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Slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was the most influential
southerner of the 20th century.
That's the view of a panel of distinguished experts from the region, including
Carolina sociologist John Shelton Reed, humorist Roy Blount Jr. and Pulitzer
Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette.
Other unanimous panel choices were writer William Faulkner, singer Elvis
Presley, preacher Billy Graham, former President Jimmy Carter and jazz great
Louis Armstrong.
Rounding out the top 10 were novelist Margaret Mitchell, former President
Lyndon Johnson, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace and former President Woodrow
Wilson.
"The panel was composed of men and women who had written or thought about the
South, chosen to be broadly representative of professional fields and
sub-regions," wrote Reed in the spring issue of Southern Cultures, a journal he
co-edits with Carolina historian Harry L. Watson.
"We had to deal with a number of problems of definition, starting with the
meaning of `influence' -- obviously it's not the same as greatness, or even
goodness," Reed said. "Martin Luther King and George Wallace were both
influential, for instance, but surely few admirers of one would argue that the
other was a great man. By all accounts, even Gov. Wallace suspected toward the
end of his life that his influence hadn't been a good one."
Boxer Muhammad Ali, singer Hank Williams, merchant Sam Walton, past President
Bill Clinton and playwright Tennessee Williams ranked 11th through 15th in the
informal poll. The last five included broadcaster Ted Turner, former Louisiana
Gov. Huey Long, educator Booker T. Washington, protester Rosa Parks and
basketball star (and Carolina alumnus) Michael Jordan, who edged out Oprah
Winfrey.
Walton might not have been a great man by most people's definition, but he and
his Wal-Mart stores certainly changed small-town American life, Reed wrote.
"Someone can be saintly `great' in the sense that really matters -- without
being influential," he said. "In my opinion, James McBride Dabbs was great, as
were a number of other white Southerners who took an early and unpopular stand
against racial injustice. Thank God for whatever influence their witness had,
but for the most part they were voices crying in the wilderness, not candidates
for the century's most influential."
Unsung saints will have to get their reward in heaven, as usual, the Carolina
professor said.
Rosa Parks is unique in that her influence stems from just one significant
action -- "but what an action!" he wrote. Like Walton, Ted Turner's presence
reflects the South's recent emergence as an economic powerhouse and seedbed of
entrepreneurial innovation.
"You don't have to agree with every choice," Reed said. "But this is a pretty
good list, if I do say so myself. All of these men and women changed the South,
one way or another, and many of them changed the world."
Other members of the panel were Raymond Arsenault of the University of South
Florida, Jim Auchmutey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, John B.
Boles of Rice University, Don Carleton of the University of Texas, Ronald D.
Eller of the University of Kentucky, Jimmie Lewis Franklin of Vanderbilt
University, Lisa Howorth of Oxford, Miss., Deborah Mathis of Gannett News
Service, Linton Weeks of The Washington Post, Charles Reagan Wilson of
the University of Mississippi and Odessa Woolfolk of the University of Alabama
at Birmingham.
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