{"id":12282,"date":"2016-07-07T23:23:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T23:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lichen.csd.sc.edu\/sce\/entries\/workman-william-douglas-jr\/"},"modified":"2022-08-26T14:13:34","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T14:13:34","slug":"workman-william-douglas-jr","status":"publish","type":"entry","link":"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/workman-william-douglas-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"Workman, William Douglas, Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Journalist, author. Workman was born on August 10, 1914, in Greenwood, the son of William D. Workman and Vivian Watkins. Following his 1935 graduation from the Citadel, he was a reporter for the <em>News and Courier <\/em>in Charleston. On June 10, 1939, he married Rhea Thomas of Walterboro. They had two children. Workman entered the U.S. Army in 1941 and was on active duty for five years during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>After military service, Workman returned to the <em>News and Courier <\/em>and was the paper\u2019s Columbia-based capital correspondent from 1946 until 1962. By the late 1950s, as a result of his reporting on government, politics, and racial issues throughout the South; his widely syndicated columns; and his frequent appearances as a television commentator, his name recognition in the state was so great that his newspaper byline was simply his initials, \u201cW.D.W.\u201d His conservative political attitudes were similarly known, especially with the 1960 publication of his first book, <em>The Case for the South, <\/em>which asserted his own views of the constitutionality and wisdom of maintaining racial segregation in the southern states.<\/p>\n<p>In 1962 leaders of the state\u2019s fledgling Republican Party, especially J. Drake Edens, Jr., persuaded Workman to run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Olin D. Johnston. South Carolina Republicans had only rarely nominated candidates for local office, much less statewide. Johnston, a staunch segregationist, was not directly vulnerable on the race issue. Consequently, Workman painted him as a supporter of President John F. Kennedy and intimated that a vote for Johnston was a vote for the invasion of Mississippi by federal troops. Johnston held on to win the election, but Workman\u2019s remarkable forty-four percent of the vote was a clear sign that the Republican Party in South Carolina had become a viable force.<\/p>\n<p>Workman returned to journalistic duties when he joined the editorial department of the Columbia <em>State <\/em>in 1963, and he served as the paper\u2019s editor from 1966 to 1972. He remained with the <em>State <\/em>until his retirement in 1979. In 1982 Workman, to the surprise of friends and contrary to the advice of his 1962 campaign manager, Drake Edens, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor to face the Democratic governor Richard W. Riley. Suffering from a mild form of Parkinson\u2019s disease, Workman waged a lackluster campaign in which he acknowledged that there were few issues. Riley was overwhelmingly reelected, and Workman failed to win any of the state\u2019s forty-six counties.<\/p>\n<p>The 1982 contest marked Workman\u2019s final quest for office, and thereafter his progressive illness began to worsen. He died in Greenville on November 23, 1990, and was buried in Greenlawn Memorial Park in Columbia. His obituary in the <em>State <\/em>called Workman \u201ca singular influence in establishing a two-party political system in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Merritt, Russell. \u201cThe Senatorial Election of 1962 and the Rise of Two-Party Politics in South Carolina.\u201d <em>South Carolina Historical Magazine <\/em>98 (July 1997): 281\u2013301.<\/p>\n<p>Wickenberg, Charles, Jr. \u201cJournalist, GOP Crusader William Workman Dies.\u201d Columbia <em>State, <\/em>November 24, 1990, pp. A1, A7.<\/p>\n<p>Workman, William D., Jr. Papers. Modern Political Collections, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Journalist, author. Workman was born on August 10, 1914, in Greenwood, the son of William D. Workman and Vivian Watkins. Following his 1935 graduation from the Citadel, he was a reporter for the News and Courier in Charleston. On June 10, 1939, he married Rhea Thomas of Walterboro. They had two children. Workman entered the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-12282","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-civil-rights-era-1955-1969","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-great-depression-1930-1938","ecms-greenwood-county","ecms-jazz-age-1919-1929","ecms-literature","ecms-midlands","ecms-politics","ecms-post-war-america-1946-1954","ecms-richland-county","ecms-the-modern-state-1970-present","ecms-upstate","ecms-w","ecms-world-war-i-1914-1918","ecms-world-war-ii-1939-1945"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Workman, William Douglas, Jr. - South Carolina Encyclopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/workman-william-douglas-jr\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Workman, William Douglas, Jr. - South Carolina Encyclopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Journalist, author. Workman was born on August 10, 1914, in Greenwood, the son of William D. Workman and Vivian Watkins. Following his 1935 graduation from the Citadel, he was a reporter for the News and Courier in Charleston. On June 10, 1939, he married Rhea Thomas of Walterboro. They had two children. 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