Clyde R. Hoey

Hoey (HOO-ee)[1] was born to Captain Samuel Alberta Hoey, a Confederate States Army officer, and Mary Charlotte Roark.[2][3] He attended school until age eleven. He worked on his family's farm and bought a weekly newspaper when he was 16. He was elected to the state legislature when he was twenty. He served as a state representative and then as a state senator.[4] He was elected in a special election to the United States House of Representatives to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Edwin Y. Webb who had accepted a federal judgeship. He defeated a Republican who opposed United States support for the League of Nations.[5] He served from 1919 to 1921.[3] He prosecuted the leaders of the 1929 Loray Mill strike for the murder of the Gastonia police chief.[6]

He was the 59th governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1937 to 1941. In July 1937, he pardoned Luke Lea, a Tennessee politician and former U.S. senator, who had been paroled a year earlier.[7] His appointment of a black man to the board of trustees of a black college set a precedent.[8] Following the 1938 Gaines Supreme Court decision on racial segregation in higher education, he asked the North Carolina legislature to provide for segregated higher education for blacks. Though opposed to integrated education, he said that the people of the state "do believe in equality of opportunity in their respective fields of service" and that "the white race cannot afford to do less than simple justice to the Negro."[9] In a speech he gave before members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Hoey stated "Niggers are not entitled to civil rights and will never get them. There were no niggers on the Mayflower."[10]

In 1940, Hoey quietly opposed a third term for FDR.[11] When he believed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt would not seek a third term, Hoey rejected the favorite son role for which the state legislature had recommended him and supported the presidential candidacy of Secretary of State Cordell Hull.[12]

Hoey won election to the U.S. Senate in 1944.[13] He served from 1945 until his death in 1954.

Hoey's politics were those of a conservative Democrat. He opposed Harry S. Truman's attempt to make the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) permanent. He promised to filibuster the effort as an attack on "the rights of every businessman in America."[14] He supported the President's threats against striking railroad workers in December 1946.[15] In the 1948 election, he supported Truman over the radical alternative Strom Thurmond.[16]

He supported President Truman's refusal to allow Congress access to records of government employees' loyalty investigations.[4]

In 1950, Hoey opposed statehood for Hawaii because he thought it "inconceivable" to allow a territory with "only a small percentage of white people" to become a state. He advocated independence for Hawaii and cited U.S. treatment of Cuba and the Philippines as precedents.[17]

From 1949 to 1952 he headed the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments. He conducted hearings into the role of "five percenters", government influence peddlers. In 1950 he chaired an investigation that resulted in a report, known as the Hoey Report, released in December of that year that said all of the government's intelligence agencies "are in complete agreement that sex perverts in Government constitute security risks.".[18] Douglas Charles characterizes Hoey's involvement in the committee as reluctant, due to fears that the issue could become hyperbolic, leaving chief counsel Francis Flanagan as the actual driving force behind the Hoey Report [19] The 1957 Crittenden Report, a review by the U.S. Navy, criticized it: "No intelligence agency, as far as can be learned, adduced any factual data before that committee with which to support these opinions."[20]

Hoey married Bessie Gardner, sister of North Carolina Governor O. Max Gardner. They had three children. His wife died in 1942.[4] He was a lifelong member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and taught Sunday school classes.[21] He was also a member of the Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Woodmen of the World, and the Knights of Pythias.[21]

Hoey died at his desk in his Washington, D.C., office.[4] Sam Ervin was appointed to his seat in June 1954.

In 1974, journalist Jonathan Daniels assessed Hoey's politics as "always satisfactory to conservative interests without being abrasive to New Dealers."[22]

Three university buildings in North Carolina were named for Hoey, but have been renamed. The first renaming was in July 2019, when, given Hoey's history of segregationist advocacy and use of racist language in a public address, his name was removed from North Carolina Central University's administration building and replaced with that of the university's African-American founder, James E. Shepard.[23] Hoey Hall, a dormitory at Appalachian State University,[24] and Hoey Auditorium, on the campus of Western Carolina University ,[25] were renamed in June 2020, as part of the name changes due to the George Floyd protests. According to a unanimous vote of the trustees of Western Carolina, "Hoey's espoused racist views are contrary to this university's core values of diversity and equality."[25]

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–99)

• United States Congress. "Clyde R. Hoey (id: H000679)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Media related to Clyde R. Hoey at Wikimedia Commons