The Dangerous Demagogue: Part I

Milford, September 1954: A 34-year-old grifter with a racist resolve wanders into town. He’s got an idea. He’s a man beyond bounds, a man with a criminal bent that ranges from fraud to homicide. Perhaps that helps to explain his latest scam idea: arouse segregationists, stir up trouble and launch a counteroffensive to implementing Brown v. Board of Education’s desegregation mandate in Delaware. The landmark ruling was only four months old, and Gov. J. Caleb Boggs had just instructed the state Board of Education to develop a plan to “carry out the mandates of the United States Supreme Court decision as expeditiously as possible.” By extreme contrast, the racist oppositional plan was to incite agitation; the grifter also planned to garner money in the process. 

Be it for profit or prejudice (or both), Bryant William Bowles, Jr. (1920-97) ventured to Milford to instigate racial unrest: “No matter if this means bloodshed, we will see it through, no matter what the consequences.” Those were his words that September. They came at a time when Delaware’s school boards franticly struggled to implement the Warren court’s Brown decree.

Bryant Bowles (tall and well-dressed) was biased, greedy, bold, crafty and often on the run. Whether it be in Tampa, Fla., or Bel Air, Md., or elsewhere, the law chased the Florida Panhandle native for assorted kinds of swindling. According to the Wilmington Morning News (Sept. 28, 1954): “At one point, Baltimore police reported six lawsuits pending against Bowles and 13 for unpaid debts.” The former Marine was once charged with beating and kicking a Black postman in Washington, D.C., though that charge was, for whatever reason, dropped.

Bowles’ first visit to Delaware was in late December of 1953. He was busy establishing a Dover-based organization. Ever savvy to the possibilities of grifter gains when aligned with racial animus, he officially formed and registered a nonprofit corporation to give a louder voice to segregationists. The group was named the National Association for the Advancement of White People Inc. Some 44 years after W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell and others founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Bowles wanted his new group to be a counterforce. He set his plan in motion only days after the Brown case had been reargued in the Supreme Court. 

Whereas the NAACP was established to combat racial injustice (especially in the aftermath of the Springfield race riot of 1908), the NAAWP was organized to preserve racial injustice (especially given the prospect of a NAACP victory in Brown). As its first president, Bowles (then a resident of Hyattsville, Md.) declared its incorporated purposes in cunning yet racist ways, including the following:

• “To ... formulate programs of action designed to benefit [certain] communities and neighborhoods in the United States of America, and to insure [sic] stable property values, and promote proper relationships among races ..., [and]
• To protect areas occupied by certain races against encroachment on the part of other races or members of other races ...”

Then there was the pledge made in Article 4 of its charter: “The corporation ... and its business, objects and purposes shall not be conducted directly or indirectly for pecuniary profit.” That was a dubious declaration, one he surely intended to breach.    

Bowles (a trim cult-like figure clad in sharp suits with swanky ties) chartered his course with rallies packed with unyielding people eager to oppose racial integration. He knew how to fire up a crowd, both in speech and with theatrics. His well-orchestrated plan was supported by, among others, prominent Milford businessmen. The plan was to oppose Gov. Boggs’ post-Brown desegregation efforts that were to be enforced by Attorney General H. Albert Young and local school boards. As Bowles’ oppositional efforts and school boycott campaigns garnered momentum, his cash coffers also filled up.  

Sunday, Sept. 26, 1954 (temperature around 70): It was the day before Milford High School was to reopen. Upward to 5,000 or so people gathered at the Harrington Airport (west of Milford) for a Bowles-backed NAAWP rally. “You certainly have the right to protect your child by keeping it at home if you are afraid there’s going to be violence stirred up by the opposition.” He then held up his 3-year-old girl (Denise) and brazenly proclaimed: “Do you think I’ll ever let my little girl go to school with Negroes? I certainly will not.”

A bad moon was rising over Milford and elsewhere. Just how much its gravitational pull would upset the balance of the quest for equality remained to be seen. To be continued.