Medford Bryan Evans

Medford Bryan Evans (1907–1989) was a college professor, author, editor, and the father of M. Stanton Evans.

Evans was born August 21, 1907 in Lufkin, the seat of Angelina County in east Texas, the son of Lysander Lee Evans and the former Bird Medford. He graduated magna cum laude in 1927 from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and then received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1933. He taught at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi (1928–1933), the Texas College of Arts and Industries—now known as Texas A&M University–Kingsville—(1933–1934), the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (1934–1942), the University of the South (1943–1944), McMurry College in Abilene, Texas — now known as McMurry University—(1953–1954) and Northwestern State College—now Northwestern State University—in 1955-1959.

In addition, Evans worked for radio station WDOD in Chattanooga, Tennessee (1943–1944), the Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. (1944–1952), H.L. Hunt's Facts Forum (1954–1955), and the Jackson (Mississippi) Citizen's Council as managing editor of The Citizen: A Journal of Fact and Opinion (1962-?),^[1] official publication of the Citizens' Councils of America in Jackson.^[2] One of Evans' articles in The Citizen, "How to Start a Private School" (1964), was republished as a small book and became influential in the South's burgeoning movement toward private day-schools.^[3] (These schools were sometimes labeled "segregation academies" or "Christian academies" in the press, but virtually all now admit African American pupils.)

Evans was also a member of the John Birch Society, founded by Robert W. Welch, Jr. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was a frequent contributor to the JBS monthly magazine, American Opinion.

Evans' other published writings include the books The Secret War for the A-Bomb (1953), Civil Rights Myths and Communist Realities (1965), The Usurpers (1968), and The Assassination of Joe McCarthy (1970), reflecting his belief in the revelations of communist subversion unveiled in the 1950s by U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. The book The Death of James Forrestal (1966) by "Cornell Simpson" has also been attributed to Evans,^[4] an attribution challenged by his son, M. Stanton Evans.^[5]

Educational philosophy

Evans contributed articles on educational trends to magazines (e.g. Harper's^[6]) and newspapers. His usual topics were the decline in classical education, the need for vocational education, and the use of public schools to promote social engineering. A typical paragraph, from "What Are We Teaching Our Children" in American Opinion, shows how he could touch on all three themes at once:

References