A PLACE IN THE SHADE
We’ve always had a place in the sun down South. Now I reckon some of us would like a little of the shade too.—An Unidentified Negro
Throughout the segregation-integration controversy white leaders have rarely attempted to discover what the Negro thinks on the matter. Instead they have arbitrarily declared that the overwhelming majority of South Carolina Negroes have no desire for integrated schools. This claim is made almost without exception. A writer in the Morning News noted that while Southern governors and attorneys general had held conferences to consider the objectives of Negroes, they had never called a biracial meeting at which the latter could voice their aims. On no occasion had white leaders asked Negroes to state their position; the aspirations of Negroes were always specified by white men. Such a situation, it was observed, might well result in “brash action” by “sincere white people, who, alarmed by white men’s statements of Negro aims,” were girding for war without waiting to hear the Negroes themselves.[231] A perusal of public pronouncements by Negro leaders and groups reveals that a misconception in regard to Negro aims and desires exists among the white people of South Carolina.
The goal sought by the overwhelming majority of South Carolina Negro leaders is an immediate end to legal segregation. They recognize that for many years to come de facto segregation will continue to exist. But on the point of legally enforced segregation, there is no compromise. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, a native South Carolinian and president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, told a meeting of the Florence County NAACP that the immediate concern of the Negro was not for integration but desegregation. Desegregation, he said, meant “to destroy segregation based on law.” Likewise A. J. Clement, Jr., president of the Charleston County NAACP chapter, said South Carolina Negroes wished an opportunity to make their “best contribution” to the development of the state, an objective that could be realized only by ending segregation.[232]
At this point a more complete picture of the aims and aspirations of South Carolina Negroes is in order. As already has been noted, white political leaders constantly have stated that the majority of the state’s Negroes oppose desegregation. Only on occasion is it acknowledged that the Negro might, after all, want desegregation. The News and Courier believed that “the average Southern Negro” would accept as much mingling “as the white man would allow.” It did not think, though, that the Negro was “willing to risk a great deal to attain it.” This “moderate attitude” by Negroes was in keeping with “good citizenship as well as good race relations.” The recognition of “conditions as they exist,” according to the Charleston paper, should be neither “humiliating nor degrading for Negroes.” Writing in Harper’s in early 1956, Thomas R. Waring, editor of the News and Courier, admitted that “it would not be hard to believe that, given a choice, a Negro naturally would prefer all restrictions to be removed.” But “a firm and positive stand by people everywhere,” he held, would put an end to “the race agitation that has plagued our country these last several years.”[233]
A more positive statement of this attitude was made by W. D. Workman, Jr., the News and Courier correspondent. Writing in late 1955, he observed that too many white South Carolinians were laboring “under the dangerous delusion that Negroes of the state do not want integration.” In truth, he maintained, “a large percentage” of Negroes “and an even greater percentage of their leaders very definitely do want integration of the races, and as soon as possible.” The failure of the state’s leadership to recognize this situation involved “the tactical error—which could prove disastrous—of underestimating the enemy.” Assessing the extent to which Negroes desired integration, Workman noted that educational, religious and civic leaders seemed overwhelmingly “determined to press for integration.” He reported a division amongst Negroes with “some genuinely and sincerely” opposing any integration and others who doubted the practicability of the “current rate” of integration. But among Negro leaders he found “increasingly open and avowed agitation for integration.”[234] In substantial agreement, the Record termed the belief that a majority of Negroes favored segregation a “head-in-the-sand theory.”[235]
It is hardly possible to evaluate with exactness, of course, the attitude of the rank and file of South Carolina Negroes toward segregation. In early 1956 the Gallup Poll asked people throughout the country their opinion on the Supreme Court decision. No results on a statewide basis were announced; however, the poll indicated that 53 percent of Southern Negroes (13 states) approved the decision while 36 percent opposed it and 11 percent were undecided. For comparison only 16 percent of Southern whites approved the decision, 80 percent disapproved, and four percent were undecided.[236] The vehement opposition of Southern whites to integration, reported the Gallup organization, caused many Negroes “to view with misgivings the possible repercussions” of race mixing. However, the report noted “a common desire” on the part of Southern Negroes “to give their children the best possible education and obtain for their race the treatment which they consider to be in keeping with the ‘American way of life.’” In a survey of the status of race relations in South Carolina in early 1956, the New York Times noted that, while Negroes were “more cautious” in expressing views than whites, nonetheless, there was “little or no question that literate, articulate Negroes generally” desired an end of legal segregation. These groups, reported the Times, resented being “officially classed” as “an inferior race and as second class citizens.”[237]
Despite an understandable reluctance of Negroes to express themselves on segregation, news reporters on occasion have been able to obtain revealing statements. In the summer of 1956 an Associated Press writer, interviewing Negroes in Clarendon County, sought the opinions of the family of William Hilton, a tenant farmer. Several of Hilton’s 13 children spoke out forthrightly:
I’d like to go to school with white children, said Henrietta Hilton, 13. I just don’t like to segregate myself because of my color or hair. I’d like to be able to pick friends on another basis. I think I’d enjoy being friends with some white girls. Maybe they’d enjoy being friends with me.
I never wished I was white, said Morgan Hilton, 16. I just wished many times I was treated like the whites.
In the movies, said Leroy Hilton, 19, we got to go up to “Buzzards Roost” (the Jim Crow Balcony). When there’s a good picture, we’ll be standing up there even though there’s empty seats downstairs. My feeling is we pay as much, we ought to be able to sit anywhere. Every time I go, I get mad, but I don’t say anything.
I feel insulted every time I got to sit in the back of a Jim Crow bus, said Henrietta. I feel insulted every time I go into the drugstore for ice cream or a soda. All the booths are for whites. We got to have our ice cream out on the hot street. I just wonder what makes them think they’re superior. Sometimes, you walk down the street and white people just look at you scornful. You can feel it.[238]
Statements made by individual Negro leaders and resolutions adopted by various Negro groups reveal a willingness of Negroes generally to follow anti-segregationist leaders. The Progressive Democratic Party, the state’s leading Negro political group, stated that the question was no longer segregation or integration but rather “how best” to accomplish desegregation. The party proposed creation of an inter-racial commission to handle such problems as would arise during the period of integration. The Palmetto Education Association, representing approximately 7,000 Negro public school teachers, adopted a resolution in 1955 hailing the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, as “consistent with the Association’s belief” in democracy. The Association offered to cooperate in “discussing, outlining, and implementing plans for universal public education” in the state “within the framework of the recent ruling of the United States Supreme Court.”[239] The Association’s stand is particularly noteworthy since there is general agreement that many Negro teachers would be eased out of their jobs should integrated schools become an accomplished fact.
The Richland County Chapter of the South Carolina Citizens Committee (Negro), in an unusually strong statement, declared that it stood “solidly for the respect and observance of all laws.” The chapter wished it “clearly understood” that this included the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954. “To circumvent or to defy the law is rebellion and to join others in so doing is criminal conspiracy which could lead to anarchy.” The chapter concluded that the Negro’s struggle was “neither temporary nor futile” since its ultimate objective was “the proper evaluation of each individual and the proper regard for human dignity.” The Clarendon County Civic League, which backed the school suit, attacked segregation as “un-Christian, undemocratic, unscientific, and asinine.” Statements to the effect that Negroes favored segregation, according to the League, revealed “a deep-seated racial prejudice that has warped the intellect, the sensibilities and the wills” of white people. According to State NAACP president James M. Hinton, “Negro parents only want their children taught by competent teachers and in integrated schools, where children of both races can learn to study and learn to live as citizens.”[240]
Opposition to school integration has arisen from isolated Negro individuals and groups. More than 100 “patrons” of a Negro school in Mullins signed a petition urging continuation of segregation and “opposing integration of the Caucasian and Negro schools.” A similar petition was signed by Negro parents in North Augusta. This group feared integration “might disrupt progress now being made” in the Negro school program. A Negro school principal in Ehrhardt, in Bamberg County, thought integration would result in Negro teachers and pupils being “thrust into a most peculiar situation” which would be beset “with many perplexing problems and grave consequences.” Educational opportunities of Negro children under integration, he feared, would “suffer for the next 50 years.”[241] A Negro delegate to the Horry County Democratic Convention said that he wanted his children “to go to as good a school as any man’s children,” but “to the same school they go to now.” Dr. Ben J. Armstrong, prominent Mullins Negro, believed it would take “a thousand years” for the races to get ready for desegregation. The Reverend Webster McClary, a “preacher” from Kingstree, praised the Citizens Councils as being composed of “smart steady men” who “mean business” and declared that Negroes did not desire mixed schools any more than whites.
I can say this to any Negro who has it sticking in his craw that he can’t be happy without trying mixed schools [said McClary]. All you have to do to get your heart’s desire is buy a ticket to Philly or other points North where they are already mixed. Nobody has to tell you that colored children don’t learn books as fast as whites. But see for yourself how pitiful your big colored children will look in the same grades with smaller white children. Have you got enough money to dress your brood in clothes they won’t be ashamed of? Go ahead and try it if you must. But don’t be fool enough to slam the door in your white friends’ faces before you go. You might want to come back like I did after I lived up there awhile. How if you came home and find the door locked?—Will the NAACP give you a handout? Laugh, folks, laugh.[242]
The News and Courier considered McClary’s statement to be “moderate in tone and sensible in approach.” The Independent thought it “timely advice” for Negroes. A letter to the editor of the News and Courier nominated McClary for the Pulitzer Prize “for the most enlightening and constructive” comment on the race problem “made to date.” The same writer opined that McClary and eight other men “equally as intelligent” should be appointed to the United States Supreme Court.[243]
Pro-segregation statements by Negro leaders have become less frequently heard as attitudes toward the problem have hardened on both sides. Pressure for conformity has worked within both the Negro and white communities, though probably less effectively so among Negroes.
The attitude of Negro church groups is of especial significance in light of the church’s undeniably great influence within the Negro community. The number of ministers and prominent laymen among Negro improvement and advancement groups is unusually high. Statewide Negro church associations almost without exception have endorsed the Court decision and have called for the ending of racial segregation. The Progressive Democratic Party claimed that as early as 1951 “religious denominations and groups administering to more than 600,000 of the state’s 850,000 colored citizens” made voluntary statements and declarations which urged the removal of racial segregation in public places. The South Carolina conference of the Central (Negro) Jurisdiction of the Methodist Church, in endorsing the struggle of the Negro for equality of treatment, approved all organizations which sought “the full participation of all American citizens in the responsibilities and privileges of this nation.” Bishop Frank Madison Reid expressed the attitude of the state’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in late 1955. In suspending the Reverend James Vanwright for opposing integration and the court decision, Bishop Reid asserted: “No minister in our church can openly declare or write anything that attacks the scriptural belief in the equality of all men.”[244] Dr. G. G. Daniels, president of the Negro Baptist State Convention, in supporting efforts to end all legal racial discriminations, stated that the Negro was seeking only those human rights guaranteed by the Constitution.[245] A manifesto of the Columbia Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, a Negro group, declared that there could be “no first-class citizenship in a segregated society.” Full participation of the Negro in the life of South Carolina would come only after the removal of such barriers as “racial segregation, discrimination, Jim Crowism and economic pressure.” The Alliance recognized the difficulties involved in the process of desegregation. “Things cannot be changed overnight,” the Reverend J. Arthur Holmes, Alliance president, told this organization in 1956.[246]
The attitude of individual Negro ministers conforms to the same general pattern. The Reverend William L. Wilson, pastor of a Spartanburg Baptist Church, told a newspaper reporter that he was sometimes “ashamed” of his white colleagues. “They tell me privately,” he said, “that segregation is wrong, but they will say nothing publicly.” The Reverend Giles G. Brown, a Methodist Minister of Charleston, referring to proposals for church integration, said that there was only “one human family.” The brotherhood of that family was ordained by God. Any movement that furthered this brotherhood would eventually succeed but in some areas this would come only after a “long, long time.”[247]
Negro leaders were restrained in commenting on the Court decision. James M. Hinton said that “Negroes, though happy,” were “most mindful of the seriousness of the decision” and would cooperate fully with state leaders in its implementation. “There is no place in a democracy for segregation,” he declared. Bishop Reid called for “a special day of thanksgiving at this hour when the Supreme Court has answered the challenge and call of democracy.”[248]
A small minority of Negro religious spokesmen opposed the decision. The Reverend Hydrick Strobel of St. George, a black-belt town, urged his congregation to “be well pleased and thank God for equal but separate schools for our colored children, where they can learn to take pride in their own race, instead of being ashamed of it.”[249]
A staff writer for the Record, analyzing the reaction of Clarendon County Negroes to the decision, stated that “there is not much rejoicing, even among the colored people of this district, over the way their case has turned out. They hold their heads a little higher and they seem to have a little more confidence in themselves, but they are concerned about the future of the schools.”[250] In like manner an Associated Press writer noted the difficulty of determining the opinion of the majority of Clarendon Negroes. “Some say that they want segregation to continue as long as facilities are equal,” he reported. “Some are against it. Many won’t say either way.”[251]
White South Carolinians in maintaining that Negroes desire segregation, customarily quote Negro “hands,” domestic servants or others who had said they favored segregation. In evaluating these pro-segregation statements by Negroes, the whites rarely distinguish between the uneducated, economically dependent Negro and recognized Negro leadership. Such a mistake results naturally from the Booker T. Washington tradition that the Southern white man is the only true friend of the Negro and has always stood ready to give him assistance and advice in meeting the challenges of the white man’s civilization. Whereas Yankees might mouth pious platitudes about all men being created equal and having equal rights, the Southerner is the true benefactor of the Negro on the individual level.
Indications are that in some quarters this attitude is changing as a result of the segregation controversy. James M. Hinton spoke of the rise of a “new Negro” in the South, one whom “traditional” Southerners had difficulty in understanding. A few white spokesmen have admitted that the “new Negro” was difficult to comprehend. W. D. Workman, Jr., spoke of the “incapacity of the white man to fathom the thinking of the Negro.” In a similar vein the Record editorially observed that “no white person can know what the Negroes are thinking. For ordinarily a Negro tells a white man in the South what he thinks that white person wishes to hear. It may not be and frequently is not what the Negro actually thinks.”[252]
Despite such evidence the state’s political leaders continue to assert that Negroes favor the status quo. They possess, in short, a superabundance of William James’s “will to believe.” In his inaugural address, Governor Timmerman asserted that “most Negro parents” did not want their children “to mix with large groups of white children.” Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings, characterizing segregation as a “natural thing,” maintained that “a majority of Negroes” were no more enthusiastic about mixed schools than white persons. Senator Marion Gressette told a Bamberg audience that “thousands of Negroes” were fighting with the whites to preserve segregation.[253]
Newspaper editorialists also generally agree that the majority of Negroes oppose integration. The News and Courier thought that “except for the NAACP and a few other zealots,” Negroes were not willing “to disrupt harmonious race relations for a goal that many of them view with indifference.” The Independent believed public school integration was opposed “not only by white people but by thinking Negro leaders and the patrons of Negro schools.” The Morning News, after James A. Rogers replaced Jack H. O’Dowd as editor in August, 1956, felt that the majority of Negroes did not regard “with sympathy the efforts of some of their contemporaries to force an unnatural mixing of the races which would create unbearable tensions and inequalities.”[254]
White spokesmen only rarely can see any reason for the Negro’s “agitation” for the abolition of segregation. Under segregation, said the Morning News, the Negro had “opportunities for racial development unparalleled anywhere else in this country.” Segregation was “not an evil scheme” to keep the Negro in subjection but a high road along which he could achieve “maximum development in an atmosphere without tension or ill-will.” An excellent example of the “separate-but-equal” argument appears in the following editorial statement from the Morning News:
We believe that an integrated school system would deepen the Negro’s inferiority complex, that it would magnify his sense of being a second class citizen, that he would not develop normally under the tensions and inequalities of integration. We believe that his finest opportunities are with equal segregated facilities. We believe that he is entitled to equal facilities, that he, like his white brother, is entitled to all the benefits of being an American citizen, but for the sake of his race, its potential, its integrity, its development, he should demand segregation in the public schools as offering the only normal, natural atmosphere in which to work for maximum racial development. Furthermore, we believe that the majority of Negroes themselves who view the problem objectively are of the same opinion.[255]
Segregation by such reasoning is less a benefit for the white than for the Negro.
Segregationists seem totally unable to understand the failure of Negro leaders to support the status quo. “The finest thing that could happen to the Negro race,” declared the Morning News, “would be the emergence of leadership that would crusade for voluntary segregation with the same vigor and persistence that the NAACP has crusaded for integration.”[256] That such leadership has not been forthcoming allegedly has been due to the “reign of terror” which the NAACP has instigated against Negro moderates. Lowcountry Negroes, like lowcountry whites, noted the News and Courier, were “largely conservative,” an attitude expressed in their “reluctance to agitate for racial change.” These moderates were loath to speak out because they would be “penalized by the extremists.” Although such moderates had “strong support” among Negroes in the state, they were largely “silent.” Negroes who spoke out in favor of segregation, concluded the News and Courier, were the “truly heroic” element in the segregation controversy. “It would be well,” Senator Gressette said, “for us to encourage the members of the Negro race with these [pro-segregation] views,” so that they in turn could “discourage the few whites and colored, from within and without the state,” who were advocating integration. State Senator Marshall Williams would extend such encouragement to all Negroes. “We should talk with the colored people we employ, and can influence,” he said, “give them the benefit of what we know, explain how they are being duped by the NAACP and other outsiders and convince them that it would be better to live at peace among their white neighbors in a segregated society.” White advice, then, is for the Negro to return to the “sound counsel” of Booker T. Washington.[257]
White leaders are certain that they and not the Negroes themselves best realize the latter’s true needs. “Unless the Negroes come to their senses and cast out the false leaders,” warned the News and Courier, they might find that they had been led “down a primrose path to misery and disaster.” “Respectable Southern white people” are the Negro’s best friends.[258] Running concurrently with this refrain is the frequently stated belief that nowhere on earth have Negroes been so fortunate as in the South. “Segregation has been a success,” especially from the standpoint of the Negro, proclaimed Dr. E. E. Colvin, a white Baptist minister of Orangeburg.[259] The South had “none of the ‘isms’ and tensions of the Northern cities,” asserted Gilbert Wilkes of Mt. Pleasant in a letter to the News and Courier, echoing the century old philosophy of George Fitzhugh and John C. Calhoun. “As far as race relations go,” the Negro lived “a much freer and happier life” in the South. Another letter writer, Alford W. Atkins of Charleston, stated that in the North in contrast to the South, one did not see among Negroes “the smiling or solemn dark faces ... filled with content or at least joy in living and the happiness that comes from it.” Negroes in the North “looked strained and dissatisfied with life.” The News and Courier said that “apparently” integration was not bringing happiness to Northern Negroes. Instead “contentment, freedom from worry and a pleasant disposition” which have been the “prize possessions” of Southern Negroes disappeared with the end of segregation.[260]
As will be shown subsequently in greater detail, the segregation controversy has played a major role in state politics in the period following the May 17, 1954, ruling by the Supreme Court. The constant political concern with the subject explains in part the inability of the two sides to get together and calmly work out a mutually agreeable modus vivendi. Negro leaders see politicians using the issue as a political football for personal benefit. Contributing to this situation has been the failure of the Negroes to register and vote in sufficiently large numbers to cause politicians to fear their influence at the polls. Absence of an effective political pressure action group has not helped the Negroes. The Progressive Democratic Party, the only real Negro political organization in the state, has been practically moribund from 1948 to 1958. Efforts of Negro political spokesmen have been hampered because a large majority of the state’s Negroes are ideologically Democrats in the national sense while Negro leaders receive no consideration from state Democratic leaders.[261]
Negroes have attempted to make the pressure of their votes felt in the state and not without some success in presidential elections. On the state and local levels, however, they are completely frustrated. They can not, for example, find candidates who will campaign on even a “moderate” platform with regard to the race issue. Consequently the Negro has only the choice of the lesser of several evils. The Negro vote, moreover, is most ineffective in areas where it is potentially the strongest, that is in heavily Negro populated low country counties. In such counties the number of Negro voters was less than in those where the Negro population was lower percentagewise.
Leading Negro political spokesmen have been John H. McCray, chairman of the Progressive Democratic Party, and the Reverend James M. Hinton, president of the state NAACP. McCray’s party sent a delegation to the national Democratic convention in 1956 to challenge the regular slate headed by Governor Timmerman. One of its purposes was to secure official recognition by the convention in the event the regular delegation walked out over the civil rights issue.[262] The presence of the Negro group probably had little if any influence on the decision of the regulars to remain in the convention.
The actual influence of the Negro vote in the state is difficult to assess. Until 1958 voter registration has omitted any mention of race and ballots by whites and Negroes have not been cast separately. Also various groups, white and Negro, have made claims and counterclaims for political purposes. McCray maintained his party delivered 85,000 to 95,000 votes to the Democratic Party nominee in 1952 and was thus responsible for the Democratic victory. A similar claim was made for 1956. Anti-Negro politicians, especially among the Independents of 1956, agreed with these claims. They hoped thereby to stigmatize the Democratic Party.[263]
In late 1954 the Palmetto State Voters Association was formed to organize Negro voters for the purpose of electing to public office candidates sympathetic to the Negro. It has had little, if any, success, in part because many of the leaders of other groups, including the NAACP, oppose isolating Negro voters in a separate group. Such action, it is argued, is inconsistent with the professed aim of the Negro for full integration into the state’s political activities. “Racial bloc voting,” said A. J. Clement, Jr., was “out of order, out of style” and did not provide the advantage of a system that was interested in the whole as against a particular part.[264]
The organization primarily responsible for the giant steps taken by Negroes toward the goal of full participation in the responsibilities and benefits of American citizenship is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The South Carolina conference has chapters scattered throughout the state with headquarters in Columbia. The state organization, headed by the Reverend James M. Hinton, claimed 22,000 members in South Carolina in early 1956.[265] Though membership rolls are not made public, it would appear that the major portion of NAACP spokesmen are from middle class and professional groups. A disproportionate number of the organization’s leaders are ministers. The NAACP generally represents the best in the state’s Negro leadership. The state conference, though virtually autonomous, works closely with the national headquarters in seeking to end all racial discriminations based on law. According to the official Civil Rights Handbook published by the national headquarters, the NAACP is “not a legal aid society” for supplying assistance to every needy colored person. Its intervention in legal suits is limited to three categories: (1) Legal defense of innocent colored persons who are victims of injustice solely because of race, (2) Assistance in legal cases involving colored persons where fundamental civil or constitutional rights are involved, and (3) Affirmative legal action to establish principles of law of benefit to colored persons generally.[266]
Working within these boundaries and in conjunction with the national headquarters, the state conference has secured several notable victories, the most spectacular being the Clarendon County school case. The NAACP also assisted in the cases which resulted in pay equalization for white and Negro school teachers and in the destruction of the white primary in South Carolina. In other less publicized cases assistance has also been given. “The litigious NAACP,” the Record complained, “has been behind every one of the suits to mix the races in the public schools, the colleges and universities, in transportation and in state parks and other recreation areas.”[267]
The degree to which South Carolina Negroes agree with the NAACP and its aims and objectives is evidenced by the widespread support given the drive to end segregation by church, professional and other groups. Many organizations have gone on record as supporting an end to segregation without giving a specific endorsement to the NAACP. But the general public directly associates the NAACP with leadership in this fight. Typical of the expressions of support given the NAACP was the resolution adopted by a portion of the student body and faculty of the Negro college at Orangeburg when the state legislators were planning an investigation of NAACP activities at the institution. The NAACP was regarded “as simply one organization” which gave “vitality” to the furtherance of the constitutional rights of the Negro. The students and teachers disavowed “any knowledge of information that that organization represents any more than the maintenance of law and order in the determination of and in the protection of the constitutional rights involved.”[268]
The NAACP is not without Negro opponents in the state. One of the most outspoken is P. B. Mdodana, a school principal at McBee. Mdodana, a native of South Africa, has spent most of his life in the United States. He charged that Negroes were “losing their Constitutional rights to a loud-speaking, scheming minority” which did not hesitate to employ coercion to achieve its “scheming and radical demands.” No exponent of logical consistency, Mdodana praised passage of a state law which forbade employment by state or local governments to members of the NAACP. Another NAACP opponent is George A. Elmore, whose lawsuits resulted in the ending of the white primary in the state. Significantly Elmore had broken with the NAACP after his failure to secure an office with the organization. He maintained that the NAACP was “interested in the little man only when the little man could be used to serve the organization’s interest.” On other occasions, said the frustrated Elmore, the association was concerned “only with college people and ‘big shots.’”[269]
Following the Supreme Court decision in the Clarendon case, the NAACP was obliged to consider formulation of a program that would not compromise the Negro’s legal position and yet take cognizance of the intransigence of white Southerners. No concrete policy could be set forth until the Supreme Court handed down its implementing decree and the district court subsequently applied it to the Clarendon case. These actions were taken in May and July, 1955. Consequently not until late summer of that year did the NAACP begin sponsoring such “overt acts” as petitions for the ending of school segregation.
Shortly after the original Court ruling, Hinton announced that the NAACP would exhaust “local remedies” before again resorting to the courts.[270] Petitions filed with school officials at the time of the original ruling would be held in abeyance until announcement of the Court’s implementation policy. Meantime the NAACP concentrated on a program, notable for its utter and complete failure, of inducing state political leaders voluntarily to accept both the letter and spirit of the decision. National NAACP Chairman Dr. Channing H. Tobias called on Governor Byrnes to accept his “responsibility of influencing implementation” of the decision “in the light of the present international situation, rather than in the light of local prejudice or political expediency.” “The pioneer role of our Association in South Carolina,” he continued, had “focused world attention upon this state.”[271] The plea of Dr. Tobias fell on stone deaf ears.
Following the district court ruling in July, 1955, enjoining Clarendon and Summerton school officials from refusing admission of any pupil to a school solely on the basis of race, the NAACP and Negro parents were faced with a difficult decision. A meeting of Negroes, attended by Thurgood Marshall, was held in Clarendon. Though not indicating his future course of action, Marshall was given a rousing vote of confidence by “virtually 100 percent” of those present. With the district court ruling on their side, the next move was up to the Negro leaders. Clarendon school authorities bluntly stated that under no conditions would the schools be kept open if a single Negro pupil were admitted to white classrooms. In light of this threat, Negro leaders and parents decided to postpone further action. Negro students would be the biggest losers should the schools be closed.[272]
In the summer of 1955 the NAACP began sponsoring a number of petitions asking local school boards to “reorganize the public schools” on a “non-discriminatory basis.” The petitions were scattered throughout the state. Most were similarly worded, indicating that the movement had statewide direction. White South Carolinians reacted to these petitions by the organization of Citizens Councils.
The petition presented the Florence County Board of Education was typical. Signed by twenty-four Negro parents, it reminded school authorities of the Court rulings of May 17, 1954, and May 31, 1955, and asked that Florence school officials “take immediate steps to reorganize the public schools” on a “non-discriminatory basis.” Pupils could no longer be “denied admission to any school solely because of race and color,” asserted the petitioners. “The time for delay, evasion or procrastination” was past. School officials were “duty bound to take immediate concrete steps leading to early elimination of segregation in the public schools.” They were assured of the willingness of Negro parents “to serve in any way ... to aid ... in dealing with this question.”[273]
These petitions invoked the displeasure of many moderate whites and the wrath of extremists. The Morning News, one of the few South Carolina papers then not unsympathetic to the Negro, thought the petitions “most unfortunate” following as they did “so closely on the heels of the Supreme Court’s integration decree.” Their presentation was a “shock” to South Carolina. The News and Courier asked:
Who are these people [who signed the petition]? How many of them have children in the public schools? Who persuaded them to sign? (Some people can be persuaded to sign a petition for almost anything.) Do they realize what they are signing? Do they understand that they may be helping to break down the public school system and even friendly race relations?
White citizens should study carefully the list of names in the newspapers. If they are acquainted with any of the Negro signers, they might ask them some of the questions propounded here and others of their own. These are legitimate questions. Anyone seeking to upset conditions as they are should be willing to explain his reasons....
White people have been educating Negroes for centuries. They now need to undertake a new educational program in race relations. The right of petition belongs to Negroes as to any citizens. So does the right to question the wisdom of the petitioners. If enough white people take it on themselves to talk with Negroes about these matters, the result may be better understanding on the part of both races.[274]
As a consequence of economic pressures brought to bear against the petitioners by the Citizens Councils, many of the former asked that their names be withdrawn. They frequently maintained that their signatures had been obtained through misrepresentation. Usually they claimed they did not realize that the petitions were asking for integration. Some said they had understood the petitions as simply requesting interracial talks on the subject of integration. The number of those asking their names be withdrawn was large, in some cases more than half the number of signers. In one case, Elloree, fourteen of the original seventeen signers asked that their names be struck from the list.[275]
The NAACP recognized this problem and also the fact that for the time being little could be done about it. “Names being struck from petitions” was understandable, said Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP. He did not believe, however, that the signers failed to realize what their signatures meant. He blamed withdrawals on “pressures” operating on the Negro. The Sumter chapter of the NAACP gave a similar explanation for the withdrawal of several signers of a local petition. The signers “knew very well the content and intent of these petitions,” said a statement issued by the chapter. No “coercion, persuasion or pressure” had been used to secure signatures.[276]
As of the early spring of 1958 no school board has acted favorably on a petition for school integration and no Negro petitioner has resorted to the courts to secure affirmative action.
The NAACP has born the brunt of the opposition to the desegregation drive. Until white South Carolina recognized the extent of the “threat” represented by the NAACP, its opposition to the organization had not been particularly bitter. The hardening of attitudes was the result of the NAACP’s increased pressure for racial integration and occurred relatively late. For instance, when the NAACP was holding its annual conference at Charleston in 1953, J. Walker Evans, executive vice-president of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce, was “happy to extend a cordial and sincere welcome” to the organization and hoped that its deliberations would be “fruitful,” “pleasant,” and “most profitable.”[277] But after the segregation decision all this changed. Even white “moderates” felt obliged to deprecate the NAACP. Editor O’Dowd of the Morning News, who had frequently defended the association against irresponsible charges such as communist-front action, stated that the organization was doing nothing more than “paying lipservice to the idea of Negro advancement.”[278]
The attack on the NAACP has taken many different forms but basically the association is pictured as a radical organization responsible for the “climate of recalcitrance” in the South by insisting on its “pound of flesh” and refusing to adopt a “moderate” attitude. The NAACP refused to “barter or compromise,” complained the Morning News, and instead had adopted a program of “absolutism” which only made the problem more difficult. New assaults by the NAACP against “the traditional citadels of Southern society,” the Florence paper asserted, were “lacking in good sense and good taste.” According to the Independent, “responsible Negroes” knew that NAACP’s “radical agitators” had done “far more harm than good” in the school crisis. The Record argued that the NAACP was acting “neither wisely nor tolerantly, preferring neither understanding nor cooperation.”[279] The same papers choose to overlook the fact that the dominant white community has offered no basis for compromise or conciliation within terms of the Supreme Court decision.
As a result of the NAACP’s “radical” stand, i.e., its refusal to accept segregation indefinitely, an attack has been made on all fronts to discredit the organization in the eyes of both whites and Negroes. The goal is to create an atmosphere in which any program, policy or pronouncement by the association will be condemned automatically, without regard to its merit. “If there’s one thing against our way of life in the South,” announced Lieutenant Governor Hollings, “it’s the NAACP. And if the U. S. Supreme Court can declare certain organizations as subversive, I believe South Carolina can declare the NAACP both subversive and illegal.” In the Lieutenant Governor’s home town the News and Courier proclaimed that the NAACP was “not genuinely devoted to the advancement of the colored people,” but rather ignored the real need of the Negro in its “search for headlines and racial martyrs.” The News and Courier believed that the association was not interested in Negro “rights” but “that whites be forced to associate with Negroes.”[280] The paper regretted that so many Negroes would swallow the “unwholesome and impractical poisons” of the NAACP. The Record declared the Association was interested in cases of violence against Southern Negroes solely for their fund raising value. “The NAACP would have been disappointed” if the slayers of Emmett Till had been brought to justice because the case provided the occasion for the raising of vast funds. The Reverend E. R. Mason, a retired officer and minister of the white South Carolina Methodist Church, termed the NAACP a “militant” and “vicious” minority group interested only in the “prominence of the front page and money.”[281]
A favorite tactic in this campaign of vilification is to equate the NAACP’s desegregation aims with the communist conspiracy against the United States. Attorney General T. C. Callison told the Columbia Rotary Club that the NAACP was led by “meddlers” who were “playing directly into the hands of Communism.”[282] The leadership of the Citizens Councils has given especially strong emphasis to this phase of the attack. Henry E. Davis, a Florence attorney, speaking at the organizational meeting of the Lake City Citizens Council, announced that “the NAACP is financed by Russia.” On another occasion he indulged in anti-Semitism, a tendency which has become increasingly open in the Citizens Council movement. Davis referred to the NAACP as “a communist-front organ,” which was “in reality a Jewish organization with financial backing from the Communists” purporting “to aid the advancement of the Negro while stirring up disorder.” G. L. Ivey, a leader of several white supremacy groups in Florence, including the Citizens Council, described the NAACP as “the radical Negro organization dominated by communist-front leaders.”[283] Stanley F. Morse, one of Ivey’s many Charleston counterparts, noted that the objectives of the NAACP coincided “strangely with the aims of the American communist party.” He declared that the policies of the NAACP were “dictated by white radicals rather than Negro patriots.” In 1954 the bellwether News and Courier did not believe the “aggressive race movement among Negroes” was communist-dominated. But a year later, the same paper intimated to its readers: “We believe the NAACP represents only a small but belligerent group of people. (In Russia only a small number of Russians belong to the Communist Party yet they rule the rest.) We aren’t saying the NAACP is Communistic. We are only pointing out how much power can be wielded by a noisy and energetic minority.”[284]
The charges of communism are accepted by the state NAACP as merely one of many “brainwashing” devices used by the whites. President Hinton answered with the following statement: “The NAACP is an American and legitimate organization, and not once has it been even thought of by right thinking people as a subversive organization. It has never done more than go into the courts, and fight the issues out before white judges using white men’s laws.”[285]
The NAACP, of course, has defended itself against such attacks. It claims, with much truth, that instead of being a communist-front organization it is in reality responsible for the fact that the communists have been unable to make any headway among American Negroes. The Record, however, has taken issue. The real reason why communists were so unsuccessful in winning over American Negroes, said a Record editorial, was the fact that most of them lived in the South “and were, like their friends among the Southern whites, conservatives.” They were not members of the Negro “intelligentsia” where, according to the capital city paper, communism had made its only headway among Negroes, and were by every sign “generally content [and] a happy race” and therefore “anything but a fertile ground for communist wiles.”[286]
A new device against the NAACP became popular in 1957, one which can be used against both the NAACP and labor unions. This is the so-called “permit system” under which counties and municipalities might require “any organization, union or society of any sort” that charged membership fees to obtain permits to sign up new members. Applications can be denied in the interest of “peace and good order.” Florence and Abbeville counties have led in requiring the permits. Several other localities have followed suit.[287]
The attacks on the NAACP contain many other phases. Among these are the following:
(1) The NAACP is pictured as the Negro counterpart of the white Ku Klux Klan. Such an association would discredit the NAACP, for the attempts to revive the Klan are decried by all except the most radical fringe of white supremacists. White conservatives are determined not to allow the opposition to the Negro to be taken up by radicals who would not only endanger their own dominant position but also completely discredit the white South in the eyes of the nation. A good example of associating the Klan and the NAACP was a statement issued by Federal District Judge Ashton H. Williams when the Edisto Beach case was pending before his court. The two organizations, he said, were “the real enemies to any progress” in the segregation controversy. No progress could be made by South Carolina until both were “wholly eliminated” from the picture. In a severe condemnation of the NAACP, interesting because he might be called upon in the future to hear civil rights cases sponsored by the NAACP, the Judge said:
It must be kept in mind that the rights given to Negroes by the Supreme Court are personal, and no one has a right to persuade them by unlawful threats or otherwise to exercise the rights given them by the Supreme Court. If the Negroes wish to accept segregated schools, or segregated beaches, parks and so forth, it is legally wrong for anyone, by misrepresentation, undue influence, or threats, to force them to seek personal rights given under the Supreme Court decision.[288]
(2) Personal and abusive attacks are made on NAACP leaders. In addition to questioning the sincerity and honesty of purpose of persons prominent in the association, a vicious racism has crept into many of the most extreme attacks. G. L. Ivey referred to Thurgood Marshall as the “mulatto chief counsel for the NAACP.” The writer of a letter to the editor of the Morning News advised the South to “get rid of the NAACP and the ‘halfbreeds.’” “History tells us,” he wrote, “that ‘halfbreeds’ have always been trouble makers. The Bible says that a bastard cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, even unto the tenth generation.”[289]
(3) Blame for originating the state’s race problem is placed solely on the NAACP. W. D. Workman, Jr., stated that responsibility for beginning a “cold war” between the races in the state rested “with the titular Negro leadership, national and state,” by which he meant the NAACP. The Record said the NAACP’s “appeal to the force of the courts to compel the elimination of segregation” created a climate in which “racial cooperation” could not exist.[290]
(4) The NAACP is presented as an enemy of the Negro, existing only on its ability to coerce. The purpose here is to alienate the Negro from the NAACP. Eldridge Thompson, a News and Courier writer, insisted that the Association’s progress was based on “the weapon of fear.” The Negro who did not subscribe to the NAACP was “afraid to be identified,” he claimed. The grip of the Association over the Negro community was so great that opposition could not be organized successfully against it. The reporter concluded that the rank and file Negro had more to fear from the NAACP than the white man. S. Emory Rogers told a Lake City Citizens Council that “our fight is not with the Negroes, they’re our hope, but we’ve got to get them under the correct leadership.... The NAACP is our chief enemy.” State Representative Charles G. Garrett of Greenville County, in supporting the bill to bar NAACP members from state employment, declared that “the NAACP should no longer be allowed to prey upon the Negro people of South Carolina” who are paid by the taxpayers.[291]
(5) The NAACP is pictured as an organization alien to Southern traditions. According to the Record, it was “not a local or indigenous organization.” It was “foreign to every one of the Southern states” and therefore owed no loyalty to them. Governor Timmerman stated that the NAACP was “largely sponsored and financed by white people who are professional Southern haters and alien to the South.” Therefore it was the “duty of every responsible Negro to repudiate the false leadership of the NAACP.”[292]
The NAACP has been the victim, not only of a propaganda campaign, but also of a program of action designed to harass and intimidate its leaders to the point of discouragement and thus stop the pressure for the end of segregation. The most effective portions of this effort have been those undertaken by the state government (discussed in Chapter VII) and the economic boycott popularized by the Citizens Councils. The remainder of the “ranting and panting and wringing and twisting of the South Carolina white professional rabble rousers”[293] has a nuisance value only for the whites and merely postpones the inevitable question facing the state: education or segregation?
In view of the many pronouncements by Southern whites to the effect that the NAACP is a “radical” organization, a brief examination of the association along these lines is necessary. In the last analysis, the labeling of any organization as “radical” depends upon the light in which it is considered. If the premise is accepted that segregation of the races in the public schools is a positive good and that the abolition of this policy would result in disaster, then the NAACP is “radical.”
However, there are many indications that the organization was and is not radical when viewed with detachment. Neither the leadership nor the membership of the association, noted Myrdal, were “recruited from the ranks of radicals.” Both its program and tactics were “well within the bounds of respectability” and its policy was based on the “acceptance of the fundamentals of the ‘American way’ of life.” An examination of the specific objectives of the NAACP upon which this observation was made reveals such “radical” aims as anti-lynching legislation, enfranchisement of the Southern Negro, abolition of all legal injustices based on race or color, equitable distribution of funds for public education, abolition of inequalities in employment opportunities based on race or color and the general abolition of “segregation, discrimination, insult and humiliation” in other areas based on color or race. In only one important respect, the abolition of public school segregation, had the NAACP altered its objectives between 1940, when the above goals were outlined, and 1954, when the Supreme Court ordered an end to school segregation. One of the main sources of strength of the NAACP in pursuit of its goals has been a willingness to work within the framework of constitutional legality. Still another has been a policy of compromise or opportunism—adapting its tactics to meet local situations. National NAACP headquarters directed local offices to “secure at least equal rights and accommodations for colored citizens” in cases where race discriminations were “too strongly entrenched to be attacked” directly.[294] In the post-World War II period there has been a hardening of this attitude and greater emphasis has been placed on securing integrated facilities.
The policy of the NAACP has been essentially one of moderation in areas where progress is being made toward its goals. The more extreme demands have been necessitated by absolute refusal of white leaders to allow any “advancement” in such areas as school integration. In opposing various proposals for “gradualism,” which appear to be little more than an indefinite maintenance of the status quo, Roy Wilkins has driven to the heart of the matter. He pointed out that the Negro was the only American who was being advised “to take his citizenship on the installment plan.” Two weeks later, however, he stated that “a plea for understanding [by white Southerners] based on consideration of timing is understandable. A plea for understanding based on defiance of constitutional government is a plea for anarchy and secession.” A. J. Clement, Jr., a prominent Charleston NAACP leader, was in substantial agreement. “No one concerned with this problem,” said Clement, “likes to be identified as being a ‘gradualist’ but, we who are ‘realists,’ have got to understand that long established customs and habits, no matter how erroneous or abhorrent, will not suddenly be cast aside. Some individuals are able to adjust themselves to change much quicker than others. My chief concern is that there be no ‘backward steps,’ no ‘marking time.’”[295]
That the NAACP’s policy is essentially moderate has been demonstrated by its willingness to compromise its position in the face of threats to close public schools. The Record reported that Marshall and other attorneys for the appellants in the Clarendon case agreed orally to forego a showdown in the face of a “blunt” warning by school authorities that segregation was more important to them than education and that schools would be closed if one Negro applied for admission to a white school. Marshall, of course, denied this report but it is significant that, although given virtually a free hand in the case, he chose not to force the issue.[296] State authorities, however, have no guarantee as to how long Negro leaders will be willing to compromise their legal position in face of the irreconcilable attitude taken by whites.
Throughout the entire controversy on the school issue neither Governor Timmerman nor any other responsible political official in South Carolina has ever offered to sit down at a conference table with Negro leaders and to discuss the question. They have blandly taken the position that there is nothing to discuss. The lines of communication between the white and Negro populations of the state have completely broken down. But in point of truth, as North Carolina pundit Harry Golden has sagely observed, what these same politicians fear is that the Negro leadership might be so reasonable in its requests that such could hardly be refused without making the official policy of South Carolina seem even more ridiculous than it already is. Governor Timmerman and his advisers know only too well that the Negro leadership would accede to the most gradual of gradualist programs provided it was proposed in good faith. But to yield an inch on “principle,” a word historically dear to South Carolinians, has literally become an impossibility even for the best intentioned of the state’s political leaders. They are the prisoners of the morally bankrupt policy of “massive resistance.”