ANOTHER WAR OF YANKEE AGGRESSION
Though secession did not survive the Confederate
War, peaceful secession is by no means inconceivable
at some future date.--_News and Courier_
A featured part of the white South Carolina defense of the racial
_status quo_ is the allegation that the entire integration drive
constitutes a gigantic conspiracy of jealous Yankees against Dixie.
“South-baiting is currently a fad north of the Mason-Dixon line,”
said the embittered _News and Courier_. Along with other pro-South
spokesmen, the Charleston paper considers the integration crusade a
continuation of the spirit of abolitionism and the “waving of the
bloody shirt.” The South Carolina segregationist state of mind includes
the assumption that a “cold war” exists between the “beleaguered”
South and the rest of the nation. But the struggle of the 1950’8, as
contrasted with that of the 1860’s, is basically one of ideas. Hence
the success of Southern efforts depends upon effective presentation of
the pro-segregation story to the nation. But alas, in this respect,
segregationists face insurmountable handicaps. The South has to stand
alone in the fight to save segregation and such related principles
as “constitutional government, states rights, geographical spread of
governmental powers, unlimited debate in the U. S. Senate, harmonious
relations between the races, (and) separate and excellent school
systems.” Because of the importance of these principles, the _News and
Courier_ would have its readers remember that “a little integration” is
like “a little adultery.”[454] Southern opposition must be total.
In defending South Carolina against outside criticism, the press of
the state, led by the _News and Courier_, has sought to point out the
absolute superiority of the “Southern way of life.” Referring to the
South in Jeffersonian terms the _Morning News_ said: “An agrarian
society helps encourage fundamental decency and proper thinking.
People cannot be closely associated with nature and God’s bounty
without absorbing some appreciation for the proper order of things and
the love of God.”[455] The _News and Courier_ decried the fact that
“movies, popular novels, the Northern press, Northern colleges--and not
a few teachers in Southern educational institutions” hammered at the
theme that the South was “hopelessly out-of-date” and “ignorant and
backward.” To combat this point of view, parents of college students
were advised to “help their youngsters understand their traditions.
Traditions have to be taught. They aren’t automatically implanted in
the brains of 18 and 19 year-olds.”[456]
On another occasion the _News and Courier_, after “reluctantly”
concluding that “the organized campaign of vilification of the Southern
way-of-life and traditions has been partially inspired by malice,”
declared, not inaccurately, that the Southern resistance was the
result of “a unique and imperishable nationalism in the South.” This
nationalism was not aggressive, it asserted. “It was cradled in the
intense desire to be left alone.” It was rooted in the pride that
Southerners had in their unique way of life.[457]
The South as the defender of traditional American values was the
theme of a speech by Representative William Jennings Bryan Dorn.
Employing terminology reminiscent of his famous namesake, he referred
to his region as “the last frontier of Americanism.” It was the duty
and challenge of the South to sell its “political, industrial and
educational philosophy” to the rest of the country. “I’m proud I
represent people who live in the Bible Belt,” said Dorn. “I had much
rather represent the Bible Belt than some of the slums and confusion
that exist in many of our larger cities.”[458]
Just as the South’s efforts to preserve segregation are warmly
applauded, so are the North’s essays at integration roundly condemned.
Here, again, the _News and Courier_ is the leading though by no means
the only spokesman. Comparing the segregated South with the integrated
North, it stated:
Segregation in the South at least has prevented terrorism
in cities. Crime exists, of course, but nothing like these
reports from Northern cities. Undisciplined packs roam
their streets. In the South we have no packs of savages.
Though Negroes are more numerous, they are better behaved.
Yes, and more CIVILIZED! They stay to themselves. They
recognize and accept the limits set up for themselves and
for white people.
Released from social restrictions of the segregation code,
Negroes are running wild in the North. That is what the
North would inflict on a far greater scale on the people of
the South.[459]
On another occasion, the same paper indicated that its ideas on racial
superiority extended not only to Negroes but to many whites as well:
“Are these so-called Northern spokesmen actually Northern Americans?
Are they from good old New England Yankee stock? Are they solid inland
families, descended from pioneers who crossed the plains? Or are they
first-generation mal-contents, full of alien notions? Are they recent
immigrants from who knows where--Russia, perhaps?” Then in a not too
subtle type of innuendo the _News and Courier_ wondered “what kind of
schism are they trying to drive through the Federal Union of States?
Why, other than for Communist reasons, would they wish to split that
union?”[460]
Many white South Carolinians accuse the North of hypocrisy. Governor
Timmerman, for example, declared that “Northern propagandists are
as loud, obnoxious and untruthful today as the Abolitionists were a
century ago.” Integrationists, like the abolitionists, he asserted, are
hypocrites. Editor Waring of the _News and Courier_ stated that while
the South had always been “open and above-board” in its treatment of
Negroes, the North had been “sly and underhanded.”[461] Since the North
had preserved segregation practically intact despite absence of legal
sanction and non-discrimination laws, several spokesmen, including
James F. Byrnes, urged the Gressette School Segregation Committee to go
above the Mason-Dixon line to study Northern methods.
White South Carolinians are especially critical of Northern news
media--newspapers, periodicals, radio and television. Blithely ignoring
the pressure for conformity within the South, the _News and Courier_
criticized Northern leaders who allegedly parroted words which they
thought the public wanted to hear. The courage to tell the truth
outside the South, complained the lowcountry newspaper, was at one of
its lowest points in history.[462]
Alleged reluctance of national news media to present sympathetically
the pro-segregation cause has given rise to such terms as the “Paper
Curtain” and the “Integration Curtain” and the charge that the South is
being “brainwashed” into acceptance of the alien notion of integration.
In no other aspect of the desegregation controversy is the cornered
and minority status of the South more apparent. With ever increasing
frequency, complaints have arisen against pro-integration statements
and incidents appearing on national television and radio networks, in
national periodicals and in the Northern metropolitan press. Newspapers
such as the _New York Times_, the _New York Herald Tribune_, and the
_Washington Post and Times-Herald_ are subjected to constant attack.
Mass circulation periodicals such as _Saturday Evening Post_, _Look_,
_Time_ and _Life_ likewise receive special criticism. Among nationally
circulated periodicals only the _U. S. News and World Report_, whose
editor David Lawrence appeals to the most reactionary elements in the
South, has won South Carolina approval. The Columbia _State_, for
example, had the following to say of _Time_:
Through stupidity or malice _Time_ has repeatedly followed,
with the rest of the blackguard Northern press, this tone
of false witness, either directly or by innuendo, against
the South. _Time_ has consistently paraded the idea that
it is too stupid or malicious to recognize the fact that
the South is a part of the United States. Refusing to
accept the sword of Robert Lee tendered at Appomattox,
it continues by snide inference, malicious innuendo and
biased implication to fight the Confederate War against
this section, blind to the fact that _Time_ and the rest
of the inflammatory press is following the same line of
wild-eyed chatter that led to Secession in 1860--with grim
determination arraying section against section, gracelessly
exaggerating the faults of one, while cravenly covering up
those of the other.
_Time_ has double-crossed the American people on so many
important issues, through stupidity or malice, that a
better name for the weekly would be “Two-Time.”[463]
Instances of racial violence and incidents of discrimination against
Negroes in the North and West quite naturally, and rightly, afford
grist for the mill to editorial writers on South Carolina newspapers.
Statements such as “clean up the mess in your own back yard before
criticizing us” and “in the South there is frankness; in the North
hypocrisy” are interspersed with “you don’t see any race riots in the
South” or “the Northern states are finding that Southerners are not
the only ones concerned with maintaining racial barriers.” The racial
disturbances at Calumet Park in Chicago and the bigotry displayed by
some of the residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania in the summer of
1957 were eagerly seized upon by counter-attacking South Carolina
editors. That the great majority of people in the North deplored
such incidents--as was true of most Southerners in the Little Rock
affair--was carefully masked by editorial legerdemain and the views of
the rabidly intolerant minority presented as typical. News of racial
tension outside the South and in it--insofar as opposition to any and
all forms of integration was concerned--is featured by blazing front
page headlines that can only further incite South Carolina extremists.
Some South Carolina editors, like Thomas Waring of the _News and
Courier_, deplore the fact that similar editorial tactics are not
utilized in the Northern press. In a particularly biting editorial
Waring declared:
It is too bad no seismograph records the range of press
hypocrisy in the North. The handling of the Chicago race
riots would have registered severe shocks in some big
cities.
Editions of the _New York Herald-Tribune_ for Monday and
Tuesday ... contained not a line about a serious racial
clash in the country’s second largest city.
The _New York Times_ on Monday printed an Associated Press
dispatch seven inches long on page 10. The _Times_, with
unrivaled facilities of its own for gathering news all over
the world, did not see fit to print the full AP account.
Tuesday’s issue ... contained no story on all further
disorders occurring in Chicago on Monday.
The handling of the local story by the _Chicago Daily
News_ is also interesting. It was printed on page 3 under
a headline saying “Man Fined $50 in Race Flareup.” The
_Daily News_ devoted its entire back page to pictures of
the earthquake damage in Mexico City. No pictures showed
the race riots in the city where the _Daily News_ is
published. The riots were called “racial disturbances”
throughout.
Does any reader wonder how these newspapers would have
displayed “racial disturbances” had they occurred in South
Carolina, Mississippi, or elsewhere this side of the Paper
Curtain? Race riots aren’t news in the North.[464]
Of all the Northern newspapers, the _New York Times_ is the chief
_bête noire_ of the South Carolina press in general and the _News and
Courier_ in particular. The Charleston paper’s plaint is that the
_Times_ is a “liberal” paper which writes its own views into news
stories. As to the _Times’_ liberalism the _News and Courier_ summed it
up by saying that the New York paper “places its faith in government
and laws for rapid improvement of mankind. It is a concept much like
the totalitarian ideology.” The _News and Courier_, which professes
admiration for Cuba’s Batista and the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo,
proceeded to develop this idea further: “The history of the world does
not indicate that laws improve the breed. The best that can be hoped
from laws, as we see it, is to maintain law and order so that people
can live out their lives in some degree of safety and comfort. By
tampering with the laws and customs about race in the United States,
the ‘liberals’ have created disorder and discomfort both in the South
and in the North.... Today, as it has been doing for years, the _Times_
is pamphleteering for its cause--the intermingling of the races.”[465]
The summer of 1957 was a particularly fecund one for attacks on
conditions in the North by South Carolina newspapers. Revelations in
the Syracuse, New York press of filthy and abominable conditions in
migrant labor camps in the Empire State coupled with NAACP charges of
peonage and the ordering by Governor Averill Harriman of a sweeping
investigation by state authorities occasioned the _State_ to send staff
writer Bob Pierce northward on a “muckraking” expedition. Pierce, who
received full co-operation from the Syracuse _Post-Standard_ which
threw open its files to him, sent back to Columbia a series of stories
that were picked up by other papers of the state. They were like heady
wine for the embattled defenders of the Southern way of life. Enjoying
for the moment the luxury of having still another tangible social abuse
in the North to attack, the _State_ combined in several editorials
a mixture of Southern chauvinism, eloquence, and what it evidently
considered to be irony. Said editor Latimer on one occasion: “Now we
read a complaint that New York migrant camps are a twentieth century
slave racket. Well, the people up North should know how to operate such
a place. Their forbears were primarily responsible for the introduction
of slavery in this country.... Conditions up North must be getting
bad for the NAACP to admit that anything but racial harmony and fair
treatment to Negroes is to be found above Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon’s
line.”[466]
That the national news media have been at least partially effective
in shaping public opinion in the segregation controversy is evidenced
by the repeated criticisms of their policies. The _News and Courier_
declared that freedom of the press as it related to “truth about race
matters” had already vanished “from a large segment of American daily
newspapers.” Race news was rarely reported outside the South without a
pro-NAACP bias. Also radio and television and Hollywood film producers
were “under the black curtain of race censorship.” “The other day, in
a Charleston theater, we saw a movie short in which John C. Calhoun
was pictured as a scheming, treasonous troublemaker,” the _News and
Courier_ indignantly exclaimed. In a letter to the same paper Fred
Grossman noted “a palpable spirit of antipathy” between the North
and South, a feeling which he blamed on the NAACP “and affiliated
organizations of equally dubious allegiance.” Southerners on national
television shows, he asserted, were “inevitably browbeaten, ridiculed,
outwitted by well-rehearsed MC’s.” In the movies, Southerners were
always villains. As a result of this slyly conducted campaign of
propaganda and insinuation, the mere mention of the word South
automatically brought to mind such “evil connotations as bigot,
demagogue, Simon Legree and the like.”[467]
The _News and Courier_, insisting that it does “not especially admire
a policy of pandering to popular views to please the subscribers,” and
summarizing its presentation of the race controversy as “the truth as
we see it,” proclaims itself as far more objective than its Northern
counterparts. In presenting “the truth as we see it,” the _News and
Courier_ commented in the following fashion on the segregation riots of
Clinton, Tennessee:
Truly, this is a tragic time in American history.... Who
would have thought that tyranny would come so quickly to
America, or that the federal government would seek to
restore all the brutality and oppression of Reconstruction
days? And yet the day of infamy has arrived....
Today the North approves the methods of Hitler in
attempting to force racial mixing upon a people who will
not mix. If Nazi techniques are upheld by the higher courts
and by public opinion in the North, one day the people of
the North themselves will feel the sting of tyranny.[468]
The newspaper chose to overlook the fact that “the brutality and
oppression” in Tennessee was being enforced by the National Guard of
the state, called out by the governor and not the federal government.
Ignored too was the parallel of “racial superiority” both in Nazi
Germany and in Tennessee.
That some white South Carolinians accept the Charleston paper at face
value as the fountainhead of truth is indicated by a letter to the
editor by C. H. Ruppert of Charleston. Ruppert wrote: “Each time I pick
up an issue of your paper, I thank God I live in a state where the
truth is printed regardless of personal views and I also know that both
sides are presented in any issue that may arise. If the truth could
be presented in the Northern papers, maybe the honest and worth while
people who live there could understand Southern people for what they
really are.”[469]
Frequently blame for the whole integration fight is placed on “Negro
politics.” “Afro-Americans,” said the _News and Courier_, “brought
in chains to the New World, are about to seek their revenge. They
are forging now the handcuffs whereby 10 percent of the population
would dominate 90 percent through the fluke of concentration.” This
observation concluded: “More than ever the Southern States seem
destined to play a role in eventual redemption of the rest of the
Republic from Negro politics.”[470]
South Carolina newspapers throughout the entire segregation-integration
controversy of the past four years have shown a peculiar insensitivity
in regard to the effort of the United States to win the support of the
nations of Asia and Africa. They have refused to see any connection
with the propaganda efforts of the nation’s diplomacy in behalf of the
democratic ideology and their espousal of racial supremacy doctrines
at home. A naked statement demonstrating lack of concern with this
particular problem came not surprisingly from the _News and Courier_
which entertains no special regard for the democratic credo: “We
are tired of manufactured nonsense about ‘propaganda’ overseas. The
suggestion that American laws and customs are subject to foreign veto
makes us sick. Our government should not look over its shoulder to
see whether it wins applause or boos from the peanut galleries of the
world.”[471]
Such an internationally myopic viewpoint could be expected from the
embattled _News and Courier_ but one could hardly anticipate it being
broadcast in a more sophisticated form by Donald S. Russell who when
he expressed it was president of the University of South Carolina, a
position which he resigned a few weeks later. Addressing the Bamberg
Lions Club, Russell lashed out against “the ill-advised efforts of
many heedless busybodies to inject the issue of school integration in
the South into American foreign policy.”[472] Conceivably Russell was
speaking strictly for home consumption as he was in the process of
preparing the ground for his announcement as a gubernatorial candidate.
Yet this outlook was hardly befitting a man who fancies himself to
be well informed in the realm of international diplomacy and who has
served as Assistant Secretary of State.
In recognition of the influence of mass communication, various
proposals have been advanced to overcome the absence in the South
of a single pro-segregation newspaper or periodical of nationwide
standing. The South, lamented the _News and Courier_, had lost its
voice in an age of miraculous means of communication. Consequently the
Southern arguments were not heard in the North. The “primary need” of
the South, then, was “a non-profit and non-political organization to
present the Southern viewpoint.” Financed by voluntary contributions
by Southerners, such an organization would employ lawyers to argue
segregation cases before the courts, issue press releases on the
position of segregationists, and furnish speakers to present the
Southern argument to the nation.[473] Ironically, it is largely on
these very grounds that South Carolinians have condemned the NAACP!
The _News and Courier_ has taken other steps to bolster the Southern
ramparts against the integrationists. It plugs W. E. Debnam’s
“handbooks for Southerners,” _Then My Old Kentucky Home Good Night_
and _Weep No More My Lady_. These would intellectually fortify those
Southerners who were “being brain-washed by experts” from the North.
Southerners who bought the books, furthermore, could send them to
Northern acquaintances. On another occasion the _News and Courier_
presented itself as covering the race controversy “more than any
other newspaper in the country.” In one of its own advertisements it
suggested three ways to pierce the “Paper Curtain”: (1) Southerners
could correspond with relatives, friends and business acquaintances in
the North and “tell the truth as they know it;” (2) better yet they
could “send pamphlets, clippings and other printed arguments through
the mail;” (3) “most effective of all would be to send _The News and
Courier_.” A gift subscription was at their command. In 1956 the paper
issued a twenty-five cent pamphlet, entitled “We Take Our Stand,”
containing thirty-two of its editorials on the race issue. Such methods
as these caused the _Independent_ to comment sourly: “The Charleston
_News and Courier_ ... constantly stirs the [race] issue with one
hand while reaching out with the other to cash in on the agitation by
advertising itself as a ‘Southern spokesman’ without peer, urging ‘buy
me, buy me.’ The theory seems to be: more strife, more profit.”[474]
W. D. Workman Jr. suggested establishment of a “Southern Foundation”
to foster “recognition of Southern achievements (and attitudes) in the
fields of industry, agriculture, politics and government, education and
sociology.” The foundation could “aid in breaking down the obvious
and discriminatory refusal of Northern publishers to print anything
out of the South which does not conform with their preconceived ideas
of ‘liberality in the New South.’” Finally it “could offset some of
the mealy-mouthed preachments of ‘dogooder’ organizations within
and without the South which seek to develop a guilt complex among
Southerners for simply being Southerners.”[475]
The “Bookworm,” writing in the _News and Courier_, suggested a boycott
against publications attacking segregation. He proposed that (1) all
Southern organizations “secede from their national affiliations,”
thereby taking large numbers of members and dues from national groups
which were attempting to “influence Southern thought and action”;
(2) Southerners discontinue subscriptions to national publications
unfriendly to the South; and (3) Southerners notify advertisers in
these publications that their products are no longer being used.[476]
Scion of an old Charleston family, Arthur Ravenel, Jr., a member of
the state House of Representatives, proposed to the Columbia Rotary
Club the creation of a fund to be used for the purpose of buying up
Northern newspapers and magazines and other media of information. The
fund would be financed by non-interest paying bonds subscribed to by
loyal South Carolinians. Through these captive magazines “the Southern
and conservative story” could be told to America. “You cannot win a
defensive battle or a defensive war,” said Ravenel. “South Carolina,
as we know her and love her, cannot survive another decade unless we
take the offensive quickly and maintain it vigorously. We alone among
the forty-eight states can do it. We have the wherewithal. Our assets
include a singleness of purpose among our people; geographical unity;
an illustrious history; a social system free of racial strife; two
societies complete and separate, living in mutual respect for one
another; and a community of real Americans.” South Carolina, continued
this young legislator, had “no ‘pinks,’ no reds, no ‘isms.’ We have the
type of people who form the backbone of the nation. We have a story
that can be told.” The battle to win men’s minds could be won, Ravenel
maintained. “That real American, David Lawrence, had proven with the
_U. S. News and World Report_ that America avidly seeks the truth.”[477]
Suggestions of this nature also reached into the state legislature. In
the 1957 session, Representative F. Mitchell Ott of Orangeburg County
introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a nine-member
commission which would interest other Southern states in sending
delegations to visit Northern and Western state legislatures. The
purpose of such visits would be to arouse these states to the threat
of “continuing and accelerating invasion of states rights by the
federal government.”[478]
The successfully waged battle for passage of a federal civil rights
act revealed the extent of the South’s isolation from the rest of
the country. It was looked upon in South Carolina and the other deep
South states as but another campaign in the insidious war of Yankee
aggression. The first skirmishes occurred in the spring of 1956
when the Eisenhower administration asked Congress to enact a civil
rights law which would include creation of a bipartisan commission to
investigate individual grievances and creation of a new civil rights
division in the Department of Justice. The proposals also provided that
any citizen who felt that his constitutional rights had been infringed
might go directly to a federal court with his complaint, bypassing the
state courts.[479]
Reaction to these proposals ranged from indignation to outright
defiance. Senator Olin D. Johnston considered them “a brazen attempt
to abolish all states rights and to establish a form of dictatorship
government.” Never before had the nation come “as close to creating
a Hitler or Stalin type dictatorship.” The _Independent_ compared
them to the “‘force bills’ Black Republicans put into effect”
during Reconstruction. Their purpose was to “create more strife”
and to “capitalize on such strife to create more Negro votes for
the Republican Party.” The _News and Courier_ also considered the
proposals “force bills aimed at the South.” The purpose was “political
reconstruction, in an all-out attempt to capture the Negro vote.” They
meant “invasion of liberties guaranteed under the Constitution.”[480]
The 1956 Civil Rights Bill died in the Senate; consequently, in 1957 a
new and stronger bill was introduced into Congress. Again state leaders
bellowed their opposition. Representative L. Mendel Rivers charged that
the 1957 proposals were based on “a contemptible, malicious, dastardly
lie” about conditions in the South. Such a law “is not only not needed
but violates every guarantee the Constitution gives us.” Passage of
the bill would drench the nation with more “blood than ever a mutinied
ship.” All Americans, not only Southerners, would lose their rights
with passage of the bill. Senator Thurmond warned the House Judiciary
Committee that adoption of the “so-called civil rights” proposals would
“turn neighbor against neighbor,” deprive citizens of their rights to
trial by jury and “keep our people in a constant state of apprehension
and harassment.”[481]
An organized campaign of resistance developed in the state to the
1957 civil rights proposals. Appearing for South Carolina before the
Judiciary Committee of the national House of Representatives were
Senator Thurmond; Representative Dorn; state Representative Robert E.
McNair of Allendale, chairman of the South Carolina House Judiciary
Committee; Thomas A. Pope of Newberry, former state House Speaker,
currently chairman of the South Carolina Bar Association Executive
Committee; state Representative James A. Spruill from Cheraw, member
of the House Education Committee; and Columbia attorney Clint T.
Graydon. Each in turn made impassioned pleas that the bill not be
passed and that the South be left alone to deal with the race problem
as it saw fit. Their arguments were generally based on legalistic and
constitutional grounds.[482] They gave increased significance to a
statement by _Morning News_ editor O’Dowd that in the South democracy
and states rights had come to mean that all men were equal but some
less equal than others.
Commenting on the testimony of the state’s representatives the
_News and Courier_ said that South Carolina could “be proud” of its
legislators and private citizens who spoke before the committee.
“Clarity, honesty, dignity and understanding” characterized their
addresses. “South-haters picture Southerners as Stone Age men,
roughnecks and demagogues. They must have been bitterly disappointed
when our spokesmen, in cool, intelligent tones, warned of perils
threatening freedom in all 48 states.”[483]
South Carolina’s delegation in Congress opposed the civil rights
bill _in toto_ but they were unhappily aware they could not prevent
passage of an act in 1957. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, it is
rumored, had told Southern Senators in January that a bill was going
to be enacted and that they had better forget about their usual “corn
and pot liquor” arguments and consider the legislation on its own
merits.[484] Under such circumstances the strategy of Southerners in
Congress was to take a last ditch stand against the most vulnerable of
the bill’s provisions, namely that violators of Federal court orders
be subject to punishment by a judge of the court without benefit of
jury trial. By insisting on a jury trial amendment to the bill, the
Southerners could present themselves as the real defenders of civil
rights.
Yet the spectacle of the Southerners in Congress presenting themselves
as champions of jury trials was ironic in light of the fact that jury
trials were not guaranteed those similarly accused in state courts.
South Carolina law, for example, provided that disobedience of a court
order “may be punished by a judge as for a contempt.” Also, circuit
courts might punish “by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of the
court, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the
same.”[485]
Both in the House of Representatives and the Senate South Carolina’s
delegation fought a last ditch battle for total rejection of the civil
rights bill. Speaking for his fellow House members from South Carolina,
Representative Dorn argued that the bill was not needed and that it
would further centralize power in Washington and pave the way for a
“federal dictatorship.” Nor would South Carolina representatives accept
any part of the jury trial compromise, said Dorn. An identical opinion
came from Senator Thurmond who believed it “entirely wrong to make
any concession on the jury trial amendment or any part of the bill.”
The Constitution, he said, “specifically provides for jury trials
in all criminal cases and the Constitution cannot be compromised.”
Senator Johnston was equally adamant. He complained of not having been
consulted on the compromise measure and accused the leadership in both
the House and the Senate of high-handed and illegal procedures. In
the closing debate on the bill Johnston declared: “The cornerstone of
human liberty is being shattered.... This is the most backward looking,
retrogressive compromise that has ever issued from any self-appointed
committee within my knowledge, memory, or understanding.”[486]
Both South Carolina representatives and other Southern members of
the Congress were engaged in a fruitless struggle. The civil rights
bill, largely rewritten by Democratic senators and their advisers, was
accepted by the House of Representatives which previously had approved
a more stringent Administration measure. With this hurdle surmounted,
only Senate approval remained. Since Reconstruction days, however, the
Senate had been the graveyard for civil rights bills.
South Carolina political leaders continued to hope that the Senate
would perform its traditional role and that Southern senators in
general and their own in particular would resort to the filibuster,
the ultimate weapon of beleaguered minorities. They clung to this hope
in face of the fact that the Democratic leadership in the Senate had
exacted an agreement from a caucus of Southern senators against use of
such a tactic. Yet South Carolinians knew that a filibuster at best
would merely delay passage of the bill and at worst invoke a move for
cloture and result in the adoption of a more drastic act.[487]
True to form, Governor Timmerman called on “American citizens ... to
demand that their representatives stand up and fight for what is right
or step aside and let there be elected men with political courage who
will.” The bill, he charged, was a “sell-out of principle for the evil
of political expediency.” Should Southern senators “at this late
hour falter or fail to filibuster,” they would be held accountable
for “compromising the inalienable rights of the American people.”
Similarly, Representative Mendel Rivers of Charleston stated that “if
I were a senator, I’d talk until hell freezes over before I’d accept
this bill.... I’d filibuster whether Lyndon B. Johnson is elected
President or not.” Representative Robert Hemphill hoped that the Senate
would “filibuster til Christmas if necessary.” Other South Carolina
representatives expressed like sentiments.[488]
Senator Johnston did not heed the pleas of those urging resort to the
filibuster; he had left Washington temporarily to attend the marriage
of his daughter in Columbia. But the state’s junior senator responded
nobly. Obtaining the floor of the Senate at 8:45 p.m. on August 28th,
J. Strom Thurmond began a record-breaking filibuster that finally
terminated twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes later. It was a
prodigious effort and brought congratulations from Senator Wayne Morse
of Oregon, the previous record holder.[489] But it only delayed passage
of the compromise civil rights bill; more important, it brought an
avalanche of adverse criticism on Thurmond’s balding head, particularly
from infuriated fellow Southern senators who charged him not only with
violating the caucus agreement, but also of making a grandstand play
for personal political advantage.[490]
Back home, reaction to Thurmond’s filibuster was on the whole favorable
though hardly enthusiastic. Many persons privately acknowledged that
he had made a complete fool of himself. Particularly was this true in
Columbia where local leaders were making a strenuous effort to retain
Fort Jackson. It was feared that Thurmond’s action might ultimately
hurt the city’s cause. Governor Timmerman, fighting mad, was the
Senator’s principal defender. He was “shocked” to learn that Thurmond
had received no help in his heroic battle. “When the going got rough,”
he growled to a press conference, the Southern senators had “fallen
down on the job.” He resented for Thurmond “the effort to belittle what
he did.” The Senator, he said, “hasn’t broken faith with anyone; he’s
the only one who didn’t break faith.... I’m commending, not condemning,
what Strom Thurmond did.” Timmerman was sure that the people of the
Palmetto State “didn’t send Senator Thurmond to Washington to be a
political flunky for Johnson, Knowland or Eisenhower.” In what could be
interpreted only as a rebuke to Senator Johnston, the irate Governor
asserted that when the next election time came, he “would take a second
look at the man who turned his back on his constituents” before he
would support him. Finally, lashing out in another direction, Timmerman
called President Eisenhower “a disgrace to the office he holds.”[491]
Timmerman’s remarks were resounded in _News and Courier_ editorials
which observed that while Thurmond had made himself unpopular with
many Americans and his fellow Senators, he spoke for the overwhelming
majority of South Carolinians. “An occasional sneer that Senator
Thurmond was putting on a personal play to the grandstands merits
no attention,” said the Charleston paper. “When personal conviction
tallies with the demands of the people, why shouldn’t a senator stand
up and say so even though he stands alone?” The _News and Courier_,
like the _Morning News_, hesitated to say that the other Southern
senators had compromised with principle, as had Governor Timmerman.
But it did not believe that “others should blame Thurmond for acting
alone.” The _State’s_ editor, Samuel Latimer, seemingly caught with his
editorial directive down, could muster only a brief nine line comment
on Thurmond’s filibuster, the gist of which was that it was a futile
but creditable performance.[492]
From Anderson, however, came a bitter blast against Thurmond from
the _Independent_: “The very junior senator from South Carolina, Mr.
‘Stand-On-Head’ Thurmond was all steamed up this week in opposition to
the Ike, Nixon, Brownell civil rights bill. All his ‘oratory’ in the
Senate will not erase the fact that Thurmond helped put the present
anti-South Republican Party in power. He can change his colors--and his
speeches--but the folks back home will always remember that he is one
of the forces that have plunged a dagger into the heart of the South.
South Carolina voters will be waiting--and ready--when ‘Stand-On-Head’
comes up for reelection. Any good Democrat can trim him and he knows
it. That’s why all the smoke at the moment. Something is urgently
needed by the little man to divert attention from his support of the
Republicans....”[493]
Passage of the civil rights bill did not mean its acceptance in any
way, manner or means by South Carolina leaders. Governor Timmerman
immediately let it be known that he would not co-operate with any civil
rights investigation commission that might come to South Carolina.[494]
The worst crisis in the current “war of Yankee aggression” on the South
came, of course, in the early autumn of 1957 with the Little Rock
affair. South Carolina resounded with praise for Governor Orval Faubus
and condemnation of President Eisenhower. As in all of the deep South
states, white South Carolinians were aghast at the President’s use
of troops to enforce the integration decree of the “northern judge,”
Justice Ronald N. Davies. The state’s press, its politicians, and its
self-appointed spokesmen joined in a crescendo of verbal abuse on
President Eisenhower, Attorney-General Herbert Brownell, Mayor Woodrow
Wilson Mann of Little Rock, Vice-President Richard Nixon, Presidential
aide Sherman Adams, and Adlai Stevenson--the last named for supporting
the President.[495] Governor Timmerman made the state’s outstanding
gesture of protest by resigning his commission as an officer in the
United States Naval Reserve, a gesture which apparently did not disturb
the Navy in the least.[496] Someone scrawled “Ike is a nigger-lover” on
the door of the children’s entrance to the Richland County library in
Columbia. In university classrooms, students who only a year before had
“liked Ike” were asking professors how they “could get rid of him.” If
Little Rock had been in South Carolina, white South Carolinians could
hardly have been more concerned.
In placing the hero’s laurels upon the brow of Governor Faubus, his
admirers rarely if ever were willing to face up to the fact that the
Arkansas chief executive, by calling out the state’s national guard
to prevent Negro children from enrolling at Central High School, was
preventing the execution of the law of the United States. Nor was it
acknowledged that his utterly reckless statements had anything to do
with creating the atmosphere of tension that nourished the violence
which engulfed Central High School on the first day of the new term.
South Carolina post-mortem editorial comment criticized resort to
violence but, with a curious twist of logic, those guilty of violence
were less condemned than those who allegedly had created it. The thugs
who kicked and beat Negroes and newsmen and the sideburned adolescents
whose faces reflected their hatred as they jeered or struck at the
Negro students were never really denounced outright. Instead the
villains of the piece were declared to be the leaders of the NAACP and
the “Northern agitators” who were accused of inciting the violence.
South Carolina editorialists in deploring use of violence, as they
invariably did, always left an escape door for those who resorted to
it. Illustrative are the following editorial comments:
The _News and Courier_ deplores terror tactics in any
cause. Yet men have used them to promote all kinds of
efforts both worthy and unworthy--including religion.
People of good will do not want violence and bloodshed
over integrating the schools of the South. Yet many of
those people would rather be dead than integrated. Shall
white people be exterminated to make room for colored? They
outnumber the colored and they will not give up easily.
(Sept. 19, 1957, p. 8-A.)
Efforts to enforce the court’s integration edict already
are resulting in violent acts by hoodlums, bedsheet
gangsterism and vandalism. This is deplored by the vast
majority of Southerners as injurious to the cause of the
South.... Yet it does not seem to have gotten through
the thick heads in Washington and elsewhere in the North
and West that Southerners will not quail in the face of
bloodshed, if bayonets are directed against them by
hogwild racist South-baiters. (Anderson _Independent_,
Sept. 21, 1957, p. 4).
Decent citizens everywhere abhor violence; [the] South is
not lawless.... The South has a right to try to maintain
its way of life by any and all lawful means. It has done
so for a hundred years despite the outcome of the war that
prevented them [sic] from seceding from the Union, when
that seemed to many of them the only way to uphold it.
(Florence _Morning News_, Sept. 19, 1957, p. 4).
_The State_ cannot condone violence. It never has, and
never will. Neither can it condone the actions of agitators
and others who bring about violence.... There was no
disorder until the judge caused the Arkansas Guard to be
removed. The disorder came after the judge and Mayor Mann
of Little Rock took charge.... We want to keep the record
straight as to under whose auspices the rioting occurred.
(Sept. 26, 1957, p. 4-A).
No thinking citizen of the South will condone the violence
that erupted in Little Rock when federal, city, and
school authorities and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People disregarded Governor Faubus’
advice to allow for a cooling-off period before attempting
the integration of nine Negroes into Little Rock’s Central
High School. Mob violence is not the answer to anything
anywhere, except as an instrument of revolution. It solves
nothing. (_Record_, Sept. 25, 1957, p. 4-A).
In none of the above editorial excerpts was a word of sympathy extended
to the victims of violence or an express denunciation made against
those engaged in the particular acts. One is reminded of the old
condemnations of lynching. No one “approved” the practice in principle,
but.... On the other hand, when an Arkansas segregationist, C. E.
Blake, was struck on the head with the butt of a rifle which he was
trying to wrest away from a federal soldier standing guard, there
was more admiration for than censure of his action. Senator Johnston
suggested to Governor Faubus that “warrants be issued for the arrest of
federal soldiers responsible for unnecessary bludgeoning of Arkansas
citizens and unlawful invasion of their homes.”[497]
In fact, the state’s senior senator had considerable gratuitous advice
for Governor Faubus. “If I were governor of Arkansas,” said Johnston,
“I would ignore the President and call out the National Guard in the
name of the State of Arkansas to defend life and property and to defend
the state against all alien influences and forces especially the NAACP
and troublemakers who wish to force a division upon the country.”
From his Washington office the Senator told the press that it was “a
known fact that subversive elements in this country support the NAACP
in inflaming the issue of integration and their ultimate goal is to
conquer us through division. If the President were tolerant of the
tolerant South’s position and less tolerant of the intolerant NAACP the
grave situation at Little Rock would never have occurred.”[498]
Other South Carolina political leaders expressed themselves with
varying degrees of vigor on the Arkansas situation. In a prepared
speech at Bennettsville, elder South Carolina politician James F.
Byrnes voiced complete confidence in the President’s integrity but
maintained that he was being “misled” by Attorney General Brownell. He
believed that Governor Faubus had been vindicated by events and called
the assignment of Judge Davies to the case highly “unwise.” Byrnes
declared that the Arkansas affair was staged purely for political
reasons as a means of outbidding the Democrats for the Negro vote.
That South Carolina had avoided such difficulties resulted from
the high quality of Negro schools in the state--better than those
provided for whites--and the sensible attitude of the “real” Negro
leaders. The former governor called on the Southern states to desert
their allegiance to the Democratic Party and to unite for southern
independent action.[499]
Byrnes’s call for southern political independence echoed the plea made
earlier by Farley Smith, leader of the South Carolina Independent
Democrats. By sending troops into Arkansas, said Smith, the President
had “succumbed to integration extremists” and “silenced the voice
of moderation and understanding.” Smith declared further: “We are
now fair game for every Negro baiter and South hater and wild-eyed
fanatic on both sides of this momentous question. God only knows
where this will all end. But one thing should be crystal clear by
now--the South has had enough.” With this last statement James P.
Richards, former South Carolina Congressman and Chairman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, agreed. “It’s about time they realize that
an issue like this can’t be handled by the federal government,” he
asserted. Richards, whose job it then was as President Eisenhower’s
roving ambassador to make friends for the United States amongst the
dark-skinned peoples of the Middle East, observed that “the Russian
provinces ... have a form of segregation between the Russians and the
others. When you ask why, they say because the people prefer it that
way.”[500]
Governor Timmerman, who had sent a telegram of encouragement to
Governor Faubus, pointed out that the Little Rock incident could never
have occurred in South Carolina because of the state’s educational
segregation laws.[501] The same position was taken by State Senator
Marion Gressette who heads the state committee entrusted with the
preservation of racial segregation in the schools. The law of South
Carolina, Gressette pointed out, would automatically shut off state
funds to any school ordered by a court to accept a Negro and also the
school from which the latter came. “Our law ... would permit a cooling
off period in South Carolina,” Gressette observed. “Where we would go
from there would depend upon the circumstances and no one can predict
what the circumstances would be.” He divulged that his committee had a
plan for such a contingency but refused to reveal its contents. He did
give notice, though, that the federal government “would be absolutely
helpless in trying to force a person or persons into South Carolina
schools. The federal government has no power to compel the General
Assembly of South Carolina to appropriate funds for the operation of
schools.”[502]
Not all of Senator Gressette’s colleagues shared his opinion that
Little Rock couldn’t happen in South Carolina. On October 6th, Senator
John D. Long announced that the legislative delegation of Union County
had arranged the purchase of nine new Browning sub-machine guns with
1000 rounds of ammunition to beat back “any invasion of federal troops”
such as took place at Little Rock. “Anyone violating our laws,” said
Long, “will be arrested, jailed and treated the same as any other
accused persons.” Senator Long was confident that Union County Sheriff
J. Harold Lamb and his eight deputies could handle any situation that
might arise.[503]
Of the many causes for which South Carolinians blamed the renewal and
intensification of the integration efforts of the 1950’s, few have
been more prominent than the economic. The integration drive of the
post-World War II period coincided, of course, with the unprecedented
industrial growth of the South. At the same time, national labor
organizations, which previously had made discouragingly little progress
in South Carolina, began increased “agitation” to unionize the labor
force of the state. Since essentially the same forces are opposed to
both integration and unionization, it is natural that these two aspects
of the new Yankee aggression should be presented to the public as
different phases of the same thing.
South Carolina’s principal industry is cotton textiles. Only a small
percentage of textile workers in the state are unionized and nowhere
does there exist equality of employment opportunities for Negroes in
South Carolina textiles. In fact state law on labor and employment
contains the following provisions:
It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in the business
of cotton textile manufacturing in this state to allow or
permit operatives, help and labor of different races
(a) to labor and work together within the same room,
(b) to use the same doors of entrance and exit at the same
time,
(c) to use and occupy the same pay ticket windows or doors
for paying off its operatives and laborers at the same time,
(d) to use the same stairway and windows at the same time,
or,
(e) to use at any time the same lavatories, toilets,
drinking water buckets, pails, cups, dippers or
glasses.[504]
In blaming integration and unionization efforts on Northern
jealousy and resentment of Southern economic progress, the Anderson
_Independent_ has been the leading voice in the state. The paper
presents itself as the friend and champion of the working man and,
in truth, is prepared to go much further than most South Carolinians
in supporting minimum wage laws, social security benefits, and other
benefits for the working classes. However, labor unions have no more
implacable an enemy. In stating its position on the connection between
Republican politics, organized labor and integration, the upcountry
newspaper declared:
We said then [1952], and repeat the opinion now, that the
forces behind the integration campaign are the true lineal
descendants of Black Republicanism that forced the South
into secession and war in the 1860’s and for the same
reasons--money and industry.
In the 1850’s there were the Abolitionists. In the 1950’s
there is the NAACP. In the 1850’s the South’s economy was
becoming too strong to suit New England interests. In the
1950’s the migration of industry poses the same challenge
to the North and East.
The Republican party was founded upon Abolitionist
agitation and the same party today is staking its hopes of
retaining power on the modern-day Abolitionists who also
are in unholy alliance with the big labor unions.[505]
Shortly after making this statement, which exhibited lack of concern
for historical accuracy, the same newspaper further spelled out its
stand on organized labor:
This time the issue is not the abolition of slavery.
Rather, it is the demand that industrial slavery in the
form of labor unions be allowed to dictate the allocation
of industry and jobs.
The South’s position today in relation to the rest of the
U. S. in its constitutional resistance to integration
may be strengthened by placing heavier emphasis upon the
fact that, unlike the 1850’s the South is on the side of
liberty in a battle against a peculiarly insidious type of
slavery.[506]
The _Independent_ is by no means alone in speaking of the “conspiracy”
between the integrationists and organized labor. Lieutenant Governor E.
F. Hollings warned against the combined efforts of CIO labor unions and
New England politicians in collusion with the NAACP to “cut the flow of
industry” into South Carolina and the South. Likewise, Attorney General
T. C. Callison hinted at “some unholy alliance between the NAACP and
enemies of ours who would be rejoiced to bring about the condition of
confusion, which would interfere with the migration of industry to our
state.”[507] Shortly after Congress’ passage of the Civil Rights Act
the _News and Courier_ ran the following editorial note under the
title of “Know Your Enemy”: “Every South Carolinian who is employed
in a textile mill should know that William Pollock, president of the
Textile Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, has petitioned President
Eisenhower to appoint immediately civil rights commissioners for the
South. The man who wants to collect the dues of textile workers in
South Carolina can’t wait for the New Reconstruction to begin.”[508]
National labor unions have been, of course, among the most consistent
and militant supporters of full civil rights for Negroes. This fact,
together with such actions by the national unions as condemning the
activities of the Citizens Councils, have been used against the
cause of organized labor. The _News and Courier_ commented with much
validity that the “traditional viewpoint” of Southerners on separation
of the races accounted for the resistance to labor organization in
the state. South Carolina’s industrial workers, it maintained, would
have to choose between heeding “the orders of union officials who are
brainwashed with the popular creed of mixing the races” and declaring
“their independence as free citizens.” Noting that the South was
traditionally “pro-segregation and anti-union,” it declared that to the
“union member who has already parted with one tradition the question
is whether he can part with the second, and still be accepted in the
community.” In a not very subtle attempt to alienate the South Carolina
worker from the labor union, the _News and Courier_ declared that “the
white man who wishes to preserve his culture, his civilization, as he
and his fathers knew it, is in the minority as the national union labor
leaders count noses.”[509]
Anti-union elements have been not unsuccessful in using for their own
ends the pro-integration stand of national labor unions and their
leaders. In some areas union members support Citizens Councils or other
white supremacy groups. And the implication of statements by a number
of labor leaders in the state, notably among those of the Textile
Workers Union of America, is that these members put loyalty to the
Citizens Councils above that of their labor unions. Oversimplifying the
case, Representative John Calhoun Hart of Union, one of the leaders
of a weak and unsuccessful effort to repeal the state’s right-to-work
law, told George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO: “Organized labor will
never make any substantial progress in the South until national labor
leaders stop uttering such rot and drivel on racial matters in the
South. Any Southerner who would go along with you on such things is not
worth his salt and could not be elected dogcatcher.”[510]
One of the most curious developments in the integration controversy
has been the creation of the United Southern Employes Association,
a pro-segregation labor organization imported from North Carolina.
Leaders of the new labor group acknowledged that they were reacting
against the pro-integration tendencies of the old unions and against
“the trend toward concentration of too much power in the hands of ‘a
few big-shots.’” Applicants for membership were required to sign a
promise to attempt “in a legal manner, to maintain and support the
Southern tradition of segregation in education and society of the
white and Negro races without discriminating against or violating
the civil rights of any other person or persons.” The movement also
aimed at the establishment of a member-controlled labor movement and
the bringing about of “good friendship” and good relations between
workers and industries. The United Southern Employes Association
supported amendments to the state’s right-to-work law which would
require the approval by secret ballot of union members before any
strike could be called by a local union, thus preventing “wildcat
strikes by unions without the approval of their members”; prohibit
national or international unions from levying more than a seventy
cents per month tax on members without membership approval by secret
ballot; ban a national or international union from controlling local
funds or property; require membership approval, by secret ballot, of
all contracts and work agreements before such become binding; allow
any union member to withdraw his membership upon ten days notice to
the local union; and require that union members be notified ten days
in advance of any union elections; investigate labor disputes; and in
general serve as a state labor board. Though the dedication of such
an organization to the real welfare of the working class might be
questioned, the United Southern Employes Association presented itself
as labor’s hope in the South. By early 1957 the group had only one
office in the state, at Rock Hill, but it had grandiose plans for
establishment of others.[511]
The close association of the United Southern Employes Association with
conservative elements in the state came to light in January, 1957,
when W. A. Somersett, one of its organizers, was asked to address
the meeting in Columbia of the South Carolina Independent political
movement. Somersett presented the Association as being dedicated to
the preservation of racial segregation. He condemned the national
Democratic party as being “socialist” and listening overmuch “to
persons such as Walter Reuther.”[512]
Somersett descended a few steps down the South Carolina social ladder
when he addressed a meeting of the Fort Mill Klan Klavern. According to
a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, he asserted that any
klansman was automatically considered a member of the USEA and could
be sent across an AFL-CIO picket line. This statement, it is said, was
greeted by a chorus of boos and a walkout of most of the klansmen who
were themselves textile operators.[513]
Thus the segregationist elements of the state reacted to the diverse
phases of the renewed war of Yankee aggression. It is a war in which
the South appears doomed to lose again, although at a much slower pace
than the struggle of the 1860’s. The growing disagreements between
North and South spotlight the ever increasing isolation of the latter,
not only in the nation but in the free world. It is evident, by 1958,
that the time has come for Southerners to undergo an “agonizing
reappraisal” of their traditional concepts of the relationships between
the races. It is also evident, however, that South Carolina’s white
spokesmen are not yet prepared to do this. On the face of things it
appears that white South Carolinians would settle down to a long and
slow process of chopping off the dog’s tail a bit at a time: The end
result will not change but the process will be much more painful.