THE NEW NULLIFICATION
In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable
infractions of the Constitution, affecting the
sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the
people, it is not only the right but the duty of
such state to interpose its authority for their
protection.--_Hartford Convention (1814)_
In the final analysis, the sound and fury of professional hate groups,
white supremacy organizations, “legal” resistance movements, and
“voluntary” segregation advocates would signify nothing without active
leadership and cooperation from the state government. Consequently,
organizations and individuals supporting segregation have made doubly
sure that there is no wavering on the part of public officials. Toward
this end, for example, the Lamar Citizens Council resolved that “the
powers of legislative decision and administrative responsibility must
remain in the exclusive control” of men who supported “constitutional
government, states rights ... individual liberty,” and “the separation
of races in the schools and colleges and social institutions of
this state.”[297] Segregationists have had no difficulty whatsoever
in achieving this objective if for no other than the simple reason
that political leaders are of one and the same opinion. Amongst the
politicians there has not been a single instance of deviation from
accepted attitudes of complete racial segregation. With such unanimity
of opinion, extremists inevitably would be able to set the pace in the
state legislature. That is precisely what has happened.
Immediately following the Court decision, much advice, largely
unsolicited, was given to state policy makers. The _News and Courier_
called “for moderation, for calm and wise decisions” in meeting the
crisis. It offered no specific policies for immediate consideration
by state officials but it did suggest for the time being a delaying
action, “a masterly retreat, in the Robert Edward Lee tradition of
rear-guard actions, including flank attacks.” Lest there be any doubt,
the Charleston paper reaffirmed its opposition to “de-segregation,
or integration, or amalgamation or any other tricky method of mixing
the races in public schools.”[298] The Florence _Morning News_, too,
called for “calm, reasonable and foresighted” leadership by “statesmen”
not “politicians.” Statesmen, it declared, “are not people who can
shout ‘nigger’ and they are not people who can prove--with words--that
the Negro is an inferior animal.” Solution of the problem would
result not from speeches that “inflame groups and excite the passions
of extremists,” but rather from “good sense, calm action and kind
reason.”[299]
W. D. Workman, Jr., the _News and Courier_ correspondent in Columbia,
thought South Carolina could take any one of five actions: acceptance
of the Court decision; “nullification” of the decision; abolition
of public schools; “evasive action,” such as the establishment of a
private school system to circumvent the Court decision; or “passive
resistance” which he deftly defined as “non-compliance rather than open
defiance.”[300]
The legislature was not in session at the time of the original ruling.
Therefore immediate policy decisions had to be made by Governor James
F. Byrnes. The latter decided that since the Supreme Court had failed
to implement its decree, it was unnecessary to call a special session
of the legislature. On May 20, 1954, however, he ordered a halt to all
school construction under the state’s equalization program. In July the
Gressette Committee recommended resumption of construction and the ban
was lifted on August 31.[301]
The new school building program represents the state’s one real
constructive reaction to Negro integration efforts. The purpose may
have been less an altruistic desire to improve Negro education than
to furnish the state with another arguing point in the preservation
of segregation. Whatever the motive, an immediate result has been
to provide Negroes with greatly improved, though still segregated,
educational facilities.
Early in 1956 Dr. E. Ryan Crow, the able director of the
“equalization” program, announced that despite “a fatal indifference
to equalizing facilities for Negroes” in some areas, the program had
been approximately 85 percent completed. The program’s magnitude
demonstrates that South Carolina whites, when pushed far enough, will
make efforts to equalize the Negro schools--at least from a physical
standpoint. Expenditures in Clarendon County are indicative: between
1951 and 1956 the state spent $770,576 on white school construction
as against $2,166,895 on Negro school construction. In the Summerton
school district which was directly involved in the case, $102,596 was
spent on white school construction as compared to $892,114 for Negro
school construction.[302]
In the gubernatorial election of 1954, George Bell Timmerman, Jr., who
had been lieutenant governor for eight years, was chosen to succeed
Governor Byrnes. Taking office in January, 1955, Governor Timmerman,
son of the Federal District Judge who had ruled against the Negro
plaintiffs in the Clarendon County case, became the key figure in
the state’s official opposition to any and all desegregation. For
this reason his public statements are of special significance. The
new Governor, a forty-five year old lawyer from Lexington County, is
a humorless and fanatical segregationist. On one occasion he told a
national television audience that segregation in the state would not
end “in a thousand years.”[303] Considering the problem in its more
immediate implications, he said on another occasion: “If you let one
[Negro] child come in ... you’ve opened the door. There can’t be any
compromise--you can’t compromise right with wrong.” In still another
instance he declared: “With the knowledge that right, justice and truth
are our allies, we shall not fail. There shall be no compulsory racial
mixing in our state.”[304]
Timmerman insisted that segregation did not involve discrimination.
Equality went “hand in hand” with separation. In developing this theme
the Governor added:
The two terms [discrimination and segregation] are not
interchangeable. I am opposed to discrimination on any
grounds, racial or otherwise, but it does not necessarily
follow that racial discrimination results from racial
separation. If anything separation makes for less
discrimination, for it does not provide a basis for the
inevitable discrimination which will follow if white and
Negro children are mingled in the same schools and the same
classrooms.
... The “separate-but-equal” policy provides a fair and
practicable basis for race relations in South Carolina.
If the administration of the law in years past has been
faulty, the need is for improved administration such
as we are now giving, not abandonment of the principle
itself.[305]
Timmerman asserted that the positive “benefits” of segregation were
realized by the state’s Negro population. He claimed that “many Negro
parents living in Washington and other cities to the North of us are
leaving their children with relatives in our State so that their
children can enjoy the benefit of a Southern climate in segregated
public schools.”[306] The Governor did not say whether he was referring
to climate in its physical aspects or in the realm of opinion and mores.
In his inaugural address, Timmerman criticized even the suggestion of a
moderate consideration of the segregation issue. “The cowardly approach
of gradualism,” he described as “the essence of discrimination,”
“a creeping evil” that had no place in “the government of a free
people.”[307] Constantly reiterating that “white parents” and “most
Negro parents” opposed integration, he applauded “the calm attitude”
in which white South Carolinians had approached the issue. Since the
latter were determined to resist integration, “the sensible choice
of the Negro” was to accept and support separate but equal schools.
“Our common task is one of patience, understanding and unyielding
determination,” said the Governor. “In this way we can minimize some
of the tragedy which the Supreme Court would impose upon us all. There
will be no compulsory racial mixing in our state.”[308]
Also indicative was Timmerman’s criticism of President Eisenhower’s
appeal that every American be “judged and measured by what he is,
rather than by his color, race or religion.” He complained that
“never before has a national administration proclaimed as unimportant
a person’s race and religion.” How better, he asked, could a person
be “judged and measured” as to what he is? “A man’s most priceless
possession is his heritage. A man’s most priceless achievement is his
religious faith.”[309]
Whatever one may think of it, Timmerman’s attitude is in no sense
hypocritical; it is in complete consonance with his political credo.
He is a conservative in the peculiarly Southern sense of the word, a
racist, a states righter, an advocate of decentralized government. In
referring to federal aid to education, he declared: “As far as I am
concerned, if I must be taxed and controlled, I would rather be taxed
by laws enacted sensibly by local representatives of my own state in
whose election I have some choice, than to be taxed ill-advisedly
by representatives of the other states, in whose selection I have
no choice.”[310] The full measure of his political conservatism is
reflected in a speech delivered before the Southern regional conference
of the Association of State Governments at Charleston in the spring of
1956. George Washington, he said, gave “to posterity prophetic advice
of strikingly current significance” when he cautioned against a “spirit
of innovation” upon the principles embodied in the Constitution. Such a
“spirit,” warned the Governor, was “prevalent and growing.”[311]
The state legislature and the special school segregation committee,
headed by Senator L. Marion Gressette of Calhoun County, also have
played leading roles in the official opposition to integration.
The Gressette Committee, consisting of 15 members appointed by the
Governor, Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings and Speaker of the State
House of Representatives Solomon Blatt, one of that rare variety of
Jewish segregationists, had been formed in 1951 as a result of the
Clarendon County school case. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, the
committee embarked in earnest on its task of determining the best
course to be followed in circumventing the integration drive. Beginning
in July the committee held a series of closed hearings which sounded
out the attitudes of leading individuals and groups. It heard from
such diverse individuals as the presidents of all state supported
colleges, including Dr. Benner C. Turner of the state Negro college;
former Governor Byrnes; E. H. Agnew, president of the state Farm
Bureau Federation; G. L. Ivey, president of the Florence National
Association for the Advancement of White People; representatives from
the Charleston NAACP and the Negro teachers association.
The initial efforts of the committee were generally applauded.
The _News and Courier_ praised its “statesmanlike and cautious
approach.”[312] The _Morning News_ was somewhat more reserved. In
addition to criticizing the closed hearings, Editor O’Dowd suggested
that the scope of the committee’s responsibility be widened to include
a study of the price South Carolina was willing to pay for segregated
schools. The same paper made the ingenious proposal that a “devil’s
advocate,” an “open and declared advocate of integration,” be placed
on the committee. Such a person, it was pointed out, could expose the
flaws in the various plans for continuing segregation.[313]
In justifying the closed hearings, the committee’s first interim
report explained that this was done “to avoid hasty action and public
misunderstanding, which could cause inflammation and friction.”[314]
In at least one instance what transpired behind committee doors
was revealed to the press. In a letter to the _News and Courier_,
A. J. Clement, Jr., the Charleston NAACP president, stated that
when appearing before the committee, he had urged “that South
Carolina accept the Supreme Court decision” and begin steps toward
desegregation “forthwith.” Clement acknowledged the magnitude of the
problem involved. “Molds and patterns of living, customs and habits
in daily activities” could not be altered overnight. The state of New
Jersey provided an example of gradual desegregation such as Clement
envisaged for South Carolina. In New Jersey the Negro had “all of
the educational, civic, political opportunities” he was fighting for
in South Carolina. Yet “the mark, the impression, the influence,
the stunting effects of former discriminatory practices and racial
segregations” were still present. He appealed to the Gressette
Committee to take the initial step toward desegregation in South
Carolina.[315]
The attitude of the Gressette Committee has been revealed in its
reports to the state legislature and in speeches by its chairman. The
latter, like the Governor, holds that a majority of Negroes desire
segregation. On one occasion he asserted that 98 percent of the
state’s Negroes were uninterested in forcibly integrating the races.
(Significantly, he neglected to say whether these same Negroes would
be opposed to integration if the question of force was not involved.)
To buttress his opinion, Gressette cited the NAACP’s “failure to
obtain more petitions” for integration in the public schools, despite
its alleged use of “fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” Similar
ideas have been expressed in committee reports. In January, 1955,
the committee found no reason to alter its view “that the consensus
of public opinion in the State favors better educational opportunity
for children--in separate schools.” Such a view is in all probability
substantially true but the matter is academic since the Supreme Court
has ruled otherwise. The following December, the committee revealed
there were “many indications, and few if any to the contrary, that
sentiment in favor of separate schools and against integrated schools”
had crystallized during 1956. It further expressed agreement “with
those who maintain that the decision of the United States Supreme Court
was improper,” representing a usurpation of executive and legislative
functions by the Supreme Court. And it proposed “to employ every
legal means” to maintain a segregated school system which it “in good
conscience” believed to be “in the best interests” of the children of
both races. With some real basis in fact the Committee held that events
were proving “that the Court did not intend to force integration on an
unwilling people.”[316]
The public school system is, of course, the key factor in the
segregation-integration controversy. The one great trump card, though
a miserable joker for the children of the state, is the threat to
close down the public school system if integration is ordered. It has
been spelled out to leave no doubts. If a Negro pupil is admitted to
a white school by court order, both the white and Negro schools which
are involved are to be closed. This threat takes in not only primary
and secondary public schools but also state supported institutions of
higher education, including graduate and professional schools.
Reactions have varied to the possibility of closing the public
schools. Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings, opposing such action,
asserted that “it’s foolish to even consider for a moment that
abolishing public education is the solution.” On another occasion he
insisted: “We can never abandon our public school system.”[317] Yet
he reassured the people that schools were “intended for education and
not integration.”[318] And since segregation was a “natural thing,” it
followed that “a majority of Negroes” was no more enthusiastic about
integration than whites. The Lieutenant Governor took the realistic
position that any private school plan “might be tossed out by the court
as a ‘trick’ designed to circumvent the decree.”[319] He advocated
a system that would be premised on local control. Pupils would be
assigned to schools by the local superintendent or trustees on a basis
other than race--“sex, aptitude, proximity of school to home and
available classroom space.” Such a plan, he thought, would meet the
requirements of the court.[320]
W. D. Workman, Jr., in evaluating public opinion on the abolition
of the public schools, considered it “extremely doubtful” that a
majority of South Carolinians was prepared to do away with the system
altogether. None the less he reported that “in some parts of the
state,” white parents considered segregation more important than
education. The _News and Courier_ editorially agreed. “Compulsory
mingling of the races in public schools,” it announced, would be “a
worse thing than closing them.” The Charleston paper attacked the
public school system _per se_:
Many thoughtful citizens of South Carolina long have been
dissatisfied with the educational performance of our
public schools. We say this not in criticism of public
school teachers or officials, because it has been the
system--rather than the participants in the system--which
is at fault.
The public schools have suffered because of political
pressures, complacency due to lack of competition and a
trend to gear lessons to the dullest of the pupils. Social
promotions, progressive education and over-emphasis on
athletics and such nonsense as drum majorettes and beauty
contests have lowered the educational standards of public
schools....
In the future, South Carolinians who do not wish to send
their children to public schools should be encouraged to
send them to private schools. This encouragement should be
in the form of an allotment of money by the state toward
the private school tuition of any child who does not attend
public schools....
We believe that private schools which offered a poor
education soon would go out of business, and that private
schools which offered a good education would thrive and
multiply. There would be competition among private schools
to do a good educational job. At present there is no
competition among public schools....[321]
Others expressed like sentiments. Henry E. Davis, a Florence attorney,
told the local Citizens Council: “Close your schools if it comes to
that.... Closing public schools is not such a calamity and private
schools get the best results anyway.” Another Citizens Council speaker,
state representative O. L. Warr of Lamar, advised a Beaufort rally that
rather than accept integration, public schools should be abandoned
“reluctantly but inflexibly without flinch or falter.”[322] The letter
of T. H. McFaddin of Gable to the _News and Courier_ is revealing:
Any court that does not consider what is best for the
white child, in my opinion is a kangaroo court. No one can
read into the Constitution, that any child should be found
guilty for being born a white child and be sentenced to
over three quarters of every year during its school term
to be mixed with children of another race. For there is
no commandment that reads, Thou shalt not keep thy race
pure....
Books are cheap. Education can be gotten by mail to a great
extent ... the only way to beat this school mixture of the
races is to advertise all school property for sale.[323]
A few outspoken champions of the public school system have come
forward to be heard. _Morning News_ Editor O’Dowd declared that
“our educational system is of more importance than mores, political
opposition, state-wide resentment or mass disappointment.”[324]
Likewise Mrs. C. B. Busbee, head of the education department of the
South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs, said that “the abandonment
of a system of public schools would set back the cause of education for
all our people 100 years.”[325]
In view of the role of the schoolhouse in the segregation controversy,
the attitude of education groups is significant. The Council of
Delegates of the South Carolina Education Association, an organization
of white classroom teachers and administrators, in October, 1954,
approved a resolution which held segregated schools “the best form of
organization for meeting the needs of children of both races,” and
urged “an adequate system of free public schools in South Carolina be
maintained.”[326] Other education groups have been more hesitant to
state their positions. Not until August, 1955, more than a year after
the court decision, did the Association of School Administrators and
the School Boards Association, an organization of school trustees,
take their stand. The School Administrators pledged themselves “to the
preservation, continuation, and improvement of the public school system
of South Carolina.” The school trustees adopted a resolution which
observed that “as long as the State of South Carolina, through its
legislative authority, continues its policy of withholding funds for
the operation of integrated schools, our schools must continue to be
segregated if they are to remain open.” The trustees pledged themselves
to keep the public schools open “so that responsibility for closing
them must be assumed by other authorities.”[327] A sad commentary
is that no one administratively connected with any state supported
institution of higher learning publicly has opposed the state’s threat
to close those institutions if a Negro were admitted. To summarize, the
threatened abolition of the public school system would indicate lack of
appreciation by white South Carolinians of the fundamental role of a
system of free education in a democratic society.
The question of federal aid to education naturally has intruded itself
into the school integration controversy. So intense is the feeling on
this subject that it has become another of the articles of faith upon
which orthodoxy is demanded of all public spokesmen. Without doubt a
large majority of white South Carolinians agreed with the _News and
Courier_ when it referred to federal aid to education as “bribery” to
be used by integrationists. Governor Timmerman characterized federal
aid as “sugar-coated federal taxation.” He told the 1956 General
Assembly that propaganda for federal aid to education fostered upon
the people “a big political hoax, the claim of an acute shortage of
school buildings.” That contention, said the Governor, was “simply
untrue.”[328] Some South Carolina school administrators might have been
disposed to disagree were it discreet to do so.
Public officials and other leaders in the state have spoken out
against federal aid, especially if it suggests any inkling of federal
control. That South Carolina’s schools are already receiving hundreds
of thousands of dollars of federal money for educational purposes has
been conveniently overlooked. Most spokesmen oppose federal aid _per
se_. Occasionally, however, proposals have been made which are designed
to give the states federal money with no strings attached. For example,
University of South Carolina President Donald Russell who resigned
in October, 1957, to run for governor, suggested that the federal
government return to the states on a per capita basis ten percent of
all federal income taxes collected. This plan, declared Russell, would
involve no federal control and thus would test the sincerity of “those
who would pervert the matter of federal aid into a coercive weapon to
promote some alien or sociological goal.”[329]
The state legislature expressed itself on the subject in March, 1957.
The House of Representatives adopted a resolution, introduced by Rep.
P. Eugene Brabham of Bamberg, which noted that South Carolinians
“are now, always have been and shall always be unequivocally,
incontrovertibly and unalterably opposed to any federal invasion,
encroachment or infringement of the fundamental right, obligation and
duty of the people and their local authority to provide, supervise and
control the education of the children of this state or the educational
processes concomitant thereon.”[330]
A central theme of the opponents of federal aid to education is the
contention that South Carolina does not need any more money for
operation of its schools. They point with pride to the large scale
school building program which the state has undertaken in response
to the demands by Negroes for racial integration. The South Carolina
Conference of Education, a group appointed by Governor Byrnes to study
education in the state, reported in late 1955 that in regard to federal
aid to education “no funds are sought or desired, except in those areas
like North Charleston or Aiken where federal installations have caused
increases in school population out of all proportion to normal growth
and development.”[331]
Opponents of federal aid usually overlook all factors in the school
program except classroom construction. They disregard the pitifully
low salaries of classroom teachers and the resultant insufficient
training of many teachers. They also tend to ignore the results of
tests conducted by the American Council of Education. South Carolina
students, according to results announced early in 1956, ranked
nationally as follows:
34th in English correctness and effectiveness of expression
36th in general mathematical ability
42nd in interpretation of literary material
46th in interpretation of reading material on the natural sciences
47th in interpretation of reading material in social studies
According to a 1958 report of the National Education Association,
South Carolina ranks at the very bottom of the nation in its record of
public school education. Among the states it is 48th in the number of
median school years completed by persons 25 years of age and older.
It is 47th in the per cent of adult (25 years and older) population
with less than five years of schooling (27.4 per cent of its adults
have less than five years of formal education) and it is 48th in the
percentage of its adult population who have completed four years of
high school. It occupies 47th position in the percentage of selective
service registrants disqualified by mental tests. In the percentage of
its eighth grade enrollment going on to finish high school the Palmetto
State is 46th. With regard to teacher pay, South Carolina ranks 45th;
the average salary of its classroom teachers is $3,250.
Statistics such as these hardly give credence to Rep. Ashmore’s
statement that “what South Carolina has done with its schools is
evidence in itself any state in the union can take care of its own
school needs.”[332]
The press of the state generally denounces federal aid for education.
The _News and Courier_ went so far as to condemn federally subsidized
school lunches. If school children should get such lunches, it argued,
they should also receive suppers and breakfasts. “The difference
between government-sponsored school lunches and the welfare state is
only a matter of degree.” Similarly, the _Record_ thought that federal
aid could destroy “freedom and inventiveness in the schools” while the
_Morning News_ suggested it would in reality make less funds available
for education because of the bureaucratic costs of collecting the taxes
and sending the money back to the states.[333]
On occasion, however, a newspaper editorialist has questioned the
arguments used against federal aid. The _Independent_, rarely missing
a chance to lash out against former Governor Byrnes, wondered how
the Palmetto State’s elder statesman could oppose federal taxation of
South Carolinians for building schools in other states and not oppose
taxation of citizens of other states to build defense and military
installations in South Carolina. Driving this point home, the Anderson
newspaper then stated that in the past both South Carolina and Byrnes
had received far more money through federal channels than they had
paid out in federal taxes. Likewise the _Morning News_ objected to
arguments that federal aid was socialism. Socialism, said the Florence
newspaper, depended on whether South Carolina got anything from it.
“Our politicians say they will not accept federal aid to education
because it is socialistic.... The truth is that they do not need this
particular aid, so they can refuse it with indignation.”[334]
A concrete instance of the federal aid to education question came
to light in mid-August of 1957 when Clemson College, the state’s
agricultural and engineering school for whites, rejected a grant of
$350,000 from the Atomic Energy Commission. According to the provisions
of the grant, of which the college’s board of trustees had accepted
an initial payment of $99,050, “the grantee agrees that no person
shall be barred from participation in the educational and training
program involved or be the subject of other unfavorable discrimination
on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion.” Inasmuch as racial
discrimination undeniably existed at Clemson, the trustees belatedly
decided to withdraw from the agreement with the AEC and to return to it
the $99,050. Clemson president R. E. Poole stressed, however, that the
college’s nuclear testing and experimental program would continue.
Governor Timmerman, choosing to ignore the obvious racial
discrimination at Clemson, defended the college’s action on the far
less realistic grounds that the inclusion of the word “creed” in
the conditions of the grant would prohibit Clemson authorities from
denying participation in the atomic energy program to a Communist. This
lawyer’s trick in semantics was applauded by the Columbia _State_ which
ironically at this very time was leading a last-ditch fight to prevent
the closing of nearby Fort Jackson, a federal military installation
on which not a small part of Columbia’s economic well being directly
depends. “This affair,” pontificated the _State_, “is an affirmation
of the principle that federal aid means federal control.” The _News
and Courier_ also praised Clemson’s action, though recognizing that
its atomic energy program would have to be reduced in scope to the
detriment of the state. “So far as we know,” said the Charleston paper,
“Clemson is the first Southern college to make such a forthright
choice between freedom and government handouts. Other colleges sooner
or later will have to make the same decision. We hope they will be
guided by the example of the Clemson trustees. We do not know how many
federal dollars the choice of freedom will cost Southern colleges.
Freedom is an expensive commodity. It is worth every cent.”[335]
Though the state legislature did not reach the zenith of its
anti-integration zeal until 1956, its 1955 session provided an
informative prelude. Legislators in 1955 were more hesitant than a
year later, perhaps because the Supreme Court had not yet implemented
the original decision. Nevertheless a number of important measures
were adopted. The Gressette committee recommended and the legislature
adopted proposals that repealed the state’s compulsory attendance law,
gave local school trustees authority to sell or lease school property,
and prohibited automatic renewal of teacher contracts.[336]
Only the repeal of the state’s compulsory school attendance law evoked
any considerable opposition. In the Senate Lewis Wallace of York County
alone opposed repeal and then on the curious grounds that the measure
was an “abject surrender” to the Court decision. Greater objection
developed in the House. The House Education Committee approved the
measure thirteen to eight but on the floor Representative Richard L.
Breeland of Richland County, a high school teacher and lawyer, led
the opposition. He urged that repeal be postponed until after the
Supreme Court had given its final ruling. “In clearing the decks,” he
said, “let’s be careful we don’t sink the ship.” His chief adversary
in debate was John Calhoun Hart, an impulsive school teacher from
Union County. “Our very way of life is at stake,” he exclaimed. “Our
ethnological makeup may be swept away. If we falter, we shall go
down into the sewer of mongrelism.”[337] The repeal of this law was
generally accepted as an unpleasant but imperative move.
The _Independent_ regarded the repeal measure, along with other laws
which undermined the public school system, as a tactical action
necessary “to realize the overall strategy of maintaining segregated
schools.”[338] In abrogating the law the legislature was simply
reflecting the will of the people, thought the _News and Courier_.
In thus functioning “as a truly representative body in a Republic,”
the legislature was observing a principle “more important than the
compulsory attendance law, or even public education itself.”[339]
By analogy, then, if the people of South Carolina were bent upon
intellectual suicide, the logic of the Charleston paper would have the
legislature legally send them to their destruction.
In several other particulars, the 1955 legislature sought to hold the
segregation line. Most important was a provision in the general state
appropriation bill which stated that: “Appropriations of state aid for
teachers, salaries, and all other school district, county and state
appropriations for the operation of the public school system shall
cease and become inoperative for any school from which, and for any
school to which, any pupil may transfer pursuant to, or in consequence
of, any order of any court, for the time that the pupil shall attend
a school other than the school to which he was assigned before the
issuance of such court order.”[340]
The legislators also called upon Congress “to enact legislation
limiting the appellate jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court
and the jurisdiction of the other Federal Courts so that the fields
of government of the executive and legislative branches and that of
the several states shall not be invaded, but shall remain separate
and distinct.” Later the legislators, in urging the Supreme Court not
to implement its earlier decision, declared that integration in South
Carolina would result in “hatred, strife, chaos and confusion,” and
the “possible wrecking of the educational program.” Consequently, “at
no time in the foreseeable future” would it be possible to desegregate
the public schools of South Carolina. Reflecting a blindness to the
realities of the twentieth century, the resolution concluded on a note
of perverse logic that the continuation of segregation would weld and
unite America and thus enable the country to present “a solid front of
democracy” to the world.[341]
In 1956 the state legislature enacted anti-integration and anti-NAACP
proposals at almost a mass production rate. If no pertinent law could
be enacted, the legislators adopted, usually unanimously, resolutions
to express their opinion on a particular phase of the integration
controversy. Altogether more than a dozen important measures were
passed. These included a resolution of interposition; a law requiring
white colleges and the Negro college to close if integration were
ordered by the courts; a law barring NAACP members from state, county
or local government employment; a resolution ordering an investigation
of NAACP activities at the state Negro college; a resolution requesting
the federal government to place the NAACP on the attorney general’s
subversive list; a provision limiting all appropriations for state
schools and parks to segregated schools and parks only; a law closing
Edisto Beach State Park because Negroes had filed a court suit seeking
admission; a resolution requesting the State Library Board to remove
current, and screen future, books “inimical and antagonistic” to the
segregation customs of the state; a resolution commending the Citizens
Councils; a resolution requesting President Eisenhower to restore
segregation in the nation’s armed forces to rebuild morale and _esprit
de corps_; the establishment of the Gressette Committee as a permanent
legislative committee; a measure giving local law enforcement officers
the power to transfer pupils from one school to another to avoid “civil
commotion;” an enactment giving local school boards the power to make
enrollment rules and regulations having the force and effect of law,
appeals from such rules to be channeled through state courts; and
finally a resolution stating the legislators’ support of continued bus
segregation.[342]
Of all these actions the interposition resolution received the most
publicity. Revived during the period by Editor James J. Kilpatrick of
the Richmond, Virginia, _News Leader_, interposition has become the
shopworn answer of the states righters and “constitutionalists” to
the integration controversy. It is designed to please those elements
which have rationalized their prejudices and objections to racial
integration on constitutional grounds. Their contention, rightly
held to be sure, is that the founding fathers had not contemplated
integration in 1787 when they wrote the Constitution. Also appealing
is the long and hoary history of interposition and its companion
nullification. It had begun in 1798 and 1799 with the Kentucky and
Virginia resolutions of Jefferson and Madison and subsequently had
run through the Hartford Convention of 1814, Calhoun’s nullification
attempts in 1832 and Wisconsin’s refusal to accept the Fugitive Slave
Law in 1859. The Virginia resolution and the Hartford Convention both
used the term “interpose.” Illustrating that the use of interposition
or nullification was more a weapon of the political outs than of a
geographic section, the Hartford Convention, in terms worthy of the
best states righters of the 1950’s, had declared that “in cases of
deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution,
affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people,
it is not only the right but the duty of such state to interpose its
authority for their protection.”
The historically outmoded theory behind interposition is the core of
the states rights argument: the federal government is a creature of
the states, which had united to establish a central authority. The
Constitution set the rules and regulations which governed that central
authority. Ultimate sovereignty, however, continued to rest with the
states. If the people of the states felt that the federal government
had exceeded its authority, then they--acting through the states--had
the power to challenge the action of the federal government.[343]
In theory the challenge would take the form of a suspensive veto
which would hold the particular act of the federal government to be
null and void until approved by ¾ of the states by a constitutional
amendment. The theory resolved itself into a basic question: Is the
federal government or are the state governments the final judge of the
authority of the federal government? Historically, the political outs
have answered the states, though the Civil War, certainly if it meant
anything constitutionally speaking, proved the contrary to be true. In
the 1950’s the South represented the political outs in the segregation
controversy.
The interposition doctrine connoted different things to different
people; consequently, it produced varied reactions. Governor
Timmerman, who considered interposition a form of protest, believed
it “fundamentally sound.” Representative James L. Richards, dean of
the state’s congressional delegation and Chairman of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, praised interposition as a means of protest but
balked at talk of nullification. Interposition he defined as “an
assertion, a protest, and a declaration of opinion of illegality.”
He urged South Carolinians to “avoid the passion and hysteria that
will lead men to ‘ride at night,’ take the law into their own hands,
or insult the United States flag.”[344] On the other hand, the
silver-maned Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of Charleston declared that
“interposition is worthless unless it carries with it the corresponding
power of nullification.” Indicating that at least one later day
Charlestonian had learned nothing from the nullification crisis of
1832, Rivers asserted that “interposition without nullification is
a knife without an edge, a gun without bullets, a plane without an
engine or a head without a body.”[345] Similarly, S. Emory Rogers, the
Summerton attorney and Citizens Council leader, agreed that there could
be “no effective interposition without nullification.”[346]
Newspaper opinion also varied. The _Record_ considered interposition
“sound” when viewed “as a device for formalizing the states’ protest
against amendment of the Constitution by judicial decision.” But like
Representative Richards, the _Record_ looked upon any nullification
proposal as “counsel of confusion” which could be supported “only
by ... outdated law and pre-Confederate War logic.”[347] The
_Morning News_ endorsed interposition as “in all probability, the
only proper answer” to the segregation controversy. However, it
cautioned interposition advocates to be prepared to accept the
possible consequences. Should the nation admit the challenge of the
interposition theory and in fact approve the integration decision by
constitutional amendment, the South would be bound by its own doctrine
to adopt integration.[348] Such an eventuality would test the sincerity
of the constitutional objections to integration. The _Independent_,
while considering interposition “worthy of the test,” also realized
this danger. In the main, however, the Anderson paper was wary of the
whole doctrine because of its support by economic conservatives. “Is
there thought in some quarters,” asked the _Independent_, “that the
doctrine might be used to combat not racial decisions alone, but also
decisions and legislation dealing with such matters as wages and hours,
old age pensions, health insurance, right to work laws and other issues
that might arise in the future?”[349]
The _News and Courier_ gave unqualified assent to interposition but
never definitely identified the doctrine with outright nullification.
That this paper was willing to carry the issue to an extreme, however,
was demonstrated on several occasions. Southerners, it declared,
... understand, we believe, the meaning of nullification.
Though many are afraid of the consequences--they have been
coerced, bought and brainwashed for nearly a quarter of
a century now--there are many others who are eager for a
showdown.
Southerners do not talk about Civil War II. That is a
bogeyman to scare the faint of heart. There will be no war.
There may be “economic sanctions” such as withholding of
some form of federal aid....
Whatever may be the form of interposition, the South will
not, cannot and should not accept dictatorship while breath
remains in Southern breasts....
For many reasons the _News and Courier_ advocated interposition, the
most important being that it “could raise the issue above the tumult
and the shouting” of race and thus place “state sovereignty on the
highest plane.” The doctrine “should be held in reserve for use in
cases of maximum gravity.”[350]
Interposition was first considered seriously late in 1955. In January,
1956, Governor Timmerman and several other Southern governors attended
a conference in Richmond, Virginia, where the problem was discussed
with a view toward united action. The conference approved a statement
urging all the Southern states to adopt a “resolution of interposition
or protest.” Upon returning from the conference, Governor Timmerman
recommended that the state legislature approve such a resolution. He
described the interposition doctrine as representing “the studious
thought and deliberate work of the men who have provided sound advice
and wise leadership in this crisis.”[351]
A resolution interposing the sovereignty of the state of South Carolina
between its people and the federal government was introduced into the
legislature by Senator Gressette on January 31 and adopted February
14. It condemned “the illegal encroachment by the central government
into the reserved powers of the states and the rights of the people.”
The resolution protested “against the grave threat to constitutional
government, implicit in the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of
the United States.” Eight closely connected reasons were enumerated in
justification for interposition. “The right of each of the States to
maintain ... racially separate public schools ... is not forbidden or
limited” by the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Supreme Court handed
down its desegregation decision, it departed from “the sanctity of past
decisions” and relied “on the current political and social philosophy
of its members.” Such in effect constituted an amendment to the
Constitution, since the Court ignored the “principle that the meaning
of the Constitution and its Amendments does not change. It is a written
instrument.” This usurpation of power by the Court transcended even
the “problems of segregation in education.” Under such circumstances
the sovereign state of South Carolina could “judge for itself of the
infraction of the Constitution.”
For these reasons, then, the legislature resolved that the Court
decision was “a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous attempt to change
the true intent and meaning of the Constitution;” that the state
“condemns and protests” against this illegal encroachment of the
federal government upon the rights of the states; and that South
Carolina reserved for itself the right to take such “legal measures” as
it might deem appropriate “to protect its sovereignty and the rights of
its people.”[352]
Scattered opposition developed in the legislature against the
resolution. The more extreme elements clamored for a stronger
statement! One of the modern “fire eaters,” Representative George
Harrell of Florence, previously had introduced an interposition
resolution in the House on January 10, 1956, which would have
declared “that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States
holding that segregation of races in public schools of this state is
unconstitutional, is, in itself, unconstitutional, contrary to law,
and therefore null and void and of no effect so far as this state is
concerned.”[353] On the House floor, Representative John M. Horlbeck
of Charleston echoed the _News and Courier_: “This is a resolution of
protest and not of interposition. There are many who think that this
resolution should state a positive position asserting and pledging
the authority of the State to prevent the implementation of what this
resolution terms an unlawful decree. I am of this opinion.”[354]
The press of the state underscored the protest nature of the Timmerman
resolution. The political writer, W. D. Workman, Jr., termed it “a
states rights resolution which is well-worded, well-reasoned and
eminently logical, but ... NOT an interposition resolution.” It marched
“briskly” up to the threshold of interposition and then stopped.
Decrying such hesitation, he declared that “somewhere, sometime,
somehow, the people and the states must stand and fight, or else watch
the American form of government evolve into centralism.”[355] The
_Independent_ agreed. The resolution, thought this upcountry paper,
amounted to nothing more than a protest. Since no assertion was made
of “the state’s claim to the right of outright nullification,” it was
meaningless. The Anderson daily questioned the seriousness of state
political leadership in the whole interposition affair.[356] The
_Record_, which strongly opposed all implications of nullification,
praised the resolution as a “solemn protest” and a “dignified
document.” It condemned the trend in the nation toward “an all-powerful
central government, constructed in the form of an absolute democracy”
in which the minority would have no rights. This situation was caused
by the political thinking of the big Northern cities--thinking that
was partially to be explained “by the high proportion of European
immigrants in their population.” These people could not “even
understand” such historical American concepts as states rights.[357]
Shades of John C. Calhoun, perhaps, but completely comprehensible to
regular readers of the _Record’s_ xenophobic editorials.
Expressing similar views, Senator Gressette said that the resolution
would serve notice to all America that the major political parties were
“victims of small pressure groups ... in some of the larger cities and
states of the North and East.”[358]
The full implications of the doctrine of interposition emerged in stark
reality early in September when Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas
called out the state’s national guard to prevent implementation of a
federal court decree ordering the integration of a Little Rock high
school. Though Faubus made no reference to interposition and claimed
that he had called out the troops solely to maintain order and to
prevent bloodshed, many South Carolinians insisted, and with some
reason, that the Governor’s defiance of federal authority constituted
interposition in effect if not in name. “Use of state troops to prevent
Little Rock’s school board from carrying out integration orders of
a federal judge is a direct act of interposition,” said a _News and
Courier_ editorial. “The doctrine of interposition,” it added, “has
been hazy in the minds of many persons, even in the South. Now it
has taken shape in the form of state troops on school patrol.” The
following morning the _State_ followed the lead of the Charleston
paper: “We have in Arkansas a first-class example of interposition--a
state putting itself between the federal government and the people.” A
few days later the same paper leveled an editorial blast against United
States District Judge Ronald N. Davies who issued the integration
decree. “In the first place a North Dakota judge, no matter how learned
he may be in law or how sternly he can throw around his bantamweight,
should never have been put in the position of making the integration
ruling in Little Rock,” said Editor Samuel Latimer. “He couldn’t
possibly have any deep understanding of the relationship between the
whites and Negroes in the South and because of this shallow knowledge
he has created a most unpleasant situation.” Mr. Latimer’s analysis was
a bit ironic since the _State’s_ editorials had constantly demanded
that judicial decisions be premised on law and not the sociological
opinions of the judges.[359]
Measures taken against the NAACP are another important phase in
the state’s efforts to preserve segregation unimpaired. These have
given official direction to the drive to eradicate the NAACP in
South Carolina. In February, 1956, the state legislature unanimously
adopted a resolution urging the attorney general of the United States
to classify the NAACP “as a subversive organization so that it may
be kept under the proper surveillance and that all citizens of the
United States may have ample warning of the danger to our way of life
which lurks in such an organization.” By way of justification the
legislators maintained that the files of the Un-American Activities
Committee of the national House of Representatives contained records
“of affiliation with ... subversive organizations or activities” of 53
leading officials of the NAACP. Among the individuals so listed were A.
Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Oscar Hammerstein II, Channing H.
Tobias, William H. Hastie, Benjamin E. Mays, Arthur B. Spingarn, Ralph
Bunche, Allen Knight Chalmers, Norman Cousins, and James Hinton.[360]
In March the legislators approved a law barring all members of the
NAACP from employment by state, county or local governments. It
declared that the NAACP exerted “constant pressure on its members
contrary to the principles upon which the economic and social life of
our state rests.” Membership in the organization was held to be “wholly
incompatible with the peace, tranquility and progress that all citizens
have a right to enjoy.” This legislation required prospective teachers
to fill out a long questionnaire designed to uncover the slightest
deviation from complete racial orthodoxy. The questions asked included:
Do you belong to the NAACP? Does any member of your
immediate family belong to the NAACP? Do you support the
NAACP in any way (money or attendance at meetings)?
Do you favor integration of races in schools? Are you
satisfied with your work and the schools as they are now
maintained? If yes, comment on back.
Do you feel that you would be happy in an integrated school
system, knowing that the parents and students do not favor
this system? (Give reasons for your answer)
Do you feel that an integrated school system would better
fit the colored race for their life’s work? (Give reasons
for your answer)
Do you feel that the parents of your school know that no
public schools will be operated if they are integrated? Do
you believe in the aims of the NAACP?[361]
The 1956 legislature also authorized the investigation of NAACP
activities at Orangeburg state college.
Several other anti-NAACP measures were introduced but failed of
passage. These followed the pernicious tactic of linking the NAACP with
the Klan. Included was a proposal to deny tax exempt status to “any
building of public worship” used as a meeting place by the Communist
party or the NAACP. Another would have required all state officials and
employes to declare by oath that they belonged neither to the NAACP nor
the Ku Klux Klan. Declared the latter proposal: “The dangerous policies
and doctrines of these despicable organizations constitute a danger
to the health, morals, safety and general welfare of citizens in the
state.”[362]
The legislature’s preoccupation with such measures was generally
criticized by the press of the state. The _Morning News_ questioned
the reasonableness, fairness and justness of the anti-NAACP bills
and compared them to the pattern of “McCarthyism.” “Bills of this
kind,” wrote O’Dowd, “are seldom given a chance of passage--even by
the authors. They are written and introduced as a grandstand play
for the folks back home. They may serve to make the author look like
the champion of white Protestantism to some of the more rabid of
his supporters; but the bills also make the legislature look pretty
silly and immature.” On another occasion the same paper declared that
“speeches and resolutions against the Supreme Court and the NAACP” had
replaced “home, mother, God and country in South Carolina political
circles.” The 1956 session of the legislature, chided O’Dowd, would
possibly be renowned for “turning its back on positive progress and
dedicating its efforts to blind blows against the Supreme Court and
the NAACP.”[363] In agreement the _Independent_ stated that the 1956
legislature showed “signs of turning into a mad scramble” to see
who could introduce the most “‘segregation’ bills.” The low-country
Walterboro _Press and Standard_ believed that “some politicians are
more interested in ‘cashing in’ politically on the [segregation] issue
and prolonging it than in establishing a steady, determined course of
action that will in fact preserve both segregation and the fundamental
freedoms in South Carolina.”[364] The _Record_ also questioned the
wisdom of anti-NAACP measures which might serve only to drive the
organization underground or to replace it with “some other apparently
less sinister group.”[365]
The _News and Courier_ was more sympathetic especially in the light of
the purpose for which the measures were designed. It noted that
Georgia is taking steps to combat race bias among its
public school teachers. By banning membership in the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
Atty. Gen. [Eugene] Cook has incurred the wrath of NAACP
and other race spokesmen.
The same kind of fuss was made over attempts to root
communists and subversives out of government jobs.
“Interference with individual freedom” is the battle cry.
The _News and Courier_ is a firm believer in individual
freedom. For that reason we do not believe that teachers
should belong to the NAACP or any other militant group.
Such membership destroys freedom to teach the unbiased
truth.
The Charleston paper, however, would not achieve its objectives by
a law barring NAACP members from state employment. It suggested
instead that the matter be handled on the local level. Local school
boards knew best which teachers were “spreading the NAACP line. Such
teachers should be discharged, firmly but with as little fuss as
possible. Membership in the NAACP or any similar organization dedicated
to upsetting customs and laws of our state should be grounds for
dismissal.”[366]
In the contest to see who could introduce the most segregation
bills, Representative John Calhoun Hart of Union County won handily.
This rumple-haired legislative fire-brand introduced separately or
in conjunction with others the bill to remove tax exemptions from
churches used as meeting places for the Communist party or the NAACP
(not passed); the bill to require all public officials and employes
to take an anti-NAACP and anti-Ku Klux Klan oath (not passed); a
resolution asking that the legislature condemn Vice-President Richard
M. Nixon “in the strongest manner possible” for the Vice-President’s
resort “to the vilest and lowest politics imaginable” in “arousing
and causing dissension among the races” (not passed); a resolution
asking President Eisenhower to restore segregation in the armed forces
(passed); a bill to prohibit Union County schools from belonging to
any educational association approving of racially integrated schools
(passed); a bill to prohibit state agencies and institutions from
buying from firms which sponsored interracial television or radio
programs (not passed); the resolution asking that the NAACP be declared
a subversive organization by the federal government (passed); and
a resolution urging the state’s delegation to the 1956 Democratic
national convention to seek restoration of the ⅔ rule for nomination of
candidates (passed).[367]
Representative Hart became positively splenetic upon learning that
Clarence Mitchell, the Washington NAACP official, had used the white
waiting room at the Florence train station. Mitchell was arrested for
his action but Florence authorities prudently did not press the case.
For such seeming pusillanimity Representative Hart blasted Florence
officials. He deplored “the jelly fish manner in which they handled
Clarence Mitchell’s flagrant violation of South Carolina segregation
customs.” The teacher-legislator then indicated how he would educate
Mitchell:
Bashing Mitchell’s head would have had a highly salutary
effect on integration psychology in the Florence area....
We must have a showdown sooner or later and it is doubtful
that a better opportunity will ever present itself. A few
cracked heads here and there could easily avert bloodshed
on a large scale later on.... There’s more law and order
in a South Carolina night-stick than in sociological U. S.
Supreme Court opinion.[368]
One of the least laudable and most farcical of the legislature’s
actions was its lapse into book censorship. It arose from discovery
that a novel, _The Swimming Hole_,[369] written for eight to twelve
year olds, was being circulated throughout South Carolina by the State
Library Board. The following summary from the _Morning News_ indicates
the extent of the book’s threat to the South Carolina segregation
customs:
The story opens with three little white boys and a Negro
boy calling at the home of Larry, another Negro child, to
ask him to go swimming with them. Larry’s mother invites
the boys in, gives them each an apple and warns them not to
go in the water for a while after eating.
The boys troop off toward the swimming hole with one of the
Negroes leading the way in what apparently is a game of
“Follow the leader.”
Upon reaching the swimming hole, the children disrobe
together and the next page shows one of the Negro boys
first in the swim as another Negro child holds one of the
white boys off the diving board. In the background, several
other Negroes are mingled among the white boys.
After several hours of swimming, they dress together
and start home. Larry spots a new white boy in the
neighborhood, and the next day they invite the new boy to
join them in the swimming hole.
Steve, the new boy, isn’t a very good swimmer so he sits
all day in his trunks in the sun and acquires a bright red
sunburn. When the boys are dressing to go home, Larry finds
his clothing tied in knots. Bob, the other Negro boy, makes
a similar discovery.
Steve admits the prank, because “I don’t want to play with
anyone who’s colored.” Whereupon Steve turns his glowing
red back on them all and starts home.
Larry suggests they all tell Steve the next day they “don’t
want to play with anyone the color you are.” The others
agree “that’s a good idea.”
The plan is carried out the next day and the boys leave
Steve contemplating his sunburned reflection in a store
window. Apparently after some soul searching, Steve goes
to the swimming hole and tells Larry, “I won’t tie your
clothes again” because “it doesn’t matter what color people
are.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Larry tells him. “Come on in the
water. I’ll teach you to swim.”
The last page concludes, “They all had a wonderful time
together.”
Discovery of the book in a state library evoked immediate and outspoken
criticism.[370] The head of the State Library Board argued that
the book was not aimed at integration, but designed to point out
that “human values are not to be judged by physical differences.”
Nevertheless, a resolution was introduced in the state legislature by
Representatives J. Henry Stuckey of Williamsburg County and Albert
W. Watson of Richland County to secure removal of the book and to
prevent recurrence of similar situations in the future. Books like _The
Swimming Hole_, according to the resolution, were “antagonistic and
inimical to the traditions and customs of our state,” and “serve no
constructive educational purpose but rather tend to confuse and warp
the thinking of our young children.”
Though calmer heads opposed the resolution, it was approved. Charges
of “book burning” and “Hitler tactics” were heard on the floor of the
legislature. Representative William H. Grimball, Jr., of Charleston
urged the House to “let reason combat whatever thoughts are in books
... in any free democracy you ought to be able to expound anything
you want.” To another lowcountry representative, Edward Huguenin of
Jasper, the resolution represented a “ridiculous extreme.” Supporting
the measure, Representative John M. Horlbeck of Charleston and
Representative John T. Gentry of Pickens declared that the question was
not one of “literary freedom” but of asserting the “attitude of the
General Assembly.”
Press reaction was generally unfavorable to this censorship. The
_Record_ said that it was “dangerous business when government gets
into the field of censorship of literature, business ‘antagonistic and
inimical’ to the traditions and customs of South Carolina.” Americans
had always thought that bad ideas could be controverted by good ideas.
The _Record_ urged South Carolina “to leave censorship to Russia and to
Boston.” But the _News and Courier_ was sympathetic. While conceding
that “books expressing all viewpoints should be available for adults,”
the Charleston paper declared,
But on the children’s shelves, it seems to us, propaganda
should be confined to such wholesome generalities as “good
is better than evil,” “crime doesn’t pay,” “be kind to
people and animals,” and “an industrious child gets more
done than a lazy one.”
... And there is no need to stand up for a book that tries
by subtle propaganda to make the South’s racial customs
appear to be hateful and wicked.
Although a cursory perusal of the anti-integration bills adopted by
the 1955 and 1956 sessions of the general assembly might infer that
the legislators had exhausted the possibilities along this line, such
was by no means the case. The 1957 session was only slightly less
productive than that of 1956. In attempting to plug by legislative fiat
every possible hole in the segregation dike the solons in 1957 ranged
from the petty and silly to the dangerous and ridiculous.
Falling into the first category were the attempt to ban the movie
_Island in the Sun_ and the proposal to require all blood banks to
label blood White or Colored. The movie is an adaptation of Alec
Waugh’s novel _Island in the Sun_ involving love affairs between
interracial couples. Though the cinema version of the story soft-pedals
its amatory aspects to the point that not a single interracial kiss
takes place on the screen, Representative John Calhoun Hart described
it as “a sickening, repulsive, indecent spectacle to which no one in
this state should be exposed or subjected.” The Union County lawmaker
introduced a bill which declared that the movie “openly” advocated
“breaking the miscegenation section of the state constitution” and
charged the movie industry with “attempting to foster moral depravity
by condoning the mixing of the races.” The bill would have fined any
theater showing the film $5,000. Hart’s effort to save “the young
people of the world” came to naught. Even the _News and Courier_
condemned it as censorship.[371]
Of a similar nature was the bill offered by Rep. George Sam Harrell
of Florence County which would have required that blood banks label
all stored blood “White” or “Colored.” Rep. Harrell decried the fact
that since 1951 blood had not been labeled by race. He said Negro and
white blood was now put on a desk and “you come along and they will
shoot” Negro “blood in your veins.” To his colleagues in the House,
he declared, “I don’t want any ... [Negro] blood in me and I don’t
intend to have any.” The bill, which passed the House but not the
Senate, carried provisions for $100 fine or 30 days in jail or both for
violators.[372]
Potentially the most dangerous of the many pro-segregation measures
was a recommendation by the Gressette Committee, subsequently enacted
by the legislature, that the governor be given almost dictatorial
injunctive police and military power “to prevent violence or threats
of violence.” Under provisions of the bill the governor can “by
proclamation declare that a danger exists.” Then to “cope with such
danger” he may enjoin any acts or planned acts by individuals,
associations or corporations, call in all state, county and local
law officers and call out the state militia “to maintain peace and
good order.” There was surprisingly little reaction to this proposal.
Said the _News and Courier_: “If they are used with discretion, such
police powers ... may be an effective method of combatting federal
discrimination against South Carolina.”[373]
The 1957 general assembly also considered many other pro-segregation
measures: a resolution creating a group similar to the State
Sovereignty Commission of Mississippi to acquaint non-Southerners
with the South Carolina position on racial segregation (not passed);
a resolution by Rep. Hart to impeach six of the nine justices of the
Supreme Court (not passed); an anti-barratry law aimed at the NAACP
(passed); and a bill repealing the 1956 statute which forbade public
employment to NAACP members and the enacting of a new requirement that
merely provided that all prospective employes list those organizations
to which they belong (passed).[374] This last law was the result of a
suit brought by a group of Elloree Negro teachers who refused to answer
a questionnaire under the 1956 law. As a result of the new law the
federal courts refused to hear the suit brought by the teachers.
In addition to these measures Rep. Hart introduced still another to
strengthen the position of South Carolina in its fight for states
rights. Reaching a new nadir, this proposal, which was not adopted,
declared that: “No executive order or directive of the President, and
no act or resolution of the Congress, and no judicial decision or
construction of the Supreme or any inferior Court, and no treaty with
any foreign power or international agreement of the United States in
conflict with, or diminishment of, or derogatory to the powers not
delegated to the United States and reserved to the States respectively
or the people, shall become effective as law in this State, except
through enactment only by the General Assembly pursuant to the
Constitution of the State of South Carolina, and otherwise the same
shall be null and void and of no effect in this state.”[375]
Use of official authority to coerce public school officials in
maintaining the segregation line intact has been a comparatively easy
matter. To move against private educational institutions which served
as focal points of disaffection or threatened to lower the segregation
barrier is more difficult. One such recent effort by Governor Timmerman
and a compliant State Board of Education bared a vicious form of
official infighting.
During the summer of 1957 rumor bruited around the campus of Allen
University, an African Methodist Episcopal Church school in Columbia,
that the Governor’s office had warned the institution’s recently
inaugurated president, the Reverend Frank Veal, that he would have to
dismiss three professors from the faculty or face the consequences.
The men proscribed were Professors John G. Rideout, chairman of the
division of humanities; Edwin Hoffman, chairman of the division of
education; and Forrest O. Wiggins of the department of philosophy.
All were holders of doctorates from leading American universities and
Rideout had been a Rhodes scholar. Rideout and Hoffman are white and
Wiggins a Negro. While no specific charges were made against the men
insofar as their professional competency was concerned--it is generally
agreed by the Allen students that they are among the most effective
teachers on the faculty--much was made of the fact that the names of
Wiggins and Rideout were in the files of the United States House of
Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.
President Veal, betraying an unprofessional sensitivity to academic
procedures, wilted under the pressure and without consulting the
members of Allen’s board of trustees wrote letters to the three men in
question demanding their resignations “for the good of the University.”
But Rideout, Hoffman and Wiggins would not resign and to confuse
matters further, the board of trustees not only refused to back Veal
but also announced that the three professors would continue on as
members of the faculty. A few days later, however, Veal reportedly
declared that his demand for the resignations of the three men still
stood and that they were in effect being given a year’s dismissal
notice. Although the Columbia press gave prominent headlines to Veal’s
statement, there was no indication that the board of trustees agreed
with it. But just on the eve of the new academic year Veal replaced
Hoffman as chairman of the division of education with Dr. Sylvia
Swinton, a former Negro field supervisor for the State Department of
Education.[376]
A few weeks later Allen again bounced back into the news headlines
with the announcement that five Hungarian refugees would be enrolled
at the University. Their admission would constitute the first modern
break-through in South Carolina’s segregation wall. And, as State
Attorney General T. C. Callison was obliged to acknowledge, the worst
part of the situation was that although it was “against public policy”
to integrate Negroes and whites in educational institutions, there was
“no law in South Carolina to reach” Allen, a private and church school.
Actually, only one of the five Hungarian “freedom fighters,” Andre
Toth, enrolled at Allen when its fall term opened.[377]
But the Governor and his advisors on the State Board of Education
still held a trump card to play. If Allen could not be dealt with
directly, it could be struck a low blow punch through withdrawal of
official approval of the University for teacher training. Accordingly,
the State Board of Education, on which the Governor sits as an ex
officio member, on September 9th sent notice to Allen that its
graduates would have teacher certification withheld “until such time
as the Board may determine that it is in the public interest to grant
approval.” The Board did not specify what if anything was wrong with
the education courses offered at Allen, courses that hitherto had had
its approval.
President Veal was conveniently out of Columbia, but Allen board
of trustees president, Bishop I. H. Bonner, cautiously took up the
gauntlet. To the consternation of several administrative officials
at the University of South Carolina, the Bishop opined that
Allen’s students requiring teacher certification would undoubtedly
seek admission to the University and other white state-supported
institutions of higher learning.[378] Should such applicants be
admitted to these schools by Federal court order, resort to which
would, of course, be imperative, state law would oblige the schools to
close.
The nadir of official hypocrisy came with the announcement of the State
Board of Education following its September 20th meeting, that it was
seeking to help Allen solve its internal problems. At the same meeting
a “bi-racial” committee consisting of six white members and one Negro,
B. C. Turner, president of the State college for Negroes at Orangeburg,
was appointed to review applications for teacher training courses in
South Carolina’s private and public universities and colleges.
Crocodile tears were copiously shed by “some state officials” over “the
plight of Dr. Veal” in light of his failure to rid his faculty of three
objectionable professors. These same persons allegedly asked how, for
instance, the State Board of Education could approve a teacher training
course at an institution whose academic head desired to dismiss members
of his faculty but could not do so because of the opposition of his
board of trustees. The logic of the state officials was that if the
president of an approved teacher training institution didn’t want
certain instructors because of lack of faith in them, then the state
could not accept a student who received certification for his work
under such a professor.[379]
So utterly gross were the actions of the Governor and the State Board
of Education that there was embarrassingly little discussion of the
affair in the editorial columns of the state’s press. Those few papers
that discussed the Allen situation either printed without comment the
decision of the Board of Education to withdraw accreditation or looked
askance upon it. The Florence _Morning News_, for example, found the
“handling of the Allen case unfortunate” particularly in the light of
the secrecy involved, the shortage of qualified Negro teachers, the
encouragement that it would give to Negroes to apply to the University
of South Carolina and the lack of data supplied to Allen officials as
to the reasons for the Board’s actions.[380]
The Allen situation stood at a standstill until mid-December with
neither the University officials nor the State Board of Education
changing their positions. But on December 17th, Bishop Bonner met with
the Governor in the latter’s office, at his own request so he said,
for a “cordial” talk and the fat was again in the fire. According
to Bonner, Timmerman maintained that the controversy over the three
professors was “non-political” and “non-racial” and then proceeded
to tell him “what was wrong.” Just what was wrong the Bishop did not
reveal.[381]
Two days later Bishop Bonner notified Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins
that he would recommend their dismissal when the trustees’ board of
control would be called for a special meeting on January 10, 1958. He
further informed them that they would receive their salaries for the
remainder of the year if they resigned and departed quietly but that if
they fought their dismissals, they would get nothing. The professors
declined to take any action pending the meeting of the trustees on
January 10th.
Meanwhile the American Association of University Professors entered
into the picture. General Secretary of the Association Dr. Robert K.
Carr wired Governor Timmerman requesting that he provide the AAUP
with information regarding the grounds on which the State Board of
Education had voted to withhold teacher accreditation approval of Allen
graduates. Carr at the same time told reporters that his organization
viewed with alarm the apparent relationship of the question of academic
tenure at Allen with that of political interference “with the internal
operations of private institutions.” “We are concerned,” he said, “lest
there be direct connection between the two matters--the dismissal of
the faculty members and the withholding of teacher certificates.” The
AAUP, he added, would support the professors to the hilt. Carr was
satisfied that the presence of the Hungarian white student on the Allen
campus was in no way related to the certification question.
Timmerman’s response to Carr’s request was completely in character.
He told the AAUP that the Allen affair was none of its business. “Our
state is concerned with protecting all of its people,” the governor
wired Carr, “and your authority to question its official actions is
without recognition. The resolution [of the State Board of Education]
speaks for itself.”
Carr expressed dismay at the brusque tone of the governor’s telegram.
“Governor Timmerman’s reaction is most unfortunate,” he declared.
“Our queries are usually received by state officials and institutions
respectfully and answered if possible.” For his part Timmerman, clearly
annoyed, replied that Carr’s “political whimpering” confirmed his
suspicion as to the motive behind the former’s telegram. Timmerman said
that Carr should “seek the answer to his questions from his own files”
thus implying that prejudicial information against the three professors
was at the disposal of the AAUP.[382]
The show-down on the Allen affair came at the board of trustees meeting
on January 10th and the results gratified all persons who still believe
in academic freedom. Bishop Bonner, who probably hoped to dominate the
meeting, found the spotlight taken away from him by Dr. R. A. Mance, a
former Columbia physician who lives in Washington, D.C. Mance, a member
of the Allen Board of Trustees, is also treasurer of the national
African Methodist Episcopal Church. When Mance spoke out in defense of
the three professors, those present at the meeting which was open to
the public were very much aware that he was voicing the sentiments of
the national church organization on which Allen heavily depends.
Bishop Bonner tried to defend his demand for the ouster of Wiggins,
Rideout and Hoffman in the face of an audience which booed him when
he said that Governor Timmerman impressed him as being “a very fine
man.” According to Bonner, who was demonstrably angry at the hostile
audience, Timmerman had told him that the State Board of Education
believed “that the three men could not possibly exert a good influence
on the university in view of their refusal to resign at the request
of the president following the recommendation by the dean of the
faculty.” The Bishop, disregarding all questions of intimidation and
of civil rights, based his position squarely on the ground that the
most important thing for Allen to consider was the certification of its
graduates by the state.
In the face of needling questions by Dr. Mance and other trustees, the
Bishop turned to President Veal for support. It was on Veal’s request,
according to Bonner, that the meeting had been called. But here the
Bishop was in for a rude awakening as Veal, not unmindful that an
investigation committee from the national AME church was present at
the meeting, suddenly announced that he would definitely not recommend
dismissal of the three professors “at this time.” Veal, who could
hardly deny that he had asked for the resignations of Rideout, Wiggins,
and Hoffman, said that any decision either to retain or to dismiss them
would be arrived at according to academic procedures. Bonner, left out
on a limb, accused Veal of having “backed out” on him. The meeting
broke up without any action being taken and with the parting comment
of Bishop Bonner that failure to dismiss the three controversial
professors “could mean death to Allen University.” But Allen’s student
body clearly did not share Bonner’s pessimism. A few hours after the
meeting had adjourned nearly three hundred students gathered in front
of Veal’s home and serenaded him. For the first time in months the
harassed president found himself genuinely popular amongst the students.
In the Allen battle, which as the trustee Reverend F. C. James of
Sumter pointed out “affects every private institution in America”
as well as the issues of “civil liberties and civil rights,” the
old “Uncle Tom” leadership, as personified in Bishop Bonner and his
supporters, went down to defeat before the new generation of American
Negroes. Whether the defeat will be thorough and permanent, only the
future will tell. But administrators of private colleges throughout
America owe a debt of gratitude to the courageous stand taken by
the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the face of political
intimidation.[383]
On January 15 Governor Timmerman officially spelled out to the people
of South Carolina why the State Board of Education had withdrawn its
approval of Allen for teacher training. In his annual message to
the state legislature he warned of the “communist menace” in South
Carolina [as of 1951 the Federal Bureau of Investigation could count
only seventeen alleged Communists in the State!] and pointed his
finger directly at Allen as a center of possible subversion. Borrowing
a trick from the late senator from Wisconsin, the chief executive
proceeded to read to the members of the legislature the “party-line”
records of the three Allen professors; he mentioned none of them by
name. The records, he said, had been procured from administration
officials at Allen and from “other” sources of information [the files
of the Un-American Activities Committee supplied through the office of
Congressman John Riley]. According to the Governor, the chairman of
the board of trustees at Allen, Bishop Bonner, was anxious to protect
the University’s student body from the noxious influences of “atheism”
and “communism” and it was for this reason that he had requested the
resignations of the three professors. The State Board of Education was
seeking to cooperate with Allen officials toward this end.
Having raised the spectre of communism and its threat to the Palmetto
State, Timmerman then suggested a means of coping with the problem,
one not very original, to be sure. He recommended establishment of a
“permanent legislative committee to investigate communist activities
in our state.” In addition, the Governor urged that “consideration
be given to the establishment of more realistic requirements for
admission to teach in state-supported institutions.” Applicants should
be screened more closely before they were employed. Concluding on the
following note Timmerman declared: “When academic freedom supersedes
loyalty to one’s country, to one’s state and to our trust in God, it
becomes an instrumentality of treason and profanes the faith of our
nation.”[384]
Senator Gressette of the state’s committee to preserve educational
segregation lauded the Governor’s recommendation for a new minor
league Un-American Activities Committee. So did other members of the
legislature. But the three Allen professors in a statement to the
radio and press services blasted the Governor. “The fact of the matter
is--and Governor Timmerman knows it well--the real need here in South
Carolina is the achievement of American democracy for all the state’s
citizens rather than a committee to investigate so-called communistic
activities.” The three professors, all church members, also struck back
at the Chief Executive’s atheist innuendo. “It comes with ill grace,”
they asserted, “for the Governor to question the religious faith of
others when he himself so openly repudiates the fundamental teaching
of Him who died that all men might dwell together as brothers.” Nor
did they think that Timmerman could pose as the shield and defender
of the Constitution. “It ill becomes a Governor who spends so much of
his time repudiating the Constitution of our country and endeavoring
to undermine the highest court of the land to pass upon the patriotism
of other Americans. If belief in racial segregation is to be made the
definition of loyalty, the vast majority of Americans become disloyal
in the eyes of Governor Timmerman.”[385]
On the same day that the Governor was reaffirming his determination to
maintain segregation in South Carolina, eleven Allen students appeared
on the campus of the University of South Carolina seeking application
blanks to permit them to take the University’s entrance examinations.
They were turned away by the director of the University’s examination
and counseling service who explained that his hands were tied by state
law. “According to the orders under which we operate,” he told the
students, “I cannot examine you and there is no purpose in supplying
you with applications.” Six days later a group of four students from
Benedict College, another Negro institution in Columbia, also applied
for examination application blanks and were similarly rebuffed.[386]
No effort was made to molest the Negroes when they were on the
University of South Carolina campus, though one USC student is said to
have leaned out a window and shouted, “Here come the niggers.” During
the evening, however, a cross was burned on the University’s athletic
field and an effigy of a Negro was hung up on the campus. Telephone
calls were received at Allen threatening the University with bombings
unless the Negro students desisted in their efforts to enter the
University of South Carolina.[387]
Governor Timmerman’s ill-tempered and ill-conceived pressure on Allen
opened the door for the very type of law suit that officials of white
state-supported universities have been dreading since 1954. The Allen
applicants, four of them ministers, indicated that they would resort to
“legal steps” to gain admission. “We plan to see this thing through,”
said one of their spokesmen. “We all feel that Negroes have been
ostracized by being kept out of the University and our cups are just
about to run over.”[388]
Only the future can tell, of course, what Governor Timmerman triggered
off in his effort to rid Rideout, Wiggins and Hoffman from the Allen
faculty. The question of admission of Negroes to white state-supported
universities had to be faced sooner or later, but officials of
the latter would have preferred to face it later. But to explain
Timmerman’s attitude toward the three professors is something else
again. The “communist” issue was convenient, if a bit dated, but those
who have closely followed the segregation question in South Carolina
since the Supreme Court decision of 1954 are inclined to believe that
the reason is less ideological than local.
Since the purge of the state Negro college at Orangeburg--the
institution is on probation with accreditation agencies because it does
not have a sufficient number of holders of the Ph.D. degree on its
faculty--Allen has been the chief center for Negro militancy in South
Carolina. The three professors who have been the target of official
attack have been prominent amongst those on the campus who have urged
the University’s students to assert their rights, including the right
to sit where they please on city buses. In all of the newspaper
accounts of the Allen affair, these facts have not been mentioned, but
it is suggested here that they have been governing. Also in the new
administration of President Veal and in the person of Bishop Bonner,
state authorities were quick to detect a lack of militancy present
in their predecessors. It would appear that they have sought to
exploit this “softness” and to repeat their disgraceful performance at
Orangeburg. But the Allen trustees were made of sterner stuff than the
Governor and the State Board of Education had supposed.
The Governor’s frustration was compounded by temporary failure to
bring about the dismissal of three white faculty members from Benedict
College, a Negro Baptist institution located directly across the
street from Allen. In a special message to the General Assembly on
January 29, Timmerman cited from the files of the House Un-American
Activities Committee the records of three Benedict professors. He
also told the legislators that Dr. J. A. Bacoats, president of
Benedict and highly respected by both whites and Negroes throughout
the state, had delivered a speech in 1941 at a “Protestantism
Answers Hate” dinner-forum allegedly sponsored by a “communist-front
publication.”[389]
Bacoats and two of the three professors cited, Dr. Lewis Smith and Dr.
J. Spencer Kennard, answered the Governor in statements to the press.
The former declared: “I have never been a communist nor held membership
in the Communist Party. And as I see it from where I now stand, I
shall never be a member of the Communist Party.” Smith, a professor of
English, said he had no intention of resigning and that he was being
attacked “by the same forces that would keep the Negro people from
achieving full equality.” Kennard, a Baptist minister and a member of
the Benedict history department, asserted that the Governor had “set
out deliberately to smear the character of a man who devoted his entire
life to serving the Master.”[390]
The governor’s attack on Benedict was successful only in uniting
the Negro community in defense of the College (far more so than had
been true of the Allen affair) and in alarming white conservatives.
The Inter-Denominational Ministerial Alliance of Columbia (Negro),
criticizing the Governor’s proposal for a state Un-American Activities
committee, held that such a group would be a “fascist gestapo” and
threaten Negro academic freedom. It also questioned the very legality
of such a committee in the light of recent Supreme Court decisions.
Likewise, John H. McCray, chairman of the South Carolina Progressive
Democrats, said: “Negro leadership in South Carolina has maintained
an eternal and vigorous alert against influence of communism among
its people....” And from R. Beverley Herbert, a conservative white
attorney of Columbia, came the warning against assuming that men were
communists because of past association with left-wing organizations.
But the crowning blow came when Benedict’s board of trustees, which
includes several white men, among them Dr. Paul Wheeler, a well known
clergyman; Dr. R. Archie Ellis, pastor of the Columbia First Baptist
Church and B. M. Edwards, a prominent South Carolina banker, issued a
public statement completely exonerating President Bacoats and the three
faculty members.[391]
White South Carolinians undoubtedly consider public education to be the
key issue in the Negroes’ drive for racial equality. Consequently other
aspects of the question have received less consideration in discussions
relating to the pros and cons of integration. Important developments,
however, have been occurring in other areas where attempts at
integration are being made, e.g. the armed forces, city buses, and
state operated recreation parks.
South Carolina officials can do little more than decry integration
in the nation’s armed forces. By the time the Supreme Court gave
its initial school desegregation ruling, integration in the armed
services had progressed to a point where it had become an accepted
fact to all except the most extreme die-hards. Nevertheless Governor
Timmerman lodged a futile protest with the National Security Council
in late 1955. Referring to statements by military leaders expressing
concern over low reenlistment rates among military personnel, the
Governor wrote: “So long as our basic training installations are used
as sociological camps for compulsory racial mixing, it is reasonable
to expect a continued lack of voluntary enlistments, and a continued
lessening of morale and _esprit de corps_ in our armed forces. The
officials of no other country in the world are so naive as to employ
racial integration among military personnel.” Commenting on the
Governor’s letter the _News and Courier_ asked editorially: “Is it
simply a coincidence that, at about the same time the government mixed
the races in the armed forces, enlistments started to sag?” Without
answering its question, the Charleston paper continued: “If integration
has hurt enlistments and morale, then it follows that integration has
harmed national defense.... Gov. Timmerman has courageously brought the
matter out into the open.”[392]
In 1956 the general assembly in its onslaught on all phases of
integration passed a resolution urging President Eisenhower to “restore
segregation of the races in the armed forces of this country which
would result in a return of the high morale, efficiency and _esprit de
corps_ which our armed forces have always heretofore enjoyed.”[393] The
resolution evoked no response in Washington.
Once the assault on armed forces integration had begun, others joined
in. From The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, came a
booming verbal salvo from President Mark Clark, former United Nations
Commander in the Far East. “I did not feel that we should integrate
then [in 1950 when the Army order was placed in effect] and I do not
think so now,” said the transplanted general from the North. “I
looked at integration strictly as a military problem, not from the
sociological standpoint.... I wanted the best fighting unit possible
... politics or no politics.”[394]
South Carolina Negroes, following the lead set in Montgomery, Alabama,
have endeavored to bring about invalidation of both state and local
Jim Crow laws in the field of bus segregation. In this connection
Sarah Mae Flemming of Columbia instituted suit against the South
Carolina Electric and Gas Company, operators of the city bus system of
Columbia, asking $25,000 for alleged violations of her civil rights.
She charged that a bus driver had forcibly required her to go to the
rear of a city bus in conformity with the South Carolina law. In the
federal district court Judge Timmerman dismissed Miss Flemming’s suit
on the ground that the 1896 decision upholding separate but equal
facilities in transportation was still in effect and had not been
overruled by the school cases of 1954. (There was a curious lack of
logic in Judge Timmerman’s position since for years Southerners had
defended segregation in the public school on the basis of the _Plessy
v. Ferguson_ ruling which upheld the separate but equal doctrine in
transportation.) This decision was appealed and reversed by the federal
circuit court presided over by Judge John J. Parker. In an action which
the _Record_ considered “brusque arrogance,” the Supreme Court refused
to hear the appeal of the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company thus
in effect upholding the circuit court decision.[395]
The practical effect of this decision on South Carolina bus segregation
has been nil. Nowhere have traditional patterns of segregation ended.
Attorney General T. C. Callison considered the Supreme Court’s action
in this case “another unwarranted invasion of state and municipal
rights.” In early 1956 the state legislature resolved that it was
“unalterably opposed to the mixing of the races on common carriers” and
would “tolerate no violation of the laws of this State relating to the
separation of the races on common carriers.” The _News and Courier_,
strangely enough, foresaw no drastic results if bus segregation were
ended. However, it believed that “as a practical matter, they [Negroes]
suffer no hardship by observing regulations that reflect prevailing
customs of the community. Even if the laws were removed from the books,
good manners call for respect of fellow passengers’ preferences.”[396]
Editor Waring’s paper made no comment on the obligation of whites to
respect the preference of their Negro fellow passengers.
In its own enveloping attack on the segregation front South Carolina’s
Negro leadership has struck at the state operated recreation parks.
In 1955 the State of South Carolina maintained twenty-one recreation
parks, one of which was operated exclusively for Negroes. Of the other
twenty, four had separate areas reserved for Negroes. In view of such
obvious discrimination, Negroes brought suit to have Edisto Beach State
Park opened for all South Carolinians without regard to race or color.
In answering this suit the state attorney general’s office presented
a brief before the federal district court which declared that “due to
the natural inclination of each race at this time to associate and
engage in recreation and social activities with members of its own
race, and to the present natural, historical, cultural and deep-rooted
mental attitudes and feelings of each race against the social and
sexual mixing of the races, there exists potential and definite dangers
of unpleasantries, social friction, breaches of the peace and other
events leading to riot and bloodshed, which will surely result from an
enforced mixing of the races at such a park.”[397]
In the light of recent federal court decisions, state officials
realized that such arguments would carry little weight in federal
courts. Therefore in 1956, precluding a federal court order on the
case, the state legislature passed a resolution closing Edisto Beach
State Park to both white and colored. The park remains closed, “a
monument,” said the Columbia _State_, to the “vindictiveness” of race
agitators.[398]
With actions such as these the sovereign state of South Carolina has
combatted the “alien ideas” of racial equality and equal rights for all
men.