Panel discusses Southern politicians
Southern politics are historically notable for their big personalities, and three men who have made careers of chronicling those personalities shared their stories Tuesday evening.
Political biographers Jack Bass, Jack Roper and David Ballentine each gave a lecture on their biographical findings and opened up to the audience about studying prominent Southern politicians in the “Art of Political Biography” panel discussion.
After graduating from USC, Bass pursued a career in journalism, where he said he quickly developed an interest in former long-time U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond.
He has written two biographies about Thurmond in which he describes how the senator held political longevity through four characteristics: never keeping an enemy, political boldness, willingness to take strong stances on controversial issues and reliable constituent service.
Bass described the late senator as the “liberal governor of South Carolina” from Edgefield, which he said may be “the most Southern place on earth.”
Following Bass was Roper, whose anecdotal style of speaking grabbed the audience’s attention and gave them a look into the lives of U.S. Rep. William Jennings Bryan Dorn and social activist Benjamin Mays.
A South Carolina native and a USC alumnus, Roper now holds the position of Richardson Professor of American History at Virginia’s Emory and Henry College.
Roper focused on the idea that “a biographer is much like a parent.” He said biographers simply watch their subjects, knowing that they are going to do something stupid. All a biographer can do is sit back and record everything his subject does as accurately as possible and wait for the subject to learn the lesson that comes out of making the mistake, Roper said.
Roper told anecdotes from his career and biography subjects, referring to each story as a “scene” in the lives of the men he has been studying for so many years.
Ballentine spoke about his work on former U.S. Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings.
Ballentine said he also has spent a significant amount of time working on stories from the 2008 presidential election. The 24-year-old said he has “spent too long on the 2008 election” and it has literally “taken up 1/4 of (his) life.”
He took an interest in American history through the courses he took during his undergraduate years at Cambridge. Now a doctoral candidate at Cambridge, Ballentine said he hopes to publish his dissertation on Hollings in the near future, having worked on it for three years now.
Ballentine said no one has published a complete biography of Hollings — for whom USC’s special collections library is named — which is why Ballentine chose him for the dissertation. Hollings served for 38 years as a Democratic U.S. senator from South Carolina.