Aurelius Scott (center, hand upraised), 45, tells the Fulton County Democratic Executive Committee in Atlanta, Georgia, that he will withdraw from the race for county coroner, Oct. 11, 1946. Clarence J. Thompson, one of the other candidates for coroner, stands at right. AP file photoOct, 1946, Atlanta, Georgia – Aurelius S. Scott was running for the seat of Fulton County Coroner and to be Georgia’s first Black office holder since reconstruction as one might predict this wasn’t looked upon favorably by the White establishment, especially of the Democratic party and he was running as a Democrat.
In the first round of polling and party voting Scott had done well, so in early October the party placed the word “NEGRO” right behind his name on the ballot. Scott knew this was probably going to kill his chances, so he tried to find ways to remove that and found that there was no way to block it.
Scott resented this greatly. He was a college professor and a member of what was likely the most prominent African American family in Georgia. His brother W.A. Scott had founded the Atlanta World as a weekly Black newspaper in 1928 and with some courageous planning and investment, which it is reported shocked everyone who knew him; he grew the World into a daily by 1932. Perhaps even more astonishing was that he had created a syndicate of 50 newspapers, mostly weekly but with some three times weekly.
W.A. Scott created a lot of enemies while doing this, and since he was quite a philanderer as well with three ex-wives and living with a new woman. He was shot to death on January 30, 1934. His murder was never solved. W. A. Scott’s will was a tangled mess of bequests to his family. He did leave controlling interest in the newspaper syndicate to his brother C.A. Scott with ten percent to his mother. Then he left, without writing percentages out, the rest of the syndicate to his other brothers.
Aurelius Scott, the now oldest brother, didn’t like this and led a legal fight over the will. The controversy came from the fact this will was written on W.A.’s death bed. This fight was drawn out, and Aurelius Scott fought part of his battle in other newspapers that were not part of the syndicate giving interviews about how outsiders were trying to force the family out. It was a rather convoluted and messy fight that Aurelius had no chance of winning since C.A. had always been the editor and chief of the paper.
Eventually C. A. Scott was allowed to take control of the syndicate. He then gave Aurelius reporting and editorial duty at the weekly Birmingham Post. This was the 2nd paper W. A Scott had founded. However, their relationship was still adversarial and in 1938 C. A. fired Aurelius after they fought over Aurelius’ pay and deductions for personal phone calls.
In 1946 another candidate for the coroner George M. Kirkland filed a disqualification petition with Fulton County Clerk. In this he charged that Aurelius Scott had remained a resident in Alabama until a year ago and that he hadn’t been a citizen of Georgia long enough to run for any office.
C. A. Scott had been against his brother from the beginning of the race; he refused to have the paper endorse Aurelius Scott. C.A. Scott had made a formal statement on October 10 that he found his brother’s entry into the race deplorable. “At this point in our political development in the state,” said C. A. Scott. “I do not think it is expedient for Negroes to run for public office at this time.”
C.A. Scott was a conservative businessman who while using the paper to advocate for civil rights and reporting on lynching also was a believer in the assimilation as Booker T. Washington did, he strongly felt that doing as he was and building a strong business would lead to White recognition and equality. Aurelius Scott felt Blacks had to fight for their rights who advocated for radical moves to confront racism.
While the arguments about the legality of Aurelius Scott’s residency, for reasons he never discussed, C. A. used his position both as a leader in the south and within the family to arrange for his brother to be arrested and hospitalized. Whether this was left over resentment from their legal battle or their disagreements on how to achieve equal footing with the Whites, only he knew.
On the 19th of October two attendants from Hubbard General Hospital at home approached Aurelius Scott at the family home, and he fought with them which led to his family having him arrested. Then, rather than facing criminal charges, the family took him to the sanatorium.
The Fulton County Clerk disqualified Aurelius Scott from the race, and this was made official. “Aurelius has been a sick man for several months,” C.A. Scott said in a front-page editorial in the Atlanta World which he shared with the city’s leading White papers the Journal and Constitution.
The newspaper accounts of Late October 1947 are very contradictory about where the family stood on the disqualification. While C.A. never endorsed his brother and made the above statement, he also published a longer statement in every paper in the Scott Syndicate:
“In view of certain incorrect and misleading statements that have appeared in the press relative to the actions and condition of Aurelius S. Scott, his family would like to make the following statement, ‘Aurelius has not been sent or carried away to any asylum as reported. That no member of his family has made any charge about his mental condition. That no member of his family has been authorized to state where he is except to say he is in a private hospital in a nearby city.”
The NAACP, the ACLU, the National Urban League and the Scott family advocated for Scott to not be disqualified, but it made no impact. A well-known Atlanta resident Ed L. Almand won the election and served as coroner for the next ten years.
C.A. Scott continued to run the Atlanta World and the Scott Syndicate until his retirement at age 89. He was always an advocate for Civil Rights but often remained at odds with how to obtain equality. His criticisms of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, such as lunch counter sit-ins, led to a decline in the syndicate and the circulation of the Atlanta World. This combined with more balanced reporting in the major newspaper led to the end of the syndicate in 1994 along with the World becoming a three day a week paper. The paper was sold to Real Times Inc in 2012 which also owns the historic Black Newspapers, the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier, all of which are now online.
Aurelius Scott was back home before Christmas 1946 but never again was a prominent newsmaker or reporter. He remanded an educator in Atlanta where he participated in many charities, particularly Christmas gift drives for children. He died on June 28, 1978, at age 77. He lived with his mother most of those years and did reconcile with family.
Sources:
C. A. Scott profile by Pat York in “Going Strong” copyright 1991 by Pat York and Arcade Publishing.
Sverdlik, Alan. "Atlanta Daily World." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Mar 18, 2021.
Aiello, Thomas. “‘The Shot That Was Heard in Nearly Two Million Negro Homes’: The 1934 Murder of William Alexander Scott.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 100, no. 4 (2016): 366–403
Aiello, Thomas.. “The Grapevine of the Black South: The Scott Newspaper Syndicate in the Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement.” University of Georgia Press
Photograph by Griff Davis
No comments:
Post a Comment