Walter D. Cocking

1937-1941

Walter Dewey Cocking became Dean of Education in 1937 and Dean Meadows became the head of the newly authorized graduate program in the College of Education. Cocking was destined to become the central figure in one of the most politically explosive events in the history of the University of Georgia.

Cocking was a native of Iowa and attended a one-room country school as a child. In 1913, he received an A.B. degree from Des Moines College. He became a district superintendent of schools before entering World War I as an artillery lieutenant. From 1923-26, he was an assistant superintendent in charge of junior high schools in San Antonio. While there, he took graduate courses as the University of Texas. He went to St. Louis as a curriculum director in 1926 and stayed for two years. He did graduate work at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1928. From 1928-33, he taught educational administration courses as George Peabody College of Teachers in Nashville. In 1933, he became the Tennessee Commissioner of Education. He worked in Washington, D.C., as Chief Specialist in School Administration on the President’s Advisory Commission on Education and as a consultant with the TVA before coming to the University of Georgia. He also served as a member of the Science Committee of the National Resources Board. The College’s emphasis on that time on curriculum development can be seen in Cocking’s selection. He was the author of a noted book, Administrative Procedures in Curriculum Making.

In 1940, the university graduated the first doctoral students in its 155-year-history, two were from the College of Education. Dean Cocking was one of the students’ major professor. Unfortunately, Thomas Jackson Woofter did not live to see this College he helped to found graduate doctoral students. He died in 1938.

Cocking was brought in by President Caldwell to reform the College of Education. Of greatest concern was that too few faculty members held doctorates and too many faculty had graduated from Georgia schools.

It appears that Cocking went at the task of reformation without enlisting the help and cooperation of most of the faculty and leaders in the College that he was trying to reform. In very early moves, he had the former Acting Dean moved to the Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. It was rumored in the College that he was trying to centralize power.

But it was ill will between Dean Cocking and Sylla Hamilton, a teacher in the Demonstration School, that led to one of the most tumultuous times in the College. Mrs. Hamilton was terminated at the request of the director of the Demonstration School in the spring of 1940. Whether she was let go because she opposed Cocking is not clear. She was then hired in the College of Business Administration as Secretary of the Institute for the Study of Georgia Problems.

In the fall of 1940, she complained to Governor Talmadge that in a faculty meeting in the spring of 1939 Cocking had talked of plans for a practice teaching school in which blacks and whites would attend together. Since blacks and whites were segregated by law in Georgia, to advocate that the two races attend school together was to advocate breaking the law. It was also to incur the wrath of some of the most powerful people in the state and some of the most violence-prone racists.

Hamilton gave her deposition on June 1, 1941, and it was backed up by Frank “Jack” Frost, who was on the Physical Education faculty in the College. Frost had been a baseball pitcher of considerable renown at the university and was a very influential faculty member. But other faculty members said that Cocking had only made some casual remark about the possibility of blacks and whites going to school together in response to a question about setting up an experiment classroom.

But in 1941 Georgia, the accusation made headlines. Meanwhile, Marvin S. Pittman, President of the Georgia Teachers College (formerly South Georgia Teachers College) at Statesboro, also came under fire because, in Talmadge’s terms, he had become involved in partisan political activity. In reality, he had offended some friends of the governor and had demoted some members of the faculty who took the matter of their demotion to the governor.

The Regents voted not to renew the contract of Pittman. Then the governor demanded that the Regents fire Cocking. They did so in a vote of 8 to 4. But President Caldwell, upon learning that Dean Cocking’s contract would not be renewed, announced that he would resign unless Cocking were given a hearing before the Regents. Caldwell was highly respected and popular throughout the university and state. The Regents knew that his resignation would precipitate a crisis in the university, so a hearing was scheduled to be held in the governor’s office.

The hearing lasted four hours and only Cocking’s case was discussed. The lone bit of evidence introduced against the educator was Sylla Hamilton’s affidavit charging him with race-mixing. Numerous other witnesses, including 16 members of the university’s College of Education faculty and the presidents of Agnes Scott, Emory and UGA, testified in Cocking’s behalf. The dearth of damning evidence made it difficult for some regents to conform Cocking’s dismissal and the board voted 8 to 7 to rehire him.

But the governor did not give up so easily. He asked for the resignations of five members of the Board. Two did resign; one who did not was voted out in executive session. The “restructured“ Board of Regents refused to issue contracts to Cocking and Pittman.

And it did not stop there. In July 1941, the Regents refused to renew the contracts of J. Curtis Dixon, Vice-Chancellor of the University System, and Professor E.E. Davis of the State College of Agriculture, based on the allegation that they had connections with the Rosenwald Fund, which was alleged to have sought equality.

Governor Talmadge did not stop there. He had been told that part of Cocking’s instructions from Caldwell was to reduce the percentage of Georgia-educated faculty members in the College to give it a less parochial character. Talmadge countered by threatening a purge of non-native Georgians from employment in the state’s colleges and the university; he stated that there were not enough native-born Georgians employed in higher education. He ordered an investigation and found that half of the university system’s employees were native Georgians.

Before his influence was curbed, the governor had ended the employment of Cocking and nine other people and had some 23 textbooks banned because he felt they were subversive.

Reaction was swift. A special committee of the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools was formed to investigate charges of political interference in the University System. The University System could be suspended or at least put under probation.

While that investigation continued, the Association of American Universities removed the names of the University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology from its list of approved institutions, meaning that graduates of Georgia and Georgia Tech would not be acceptable to the graduate schools of members in good standing of the AAU.

When the Southern University Conference dropped the university from its membership in October 1941, about 1,500 UGA students initiated a “riotous demonstration” against Governor Talmadge, in which he was hanged in effigy. The protests grew as students around the state realized a suspension by the Southern Association of Colleges would not just affect UGA, but all 16 other institutions in the state. On Dec. 4, 1941, the Southern Association of Colleges dropped the long-dreaded bombshell. Ten of Georgia’s schools would not be accredited by the association, including UGA and Georgia Tech, because of “unprecedented and unjustifiable political interference.”

The status of the University System totally dominated the election of 1942 and led to Talmadge’s defeat by Attorney General Ellis Arnall who campaigned on restoring accreditation of Georgia’s universities.

When Arnall took office, he created a new Board of Regents which restored Marvin Pittman as President of Georgia State Teachers College at Statesboro. Cocking was offered his job back as Dean of Education, but he declined, having already accepted a job with the federal government and who went on to distinguished career as a professor and lecturer in half a dozen universities.

In 1943, the University System was restored to full accreditation and the crisis was over. The governance of the University System had been fundamentally changed but damage had been done that was to affect higher education in the state for years.

The bills reorganizing the Board of regents were proposed as amendments to the Georgia State Constitution. They were adopted. The terms of the members were extended to seven years. When a Regent could serve out a full term, the governor would appoint a replacement, but the governor was not to serve on the board as ex officio member as had been the case.