In 1956 George L. Weissman, a freelance writer on labor and civil rights issues, wrote a series of articles on the Rev. Donald West of Dalton, Georgia. Previously a Congregational minister, in 1954 West had joined a small fundamentalist sect known as the Church of God of the Union Assembly. This church was unique among the many poor white sects in northwest Georgia in its advocacy of unionism, Negro rights, and its practice of a form of apostolic economic communism. In 1955 West took over the editorship of the church paper, The Southerner, and began a campaign to organize the Dalton textile workers. The mill owners reacted by firing the Union church members and launching an attack upon West after an investigation revealed that West had been a member of the Communist party during the 1930's. Alerted by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Textile Workers Union of America, Weissman went to Dalton to interview West on the situation. The resulting series of four articles describe the conflict of issues released in Dalton as a result of West's campaign - anti-communism, anti-Semitism, anti-unionism, as well as racial and class antagonisms. Ultimately West was forced to resign from the church and to leave Dalton. With Weissman's assistance, West began publication of a short-lived successor to The Southerner called The New Southerner which was dedicated to improving the condition of white and Negro working people in the South.
