southern lineage (his great-grandfather, Gen eral Thomas R. R. Cobb, wrote the Confederate constitution and was killed at Fredericksburg), personified “the new breed” of Southern Congressman —and was proud of the label. Elected to Congress in 1962 as a result of a court-ordered redistricting that gave his Atlanta district a 25% Negro vote, Weltner, in his first major House speech, indicted Southern white leaders who, he charged, “have stood by, leaving the field to reckless and violent men.”

He became the first Deep South Congressman in this century to put a Negro on his staff, was the only one to vote for all three of the Administration’s major civil rights bills—in 1964, ’65 and ’66. Weltner further outraged Southern racists last year by initiating a House Un-American Activities Committee investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. His resignation from the race prompted hundreds of tributes from across the U.S., including a telegram from a non-Georgian that read: “I never heard of you. Now I will never forget you.”

“Time to Fight.” Weltner’s opponents charged that he had good reason to resign. Until two weeks ago, he had been easily favored over his Republican challenger, Fletcher Thompson, 41, a handsome but undistinguished state senator. However, Maddox’s victory raised the possibility that Atlanta’s Negroes and white moderates—the bulk of Weltner’s support—would go fishing on election day. Close friends of Weltner’s insisted nonetheless that had it not been for the moral issue, he would have stayed in the race, whatever the odds.

Other friends, even while sympathizing with his dilemma, had their doubts about the wisdom of Weltner’s move. “My position,” said Georgia Congressman James Mackay, a fellow liberal and political ally of Weltner, “is that if there ever was a time to fight for rational leadership in Georgia, it’s now.” Therefore Mackay decided to stay in the fight.