THE EMERGENCE OF PATTERNS
So strongly drawn is the line between the two
races ... and so strengthened by the form of
habit and education, that ... no power on earth
can overcome the difficulty.--_John C. Calhoun._
The May 17, 1954, decision of the Supreme Court in the school
segregation cases issued in a new era in race relations in the South.
From this point onward the race issue centered on public school
integration. Reaction to the ruling tended to vary in proportion to
the percentage of Negroes in the local population. Some border areas
began preparations for compliance; the deep South was defiant. South
Carolina, with a high percentage of Negro population (between 35 and
40 percent) and with a strong master-servant tradition governing its
race relations, was among the most intransigent of the deep South
states. Few white South Carolinians were willing even to consider
compliance with the decision as being among the possible solutions to
the segregation problem.
The Clarendon verdict momentarily stunned the white citizenry of
South Carolina. Though politicians and their allies in the “power
structure” of the state quickly warmed to their traditional thespian
role of championing white supremacy and competed in lambasting the
Court and the decision, the general public was slow in grasping its
full implications. It was this seeming state of indecision that misled
those moderates who were willing to go ahead and at least try school
integration. The majesty of a Supreme Court decision lent conviction
that little needed to be done and in any event there was no sense in
antagonizing one’s neighbors. As a consequence the moderates rested on
their oars and did virtually nothing to help prepare the way for the
implementation of the Court’s ruling. This was a tragic error. But in
retrospect and admittedly with the benefit of historical hindsight, it
was no more an error than the Court’s allowing the Clarendon County
officials an unspecified length of time to achieve integration. Had
the Court ordered immediate integration, compliance might well have
been forthcoming since at the time there was no alternative course
of action. As was, the Court allowed the Clarendon officials time to
develop stalling tactics and the state to adopt a public policy which
together have been successful in preventing even one Negro child from
entering a white public school in South Carolina.
Official reaction to the decision was universally condemnatory.
Governor James F. Byrnes was “shocked” to learn that the Court had
overthrown the Plessy doctrine. The late Senator Burnet R. Maybank
labeled the ruling “a shameful political edict rather than a judicial
decision.” The Court made the ruling, he asserted, only “under the
duress” of Chief Justice Earl Warren and Attorney General Herbert
Brownell. Had the Democrats been in power, the decision would never
have been made. Senator Olin D. Johnston, too, saw the fine Venetian
hands of Warren and Brownell in the decision which he described as “a
flagrant, direct appeal for the political favor of minority groups.”
He deplored the Court’s “radical departure from the well-reasoned”
separate-but-equal doctrine as being written largely by “subversive
groups.”[74]
Senator J. Strom Thurmond was, if anything, even more critical. Blaming
the decision on “pressure and power politics,” he termed it “one of
the worst ever handed down by any court ... in this country.” Most
of the authorities cited by the Court, he said, “were either members
of Communist-front organizations” or their loyalty was “in serious
question.” Broadening his attack, Thurmond declared that integration
was “impractical, illogical, and unconstitutional” and undesired by
white people or “good Negro people” of the South. The trouble came from
“outside agitators” who were stirring up Negroes with discrimination
charges.[75]
Similarly, Attorney General T. C. Callison saw “no constitutional
authority, no statutory authority, no judicial precedent, no reason and
no justice in that decision.” Callison, a small town lawyer, described
Gunnar Myrdal, “the principal authority” used by the Court, as “a
foreign Socialist, with no first hand knowledge of conditions in the
South.” Many of Myrdal’s “collaborators” in the writing of _An American
Dilemma_ were allegedly “members of Communist front organizations.”[76]
In sharp contrast to the comments of the state’s leading political
figures was the reaction of James M. Hinton, state NAACP president.
Hinton believed that there was “no place in a democracy, and certainly
not in the Christian church, for segregation.” Both whites and Negroes
of South Carolina, he thought, would accept “any decision from the U.
S. Supreme Court.”[77]
The press was no less critical than the politicians. The Charleston
_News and Courier_ was especially outspoken. This paper attacked the
decision on several grounds. It gave new meaning to the Constitution;
“drove another nail into the coffin of states rights;” consisted of a
“sociological finding, as contrasted with an affirmation of the law;”
constituted an abridgement of “the freedom of white people;” repealed
and outlawed laws and customs that were “older than the Republic;” and
was the result of packing the Supreme Court “to represent the New-Fair
Deal viewpoint” to the exclusion of the “States Rights viewpoint.”
Noting the embarrassingly favorable reaction to the decision throughout
the non-Southern part of the country and the world, the _News and
Courier_ asserted that the only ones “unhappy” with the ruling were
“white Southerners ... and the rank and file of self-respecting
Negroes,” who were “not interested in being compelled to associate with
one another.” While Editor Thomas R. Waring’s paper urged “wisdom and
tolerance,” it opposed “cowardice” on the part of Southerners.[78]
The Columbia _Record_ was more realistic. Southerners should not have
been surprised by the Supreme Court’s “bouleversement on segregation,”
said Editor Buchanan, because such a decision was the logical result of
previous cases affecting graduate and professional levels of education.
It was based “not upon law but upon sociology and psychology, so-called
social sciences which true scientists agree today are not scientific.”
The opinion was “a sociological interpretation of the Constitution”
and segregation was “sociologically, not legally ... unconstitutional,
null and void.” The Court was guilty of getting “too far ahead too fast
of public opinion in the South.” The Justices might have held that
segregation _per se_ was inequality, suggested the _Record_, but then
concluded that because of “the cultural, health, and other differences
between children of the two races and in the preponderance of Negroes
in its school population” the Clarendon district had problems which
would make integration “harmful, psychologically and sociologically.”
The capital city paper, a strong supporter of President Eisenhower,
took issue with those who blamed or credited the decision on the
Republican administration. Buchanan insisted that the decision was a
Democratic ruling eight to one, since Eisenhower had appointed only one
justice to the Court. In seeking to absolve Chief Justice Warren of
responsibility, the _Record_ declared with a good deal of truth that
there were “some indications” that the case had been decided before
Warren’s appointment.[79] The editor of the _Record_ refused to concede
that what was involved was an “American” decision rather than either a
Republican or a Democratic one.
The Anderson _Independent_ likewise stressed the non-legal nature of
the Court’s action. Taking exactly the opposite direction from the
_Record_, the upcountry paper said that the decision, which combined
“a bit of law along with large doses of psychology and sociology,”
was not unexpected in view of the pro-integration policies of the
Republican administration. It conveniently ignored the attitude of the
national Democratic Party toward the segregation issue. Decision or
no decision, said the _Independent_, the races would “not be mixed in
South Carolina schools today, tomorrow, next year or in the years to
come.”[80]
Only the Florence _Morning News_ admitted the end of school segregation
in South Carolina a probability. On the day following the decision,
Editor Jack H. O’Dowd announced, prematurely to be sure, that
“segregation is ended in Southern schools.” He then added, “It can
be assumed that South Carolina, in the immediate future, is to have
integrated schools, or no public schools.... The question is no longer
whether or not segregation is proper, the present question is what the
state is to do in the face of the Court’s decision.” Within a year,
however, the Florence editor saw the South Carolina light, or felt the
intolerably hot breath of the white population on his neck, and became
more critical of the decision. In April, 1955, he chastised the Court
for having “swapped law and legal tradition for ... warped ideas of
sociology” which only endangered the “medium through which the Negro
has made his greatest gains--public education.”[81]
White South Carolinians generally were no less antagonistic toward the
decision than their political leaders and newspapers. W. D. Workman,
Jr., the _News and Courier_ correspondent in Columbia, thought the
Court was more concerned with the Southern Negro than his white
neighbor. And this in spite of the fact that the latter had always
relied upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
“rather than upon the changing social and political standards of a
polyglot nation.” Southerners, boasted this young apostle of the old
order, “have been and still are, closer by blood, by belief, and by
behavior to the framers of those two documents than are persons of any
other section of the country.”[82] L. B. McCord, the Clarendon County
school superintendent and former Presbyterian minister, thought the
decision “one of the worst things that has happened in this century,”
endangering as it did “_the splendid relation_” which had previously
existed between the races “in this good old Southland.”[83]
Stanley F. Morse, president of the Charleston Grass Roots League, a
white supremacy organization, viewed the decision as “just another
successful step in the Red Revolution against the United States,”
marking “the attainment of one of the objectives of the Communist
drive among U. S. Negroes started in 1920.” The fact that the decision
was unanimous was “indicative of powerful pressure on the Court by
‘liberal’ politicians and Marxian Socialist conspirators.” In a similar
manner another Charleston man, Huger Sinkler, attorney and former state
legislator, considered the decision to be “but another aftermath to
Appomattox.” He believed that
... the authors of this latest outrage are as deeply imbued
with hatred for our Southern customs as was Thaddeus
Stevens. And, unfortunately, in both periods, we find as
President a man whose decisions are obviously made for him
by others.
In the case of Grant, it was the man with the mulatto
mistress, Thaddeus Stevens, and the small corps of
abolitionists. In the instance of Eisenhower, it would
appear to be Dewey, Brownell and Dulles, men whose
political ambitions lead them to pose as friends of the
underprivileged, and, in the case of Dewey, a man with an
open hatred for the South....
Reconstruction days were harsh, but, notwithstanding the
scalawags, the carpetbaggers and the federal bayonet,
the basic principles for which the South fought were not
destroyed.
Today, we face a similar challenge. Perhaps, if we have
the strength of character, exhibited by the generation
preceding, the dawn of a new 1876 will arrive.[84]
The reaction of the white people of Clarendon County to the decision,
according to _Record_ reporter Carlton Truax, a former missionary,
ranged from “resignation to bitterness and violent rebellion.” A
minority “fringe group” openly expressed the opinion that blood would
flow if Negroes sought admission in white Clarendon schools. Truax
found “much bitterness, some deep frustration and often a sense of
helplessness.” At a meeting held in June, 1955, approximately 350 white
residents of the Summerton school district agreed that the schools
should be kept open only until the courts ordered the admission of a
Negro pupil to the white school.[85] The white Clarendon community had
decided that segregation was more important than education.
Reaction to the implementing decision of May 31, 1955, was less
critical than that of the earlier ruling. The Columbia _Record_
considered the Court’s plan to remand the cases to lower courts a
partial Southern victory even though the justices failed to change
their original decision. Similarly the Florence _Morning News_ saw
“some small comfort” for the South in the Court’s failure to establish
a deadline for compliance. In a more critical mood, the Anderson
_Independent_ declared that “the poison prescribed when the Supreme
Court wrote new law into the Constitution last year is no less deadly
offered in the small doses as now directed.” The Charleston _News and
Courier_ believed that the Court’s “as soon as practicable” meant
“never at all.”[86]
Attorney General T. C. Callison, speaking for the state leaders,
termed the implementing decision “quite unsatisfactory.” He asserted
once again that integration in South Carolina would “bring about every
condition which will create a breeding bed for communism.”[87]
An outgrowth of the Supreme Court’s invalidation of segregation in the
public schools was increased criticism of the Court itself. Extremists
expressed scorn for the Court as an instrument of government; others
urged the Court’s powers be curbed by Congress. Senator Thurmond
maintained that the members of the Court were “not worthy to wear the
robes of their high office.” James H. Hammond, former state senator
and direct lineal descendant of the ante-bellum United States senator
of “Cotton is King” fame, called the justices “a bunch of skunks.” At
a rally at Laurens, E. L. Edwards, the Grand Dragon of the national
Ku Klux Klan, referred to the “nine buzzards on the Supreme Court.”
State Representative George Harrell of Florence County introduced into
the state legislature a resolution which urged Congress to investigate
the Court for “attempting to enact and enforce as law the sociological
concepts of its members.”[88]
According to the _News and Courier_ the Court had become “an
instrument to uphold the right of Big Government to slap down state
and individual rights.” It was more concerned with “the rights of
leftist labor officials and Communist editors” than “the rights of
white Southerners.” And it had degenerated into a mere political arm
of the Eisenhower administration. Indirectly accusing the President of
court-packing in the appointment of John Marshall Harlan, the _News
and Courier_ peevishly declared that “a suitable man could have been
found whose grandfather had not been the only dissenter to the basic
(Plessy-Ferguson) decision in the 1896 issue.”[89] The need of the
country, said the _Record_, was “a Supreme Court in the pre-New Deal
tradition, one of integrity, stability, learning and judicial outlook.”
Unfortunately neither national party offered hope in this area. Warren
was “a political appointment” and on the Court he had been a “political
Chief Justice.”[90] No less critical of the Court, the _Independent_
suggested that the justices would be less subject to “political
pressures” and “radical departures” if they were appointed not for life
but for specified terms.[91] The Columbia _State_, not to be undone,
opined that the popularity of the Supreme Court among “sound thinking
people seems to resemble that of measles.” It asserted on another
occasion that the Court had rather “meander through Myrdalism than
precedents.”[92]
Congressman Robert J. Ashmore, a member of the House Judiciary
Committee, criticized the Court for a long line of “foolish,
unconstitutional and un-American” decisions. Sooner or later, he
asserted, Congress would realize that the real aim of the justices
was “to set up their socialistic ideas as supreme.” In like manner
Representative William Jennings Bryan Dorn accused the Court
of degenerating into a mere “rubber stamp” for the Eisenhower
administration.[93]
Former Justice James F. Byrnes spoke for states righters who would curb
the powers of the Court as a means of halting “creeping centralism.”
Holding the desegregation decision an amendment to rather than an
interpretation of the Constitution, Byrnes criticized the Court for
impairing “progress and ... freedom,” undoing the South’s “steadily
advancing racial amity,” and undermining the Constitution. He blamed
the decision on political factors and attempted to discredit the
sources cited in the Court’s opinion. The one-time New Dealer quoted
Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi as authority for the statement
that the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee were
“replete with citations and information” concerning Theodore Brameld
and E. Franklin Frazier, whose studies were considered by the Court.
Allegedly, the files contained “18 citations of Frazier’s connections
with Communist causes in the United States.” Byrnes was especially
critical of the use of Myrdal’s _An American Dilemma_. He branded as
obviously false Myrdal’s statement that “in the South the Negro’s
person and property are practically subject to the whim of any white
person who wishes to take advantage of him or to punish him for any
real or fancied wrongdoing or insult.” Removed from the bench and no
longer the wearer of the judicial ermine, Byrnes stated flatly that
the only solution to such a situation was to limit the authority
of the Court. The trend toward centralization of government powers
in Washington, said the ex-War Mobilizer, was bringing “joy to the
Communists and their fellow travelers, for they could more easily
influence one government” than forty-eight.[94]
Illustrative of the widespread opposition to the Court and its
anti-segregation decisions was a resolution signed by 52 prominent
white South Carolinians and circulated throughout the state for
signature by other Carolinians. All the original signers of this
resolution could be included in the State’s “power structure.” The more
outstanding included E. H. Agnew, Eugene S. Blease, Robert R. Coker,
Rev. Edward B. Guerry, R. Beverly Herbert, Col. Wyndham M. Manning,
Thomas H. Pope, Herbert Ravenel Sass, Ellison D. Smith, Jr., Farley
Smith, the Rt. Rev. Albert S. Thomas, Ransome J. Williams and William
D. Workman, Jr. These people, said the _News and Courier_, “are not
crackpots, extremists, Klansmen, rightists or leftists. They are
largely middle-of-the-roaders. They are intelligent white men. They are
leaders in law, clergy, business, farming, education, and politics of
our state. In other words, they are a cross section of the better-class
moderate, white people of South Carolina.”[95]
The “Committee of 52” resolved that the Supreme Court relied “not upon
the body of established American law, but upon the dubious conclusions
of sociologists and psychologists whose number includes persons tainted
with Communism;” that pressure from the NAACP and other “self-serving
organizations” had “lowered the will of politicians and the public
generally to resist encroachments upon the sovereign rights of states;”
and that such pressure was endangering both “the public school system
of South Carolina and the harmonious relationship between the white and
Negro races.” Therefore, the resolution urged the state legislature
to take such steps as “may be necessary or desirable to interpose the
sovereignty of the State of South Carolina between Federal courts and
local school officials.”[96] The petitioners had some initial success
and within a week 7,000 persons had reportedly signed the resolution.
However, this movement soon lost its drive and produced no tangible
results.
As already observed, one of the tactics most widely used by the
segregationists was ridicule and disparagement of the Court’s use of
sociological and psychological authority. W. D. Workman, Jr., some
fifty years behind the times, spoke of the “new school of sociological
jurisprudence.” If Negro children required the company of white
children “to fully develop personality and education,” he wrote, then
South Carolina needed help because in some areas there weren’t “enough
white folks to go around.” In a heavy handed attempt at facetiousness,
he suggested that the Supreme Court set up the number of white and
colored children necessary to form an acceptable classroom situation.
In like vein, the _Record_ complained that “nobody knows what the law
is today or what it will be tomorrow with a Supreme Court making its
decisions on whim, fancy or pseudo sociology.”[97]
The _News and Courier_, which shudders at all innovations, was
critical of the Court’s emphasis on “psychiatry.” The injection of
psychiatry into the controversy brought a letter to the editor from
Dr. Norton Williams, a Charleston psychiatrist, who felt that the
Supreme Court had “used unwise judgment” and accepted “bad advice”
from the psychiatrists who testified in the Clarendon case. “False
interpretations” of psychiatry “in the hands of some psychiatrists with
misguided motivations” would lead to “unhappy situations” such as the
anti-segregation riots in Delaware and Tennessee. Many psychiatrists,
according to Williams, “using good, profound psychiatric principles,”
realized the need for maintaining segregation. The Negro, a member of
a culturally inferior race, was not yet ready for integration. Until
he had developed his own culture he would remain unready. To force
integration suddenly would make the Negro feel “inferior, hostile, or
defiantly competitive.”[98]
Only on the rarest of occasions did a white South Carolinian speak out
in favor of the decision of the Supreme Court. On one such occasion
H. B. Clark of Charleston, in a letter to the _News and Courier_,
criticized the white man’s “conception of the Negro as something
slightly subhuman, a sort of beast of burden for the exploitation of
the white man.” He declared that
All the restrictions upon economic and educational
opportunity, all the degrading Jim Crow laws which we
impose upon the Negro say, in effect, “We no longer own
you as slaves, but we are determined to keep you in a
subordinate position in our society, and to impress upon
you in a thousand small ways every day that you are an
inferior race.” Now the justices of the Supreme Court are
not black-hearted villains who have sold their souls to the
devil of political expediency; on the contrary, they are
simply nine Americans honest enough to face inescapable
conflict between these undemocratic values of the South
and the principles of equality and freedom on which the
Constitution is based, and courageous enough to proclaim
the necessity of eliminating this paradoxical state of
affairs no matter what the cost in terms of readjustment of
traditional thinking.[99]
II
White South Carolinians, regarding integration with outright disdain
and horror, advance many arguments in defense of segregation. These
range from temporary expediency to the fear of “mongrelization”
and ultimate extinction of the white race. Running parallel is the
constant reiteration that segregation, which allegedly provides
separate-but-equal facilities, is of greater advantage to the Negro
than to the white. Such a view, to be sure, runs completely counter
to the assertion of President Truman’s committee on civil rights
which said in 1948 that segregation had become “the cornerstone of an
elaborate structure of discrimination.” Separate-but-equal arguments,
declared the committee, were the basis for “one of the outstanding
myths of American history;” while facilities were indeed separate
they were far from equal.[100] In defending segregation white South
Carolinians are far less concerned with the equal than with the
separate.
Arguments against racial integration indicate a frank belief in the
inherent superiority of the white race. In a widely read article in
_Harper’s_ magazine, Thomas R. Waring argued against integration on
the following grounds: (1) The incidence of venereal diseases was
higher among Negroes. (2) The cultural home environment of Negroes was
inferior. (3) Marital habits among many Southern Negroes were “to state
it mildly, casual.” (4) Crime was more prevalent among Negroes. (5) The
intellectual development of Negro school children was generally below
that of their white counterparts.[101] The late Herbert Ravenel Sass, a
well known Charleston author, got down to Freudian bedrock in stating
that fear of intermarriage was the most important factor in Southern
opposition to racial integration. In an article in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, he asserted that “it is the deep conviction of nearly all
white Southerners in the states which have large Negro populations,
that the mingling or integration of white and Negro children in the
South’s primary schools would open the gates to miscegenation and
wide-spread racial amalgamation.” He claimed that there was “almost
no hatred of the Negro” nor was there anything that could “accurately
be called race prejudice” in South Carolina. In a skillful display of
semantic gymnastics, he held the desire for segregation to be based on
“race preference.”[102]
In rebuttal to Sass, Harvard historian Oscar Handlin declared that
statistics indicated that the growth of equality between the races
did not increase the rate of intermarriage. Historically racial
“miscegenation” had been the “direct product of the inferiority
of Negro women.” The extent of “miscegenation” varied directly in
proportion to the degree of that inferiority. The idea that Negroes
were eager to marry whites, he said, was “a delusion born of the
white’s own vanity and of his ignorance of the real sentiments of his
fellow Americans of another color.”[103]
Answering criticisms such as those of Handlin the _News and Courier_
replied: “The separation of races in public schools, in the
circumstances that exist in South Carolina, is necessary. It is not
evil or immoral. It does not deprive Negroes of their rights. It does
protect the rights of white people. Arguments to the contrary usually
stem from ignorance. Firm decent resistance in the end will win.”
The paper branded integrationists as “Meddlesome Matties” who were
interfering with a custom “older than the Republic.” Only in the last
few years had “native born Americans ... learned from the NAACP and the
eggheads that a traditionally American practice was un-American.”[104]
The _Record_ considered segregation a _modus vivendi_ which enabled
the two races to live together until a more suitable solution could
be evolved. Such would result only from a long and slow process of
education in which racial prejudice would be wiped out.[105]
The attitude of _Morning News_ Editor O’Dowd was highly ambivalent.
Four days before the Court’s original decision he had declared that
segregation traditionally had been “a social, economic and political
expedient” which had no “moral justification.” Yet he believed the
institution continued to be necessary. Three months later he described
segregation as “a benevolent and paternal social order,” which “has
not been a matter of expediency.” Under O’Dowd’s successor, James A.
Rogers, the _Morning News_ moved nearer the position of the _Record_
and the _News and Courier_. In his first editorial comment on the
problem, Rogers stated his “sincere belief” that segregation was
practiced in the best interest of both races. Under such circumstances
segregation was “not an evil scheme to keep the Negro in subjection but
a high road” along which the Negro could “achieve maximum development
in an atmosphere without tension or ill will.” A suitable solution
to the problem of integration, Rogers thought, would come only after
“education, education, education for a period of generations, and
patience, the practice of tolerance and the willingness to wait until
the alchemy of good will has done its work.”[106] Such a proposal meant
postponing integration indefinitely.
Amongst individual white South Carolinians much the same attitudes
prevailed. Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., indignantly contended
that “any statement that our law is inherently unequal is inherently
untrue.” Lieutenant Governor Ernest F. Hollings, young, handsome and
ambitious, told the Lions Club of Florence that he did not know anyone
who believed in “any prejudice on account of race.” Segregation was
based on “history, culture and economic background” rather than race
prejudice. Former Governor Byrnes told the Sumter Kiwanis Club that
segregation arose not from “petty prejudice” but from “an instinctive
desire for the preservation of our race.”[107]
Other South Carolinians expressed these sentiments in greater or lesser
degree. Charles D. Haigh of Florence pleaded with “white American
fathers” to guard their “defenseless children” against all attempts at
integration. Criticizing any moderate approach, he recognized only two
alternatives--“segregation or integration and eventual mongrelization
of the races.” Should the latter alternative come to pass there would
be “no ‘Star Spangled Banner’ as a national anthem, but more than
likely some such song as, ‘Rest your li’l kinky head upon my breast,
w’suns is all alike.’”[108] Similarly, Gilbert Wilkes of the Charleston
suburb of Mt. Pleasant had not taught his children “any prejudices
against other races” except insofar as “racial purity” was concerned.
In keeping his children free from prejudice he imparted to them “the
knowledge that God chose members of the white race as his chosen people
and then colored the others.”[109]
III
The course of race relations in the state during the period following
the court decision was indicative of the moves and counter moves by
the proponents and opponents of integration. Segregationists were
unanimous in asserting that race relations had been harmonious in the
state in the days before the “agitation” began. Historically, said the
_News and Courier_, “whites and Negroes have got along with a minimum
of friction in the South.” Likewise, “the South was making rapid
progress toward elimination of racial prejudice,” claimed the _Record_.
“There was sympathy and understanding among whites for Negroes in the
South.” This era of good will allegedly had been overturned by those
who would force integration on an unwilling South. For the “cold war”
between the races, full responsibility rested with the “titular Negro
leadership.”[110]
During the year between the original ruling and the implementation
decree there was little outward evidence that relations between the
races had changed appreciably. Each side appeared to be awaiting final
action by the Court before digging in and taking its stand. Abruptly
in the summer of 1955 the situation changed. The implementing ruling
came on the last day of May. Almost at once there followed such “overt
actions as the filing of NAACP-sponsored integration petitions.” In
response, the whites organized the Citizens Councils which employed
or threatened to employ the economic boycott as a means of ending
the attempts by Negroes to secure school integration. The most
notable example of the economic boycott in action came in the city
of Orangeburg in 1955-56. Orangeburg Negroes retaliated in kind and
relations between the races deteriorated generally, remaining at their
lowest between the summers of 1955 and 1956. The _New York Times_, in
surveying race relations in early 1956, noted this retrogradation.
So did the _News and Courier’s_ W. D. Workman, Jr., who reported “a
massive deterioration of the racial amity which had been developing
and increasing between whites and Negroes.” “Distrust, suspicion
and growing bitterness” had supplanted good will. By the following
December, when the full implications of the boycott were felt and
realized by both whites and Negroes, Workman noted that relations
between the races seemed “considerably more tranquil” than a year
earlier. He observed that while neither side had compromised “its
adamant position,” each was attempting to soft-pedal the issue.[111]
A few whites, by indirection, conceded that the “mutual respect
and affection” which allegedly had traditionally characterized the
relations between the races in South Carolina resulted from the
Negro’s submission, in the face of overpowering odds, to a _modus
vivendi_ dictated by the white man. Dr. E. E. Colvin, pastor of the
Immanuel Baptist Church of Orangeburg, thought segregation had been
a success even if the South “used to have an occasional lynching.
Almost invariably the Negro who was lynched had committed some terrible
crime.” By contrast, “up North where they don’t have segregation they
have a race riot every once in a while.” Similarly, Dr. J. G. McMaster
of Kingstree wrote that “whites have sometimes taken advantage of
colored but that can be expected and on the other hand, Negroes are
less honest with each other than are whites with them.”[112]
IV
Public spokesmen offer many answers to the school integration question.
The press of the state constantly urges “patience and forbearance;”
“calm, careful consideration, hard thinking and studied action;”
“calm, reasonable, and foresighted” actions; “cool calculation,
searching forethought;” “restraint and common sense;” “planning, ...
determination, perhaps ... cunning;” and “calm and wise decisions.”
Of the many proposals for circumventing the Court’s decision, voluntary
segregation is the most popular. _Morning News_ Editor Rogers thought
it represented the “ultimate answer to the problem.” The _News and
Courier_ believed that “of all the approaches ... now uppermost in
the minds of South Carolinians, the voluntary selection of schools
by patrons according to their own race keeps recurring as the most
reasonable.” Former Governor Byrnes stated that “the hope” of the South
was voluntary segregation.[113] Proposals for voluntary segregation, of
course, contain no provision for Negro parents who desire integrated
schools for their children.
The _News and Courier_ has been a consistent advocate of voluntary
segregation. In defending this approach, the Charleston paper said:
Happiness cannot be measured in worldly goods, nor social
position, nor many of the things that some of us hold too
dear. Contentment is necessary for true happiness....
Too many people of all races and stations in life seem
dissatisfied with things as they are. While ambition
and the go-getter spirit are praiseworthy, whining
for “equal treatment”--which often means excuse for
shortcomings--should not be a part of a person’s equipment.
Merit has a way of being recognized.
Too many people--both white and Negro--are trying to bite
off more of life than they can chew. Not everyone is
qualified to take a place in the front rank. Instead of
being angry, they would do themselves a favor by adopting a
philosophical attitude. Instead some persons dissatisfied
with their own accomplishments demand a change in
government, in economic laws, in the rules of society.[114]
Another solution is the migration of the Negroes to non-Southern parts
of the United States, thus relieving “the pressure of numbers” on the
black belt areas of the South. This proposal represents a revival of
the pre-Civil War suggestion that the free Negro should be returned
to Africa. But in 1955 even the _News and Courier_ conceded that
“migration to Africa seems no longer feasible.” In a letter to the
editor of the paper W. W. Bragg of Columbia offered concrete proposals
to encourage migration. He urged that the state provide each Negro
desiring to migrate with a small sum of money--$100 to $200--and pay
his transportation expenses. The Negro would be required to “go to a
State in the North,” and agree not to return to South Carolina for five
years. In the long run this would be cheaper for the state, argued
Bragg, because the Negro paid much less money in taxes than the value
he received in state services.[115]
The South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and its president, E. H.
Agnew of Starr, also advanced proposals for the continuation of
segregation. Agnew, who strongly opposed “this dastardly thing of
forced integration,” summarized what he considered to be the views of
farmers in the state: “The farm people of South Carolina, both white
and colored, are bitterly opposed to such a program as the Supreme
Court outlines. They earnestly desire both separate schools and a
continued relationship of peace and harmony but they are determined
that this vile thing shall be circumvented. They want neither abolition
of public schools nor do they want a shotgun solution to the problem
but if worst must come they are ready for either or both.”[116]
In a booklet entitled “Education and Race Relations” distributed to
its 20,000 members, the Farm Bureau proposed the development of a
“co-racial program” of separate but equal schools. By co-racial the
Bureau meant “equal status, equal opportunity and self-determination.”
If facilities were truly equal, contended the Bureau, there would be
“more gracious acceptance” of segregation by both races and “no white
or Negro child” would be “forced to attend a school of mixed races,
unwillingly.” Since segregation would, under these circumstances, be
maintained voluntarily both the spirit and the letter of the court
decision would be observed. The success of this program would depend on
voluntary acceptance by both races. Again significantly, no provision
was made to accommodate those pupils seeking integrated schools.[117]
The _Record’s_ proposals merit special attention since in reality
they cracked the door to school integration. It recommended a system
(consequently adopted in part in North Carolina) which would allow
Negroes in “a few rare instances” to attend white schools. Such a
system, which would have assigned pupils to schools on factors other
than race, would comply with the Court’s decision and at the same time
maintain segregation almost 100 percent intact. Under the system “an
occasional white pupil” would have to be assigned to a Negro school.
The _Record_ also recommended repeal of all of South Carolina’s
segregation laws as a means of removing the basis for further court
rulings against the state.[118]
The _Independent_, though less concerned with the segregation issue,
had its own homespun suggestions as to how to circumvent the Court.
Comparing resistance to integration with opposition to the Eighteenth
Amendment, it suggested that the time might come “when segregated
education will be ‘bootlegged’ and when federal agents, slinking behind
hedges, will try to follow little Johnny to the ‘speakeasy’ school.”
However, there would be plenty of old timers who could give Johnny
“some valuable tips on how to confound the revenooers.”[119]
Not a few urged defiance to the point of violence in resistance to
integration. Others, less extreme in their utterances, helped create a
climate of disrespect for the segregation decision which made defiance
easier. “Because the Supreme Court has spoken we should not submit
without resistance,” said Senator Thurmond. South Carolinians, he
added, “must resist integration by every legal means harder than the
integrationists fought to end segregation.” The _News and Courier_
asserted that “the will to resist goes deep into the fabric of the
Southern people. They do not intend to yield their principles so
long as they draw breath.” Commenting on the integration violence
in Clinton, Tennessee, it declared that “organized rebellion at the
local level” was “a wasteful and disturbing means of dealing with
government.” But Southern states should not “give an inch in standing
up to the federal government.”[120]
Despite the intransigent opposition that had developed to integration
in the state and the South generally by the summer of 1955, W. D.
Workman, Jr., despaired of the “blight of submissiveness” which the
Court decision had spread over the land. The “cry of surrender” by
those who would accept the decision as law did not “fit well into
the traditional pattern of American resistance to dictation,” he
declared.[121] A number of letters to the editor of the _News and
Courier_ were of the same opinion.
Occasional outbreaks of violence have come in South Carolina as a
result of the integration “agitation.” These have been rare, however;
the threat of violence was usually sufficient. The most prominent case
of violence involved the Reverend J. A. DeLaine, an African Methodist
Episcopal Church minister[122] and leader of one of the organizations
sponsoring the school case from Clarendon County, where he had a
pastorate. Later he was transferred to Lake City. DeLaine’s church in
Lake City was destroyed by a fire of undetermined origin; his home was
pelted with rocks, fruits and other objects from passing automobiles.
On one occasion DeLaine, claiming that the occupants of a passing
automobile had fired gunshots into his home, shot back. Two of the men
were slightly injured by metal fragments from the car. The men in the
car maintained that they had not fired and were in fact unarmed. As a
result of this incident DeLaine fled to New York City, seeking refuge
with an AME bishop. In South Carolina he was indicted for assault with
intent to kill. Federal authorities took no action to return DeLaine
to South Carolina. Governor Timmerman, stating that he did not want
to give the NAACP another martyr who could be used for fund raising,
decided not to press for extradition. South Carolina was well rid of
“this professional agitator,” commented Timmerman.
Some two years later DeLaine, interviewed at New Rochelle, N. Y.,
where he was serving as pastor of the Mount Carmel Church, asserted
that his experiences in South Carolina had permanently scarred both
him and the members of his family. However, he added: “It’s worth some
suffering--it’s even worth a man’s life, if he can start something
that will lead to a little more justice for people.... We helped start
some things that are bringing a revolution in education for Negroes in
South Carolina, in modern schools and bus transportation.” Nor did the
minister harbor any ill feelings toward the people of South Carolina.
“There are too many good people there, white and colored. But they need
to stand up against the hate-mongers,” he declared.[123]
A second notable incident of violence, which took place in December,
1956, involved the flogging of a Camden High School band leader, Guy
Hutchins, by six hooded men. According to Hutchins, he was attacked
while changing an automobile tire on a lonely road. His assailants
accused him of making remarks in favor of racial integration, a charge
which Hutchins flatly denied.
Although the Kershaw County grand jury on two different occasions
refused to indict six men arrested in connection with the case, many
white South Carolinians publicly criticized the incident. The Rev.
Stiles B. Lines, pastor of the Camden Episcopal Church of which
Hutchins was a member, declared that “fear covers South Carolina like
the frost.” Referring to the flogging, he told his parishioners: “Men
are afraid to speak. Freedom of speech is almost extinct in South
Carolina, except for those who wish to speak in favor of and in accord
with the policies of the pressure groups who self-righteously assume
that they, and only they, have the answers.”[124]
Criticism of the Hutchins affair was sufficiently widespread to cause
the steering committee of the Kershaw County Citizens Council to meet
in special session and issue a statement declaring that “unlawful
acts of violence, force or intimidation serve only to bring discredit
on this community and state, and, insofar as concerns the struggle
against integration, the loss of States’ Rights and loss of individual
liberties, to cause diversion, dissension and dismay among those who
are attempting to maintain our traditional social order and way of
life.”
The comments made by South Carolina Circuit Judge G. Duncan Bellinger
of Columbia on the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision were an
interesting sidelight on the Hutchins incident. They were voiced in
his charge to the grand jury considering the indictment of the six men
accused of the flogging. Members of the Court, said the judge, had
“substituted for legal principles their own personal, social, economic
and political ideas, taking away the rights of states, the powers of
the departments of the federal government and the rights of individual
citizens.” But in urging an indictment of the accused, Bellinger
declared that violence would aid only the “scalawags and carpetbaggers”
who were seeking to bring about another Reconstruction.[125]
By inference the judge considered fighting the “scalawags and
carpetbaggers” as important as the rights of individual citizen Guy
Hutchins.
Under circumstances and conditions such as those outlined above South
Carolina developed its resistance to attempts of the Negro to win
integration. The unanimity of opinion among those elements which spoke
out on the subject encouraged silence among more moderate persons. Such
a situation is further illustrated by a more detailed consideration of
the various phases of resistance.