The Golden Dream (11 page)

Then there was the Leontyne Price incident. For years, the Metropolitan Opera Company has come to Atlanta, usually in late spring, and for years, one of the city's most glittering society galas has been the opening-night party for the opera company and cast at the Piedmont Driving Club. On the night, several years ago, when Leontyne Price was scheduled to open in Atlanta with
Tosca
, Mr. Rudolf Bing was privately advised that while the rest of the cast would be most welcome at the party, the star would not. Bing replied that if Miss Price could not attend, neither could anyone else. Disappointed party-goers were advised on opening night that there would be no party, “Due to the fact that the Clubhouse is undergoing renovations.”

Reacting to stories like these, stalwart members of the Piedmont Driving Club spring to the club's defense with a variety of counterclaims. On the subject of restrictions against Jews, for example, there is what might be called the Eloise Pappenheimer Defense. “What about Eloise Pappenheimer?” is a stock response. There is also the Major John Cohen Defense. “Why, we've even had a Jewish
president
of the club,” says one member. Major Cohen was president of the Driving Club from 1930 to 1932. But Mr. De Jongh Franklin, a prominent Atlanta attorney who is Jewish, scoffs at this and says: “Whenever the Driving Club is accused of anti-Semitism, they trot out John Cohen. He came in during the depths of the Depression, when the club was desperate for money and members, and he was only half Jewish anyway. Besides, he's been dead for years. So has Eloise Pappenheimer.”

As for blacks being excluded from the Driving Club, members point to the Lester Maddox incident because it was Maddox, of all people, who first brought blacks to the club as guests. (It is widely suspected, of course, that Governor Maddox did this to embarrass the club, since he himself would have been among those least qualified for membership.) The episode took place when Governor Maddox and the Georgia Commerce Department were holding a luncheon
at the club for the media, and when everyone sat down to eat, it was discovered with horror that the guests included two black television newsmen from Atlanta's station WAGA-TV. While guests watched apprehensively, the headwaiter rushed to consult with the maître d', who went for the assistant manager, who went for the manager. For several minutes, the four men stood about wringing their hands. Finally—perhaps because it seemed simpler not to make a fuss—they returned to their posts and the luncheon continued without further disruption. Through it all, Maddox seemed blankly oblivious to the situation he had created.

Finally, members of the Piedmont Driving Club defend their membership practices and policies by pointing out that there are at least two fashionable Jewish clubs in Atlanta—the Standard and the Progressive—which exclude Christians. If blacks wanted a club, the reasoning goes, they could form one of their own. There is also the downtown Commerce Club, which is completely integrated. (Originally an all-male affair, it has recently taken in about ten women members.)

But there is also some confusion about the policies of the Jewish clubs. “If a Christian wanted to join the Standard Club, I could get him in tomorrow,” says Edward Elson, a prominent Jewish businessman. Not so, says Charles Wittenstein of the Anti-Defamation League's Southern Council. The ADL considers the Standard Club just as discriminatory as the Driving Club, though the Standard did recently admit one Christian husband of a Jewish lady member. “The Standard Club was formed in
reaction
to the policies of the Driving Club,” says Mr. Elson. But this can't be right, either, because the Standard Club was established in 1867—in the beginning as a club exclusively for
German
Jews—twenty years before the Driving Club's founding in 1887.

One club that
was
established in reaction to the Driving Club was the Cherokee Club, but here again there were strange ironies. Several years ago, a group of young Atlanta couples impatient with the Driving Club's exclusive ways, got together and decided to form their own club. Among the founders were Mr. and Mrs. De Jongh Franklin and Mr. and Mrs. Lee Ross, who are also Jewish. All seemed to go well until the Cherokee Club was ready to send out invitations for membership. The Jewish families, the Rosses and the Franklins, who had helped organize the club, received no invitations. “It would never get off the ground if it weren't patterned after the Driving Club,” their friends explained.

Now that the capital of Georgia has become nationally conspicuous, Atlanta's choosy clubs have become a local
cause célèbre
, and nearly everybody, pro and con, is up in arms on the subject. “Bob Lipschutz, the White House counsel, belongs to the Standard Club,” says one Atlantan. He has resigned. Another says jokingly, “What if they took Bell into the Standard and Lipschutz into the Driving Club? Would that make everybody happy?” Most critical of the Christian clubs' policies, meanwhile, have been Atlanta's Jews. Important business decisions, the Jews claim, are made within the confines of the Capital City and the Piedmont Driving clubs—decisions which affect Jewish businesses, and yet about which Jews have no say. The Jews argue that the clubs put Jewish businesses at an
economic
disadvantage. At the moment, feelings are particularly bitter because Atlanta has been undergoing a sharp business recession, out of proportion to what has happened elsewhere in the country. “The fastest-growing city in the South,” as it is called, has perhaps grown too fast. One enormous and ambitious office tower stands more than 75 percent unoccupied. “The world's tallest hotel,” the staggering new Peachtree Plaza, is air-conditioning empty rooms. As far as some of the city's prominent Jews are concerned, the WASP establishment—and its clubs—are at least partway to blame.

But the most frequently heard complaint in Atlanta is: Why us? “There are thousands of clubs all over the country that have been restricted against Jews and blacks and Orientals and what have you for
years
!” says one indignant woman. “Why is everyone picking on poor little Atlanta?” What she says is of course true. But in the case of Atlanta, the situation is a little different. The position and the power of the Piedmont Driving Club—and, to a lesser extent, the Capital City Club—are somewhat special. The Driving Club is without exception
the
Atlanta Club. And how it achieved, and continues to wield, its immense social power in the city are worth examining.

To begin with, “Driving” has nothing to do with driving golf balls. The club has no driving range, and no golf course. It offers only tennis, squash, swimming, a men's health club, a number of dining rooms, bars, rooms for private parties, and a ballroom for quasi-public functions which has an unsupported ceiling so large that, not long ago, it fell down all by itself—fortunately late at night, when no one was around. The club was formed by a group of young, well-born Atlanta men who enjoyed driving their four-horse
tally-hos through what is now a neighboring park, and was known as The Gentlemen's Driving Club. The original clubhouse has been much added to but most of the early building stands today. It is not particularly grand. Decorated in warm pastels and furnished with antiques and Chippendale reproductions and several fine Oriental rugs, it has an atmosphere that is intimate, cozy, old-shoe, and—well—clubby. Its smiling staff (mostly black) knows not only its members' names but also their preferences in food and drink.

Its members rave over the Driving Club's “marvelous” food. But a glance at its buffet table reveals nothing that is beyond country-club ordinary—or what might be called American Rich Predictable, the kind of bland and unsurprising fare that the wealthy eat and serve in their own homes: deviled eggs, cocktail onions, waterlogged lobster halves with Hellmann's mayonnaise, cold collapsed broiled tomatoes, peas, Parker House rolls, roast beef with rubbery Yorkshire pudding, sweet desserts ladled over with cherry syrup.

Strictly speaking, it has always been a men's club, though a group of women has been granted membership as “privileged widows.” Wives and children of members are also given “privileges,” but should a group of men wish to use a tennis court on which women are playing, the men merely step onto the court, say, “Thank you very much, ladies,” and the women depart. A few wives of members have grumbled about this high-handed treatment, but most accept it as their mothers and grandmothers did, and regard it as just another of the club's traditions—quaint, but sacred. Some women actually defend it, saying, as one wife does, “After all, there are only a few hours in a day when a man can have time to play tennis. They deserve to have priority.”

From the earliest days of the Driving Club, it has served as the scene of Atlanta's most gorgeous social events, topped by the annual Piedmont Ball, an invitation-only affair that benefits the Piedmont Hospital. For years, no Atlanta girl could be a debutante unless she was a daughter of a Driving Club member, and for years, the Atlanta Junior League was composed of wives and daughters of Driving Club members. Atlanta society says it has no use for a
Social Register
. The Driving Club membership list suffices. (For a while, the Social Register Association in New York published an edition for Atlanta; it was abandoned for “lack of interest.”) Perhaps the most dazzling party in the club's history was the famous breakfast
tossed at the club in 1939, following the world premiere of
Gone With the Wind
, with Margaret Mitchell, Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, and
le tout
Atlanta in attendance. (Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were not present.)

As an example of the cachet membership in the club carries, an Atlanta woman was shopping recently for a gown to wear to the Piedmont Ball. “Shame on you for going to a party at a club that discriminates,” said the salesgirl, who quickly added, “I'm only kidding. I'd give my eyeteeth to go to the Piedmont Ball! Even just to set foot in the club!”

The club has come, meanwhile, to represent an interesting axis of power in the city. The firm of King & Spalding is Atlanta's most prestigious law firm. (Griffin Bell was a partner in King & Spalding, as was Charles Kirbo, President Carter's old friend and troubleshooter.) King & Spalding drafted the Driving Club's original Petition for Charter, and remains the club's official counsel. In a city the size of Atlanta, such a law firm can become virtually a second city government, a law unto itself. There are three Kings and two Spaldings in the Driving Club today, and Kings and Spaldings decorate the boards of Atlanta's biggest banks. Hughes Spalding, Jr., is now a senior partner at King & Spalding. His brother, Jack Spalding, meanwhile, is editor of the
Atlanta Journal
, which, with the
Constitution
, is one of the two Cox-owned newspapers which serve Atlanta morning and evening. The publisher of both the
Journal
and the
Constitution
is a hot-tempered gentleman named Jack Tarver, another Driving Club member, and so it is not surprising that both newspapers have supported the club's membership policy, and opposed Mr. Bell's need to resign. In 1969, when Jim Montgomery, who was business editor for the
Constitution
, produced a story on discrimination in clubs, naming names and citing examples of how major business decisions in Atlanta were made within a tight-knit little group of members, hackles rose in the business community. Hackles rose even higher in Jack Tarver's office. After angrily telling Montgomery that he had embarrassed the paper, Tarver added, “Jim, I think you're getting stale.” Montgomery was subsequently transferred from business editor to general-assignment reporting—which meant that his income dropped sharply, since he was no longer able to accept free-lance assignments. Montgomery got the message, and left the paper shortly thereafter.

Atlanta's most powerful society woman, meanwhile, is Mrs. Ann Cox Chambers, heiress to the Cox newspaper fortune, who has
been a pivotal figure behind—among other things—the Piedmont Ball. Mrs. Chambers also provides what might be called the Coke Connection, linking the already great coalition of Atlanta forces with another giant power: the Coca-Cola Company. The two great Coca-Cola families are the Candlers and the Woodruffs—there are seven Candler families and two Woodruffs in the Driving Club—who live on large estates in Atlanta's grandest northwest suburbs (with other Coca-Cola money), on Chatham Road, Pace's Ferry Road, Normandy Drive, and Manor Ridge Drive. Two Candler brothers—Asa W. Candler and John S. Candler II—are lawyers in yet another powerful firm, Candler, Cox & Andrews, where, needless to say, Mrs. Ann Cox Chambers has close relatives. The Piedmont Driving Club, in other words, represents a four-sided axis of the press, society, and two large legal firms. It is a combination, Mafia-like in its interlocking complexity, that might seem rather difficult to beat. Not just millions, but
billions
of Atlanta dollars are represented here.

Efforts have been made, of course, to beat it, particularly by prominent Atlanta Jews, such as Edward Elson, who can produce a thick file of letters written to civic organizations urging them not to hold meetings and functions at the Driving Club. The club's claim that it is “purely social” is, he says, a lie. For several years, the Anti-Defamation League has been working to dissuade charitable and other groups from hiring the club's rooms for meetings, and it recently succeeded in having a convention of the American Bar Association reschedule a series of functions elsewhere. Jewish businessmen, aware of the Driving Club's strong power with the press, note that Atlanta newspapers show no reluctance to accept Jewish advertising. The biggest advertiser in the
Journal
and the
Constitution
, for example, is Rich's. If Rich's were to discontinue advertising on the issue of club discrimination, the papers would be dealt a severe financial blow. But this, Michael Rich says, would be “a negative approach.”