The "Holy Crusade" The specitic strategy behind the deployment of CIO organ- izers across the South in May 1946 reflected a high-level CIO decision to create a tightly centralized operation, firmly under the personal control of the campaign's direc- tor, Van A. Bittner. The jurisdictional problems inherent in a multi-union drive received a simple, straightforward solu- tion: the CIO Southern Organizing Committee's (SOC) At- lanta office would decide after a successful organizing campaign which international union would inherit jurisdic- tion over the new C10 members. The assignment of organiz- ers to states and, at the outset, even to regions of states was similarly centralized in the Atlanta SOC office. The initia- tion fees to be collected with each signed union card would be sent to Atlanta; all petitions for NLRB elections would also be, forwarded there; and finally, all state directors would report directly to Bittner, separate from any contact with their own internationals. To emphasize the subordi- nate role of everyone to Atlanta-and to stress, as well, the priority of organizing over political activity-Bittner in- structed all state directors to resign from any CIO Political Ac- tion Committee to which they might belong. The Southern Organizing Committee, radiating out of Atlanta, was to be a tightly knit, scalpel-clean force of trade union activists, stripped of any preoccupations that did not directly coin- cide with the task of organizing the unorganized. It was to be a "no frills campaign."' Bittner, a veteran of the United Mine Workers, had been appointed to head the Southern campaign by CIO Presi- The "Holy Crusade" 23 dent Philip Murray one month earlier. Murray had also cho- sen George Baldanzi as deputy director of the drive. As it turned out, Bittner served Operation Dixie essentially as a civil servant carrying out the strategic wishes of Philip Mur- ray and the CIO Executive Board. Actual direction of the cam- paign was in the hands of the more energetic Baldanzi. Bittner could perhaps fairly be characterized as something more of a trade union functionary than a labor activist.' Throughout 1946, he was to spend much of his time in Wash- ington and New York. While in the Atlanta headquarters of Operation Dixie, he seemed content to push paper. George Baldanzi ran Operation Dixie. There was an unassailable logic behind Baldanzi's appoint- - ment. From his work in the Dyers' Federation and the TWUA, he was familiar with the many branches of the tex- tile industry. He had also witnessed the deterioration oi the New England textile industry, the union's original base, and had organized Southern textile workers during the war, including the victory at the Dan River and Riverside cot- ton mills in Danville, Virginia, in 1942.j Among other key appointments for Operation Dixie were the men assigned as state directors:In the six textile states, Baldanzi named men who, in the aggregate, consti- tuted an interesting cross section of the labor movement. Named as South Carolina state director was Franz Daniel, a college-trained "labor intellectual" who was experienced, personally engaging, and quite capable. Daniel's counter- part in North Carolina was William Smith. He coupled a cour- teous demeanor with a quiet passion to organize the textile industly. Tennessee's Paul Christopher was a social derno- crat, with associations that placed him a bit to the left of most textile organizers. More than most of the state direc- tors in Operation Dixie, Christopher could work easily with . . both ideological wings of the CIO. The Alabama state direc- tor, Carey Haigler, was more attuned to Washington than to the Southern rank and file, and was notably cautious on the race issue. Virginia's Ernest Pugh was remembered for his caution, and Charles Gillman, the Georgia state direc-24 The "Holy Crusade" tor, was recalled as an unprepossessing and earnest man who had something of the solid citizen about him.$ The state directors set up state offices across the South in May and began assembling the diverse assortment of incom- ing organizers-representing scores of different interna- tional unions-into something approximating working teams. Aware of the Southern habit of reflexive hostility to "outside agitators," Baldanzi decreed that Operation Dixie would be staffed largely by Soutl~erners and, if ~ossible, vet- erans of World War 11. Internationals were so instructed in advance. As a result of his wartime organizing experiences in the South, Baldanzi wished to insulate Operation Dixie as much as possible from any charge that the C10 was radi- cal, un-American, or alien to the Southern way of life. Like Bittner and TWA generally, Baldanzi was safely in- sulated from the ClO's left wing and was, presumably, invul- nerable to red-baiting-a charge that was almost certain to be leveled at any CIO campaign. In the case of Operation Dixie, however, that accusation came even more quickly than anyone had expected, and frbm a quarter that was close to home. The assignment of state directors and organiz- ing teams was overshadowed in the public press by the reappearance of George Googe, the AFL's Southern representative, who reminded Southern newspaper editors of the red threat represented by Operation Dixie. The ClO's effolt, he said, was in the hands of "broken down lefi- wingers." Indeed the AFL went beyond press announce- ments. Alarmed by Operation Dixie, the AFL convened no fewer than 3,300 delegates from twelve Southern states to launch its own Southern campaign in May 1946. AFL presi- dent William Green sounded the tone that would dominate much of AFL rhetoric throughout the life of Operation Dixie: "Neither reactionary employers nor Communists in the CIO can stop the campaign of the American Federation of Labor to enroll 1,000,000 unorganized Southern workers in the next twelve months." Green advised Southern indus- trialists: "Grow and cooperate with us or fight for your life against Communist forces."' George Meany joined in the vituperation by calling the The "Holy Crusade" 25 CIO's National Executive Board "the devoted followers of Moscow." "The