THE WHITE FOLKS FIGHT BACK
We are surrounded by invisible dangers, against
which nothing can protect us, but our foresight
and energy.--_John C. Calhoun_
In response to the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision a number
of organizations dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy
mushroomed up in the state. Among these were the National Association
for the Advancement of White People, the States Rights League, the
Grass Roots League, American Educators Incorporated, the Federation
for Constitutional Government, the Association for the Preservation of
Southern Traditions and the Citizens Council. In addition the Ku Klux
Klan again reared its ugly head. These organizations opposed racial
integration with methods that varied from the “legal” opposition of
the Citizens Council to the blunt threats of naked force by the Ku
Klux Klan. Similarly, they experienced differing degrees of success.
The Citizens Council, though last to be organized, has been the most
prominent. With the exception of the Citizens Council, none of the
organizations developed anything approaching a statewide following. Its
appearance in the summer of 1955 virtually signalized the disappearance
of the other groups. Only the Ku Klux Klan remains.
The Klan is the largest and most important of the white supremacy
groups next to the Citizens Council. As it exists in the state during
the period following the Supreme Court’s ruling on school segregation,
the Klan is a continuation of the organization that had become almost
defunct by the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The Court decision gave
the Klan a new lease on life. However, it has not been able to achieve
recognition as the state’s chief defender of racial segregation.
Essentially this results from the fact that the Klan, because of its
checkered history since World War I, has no appeal among “respectable”
elements, in short to the state’s “power structure.” The bedsheet
brigade also has the official opposition of the state government.
In general the South Carolina Ku Kluxers have found greatest following
among the less economically privileged whites, workingmen and petty
tradesmen. Klan rallies, replete with burning crosses and fiery
oratory, have been held at various points throughout the state.
Attendance, as reported by the press, usually has varied from less than
a hundred to several hundred, though Klan leaders argue that these
figures are much too low. At one meeting in Union, the Klan claimed an
attendance of between 12,000 and 15,000.[126]
Several independent Klan factions have been organized in the state.
The national organization, with headquarters in Atlanta, recognizes
the group headed by Grand Dragon J. H. Bickley, a Marion carpenter,
as the “official” Klan in South Carolina. Bickley’s organization has
been bothered by periodic Klan rallies which it has not sponsored and
which engage in practices which, according to the Grand Dragon, tend to
discredit his group and alienate its followers. Since Bickley refuses
to release any information on the number of Klansmen or klaverns in the
state, the numerical strength of the Klan is impossible to determine.
He claims that if he had the time, he “could stage a rally each night
of the week.”[127]
The purpose of the Klan according to E. L. Edwards of Atlanta, the
national Imperial Wizard, is to protect Southerners “against the NAACP,
Knights of Columbus and the ADL [Anti-Defamation League].” The Klan
is “a white man’s organization fighting for white supremacy” and is
not made up of race discriminators but people who want to live “in a
segregated group.”[128] On the basis of stated aims and objectives,
there is no discernible difference between the Klan of the 1920’s and
that of the 1950’s.
Klan leaders deliver impassioned harangues at klavern rallies. Their
principal foes, as evidenced by the organizations singled out by
Edwards, are Negroes, Jews and to a somewhat lesser extent Catholics.
Liberal use is made of the smear technique of accusing opponents of
being pro-Communist. Speaking at Sumter Imperial Wizard Edwards charged
that the Supreme Court’s ruling was “a Communist-Jewish-Catholic plot”
aimed at “destroying and mongrelizing” the white race. Parties to this
conspiracy included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, “the
Jew Bernard Baruch,” and President Eisenhower, whom he referred to as
“Eisenberger.” With characteristic disregard for historical accuracy,
the Imperial Wizard branded the NAACP as an organization formed in 1906
by a “group of three people sent directly from Russia.” He urged all
“one hundred percent Protestant white Americans” to join the Klan and
help overcome this menace.[129]
At a Timmonsville meeting Ku Klux attitudes were well expressed by a
Klan speaker identified only as a “minister of the Gospel” who would
be in his pulpit the following Sunday morning. After the opening
prayer, this defender of the faith announced that he hated all Jews and
“niggers.”
The NAACP [he continued] is a Communist front organization.
We have documents in the House Un-American Activities
Committee to prove this. I was supposed to have literature
here tonight to prove this, but it was late in arriving....
The main issue in South Carolina is not so much Communism
as it is niggerism....
Klansmen don’t wear sheets, they wear robes. It is a shame
that good Christian people have to hide themselves to do
what our country was founded for....
That nigger-lovin’ Estes Kefauver wouldn’t sign the
referendum (Southern Manifesto); we ought to send that
nigger-lover to Africa....
The National Council of Churches is a Communist front
organization. Bishop Oxnam, the former president, is under
indictment by the House Un-American Activities Committee as
a Communist....
I’d rather (my little boy) grow up unable to read or write
than sit beside a nigger in school.
Another speaker, standing on the flat bed of a Ford truck, told a Klan
rally that Henry Ford II had given $1,500,000 to the NAACP and that he
(the speaker) would boycott all Ford products until Ford gave an equal
amount to a white supremacy group.[130]
Klan speakers invariably include a thinly veiled threat against
those who seek to upset racial segregation. The Grand Dragon of
South Carolina warned that “the day the Negro steps into a white
South Carolina school as a student will be the day we pick up our
weapons.”[131] A “preacher” told another rally that “moderation has
never been the answer to anything. It’s the extremists--you and me--who
are going to solve this situation.”[132]
The lengths to which Klan “extremists” are willing to go, or more
accurately the depths to which they can descend, is illustrated by an
episode which occurred at Traveler’s Rest in Greenville County which is
in the upper part of the state. On the night of July 21, 1957, eleven
white men broke into the home of Claude Cruell, a moderately prosperous
fifty-eight year old Negro farmer and Baptist deacon. Four of them
proceeded to chain him up and beat him. The others watched. During the
course of the beating, according to Cruell’s wife, Fannie, who was
subsequently driven away several miles from the farm and made to walk
home, the invaders berated the Negro couple for “trying to mix with
white people.”
Specifically, the group was referring to the Cruells’ association
with Sherwood Turner and his family. Turner, a tall, illiterate
thirty-four year old white man who eked out a precarious livelihood as
an itinerant bean picker and handyman, lived with his wife and seven
small children in a nearby house which they rented from Cruell for
five dollars a month. On occasion, the Negro farmer had given Turner
and his family rides in his car to nearby bean fields. On the day of
the beating the Cruells were caring for Turner’s children while the
latter had taken his wife, a thin, anemic woman, to the Stroud Memorial
Hospital at Marietta for emergency treatment for a kidney ailment. The
Turner children, consequently, witnessed the beating of Cruell.
A police investigation led directly to the independent Greenville
County Ku Klux Klan. It was A. Marshall Rochester, head of the
Greenville Klansmen, who led the “inquisitional” party to the Cruell
farm. They had intended to whip not only Cruell but also the pitiful
Mrs. Turner. Rochester openly acknowledged his role in the affair.
Eight of the other men arrested with him not only in connection with
the Cruell beating but also that of another Negro, Willie Lewis Brown,
on July 29th, admitted membership in the Klan; a tenth said that he was
a “probationary” member, and the eleventh identified himself as its
“chaplain.”
The Cruell incident brought an indignant protest from Grand Dragon
Bickley who denounced the Greenville Klansmen. He expressed “great
pleasure” that the incidents of violence in Greenville had been solved
by law enforcement authorities and held that such episodes resulted
“only in harmful effects upon the South and our nation as a whole.” He
carefully pointed out that his own organization had no acts of violence
charged against it and also that it was not on the Attorney General’s
subversive list. “This is due to the fact,” said Bickley, “that in all
our chartered klaverns, the klansmen are taught to respect law and
order.”
When the Klansmen were finally brought to trial after an indictment by
a grand jury all but six were exonerated by Judge James M. Brailsford,
Jr., who ordered charges against them dismissed. The trial jury found
two others innocent. The remaining four, including Rochester, were
found guilty of conspiracy and assault and battery and sentenced to
jail terms ranging from one to six years. Rochester received the
maximum six year sentence from Judge Brailsford who remarked: “I don’t
see that I can accomplish any good by lecturing these men.” He was
undoubtedly right.[133]
The press of the state has universally harrassed the Klan not only in
the Cruell episode but in its other activities as well. The _Morning
News_ referred to the organization as “this blasphemy against religion;
this living curse against decency; this social cancer that pollutes
everyone and every area it touches.” The _Independent_ called the Klan
a “latter-day bedsheet brigade” which appealed only to the “mentally
immature” who had “something to hide.” The _News and Courier_ believed
that it was made up of “hotheads, crackpots and brutes,” who went
“night riding for sport” and did more harm than good for the cause of
segregation.[134]
Not only does the Klan have to contend with a hostile press but it
also faces opposition from the state government. Governor Timmerman
quixotically charged that the reorganization of the Klan was the work
of the Communist Party. In early 1956 the South Carolina Klan applied
for a state charter. Attorney General Callison ruled against this
request on the ground that Klan ritual called for the wearing of robes
and hoods, which was illegal under the state’s anti-masking law.[135]
Previously Callison had joined other Southern attorneys general in a
declaration which pledged joint action to “use every legal means” to
check Klan growth and expose its “secret and unlawful purposes.”[136]
The attorney general’s actions were applauded by the press.
Public support of the Klan is rare. An occasional letter to the editor
has defended the order. The writer of one such letter to the _News and
Courier_, for example, had “never heard of the Klu Klux Klan bothering
anyone who did not need a double-dose of what they got.” Neither had
he ever known of the Klan taking the law into its own hands until “the
law had been notified, and had failed to take action.” Because of the
nature of the Communist conspiracy, he was in “favor of America waking
up” even if the Klan had to do the waking.[137] Another letter writer
to the _News and Courier_, one C. A. Rea of Hamlet, North Carolina,
a town close to the South Carolina border, said that he had attended
several KKK rallies and was sure that Klansmen did “not want any
trouble.” Rea, who concluded his letter with “Yours for Christianity,
segregation, and decency,” praised South Carolina law enforcement
officers “for their fairness and cooperation” at Klan rallies. “They
recognize and respect constitutional rights of peaceful assembly and of
free speech,” he declared.[138]
The other white supremacy groups, nearly all of which had short
existences, were less well known than the Klan. One of these, the
National Association for the Advancement of White People, apparently
had only one chapter in the state. This group was located at Florence
and affiliated with a national organization led by Bryant Bowles who
achieved a fleeting notoriety in connection with his attempts to
prevent school integration in Delaware and Washington, D.C. The NAAWP,
according to its national president, represented the white man’s “last
hope” against the NAACP. He pledged to fight the “trend from communism
to liberalism and then to negroism in the United States.”[139]
The Florence chapter was headed by G. L. Ivey, a restaurant owner, who
fired all of his Negro employees immediately after the Supreme Court
decision of May 17, 1954. The pronouncements of Ivey and Bowles were
similar to those made by some of the more outspoken members of the
Klan. What the Negro really wanted, Ivey told white Carolinians, was
“to get into your front bedroom.” Bowles protested that he was not
anti-Semitic but added “the Jews are fast making me that way” through
their support of the NAACP.[140]
The _Morning News_ condemned the NAAWP as being “at least as
undesirable” as the opposition it proposed to combat--the NAACP.
The _News and Courier_, professing to know little concerning the
organization, was inclined “not to endorse such a movement.”[141] Such
criticism may have discouraged white supremacists elsewhere in the
state from forming NAAWP chapters.
In March, 1955, apparently because of failure of the organization on
both the local and national level, the Florence chapter reconstituted
itself as the Florence County Chapter of the States Rights League.[142]
The States Rights League was another abbreviated attempt to combat
integration. It had a few chapters in lowcountry counties, e.g.
Charleston, Darlington, Florence, but never achieved more than a tiny
numerical strength. Its purposes, though couched in constitutional
terms, were essentially the same as those of other white supremacy
groups. The Darlington chapter of the League, in applying for a state
charter, listed its objectives as follows:
To promote constitutional government, including the
preservation of the independence of the legislative,
executive and judicial departments; the preservation of the
sovereign rights of state government and the preservation
of individual liberties guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution....
To oppose the adoption of socialistic platforms; to
seek in every Christian and legal manner the strongest
opposition to decisions of the Federal Courts and the
Supreme Court, which wrongly abrogated, modified or amended
the provisions of the U. S. Constitution which require a
separation of power between the three great branches of
government....[143]
Spokesmen for the League were more blunt in stating their objectives. A
member of the Darlington chapter declared that the League was seeking
“to preserve Christianity, segregation, states rights and individual
liberties.” The “sole purpose” of the League, announced G. L. Ivey,
was “to maintain segregation.” He urged “every white man and woman”
who believed that segregation provided “the only stable arrangement
for mutual respect and right conduct between the races” to join the
League.[144]
In promoting constitutional government, the Florence County States
Rights League concerned itself with such momentous issues as passing
a resolution demanding the resignation of the Reverend E. L. Byrd, a
Florence Baptist minister, who had advocated “the mixing of the white
and Negro races” in churches. In another equally dramatic action
the League adopted and sent to officials of the Florence County
Agricultural Building a resolution requesting that officials correct
a situation wherein whites and Negroes had to use the same drinking
fountain in the building. This move was taken following a report by a
league member that he had seen a “bunch of little Negro children all
around the white drinking fountain like a swarm of bees around a saucer
of syrup.”[145]
Another of the ephemeral Class B white supremacy groups was the
Grass Roots League of Charleston. President of the League was the
elderly Stanley F. Morse. Though highly vocal, the Grass Rooters were
numerically insignificant. Their method of attack was through the
issuance of “Research Bulletins.” Bulletin No. 2, for example, “proved”
that the NAACP “was infiltrated by the Communist party in 1925.”[146]
Bulletin No. 3 accused the National Council of Churches of distributing
“leftist propaganda” which echoed “the subtle Marxist line that the
South must give up its constitutional States Rights and necessary local
customs in accordance with the Supreme Court’s left-wing segregation
ruling.” This Bulletin was prepared by the League’s Religious Affairs
Committee whose chairman, Micah Jenkins, was later to become president
of the state Citizens Council organization.[147]
The purpose of the Grass Roots League, as stated by its president, was
to combat the “threat to the continued existence of our free American
Republic,” a threat which resulted from the Supreme Court’s segregation
ruling. Various facets of this threat included the “Communist
aim” of weakening “America’s constructive white civilization by
mongrelization;” the attempt of the Supreme Court to seize legislative
powers and destroy the principle of States Rights; the Supreme Court’s
surrender to “political expediency” in cooperating with the Eisenhower
administration’s “unscrupulous effort to win the Negro vote;” and “the
cowardly reluctance of too many Southern businessmen, newspapers,
radio stations, etc.,” to support resistance to “the black phases
of the Red revolution.” Almost two years later, in February, 1957,
Morse further expounded his views on the integration controversy in a
letter to the editor of the _News and Courier_: “In brief the racial
issue is political and biological--not religious. Since it is promoted
by the atheistic Reds, it is anti-Christian. If the pro-Negro drive
of the Communists succeeds, our United States may be wiped out and
Christianity may receive a terrible setback. It is incredible that many
clergymen and other ‘intellectuals’ are so unfamiliar with the laws of
God (natural laws) and the facts of history that they have been duped
into participating in this pagan attack on our civilization.”[148]
Still another transitory organization combatting racial equality was
the American Educators, Incorporated, with headquarters in Hartsville.
The American Educators apparently consisted of little more than their
president, George W. Waring, who was connected with other similar
groups, notably the States Rights League. Chartered in August, 1955,
the American Educators sought to instruct the public to “the dangers
of the communistic, socialistic, left wing, and modernistic trends to
destroy Christianity and other religious faiths, the Constitution of
the United States, individual liberties, high morals and self respect.”
President Waring favored the application of economic pressures against
“all members and sympathizers of the NAACP as well as any other
communist-dominated organizations.”[149]
The Federation for Constitutional Government with headquarters in New
Orleans is a “national” coordinating organization for white resistance
groups. It has affiliates in South Carolina, notably among the Citizens
Councils. The Federation was organized in December, 1955, in Memphis,
Tennessee, by representatives from twelve Southern and border states
and a sprinkling of delegates (self-appointed) from other states. Among
the South Carolinians attending were Micah Jenkins, who was elected
to the Executive Committee of the Federation, and Congressman L.
Mendel Rivers of Charleston, who offered a resolution, adopted by the
Convention, supporting interposition. Present at the Memphis meeting
were many persons prominent in pro-segregation organizations such as
the Citizens Councils and rightist organizations such as We the People
and For America. The motives which brought these elements together,
according to the _News and Courier_, were the same as those which
guided “the founders of our Republic”--“the preservation of rights and
freedoms built on centuries of Anglo-Saxon culture.”[150]
In the development of organized resistance to integration efforts, the
Citizens Council has emerged as the most effective opponent of the
NAACP. The Council was a relatively late comer to the state, first
appearing in the summer of 1955, a full year after the Court’s original
ruling. The “need” for an organization which would rally “moderate”
and “respectable” whites was apparent to many segregationist leaders.
The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups were unable to
generate anything approaching popular support and furthermore they
represented not particularly desirable white elements. In May, 1955,
Farley Smith, son of the late Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith, complained
of the “apathy of the average white citizen” toward pro-segregation
movements and urged establishment of a white counterpart of the NAACP.
Smith, S. Emory Rogers, the Summerton attorney who helped argue the
Clarendon school case, and others recognized the Council as the answer
to the undermining of segregation by the NAACP. The _News and Courier_,
too, believed that the Citizens Council might succeed in steadying the
shaking “foundations of the Republic” by providing leadership of the
type which was “sorely needed” in the “uncertain times” of 1955.[151]
The Citizens Council idea originated in Indianola, Mississippi, where
the first Council was formed in July, 1954. The movement spread
rapidly throughout the South. In the late summer of 1955 Thomas R.
Waring of the _News and Courier_ wrote a series of articles on the
Mississippi Councils to acquaint South Carolinians as to their nature
and purpose with a view to encouraging the creation of similar groups
in the state. He reported that the Councils proposed “to preserve
separation of the races” against the combined assaults of the NAACP
and the federal government. At the same time they allegedly were
dedicated to the protection of rank and file Negroes “from the wrath
of ruffian white people.” Membership in the Councils, said Waring, was
recruited from “private, patriotic citizens,” who were the “pillars of
the community.” Council members were citizens who “run the Chamber of
Commerce and the Community Chest, serve as officers of churches and
do the civic chores in every town worthy of the name.” Meeting the
criticism of liberals both in the North and the South, Waring stated
that Council leaders were “in no sense the architects of an American
Fascist movement.” On the contrary, they were “firm supporters of
the Republic and Jeffersonian democracy.” The Councils screened all
potential members carefully “for character and dependability, as well
as for their determination to keep the races separate,” and accepted
only those who could be trusted with “the powers of organized civic
righteousness.”[152]
The aims of the Citizens Council do not, in fact, differ particularly
from those of other white supremacy groups; in its methods, however,
the Council places greater emphasis on economic pressure, legal
resistance and respectability. Its members wear business suits instead
of bedsheets. In 1956 the State Legislature adopted a resolution
commending the Citizens Councils in South Carolina as organizations
designed
to preserve and maintain proper relations between all races
residing in the State of South Carolina; to oppose the use
of force by radicals and reactionaries; to disseminate
information concerning radicals and reactionaries who may
attempt to disrupt the peace and good relations among the
races; to make every legal and moral effort to maintain
the segregated public schools of the state; to study and
develop ways and means for providing adequate education for
children of all races in the State of South Carolina in the
event that radical agitators should force the abandonment
of the public schools; to operate segregated public
schools by agreement between the races on a voluntary
basis; to acquaint public officials without the State of
South Carolina with the conditions in our State which
make integration impossible; to acquaint such officials
with the fact that the vast majority of the citizens of
our State, both white and colored, favor the continuance
of segregation in the public schools as now exists; to
continue the present American way of life; and for other
eleemosynary purposes.[153]
The emphasis on white supremacy is more apparent in a newspaper
advertisement of the Florence Council soliciting membership. After
describing the organization as the “modern version of the old town
meeting,” it stated that the “Council is the South’s answer to the
mongrelizers. We will not be integrated! We are proud of our white
blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.” To do battle with the
“mongrelizers” the Council needed “every patriotic white Southerner,
rich or poor, high or low,” who was “proud of being a white American.”
All such persons were urged to join the Council for the protection
of “those baby children at home.”[154] Micah Jenkins, president of
the Charleston Council, said the movement aimed “to promote better
race relations, and in every way preserve for the South its own way
of life.”[155] The Reverend L. B. McCord, the Clarendon County school
superintendent and one of the founders of the Clarendon Council,
justified formation of the Councils on the ground that should an
emergency arise such organizations would be available to give it
“thoughtful and prayerful attention.”[156]
The immediate cause for the rapid growth of the Citizens Councils in
South Carolina was the appearance of the school integration petitions
in the summer of 1955. These petitions served as a catalyst to
crystallize the previously unorganized opposition among whites to
integration. The first Council was formed at Elloree in Orangeburg
County in early August, 1955, immediately following a petition by
Negroes for school integration. From this beginning the Councils spread
rapidly throughout the lowcountry and into several counties in the
upper part of the state. During the first year’s existence, Councils
were formed at the rate of better than one per week so that by July 1,
1956, South Carolina had 55 separate Councils.[157] Only a few have
been added since that date.[158]
In October, 1955, representatives from the various Councils met in
Columbia to lay the foundation for a statewide association. This was
effected in December, 1955. Micah Jenkins, a Charleston nurseryman,
was named state chairman and S. Emory Rogers executive secretary.
Inasmuch as the local Councils were autonomous, the purpose of the
state organization was to give overall coordination and direction to
activities on the state level. The state association had a speakers’
bureau and a legal advisory committee composed of one member from each
of the state’s judicial districts in which at least one Council was
organized. The board of directors was made up of one representative
from each county in which a Council had been organized. Membership
totals were not maintained by the state headquarters but were variously
estimated between 25,000 and 40,000 in the summer of 1956.[159]
The South Carolina Citizens Councils are affiliated with the national
Citizens Councils of America which has headquarters in Greenwood,
Mississippi. The national organization published an official newspaper,
_The Citizens Council_, which had a circulation in early 1957 of
approximately 4,000. In 1957 _The Citizens Council_ ran in serial form
“A Manual for Southerners,” a segregation handbook designed for public
school pupils. That portion designed for third and fourth graders read
in part:
Negroes and white people do not go to the same places
together. We live in different parts of town. And we are
kind to each other. This is called our Southern Way of Life.
Do you know that some people in our country want the
Negroes to live with the white people? These people want us
to be unhappy.... They want to make our country weak....
Do you know what part of our country you live in? You live
in the South.... We are called Southerners. Southerners are
people who live in the South. You are a Southerner. You
live in the South....
God put the white people off by themselves. He put the
yellow, red and black people by themselves. God wanted the
white people to live alone....
White men built America. The Negro came to our country
after the white man did. The white man has always been kind
to the Negro. But the white and black people do not live
together in the South....
[Those who seek integration] say we are not good if we
don’t live together. But we know it is wrong to live
together.... They want to make our country weak. Did you
know our country will grow weak if we mix our races? It
will.[160]
Although this quotation requires no comment either from the standpoint
of logic or historical accuracy, the reaction of Margaretta P. Childs
of Charleston is noteworthy:
Such pontifical judgments [she wrote] may not edify the
third grade pupil for whom they are intended, but will
surely amuse a wide audience all over the country. The
Mississippians’ intimate knowledge, perhaps even complicity
in, the Deity’s intentions will also catch the attention of
the nation’s Biblical scholars and theologians....
Unfortunately for the school child, if he learns any
history or geography he may be more perplexed than
confirmed in a fine old Saxon interpretation of divine
will. If God wanted the white man ‘to live alone’, why did
He send the white man across the ocean to trespass on the
lands of the red men or to make long voyages to settle
among the dark-skinned people of Africa and Asia?
The pamphlet in its ‘simple, easy-to-read style’ will
not fool the children for long and will furnish lots of
jokes to observers of the Southern scene. Too bad that H.
L. Mencken, keenest critic of bigotry, false sentiment,
and hypocrisy, is not around to enjoy and lampoon this
latest tasteless expression of the cracker mentality. The
intellectual bankruptcy of the die-hard segregationists is
clearly shown for those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear.[161]
Local Councils maintain several committees, each charged with specific
functions. An information and education committee is assigned to
gather and disseminate information on racial problems on all levels. A
committee on politics and elections has the responsibility of studying
candidates for political office and presenting their qualifications
to the voters. A membership and finance committee seeks to enlist
“all patriotic white citizens for membership” and thus assure the
organization of support. Membership fees are generally set at $5.00. A
legal advisory committee provides “legal knowledge” to the Council in
its fight against integration.[162] Some of the Councils are organized
on a countywide basis while others correspond to a local school
district.
The Citizens Councils have quickly endeavored to make their influence
felt in the political arena. Although the state organization declares
that it will “steer clear of partisan politics,” it nonetheless exerts
direct political pressure. Using its power “for principles, not
persons; for causes, not individuals,” the state Council makes sure
that all candidates hold orthodox views on the race question. The aim
is not so much to endorse particular candidates but to insure that all
are “safe.” As the _News and Courier_ noted, the Council aimed “to give
support to strong officials and put backbone into weak ones.”[163]
In the state elections of 1956 the Council submitted to the candidates
a list of questions designed to detect any deviation from orthodoxy on
the race issue. The most revealing of these asked: “Do you here and
now promise not to seek the Negro vote directly or indirectly?”[164]
A joint statement in reply to the queries by five of the six members
of the state’s delegation to the House of Representatives--L. Mendel
Rivers, John J. Riley, W. J. Bryan Dorn, Robert J. Ashmore and John L.
McMillan--reflected the attitudes of South Carolina politicians. Said
the representatives:
We believe continued segregation to be in the best interest
of South Carolina and the United States. Our country is
threatened from abroad and from within by an atheistic
menace which will stoop to any methods to create unrest and
disunity. South Carolina’s record of tolerance, patriotism
and understanding is second to that of no other state. It
is far superior to that of some other states which spawn
the chief critics of our way of life and harbor fugitives
from justice.
There are in South Carolina many patriotic colored citizens
who are not misled by outside agitation and who are working
at the local level with our white citizens to solve this
complex problem.
The votes of such Negroes, continued the congressmen, would and should
be welcomed by all South Carolina politicians.[165]
Political leaders, the state press and other moulders of public opinion
endorse the Citizens Council in its role as spokesman for “the Southern
way of life.” Indicative was the appearance of Senators Thurmond and
Johnston, Representatives Rivers and Riley, former Governor Byrnes,
State Representative Burnet R. Maybank, Jr., and others of less
political note at a Council rally held in Columbia. Senator James O.
Eastland of Mississippi, the principal speaker, told his audience that
the Supreme Court decision had been “dictated by political pressure
groups bent upon the destruction of the American system of government
and bent upon the mongrelization of the white race.” In making the
decision, the Court had “responded to a radical pro-communist political
movement.” Senator Thurmond commended the Councils for the “orderly and
lawful manner” in which they had approached the “problem” created by
the Supreme Court decision.[166]
Among the state press, the _News and Courier_ has become a sort of
unofficial organ for the Councils. The Charleston paper presents these
organizations as “moderate and sound” in approach and representative
of a “deep public sentiment” against integration. To the _News and
Courier_ the movement is evidence that the South has “not shrunk
from revolution and rebellion,” words which were “honorable” when
the cause was just.[167] The _Record_ endorses the Councils but the
_Independent_, reflecting upcountry distrust of lowcountry domination
of the Councils, expresses little interest in the movement.
Scattered opposition has developed amongst the South Carolina white
population to the Councils. Initially, the _Morning News_ mildly
condemned them, stating that their appearance was “tacit admission”
that the NAACP occupied a position of superiority in the segregation
controversy.[168] Stronger protest has come from the South Carolina
Methodist Church. In a statement adopted at its annual conference in
1955--before the Citizens Councils had consolidated their position in
the state--the Methodist leaders condemned the movement. They noted
that “it is properly supposed that these councils are being formed
for the express purpose of exerting economic pressure upon a portion
of our citizenry to prevent the exercise and development of their
moral conscience and their civil rights according to the dictates
of their consciences.” Such action, declared the Methodists, was a
“contradiction of the basic teachings of our Lord and Master.”[169] The
national executive council of the AFL-CIO has approved a report that
contained an especially strong condemnation of the Councils. The labor
leaders referred to them as “this new Ku Klux Klan without hoods” whose
actions bore “ominous” resemblance “to the pattern of the growth of
Naziism and other totalitarian movements which have fed on hatred and
defied constitutional democracy.”[170] Expressing similar sentiments,
Thurgood Marshall said that “the really vicious part about these
groups” was the creation of an “atmosphere of respectability” in which
other less scrupulous groups could “intimidate, threaten, beat up and
kill Negroes.”[171]
The principal method used by the Citizens Councils in opposing
integration is the economic boycott. This policy, which belies
professed reliance on constitutional forms of opposition, has been
employed from the very beginning. Leaders of the Elloree Council
declared their immediate purpose was to exert “economic pressure on all
persons connected with the NAACP.” Specifically, these spokesmen were
referring to the seventeen Negro parents who had signed the petition
seeking the end of race discrimination in Elloree public schools. The
effectiveness of the policy was indicated within two weeks following
the formation of the Council. Several Negro petitioners lost their jobs
or were peremptorily evicted from their farms as a consequence of which
fourteen of them asked that their names be removed because they “did
not fully understand the meaning of the language of the petition” at
the time of their signature.[172]
The overall object of the economic boycott has been to discourage
all persons sympathetic to the idea of integration. Because of their
generally inferior economic status, Negroes are especially vulnerable
to such pressures. In areas where the boycott has been invoked any
Negro who did not support segregation could expect to find business and
personal credit withheld, home mortgages and installment loans denied,
employment terminated or refused, rental quarters barred to him, and
business and professional patronage withdrawn.
The city of Orangeburg provides an excellent study of the way in which
the economic boycott operates. Located about fifty miles southeast
of Columbia, Orangeburg had a population in 1950 of approximately
15,000. It is the county seat of Orangeburg County, a predominantly
agricultural area the population of which is approximately fifty
percent Negro. The white population of Orangeburg had always considered
the city a model of “biracial amity, interracial cooperation, and
educational progress.”[173] This attitude prevailed until fifty-seven
Negroes petitioned for public school integration in the summer of
1955. The white citizenry was stunned by this action, considering it
a breach of good faith on the part of the Negro parents. Reaction was
instantaneous. A Citizens Council was organized which immediately
began a policy of economic pressure against the petitioners. A number
of prominent businessmen joined the boycott and several Negro retail
merchants among the petitioners found their supply of such basic
commodities as bread and milk curtailed. White merchants refused
to extend credit to the petitioners and asked that all outstanding
accounts be settled immediately. The white community terminated
financial assistance that had previously been available to petitioners.
Negro leaders, realizing that economic pressure was a two-edged
sword, immediately began retaliating in kind against those merchants
prominent in the Citizens Council boycott. Since Negroes represented
approximately fifty percent of Orangeburg’s population, their counter
boycott was of considerable proportion and keenly felt by many white
merchants. A boycott list of twenty-three local firms was distributed
among the Negro community. It included only the more outspoken of
the white boycott leaders and those most dependent on Negro trade.
According to _Reporter_ magazine, at least one white retail merchant
was put out of business.
More positive steps were also taken to aid the Negro boycott victims. A
fund, eventually reaching approximately $50,000, was deposited in the
Victory Savings Bank, a Negro institution in Columbia, and was made
available for small loans to Orangeburg Negroes. This fund included
$20,000 donated by the NAACP, $5,000 deposited by an unidentified
Catholic church, and $5,000 deposited by the National Council of
Churches. The Negroes cooperated among themselves in other ways to help
make their counter-boycott effective.
Accompanying the two-sided economic boycott was a general breakdown
in race relations. To a suggestion by Negro ministers that they hold
joint prayer services to help solve the problem, the white ministerial
alliance of Orangeburg replied, “This is not the time” for praying
together.
Boycott and counter-boycott reached an impasse and in the spring of
1956 both sides realized the desirability for compromise. The whites
made several concessions, notably the resignation of Council Chairman
W. T. C. Bates who had been largely responsible for the extreme
position taken by the whites. With both sides easing up on the economic
boycott, there was a general lessening of tension. However, neither
side would compromise the basic issue. Negro parents continue to demand
an end to school segregation (the number of petitioners was reduced by
the boycott from fifty-seven to twenty-six); whites continue to stand
adamantly against ending school segregation.[174]
An important incident in the Orangeburg controversy was the protest
against intimidation by the student body and certain faculty members of
the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. The college
is the only state supported institution of higher education for Negroes
in South Carolina. Its presence in Orangeburg gives the local Negro
community an unusually well educated and effective leadership. Several
of the faculty members were at least sympathetic to the policies of
the NAACP. The anti-segregation sentiment of these and other persons
prominently connected with the college brought a request from Rep.
Jerry M. Hughes, Jr. of Orangeburg for an investigation of NAACP
activities among the faculty and students. Consequently in March 1956
the state legislature approved a resolution establishing a nine-member
committee to determine which individuals at the college were “members
of and sympathizers with” the NAACP; the extent of participation of the
faculty and students in the activities of the NAACP; whether or not the
faculty and students were “serving to mislead the Negro citizens and
foment and nurture ill feeling and misunderstanding between the White
and Negro races;” and if the activities of the faculty and students
were “detrimental to the welfare of the college, its students and the
State of South Carolina as a whole.” The resolution described the
NAACP as an organization dedicated to the “fomenting and nurturing
of a bitter feeling of unrest, unhappiness and resentment among the
members of the Negro race with their status in the social and economic
structure of the South.”[175]
Following adoption of this resolution, a portion of the student body
and faculty of the college framed its own resolution which condemned
“pressures and attempts at intimidation” being applied to the college
and expressed approval of the policies of the NAACP.[176]
As unrest among the student body grew, Governor Timmerman directed the
State Law Enforcement Division’s attention to “information that certain
subversive elements” might attempt to sponsor a demonstration against
the state government. He directed the law enforcement agency “to keep
the situation under surveillance and to arrest immediately any law
violators.”[177]
These incidents together with the white-Negro boycott then in effect
in Orangeburg led to a protest strike by the student body of the
Negro college. During the strike the students presented President
Benner C. Turner with a list of grievances which protested against the
investigation and the patronage by the college of certain Orangeburg
business firms operated by men prominent in the economic boycott
against Negroes. The strike lasted a week, achieving little for the
students. Fred Moore, student body president and leader of the strike,
was expelled from school. At the end of the year the contracts of
several faculty members were not renewed and some twenty-five students
were requested not to return.[178]
The investigating committee met in July, organized itself and selected
Rep. James H. McFaddin of Clarendon County as chairman. When the
investigation began, committee members were told by the compliant
President Turner that since the student strike had been ended and
several faculty members dismissed, there was no longer anything to
investigate. Consequently after a perfunctory one-day meeting, the
committee held no further hearings.[179]
Use of the economic boycott at Orangeburg and elsewhere has generally
been approved by the press of the state. Its dangers are realized
but the end is considered worth the risk. The _Record_ has compared
the white boycott to Gandhi’s policy of “non-cooperation” (passive
resistance) against the British![180] Not surprisingly the policy
receives its most enthusiastic support from the _News and Courier_:
We would not encourage unfair retaliation against any
citizen, whatever his race, for free expression of opinion.
This is a truly free country and people can say or write
whatever they wish.
In exercising this freedom, people must be ready to
bear the consequences. If those consequences include
unpopularity, public dislike or refusal to do business with
them, they need not be surprised.[181]
On another occasion the _News and Courier_ declared that “Negroes
wishing to engage in activities repugnant to white people are also free
to earn a living elsewhere.” To secure employment in the South, Negroes
should be willing “to observe community customs.”[182]
The policies of the Citizens Council at least temporarily have been
successful inasmuch as they have postponed an immediate showdown on the
school segregation issue. Just how long such unofficial measures will
continue to be successful is problematical.