PURITY LEAGUE
- A more serious attack leveled against Conradi,
science professors at FSCW, and even the University of
Florida filled newspapers statewide in 1926 and
remained in the public forum for three years. It began
as a well-meaning attempt on Conradi's part to hire
the best faculty possible for the college. For several
years he had wanted to divide the teaching
responsibilities for philosophy and psychology
and add a program of applied psychology and
educational measurements to the curriculum. When
psychology professor Hayden died, Conradi hired Dr.
Basil Blaine Bassett to teach philosophy and Dr.
Paul F. Finner to teach psychology and direct a
psychology laboratory. However, Conradi and Dodd
found Bassett's performance unsatisfactory and decided
not to reappoint him at the end of the summer session.
In his place they employed Dr. Walter Scott McNutt,
who not only held a Ph.D. but also was an ordained
Presbyterian minister in the Presbytery of North
Florida. Though hired to teach philosophy, McNutt
spent much of his time during his first year on
classes in education and general psychology . Both
Salley in education and Finner in psychology
gave Dodd unfavorable reports of his work.
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- In his second year, McNutt taught only philosophy.
His students complained that "his work in class showed
little or no evidence of organization or certainty of
purpose." He spent much of the class time relating how
learned he was and often made the observation that
certain philosophical writers took their ideas from
him. He seemed oblivious to the fact that those men
had written their books 30 years earlier. By the
second semester, students remarked openly that his
class was a good place in which to bring personal
correspondence up to date. One girl related that on
her parallel reading assignments for one of his
courses she listed only fictitious books and authors,
and he made no objection to her choices. Louise
Richardson reported that she repeatedly rebuked
students for referring to the teacher as "Boob"
McNutt. Dr. Alban Stewart of the Department of Botany
and Bacteriology flatly refused to allow Ruth
Schornherst, one of his major students and his lab
assistant, to take a course with McNutt.
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- Conradi and Dodd cautioned McNutt at the end of
the 1924-25 session that, if he failed to overcome his
classroom difficulties during the next year, they
would not recommend him for reappointment. In March
1926, Conradi advised McNutt that he planned to ask
the Board of Control to drop him from the faculty at
the college. According to the president, McNutt
threatened to "show up some things of the college." He
enlisted the assistance of fellow Presbyterian L. A.
Tatum, a relative newcomer to Tallahassee and an elder
in the very church Conradi and his family attended.
Together McNutt and Tatum mounted a campaign that
dovetailed with anti-evolutionist activity in the
state and nation.
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- In the first half of the 1920s, North Florida
provided fertile ground for the growth of religious
fundamentalism. William Jennings Bryan, spokesperson
for the national movement, made Miami his permanent
residence in 1921. As a moderate fundamentalist, he
provided leadership for conservative, Southern
Protestant Floridians. In furthering the
fundamentalist cause, he sparked a national drive for
laws to protest the teaching of evolution, with
positive results mainly in the South. In Florida, he
worked behind the scenes and managed to get the 1923
Legislature to pass a resolution that declared:
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- It is improper and subversive to the best
interests of the people of this State for any
professor, teacher or instructor in the public
schools and colleges of this State, supported in
whole or in part by public taxation, to teach or
permit to be taught atheism, agnosticism, or to
teach as true Darwinism, or any other hypothesis
that links man in blood relation to any other form
of life.
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- Conradi made no public comment regarding the
resolution. A.A. Murphree [President] at the
University of Florida claimed he agreed with his close
friend Bryan, but he stipulated that he did not object
to the theory of organic evolution, only to its being
taught in a manner that upset religious faith. Because
the resolution lacked legal penalties for
noncompliance, it failed to discourage the teaching of
evolution. Two years later, when anti-evolutionists
attempted to strengthen the proclamation and impose
legal restrictions on those who imparted such heresy,
Bryan had shifted his attention to the Scopes Trial in
Dayton, Tennessee. He died shortly thereafter; the
Florida bill never came out of committee. A Clearwater
realtor and good friend of Bryan's took up his mantle
and, in November 1925, announced the inauguration of a
campaign to ban the teaching of evolution and "German
philosophy" in tax- supported schools. He appealed
first to Governor John Martin and then to State School
Superintendent W. S. Cawthon to either delete all
references to evolution from Florida texts or remove
the offensive books entirely from the schools.
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- Fundamentalists McNutt and Tatum entered the
anti-evolution fray in April 1926. The lame duck
philosophy teacher, while remaining in the background,
gave Tatum information about textbooks and reading
assignments used by several professors, including
Sociology Department Head Raymond Bellamy, whom he
believed had prejudiced Conradi against him. Though
McNutt's name was never publicly connected with any of
Tatum's activities, Conradi and later Murphree became
convinced that he ghost-wrote the script for the
ensuing events. Tatum, armed with half-truths and his
own sense of righteousness, appeared before the Board
of Control and charged that through the use of several
books promoting "German kultur" and others that were,
according to him, satires on American religion, "there
is being taught, and every effort made to implant into
the minds of the students, ideas altogether foreign to
Southern tradition and chivalry." He left the books,
their objectionable passages clearly marked, with the
board members for their perusal.
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- Tatum returned to the next board meeting to make
certain that the members had read the pertinent
sections in the books he had left with them. He drew
their attention to various passages from Freud's
The Interpretation of Dreams that contained
sexual connotations. He then took special care to
point out that Van Teslaar's Psychoanalysis
contained five lectures concerning Freud and
psychoanalysis that had been translated from German
and delivered by a Fellow in Psychology at Clark
University, Conradi's and Bellamy's alma mater. To tie
his crusade to that of the 1925 Florida Legislature,
he quoted Van Teslaar as saying "psychoanalysis
represents but an extension of the theory of
evolution, an application of the principle of
evolution to the study of the mind." He concluded his
presentation with the remark, "Florida State College
for Women is sadly in need of a genuine house
cleaning, including therein removal of its present
president."
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- Conradi replied that none of the professors at the
college taught as true "any theory that is in conflict
with the biblical story of the creation of man." As to
the textbooks declared objectionable, most were "used
in ...state universities, women's colleges,
denominational colleges and universities, and
privately endowed colleges and universities throughout
the country ." The Van Teslaar book, no longer used at
FSCW, consisted of a collection of articles by 12
different writers, only five of which were assigned
reading.
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- The matter simmered for several months with no
overt action until the spring of 1927, when another
proposal to ban teaching of evolution was introduced
in the legislature. Educators in the state's public
and private colleges and universities condemned the
bill. President Murphree of the University of Florida,
a staunch fundamentalist, declared that his faculty
consisted of Christian gentlemen, "no one of whom
would permit the use of books...that would undermine
the moral life of a young man or shake his faith in
the Bible." He opposed the bill on the grounds that it
subjected Florida to ridicule. Hamilton Holt,
president of Rollins College, signified his opposition
and revealed that he had refused a large endowment
offered to his institution when the donor had demanded
that he exclude evolution from the curriculum. Most
state newspapers implied that the proposed legislation
was ill-advised at best. No comment came from the
women's college. The bill passed the House but died in
the Senate Education Committee. Instead, the senate
adopted a politically flexible resolution that
provided for a committee to scrutinize state texts and
report to the Board of Education, which would then
remove all those deemed "detrimental to good morals
and clean thinking." Outraged, the Florida State News
declared that most of the legislators were incompetent
to teach grade school, let alone censor college texts.
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- The turn of events delighted Tatum. Now aided by
several deacons from the local First Baptist Church,
he renewed his attack against evolution. He created
and headed the Florida Purity League, dedicated to
ridding all state libraries of objectionable
publications and all state schools of "dangerous
teachers." In August 1927, Tatum requested that the
two state schools remove certain works from their
libraries, among them Sigmund Freud's General
Introduction to Psychology, H. G. Wells's
Outline of History, D. H. Lawrence's Sons
and Lovers, and George Bernard Shaw's Man and
Superman. Conradi and Murphree refused to remove
the books completely, but agreed to restrict their use
to faculty members and certain students, in order to
decrease the possibility of their abuse ''as a result
of the unfortunate advertising they have received from
Mr. Tatum." The Board of Control and the Board of
Education formally approved the presidents' actions
and endorsed their positions.
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- Tatum continued his attack, determined to open the
public's eyes to the scandalous situation that he
believed existed. He contended that
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- the greater percentage of books in use in
our State institutions of higher learning in the
State of Florida, as well as throughout the nation,
are the product of infidel writers [and]
the same holds equally true as to instructors in
these same institutions.
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- He printed bulletins containing much of the
material to which he objected, and distributed them
statewide. He continued to add works to his book list.
Murphree died unexpectedly in 1927, but before his
death he effectively removed the university from the
fray. In order to make the volumes in question
accessible to professors, who "need to combat the evil
propaganda now being broadcast over the country," he
placed the materials in a locked recess of the
library. According to Carl Van Ness, Archivist at the
University of Florida, many years later when the
library underwent renovation and restoration, the
books were found in their locked closet, and no one
knew why they were there. Conradi initiated his own
investigation, determined to prove what he already
believed, that a disgruntled faculty member had
instigated Tatum's attack. He demanded that every
science professor deliver to his office a list of text
books and required reading assignments used over the
past several years. As the president made accusations
based on misunderstandings and mistaken identities,
the campus atmosphere became decidedly uncomfortable.
Unintentionally illustrating the absurdity of the
prevailing mood, Classics professor Game wrote to
Conradi,
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- I [Game] was calling on Professor
Williams and his family on the evening of Sept. 19.
As my close personal friend of many years,
Professor [Williams] told me that you
[Conradi] had told him [Williams]
that Professor Finner had told you
[Conradi] that Dr. Kendrick had told him
[Finner] that I [Game] had prepared
the list of Library books which had been under
investigation.
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- Game then confronted Dr. Kendrick, who admitted:
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- When I [Kendrick] made the statement
that [one of the deacons] told me you
[Game] had given information to Mr. Tatum,
I was mistaken, for I find upon asking him again
that he says it was Dr. McNutt, and not you at all.
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- Conradi ordered Librarian Louise Richardson to
search the library for any and all books that appeared
on Tatum's list, an exercise that Richardson reported
took an additional 52 hours of her time. Meanwhile,
the president addressed the college Scientific Society
and stressed the essential harmony of science and
religion.
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- Tatum escalated his attack by spreading a rumor
that Bellamy had told his summer school class that
"the white race of the South would in a very few more
generations become imbeciles unless they intermixed
with the [N]egro race." The students
themselves squelched that rumor quickly with a signed
resolution to the effect that such a charge was "an
absolute untruth" and the entire hullabaloo "a gross
misrepresentation of facts as to what is being taught
here at the college." The young ladies further
stipulated that
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- we resent the reflection these charges imply
against our character, our ideals, and our
intelligence as young women, and must here express
our utter surprise that men who claim to be
gentlemen could persist in making such false
charges and casting such reflections upon our
character. It is unthinkable that any group of
young women with character and intelligence would
peaceably accept such teaching as is charged by the
accusers.
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- The Purity League was quickly becoming an
embarrassment to the state. The Florida Presbytery
disassociated itself from Tatum. Conradi and Bellamy
requested, received, and advertised confirmation from
publishing houses that most leading universities used
those texts singled out by the league. The Tallahassee
Chamber of Commerce, not one of the college's most
enthusiastic supporters in the recent past, publicly
stated what others were thinking about the Purity
League:
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- We are not in sympathy with your propaganda
against the Florida State College for Women, Dr.
Edward Conradi and the faculty of the college. It
is our opinion that your propaganda is distasteful
to the vast majority. Not only to the people at
Tallahassee, but to those of the State of Florida
who are at all familiar with it. The students and
faculty of FSCW are many times welcome with us. We
believe them to be a body with ideals and
intelligence of the highest type, and we deplore
the continued attack upon them.
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- Friedreich von Falkenberg, city editor for the
Florida State News, brought the whole sorry episode to
a conclusion with two very sensible suggestions to
Conradi. First, he implied that since the Purity
League was attempting to sell its pamphlets, an action
contrary to copyright laws, if the college conveyed
this information to the publishers of the reference
books cited, those publishers would undoubtedly take
legal action. Second, he conjectured that Tatum could
probably be prosecuted "under the statute which
prohibits the publication and dissemination of obscene
literature," with reference to the excerpts he had
reprinted (out of context) from the books he found
objectionable.
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- In the fall of 1928, the college offered two
courses in Bible and religious education, taught by
Arthur Williams and Dr. J.B. Game. Nothing further was
heard from McNutt, Tatum, or the Purity League in
Florida. However, a column in the Chapel Hill Weekly,
some four years, later opened with "The tirade
launched last week by L. A, Tatum against the
University and the North Carolina College for
Women..."
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