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Walter Brown Papers

 Collection
Identifier: Mss-0243

Scope and Content Note

The Walter J. Brown Papers consists of advertisements, articles, artifacts, audio-visual materials, campaign materials, cartoons, clippings, correspondence, a day book, editorials, executive orders, galley proofs, journals, laws and legal documents, a ledger, legislative bills, lists, maps, minutes, petitions, postcards, photographs, publications, reports, scrapbooks, speeches, telegrams, transcripts, and other items.

Materials in this collection cover the period 1879-1995, with the bulk of the papers dating from 1915-1988.

The papers are arranged alphabetically by folder title. Artifacts, photographs and oversize items have been placed in artifacts, photographs and oversize storage. Publications by Tom Watson have been cataloged and put in the book collection.

The Walter J. Brown Papers document his media career in and his government service with the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion during World War II and with the U.S. Department of State. There is also material relating to his personal life; his interest and involvement in politics; his role in the economic development of Spartanburg, SC; and the writing of his two books on J. J. Brown/Tom Watson and James F. Byrnes.

Of particular interest to researchers are the journals Brown kept between April 1943 and November 1945. They include information on the day-to-day activities the State Department and of OWMR, including economic statistics such as the costs of various products; politics, especially the potential vice presidential candidacy of James F. Byrnes in 1944; and the London and Potsdam Conferences. The latter are supplemented by notes taken at both conferences filed with the journals and journal extracts in folders relating to Byrnes. There are also two sets of transcripts, denoted as "A" and "B," that were probably created in the 1970's or early 1980's. These are less word-for-word transcriptions of the journals than re-workings of them, probably for use in James F. Byrnes of South Carolina: A Remembrance. Transcript "B" tends to be a little more detailed than transcript "A."

The materials concerning his books J. J. Brown and Thomas E. Watson-Georgia Politics 1912-1928 and James F. Byrnes of South Carolina: A Remembrance include both research material and, in the case of James F. Byrnes, material resulting from their work together and their long friendship. There is a good deal of correspondence between Brown and Byrnes in the collection and numerous files relating to Byrnes' career. The State Department-related files include those for the London and Potsdam Conferences, which have the journal extracts alluded to above. Material relating to his father J. J. Brown includes the 1923 Report of Special Committee Investigating the Dept. of Ag. and J. J. Brown, while that for U.S. Congressman and Senator Tom Watson includes material on his publishing company (including a day book); copies of The Jeffersonian for 1915 and 1917 on the Leo Frank case, anti-Catholicism, and opposition to American entry into World War I; and the report of his 1916 trial on obscenity charges. There is also correspondence concerning the his research and to the publication of the two books, galleys (circa 1992) for the Byrnes book, a 1986 manuscript for the Brown/Watson book, a 1982 manuscript that contains both books, and computer discs for the 1986 versions of both books.

Related to Brown's interest in Watson was his interest in Brown's home, Hickory Hill and by extension the town of Thomson, Georgia. There is correspondence concerning the possibility of Brown renting Hickory Hill and his successful 1947 purchase of the property. Additional correspondence deals with the running of the Hickory Hill dairy and farms, while other material concerns its eventual designation as a historic site.

He was also worked for, and was interested in, the career of Alabama politician J. Thomas Heflin. Brown helped arrange Heflin's lecture tours, although almost all of the correspondence in the collection is to and from Heflin's secretary, J. L. Thornton. The papers contain posters and other advertisements for Heflin's lecture tours. Brown also reported on J. Thomas Heflin's 1930 Senate campaign and in addition to his stories there are copies of campaign advertisements and issues of a local newspaper, the Abbeville (Alabama) Independent. A small amount of research material on Heflin can be found in the collection as well.

There is extensive documentation of Brown's interest and involvement in politics in the papers. In addition to political correspondence files and others relating to elections. political figures, and presidential inaugurations, there are materials relating to political party conventions Brown attended, especially the Democratic National Conventions of 1944, 1948, 1956, 1976, and 1988 and the Republican National Conventions of 1976 and 1988. There is little that documents the election of 1960, however. Brown also acted as a public relations consultant to Burnet Maybank's 1941 Senatorial campaign; Strom Thurmond's 1948 Presidential campaign and his 1950 and 1954 Senatorial campaigns; and Donald Russell's 1958 gubernatorial campaign. All of these campaigns are fully documented in the collection.

Brown was involved in opposing the relocation I-85 around Spartanburg in the 1980's because he was convinced it would have a detrimental economic impact on the city. The collection reflects his efforts to prevent the relocation, containing correspondence with U.S. Congressman Carroll Campbell (4th District), U.S. Senators Ernest Hollings and Strom Thurmond, the State Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and others. Other materials relating to this topic include engineering reports, maps, and photographs.

A few files document his participation in the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce and other economic development efforts. There are also a small number of items relating to Spartan Communications and WSPA, including some material that may have been used to help write his on-air editorials as well as files concerning his term as president of the South Carolina Broadcasting Association. A number of letters in the collection refer to the long legal fight to build a broadcasting tower on Hogback Mountain for WSPA.

Brown visited to various countries in Asia, the Caribbean Europe, and North and South America and the papers contain brochures, correspondence, itineraries, maps, and other items relating to his travel. Also included are editorials on some of the places he visited. Those relating to his visit to the Soviet Union in 1969 became the article A Visit Behind the Iron Curtain, which is also in the collection.

The collection contains a number of scrapbooks, which have a card file index. They include articles by Brown and his "Around Washington" and "Sense and Nonsense Along the Potomac" columns, as well as covering such topics as anti-Catholicism, especially in regard to public schools; James F. Byrnes; civil rights and segregation; Georgia politics; J. Thomas Heflin; Burnet R. Maybank; national politics, especially the 1948 presidential campaign; OWMR and the war effort; Donald Russell's 1958 gubernatorial campaign; prominent South Carolinians in Washington, D.C., including Leonore Fuller, Byrnes' sister; South Carolina politics; and Strom Thurmond's 1954 write-in campaign for the Senate. One of the scrapbooks appears to have also served as a ledger book for Tom Watson's Jeffersonian Publishing Company.

The photographs in the papers are chiefly of Brown, his family and the Watson family, James F. Byrnes, Hickory Hill, I-85 between Atlanta, GA and Spartanburg, SC and those taken during the Potsdam Conference. There are also photographs of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon as well as historic photographs and postcards of Thomson, GA. Other audio-visual materials include sound recordings of political advertisements, political commentary, and of eulogies given at the funeral of James F. Byrnes. Finally, there a number of artifacts such as German coins, convention delegate badges and press credentials, a patch, a plaque, political buttons, tokens, and small pieces of rubble from Berchtesgaden, Germany in the collection.

Other correspondents or other authors represented in the collection include Turner Catledge, executive editor of the New York Times; lawyers Robert Figg and C. C. Wyche; journalist Porter McKeever; businessman Roger Peace; and Richard B. Russell, Jr., U.S. Senator from Georgia. There is also correspondence with members of the Brown family, especially with his father, John Judson Brown and his brother Sylvester V. Brown.

The bulk of the material relating to Spartan Communications and other media-related enterprises is at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. The Walter J. Brown Media Archives is at the University of Georgia.

Dates

  • 1879 - 1995
  • 1915 - 1992

Creator

Biographical Note

Walter Johnson Brown was born on July 25, 1903 in Bowman, Georgia, the son of J. J. (John Judson) (1865-1953) and Captora Ginn Brown (1866-1956). He was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology High School, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. On April 12, 1925 he married Georgia Watson Lee (died 1935), a granddaughter of Thomas E. Watson. They had one son, Thomas Watson Brown (1933-2007). He then married Ruth Taylor (1916-1990), the daughter of Spartanburg Advertising Company President Alfred Brandon Taylor and Ruth King Taylor, on July 3, 1941. They divorced in 1966 after having one son, James Byrnes Brown (born 1947). In 1970 he married Ann Revell Chadeayne Tindale.

He worked for his father in the Georgia Department of Agriculture from 1925 until 1927, when he and his wife moved to Thomson, Georgia and started a mail-order book business and a monthly publication called The Watsonian. He also helped arrange lecture tours for Senator Thomas Heflin of Alabama and reported on the Senator's unsuccessful 1930 re-election campaign. After covering the 1928 presidential campaign for James S. Vance's Washington, D.C.-based The Fellowship Forum Brown moved to Washington in 1929 to work for Vance. The following year, with some help from Heflin and his friends, he started his own news bureau that served newspapers in North and South Carolina. In the 1930's he began a life-long friendship with James F. Byrnes, then a U.S. Senator.

In 1940 Brown moved to Spartanburg, SC to become the Vice President and General Manager of the Spartanburg Advertising Company, which owned radio station WORD. Later that same year the Company bought WSPA, which had begun broadcasting in 1930 as the first commercial radio station in South Carolina. He took a leave of absence from the Company in 1943 at the request of James F. Byrnes, who had resigned from the Supreme Court to become director of the Office of Economic Stabilization (which became the Office of War Mobilization and later the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion). He served as Assistant to the Director until April 1945, when he returned to Spartanburg. However, when Byrnes became Secretary of State in July 1945 Brown returned to Washington and served as Special Assistant to the Secretary. He attended the Potsdam Conference and the Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in London. Brown resigned from the State Department in November 1945 and returned to Spartanburg and the Spartanburg Advertising Company.

Brown organized Georgia-Carolina Broadcasting Company in 1945 and served as its president. The Company operated WTNT in Augusta, Georgia, which began broadcasting in 1947. He started the Hickory Hill Broadcasting Company in 1947 and built station WTWA in Thomson. Meanwhile the Spartanburg Advertising Company had been forced to relinquish WORD in 1944 because of the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) "duopoly" rule forbidding a company from owning more than one station in a market. The Liberty Life Insurance Company bought WSPA in 1947. Brown then organized the Spartan Radiocasting Company and purchased WORD.

In 1951 Brown orchestrated a successful campaign to have the FCC assign VHF Channel 7 to Spartanburg. His company then petitioned the FCC for a license to operate WORD-TV. WSPA filed its own competing request. Brown then bought WSPA in 1953. The construction of a broadcasting tower on Hogback Mountain for the new television station led to a protracted legal fight with television interests in Anderson and Greenville that was not resolved in WSPA's favor until 1963. However, WSPA was able to begin broadcasting in 1956 using a temporary transmitter on Paris Mountain. WSPA-FM radio began broadcasting in stereo in 1961, the first in the Southeast to do so, and WSPA-TV started broadcasting in color in 1965, the first TV station in South Carolina "to originate local color programming." Brown was appointed Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Spartan Radiocasting Company in 1988. The business changed its name to Spartan Communications, Inc. in 1995.

He was a member of the Rotary Club and served as president of the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce and the South Carolina Broadcasters Association. Brown was a trustee of both the Spartanburg County Foundation and Converse College. He was also an leader in the unsuccessful effort to prevent the relocation of Interstate 85 north of the city of Spartanburg in 1983-1984. Brown was inducted into the South Carolina Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1975 and was awarded the Neville Holcombe Distinguished Award by the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce in 1995. A briefing center at the Chamber of Commerce is named for him. He was the author of two books: J. J. Brown and Thomas E. Watson-Georgia Politics 1912-1928 (1989) and James F. Byrnes of South Carolina: A Remembrance (1992).

Walter J. Brown died on November 17, 1995 in Spartanburg, South Carolina and was buried in Thomson, Georgia.

Extent

41.25 Cubic Feet (consisting of 903 folders, 6 index card boxes, 57 volumes, 1,500 photographs, 6 oversize photographs, 37 slides, 18 sound discs, 22 reel-to-reel audio tapes, 5 audio cassette tapes, 5 rolls of microfilm, 153 oversize items, 24 8-inch computer discs, and 53 artifacts)

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

The Walter J. Brown Papers document his career as a reporter, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion during World War II, Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of State, and owner of Spartan Communications (especially WSPA-Radio and WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, SC). There is also material relating to his personal life, particularly his interest in the Hickory Hill estate of Tom Watson; his involvement in politics, particularly with James F. Byrnes, J. Thomas Heflin, Burnet Maybank, Donald Russell, and Strom Thurmond; his role in the economic development of Spartanburg, SC; and the writing of his two books, J. J. Brown and Thomas E. Watson-Georgia Politics 1912-1928 and James F. Byrnes of South Carolina: A Remembrance.

Provenance

Spartan Communications (WSPA) in accessions 99-130 and 00-02. Additional material acquired from Tad Brown in accessions 08-37 and 08-50.

Related Material

Mss 90, James F. Byrnes Papers; SCL-MS-14431 Walter Johnson Brown Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC: SCPL-2019-009 Spartan Communications, Inc. Records, Spartanburg County Public Libraries, Spartanburg, SC; Collection #00093 John Judson Brown Papers and Collection #00755 Thomas E. Watson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.

Separated Material

The following materials were separated from the collection and cataloged for Special Collections:

Watson, Thomas E. Roman portraits. Press of the Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia: 1912

Watson, Thomas E. The House of Hapsburg: the reigning Austrian dynasty. Press of the Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia: 1915

Watson, Thomas E. Speech against the conscription act delivered by Thomas E. Watson at Thomson, GA. June 23, 1917, reprinted from Watson's magazine. Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia: 1917

Watson, Thomas E. Is there a Roman Catholic peril? Tom Watson Book Company, Inc., Thomson, Georgia: 1927

Watson, Thomas E. Fourth degree oath of the Knights of Columbus, fifth edition. Tom Watson Book Company, Inc., Thomson, Georgia: 1928

Watson, Thomas E. Italian Pope's campaign against the constitutional rights of American citizens, fourth edition. Tom Watson Book Company, Inc., Thomson, Georgia: 1928

Watson, Thomas E. Roman Catholic Church: its law and literature, third edition. Tom Watson Book Company, Inc., Thomson, Georgia: 1928

Watson's Jeffersonian magazine and Taylor-Trotwood magazine, Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia, volume 12, number 4, February 1911

Watson's magazine, Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia, volume 12, number 5, March 1916

Watson's magazine, Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia, volume 12, number 6, April 1916

Watson's magazine, Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia, volume 13, number 3, July 1916

Watson's magazine, Jeffersonian Publishing Company, Thomson, Georgia, volume 13, number 4, August 1916

Bibliography

The Legacy, volume 7, Issue 1 (April 2007), pg. 2."Register of the Walter Johnson Brown Papers," South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, http://www.sc.edu/library/socar/mnscrpts/brownwj.pdfBiographical sketch from 1982 Silver Medal Award brochure from the Advertising Federation of Greenville, Box 30, Folder 1, Mss 243, Walter J. Brown Papers, Special Collections, Clemson University Libraries, Clemson, SC.

General Physical Description note

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Processing Information

Processing, arrangement, and microfilming of the collection was supervised from 2000-2002 by Melissa Finley. James Cross supervised additional processing from 2003-2008. James Cross prepared the register in 2008-2009. Processing assistance was provided by student assistants Elizabeth Bearfield, Michael Bufano, Swati Deo, Nikki Garnto, Jessica Hart, Jessica Keaton, Venkatesh Seetharam, Amanda Shepard, Brett Sowell, and Sowjanya Syamala.

The conversion of this finding aid to Encoded Archival Description format was made possible with a grant from the South Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board in 2009-2010. The finding aid was prepared for encoding by Virengia Houston.

Title
Walter Brown Papers
Status
Completed
Date
2010 July 19
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Repository Details

Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository

Contact:
230 Kappa St.
Clemson SC 29634 U.S.A. US