Say,
did you hear the one about the math professor who ran for governor?
That
sounds like a joke, but in the case of Dr. John G. Clinkscales, it’s a true
story. In 1914, running on a platform of
compulsory public education, Clinkscales won some 40,000 votes and placed
fourth in the race. That may not sound
like much of an achievement, but every one of the three men who finished ahead
of him at some point served as the Palmetto state’s governor.
Born
in Abbeville County in 1855, John George Clinkscales came to Wofford as a
student in 1872. He graduated in 1876, and
in 1889, returned to take a master of arts degree. He continued his education with further study
at Cornell and Johns Hopkins. Before he
came to Wofford in 1899, he taught at Clemson for five years, at Columbia
College for four, and at Williamston Female College for one. The latter two colleges were both
Methodist-related, and the latter has since become Lander University. Before he began his college teaching career,
he taught in the public schools of Spartanburg County, and for four years, he
was the superintendent of education in Anderson County. In 1912, Erskine College awarded him an
honorary doctor of laws degree.
He
became a popular professor of mathematics and astronomy in 1899, probably
taking many of the classes previously taught by President James H.
Carlisle. However, one of the reasons he
was brought to Wofford was his speaking ability. Dr. Carlisle did not want to undertake the
public relations aspects of the presidency, so over the course of his administration,
several faculty members undertook these duties.
Clinkscales became a popular figure on the lecture circuit, speaking in
churches and civic groups around the state.
On top of his teaching responsibilities, he was for a quarter century
one of Wofford’s “field representatives” – traveling the state as an ambassador
of the college – a task he continued even when Henry Nelson Snyder became
president and took to the circuit himself.
No doubt this involved a mixture of student recruitment, alumni relations,
fund-raising, and otherwise showing Wofford’s colors throughout the state. It also probably put him in touch with
Wofford alumni, Methodists, and other citizens around the state and helped him
immensely in his subsequent campaign for governor.
Clinkscales
was also something of a writer. From one
of his personal experiences came his first book, How Zach Came to College,
published in 1904. The book tells the
story an uneducated young man who came from a Western North Carolina valley to
attend Wofford in the 1870s. In fact,
the story is somewhat fictionalized as there were actually two brothers,
Zachary T. Whiteside and his brother, Andrew S. “Zeb” Whiteside, who were both
part of the Class of 1877. Zach and Zeb
did not have much money, and as such they lived in spare rooms in Main
Building, cooking their meals. Soon
other students joined them, and from that the college’s first dining hall
emerged. Dr. Clinkscales would have been
a student at the same time as these two, and I would not be surprised if their
story made its way into his speeches, and eventually into a book.
As
a lifelong advocate for public education, Clinkscales entered the 1914 race for
governor not because he thought he could win, but because he thought somebody
should speak for education. In those
days, all of the candidates for statewide office traveled the state together
for a stump meeting in each county, and each had an opportunity to speak. Clinkscales was tired of the level of
anti-progressive demagoguery that he had been hearing for years in state
politics, and told friends that if someone wouldn’t run on behalf of compulsory
education, then he would. He kept his
word. His platform was fairly advanced
for the day, and the two leading progressive candidates had much better
political organizations. In defeat, his
campaign had more influence than many other losing efforts in that at its next
session, the legislature approved and the governor signed a bill enacting
compulsory school attendance.
Clinkscales
continued to be an active speaker, Methodist layman, and advocate of education
in the state. He gave up his field work
in the late 1920s, and declining health forced him to stop teaching in the late
1930s. He continued to live in his
campus home – now called the Kilgo-Clinkscales House – until his death on
January 1, 1942.
Photos: Clinkscales' portrait, presently on display in the Daniel Building, a photo of Clinkscales taken by Herbert Hucks '34 at Commencement in the late 1930s.
