COLLABORATORS, EGGHEADS, DO-GOODERS, AND APPEASERS
As for the local liberal—there are not too many among us. Either they are idealistic, good hearted people who have been led astray; or they are exhibitionists with the warped idea that to be “progressive” is to destroy all experience and teaching the centuries have given us.—“The Bookworm” in the News and Courier
Only a small proportion of South Carolina’s white population, it would appear, has accepted the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision in good faith. In any event few whites have been willing to face “the venom of extremism and give expression to right and reality.” At most “some ministers, fewer newspapers, an occasional public figure, and some proper public organizations” have spoken out affirmatively with respect to the Court ruling.[514] The effectiveness of their efforts has been even more limited than their number. Two of the most important individuals who advocated compliance with the decision, Dean Chester C. Travelstead of the University of South Carolina School of Education and Morning News Editor Jack H. O’Dowd, were both forced out of their positions. Similarly, those clergymen who have accepted and have been vocally articulate regarding the Court ruling have been subjected in some instances to strong pressures. Several have been obliged to give up their pastorates.
Extreme segregationists recognize that those Southerners who urge acceptance of the decision are a greater potential threat than “outside agitators.” Consequently they direct some of their sharpest attacks against these Southern moderates. (The term moderate is used here to designate those South Carolinians who accept the Court decision as the law of the land and urge its implementation with varying degrees of speed. They range from those who would begin the process of integration at once to those who simply accept the decision but would delay implementation.) James F. Byrnes, the state’s “elder statesman,” disparaged the moderates as “‘appeasers’ comparable to the ‘scalawags’ of Reconstruction.” He fumed against those white Southerners who were “so anxious for unity of a political party” that they would surrender in the fight for continued segregation.[515]
The News and Courier, the principal newspaper critic of the moderates, believed too many Southerners were inclined to “swallow unwholesome and impractical poisons” dispensed by Northern liberals. Editor Thomas R. Waring castigated those elements of the Southern press which were lending “solace to the do-gooders.” Such “scalarags” (sic), according to Waring, did “not represent the sentiments of the vast majority of the Southern people” and their editors might “live to regret their betrayal.” The News and Courier, indeed, did not contend that “all editors should think” as it thought; nevertheless, it said, there came “a time to be counted.” “Timid newspapers, showing signs of brainwashing by do-gooders and eggheads,” were causing the North to misjudge the temper of the South on the segregation question, thus doing a disservice to the South as well as the North. In a none too oblique attack on the moderates, the News and Courier pointed out that “in certain European countries during World War II, some natives ‘collaborated’ with the enemy. They got better food rations. Others resisted. Some of these were imprisoned. Some were tortured or shot.”[516]
The sentiments of the News and Courier were repeated throughout the state. Dorothy Moore Guess of White Hall, a biology, history and Sunday school teacher, had this advice for the moderates:
To all those who do not like American free enterprise and dependence on the individual, I say go back to socialistic England, Sweden, or to lands dominated by Russian communism. To all those who do not like life in South Carolina as native South Carolinians have shaped it, I say, leave immediately for New York, Michigan, California, Oregon or any other state that you believe to be an improvement on South Carolina.
The Garden of Eden was a wonderful place as long as Adam and Eve accepted it as it was. South Carolinians, and Americans in general, should think well before they destroy forever their own gardens of freedom.[517]
According to the News and Courier the appeal of the moderates stemmed from a misunderstanding and faulty definition of the term “moderate” and the consequent gulf which existed between Northern and Southern moderates. It recognized the existence of a “group of Southerners who call themselves moderates.” This group believed that the decision was the law of the land and that integration was inevitable and hence ought to be accepted in good grace. Such persons were “mere echoes of the Northern moderates” and represented only a small minority of “white Southern opinion.” According to the Charleston paper’s understanding of the term, a Southern moderate was one who believed that there was no “valid law requiring states to mix the races in their schools” and who thought the Supreme Court had exceeded its authority in declaring segregation unconstitutional. The Southern moderate maintained that integration wasn’t legal and that the South wouldn’t attempt it. “So why don’t you meddlesome Yankees be reasonable men of good will and let us alone,” he would ask. The News and Courier included in the category of Southern moderates not only itself but also “Southern Legislatures which have passed interposition resolutions, ... senators and representatives who recently signed the historic [anti-integration] manifesto in Washington” and most members of the Citizens Councils. To surrender to the integrationists was not moderation; it was “acceptance of racial suicide” for the Southern white people.[518]
The organization in the state which concerns itself most prominently with interracial understanding is the South Carolina Council on Human Relations. It was affiliated with the Southern Regional Council, an association dedicated to “equal opportunity for all peoples of the South,” and has been financed in part by the Fund for the Republic. The South Carolina Council has no specific solution to the segregation issue but has expressed the conviction that the answer would “demand the best thought and action from responsible leaders of both races.” It maintains, however, that “the state must move in the direction of compliance with the Supreme Court decision.” Sparkplug of the organization is Mrs. Alice N. Spearman of Columbia, formerly executive director of the South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs. The Rev. J. Claude Evans, editor of the South Carolina Methodist Christian Advocate, was the Council’s president until 1957 when he was succeeded by Courtney Siceloff of Frogmore. The Council has fewer than a half dozen local chapters throughout the state. The most active is at Sumter. The Rock Hill chapter has been “stimulated” by a strongly anti-segregationist Catholic priest, the Very Rev. Maurice Shean. In Rock Hill the Council enjoyed a degree of official recognition since former Mayor Emmette Jerome, now a member of the state House of Representatives, was a member of the state board and appointed a Mayor’s Committee on Human Relations.[519]
South Carolina had a few other similar but short-lived organizations. In Anderson a Christian Council of Human Relations was established in July, 1954. An interracial association, it adopted a declaration of principles which asserted that the Supreme Court decision was “in keeping with the highest traditions of American justice and freedom.... [and was] consistent with the spirit and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.” The practical question confronting the state, according to the Council, was “not whether the Court was socially wise or legally correct in their judgment.” Rather the problem was how best to adjust to the decision in such a way “that the majesty and force of the law may be upheld and good will among men may be advanced.” Good faith in implementing the decision would “relieve the conscience of many white Christians who have long been uneasy and troubled by conflict between the teaching of Jesus and the inequalities of our racial situation.”[520]
Another such group is the South Carolina chapter of United Church Women. This organization, which, in truth, has little influence, is composed of women from most Protestant denominations. Mrs. James M. Dabbs of Maysville is state president. In a letter to Governor Byrnes shortly after the original desegregation decision, Mrs. Dabbs declared that “enforced segregation had no place in Christian activity and constituted a very real threat to our Democracy.”[521]
The position which these organizations have held in the state has not been particularly enviable. Commented the Rev. J. Claude Evans: “I think the solution is a long term process of human relations down the moderate road. At the moment, the moderates are not very popular and walk a razor’s edge.” The moderates, he observed, would have “to bide their time” until “the legal aspects” of segregation were clarified and “the social attitudes of the people jell.”[522]
The plight of those who urge moderation was further illustrated in the summer of 1957 when five Protestant ministers from the Pee Dee section of the state organized themselves into a group called “Concerned South Carolinians.”[523] They were the Reverends John Lyles, Presbyterian of Marion; John Morris, Episcopalian of Dillon; Joseph Horn, Episcopalian of Florence; Larry Jackson, Methodist of Florence; and Ralph Cousins, Episcopalian of Marion. The Concerned South Carolinians issued a prospectus of their aims and objectives. They urged publication of a booklet of articles written by prominent Carolinians pleading for moderation in the race controversy—“a course between the excesses of certain Citizens Councils, on the one hand, and extreme actions of the NAACP [sic] on the other hand.”
We feel [declared the prospectus] that extreme positions have dominated the picture in our state. Organized groups are feeding the flames of racial hate. We believe, however, that a large group of South Carolinians disagree with these positions on the racial problem. We desperately need the leadership of men and women who will debate the issues rationally, who will counter the voices of extremism with words of moderation, and who will have the humility and courage to see a goal in the future toward which we in South Carolina must be working gradually.
... It is imperative that persons in South Carolina who are honored and respected in their several communities speak words of calmness and moderation. This is the conviction which has drawn us together as ministers of Christ and as concerned citizens of South Carolina. We also believe that you are such a leader as is now needed and that you may share some of this concern.
The ministers continued by stating their basic beliefs and assumptions:
1. That God created all men in His own image and therefore all races are equal in His sight.
2. That although there is no “superior” race certain differences are to be recognized because of environment, but these differences are not due to an inherent inferiority.
3. That the public school system must be maintained for all the people.
4. That any solution to the present dilemma must be sought within the framework of Supreme Court decisions, which are legally binding and morally valid.
5. That, nevertheless, cultural patterns cannot be changed quickly and the reality of this cannot wisely be ignored in seeking solutions.
6. That neither of the extreme pressures of the NAACP nor the Citizens Councils offers the best direction for the South.
7. That personal freedom of choice and association in social relations must be maintained within the bounds of a democratic society, even if desegregation becomes the accepted procedure for tax supported institutions.
8. That all Southerners should explore the situation thoughtfully in the light of Christian love and our democratic heritage, believing that we can go forward together even though slowly.
Sentiments such as these, of course, had little chance of winning friends and influencing segregationists in South Carolina. Among those receiving the prospectus was Governor Timmerman. Although specifically asked not to make the contents of the prospectus public, the Governor handed his copy to the press. He explained his action in the following manner: “In the belief that it is of interest generally to the public, I am making it [the prospectus] available for publication. All South Carolinians, not just these self-appointed few, are ‘Concerned’ South Carolinians.”
The Florence Citizens Council wasted little time in replying to the “Concerned South Carolinians.” In a press release, it accused the clergymen of organizing “under a cloak of secrecy” and boasted by way of comparison that it was an “open” association. The Florence Council maintained that the ministers misrepresented the facts in classifying it as an “extremist” organization along with the NAACP. It challenged the “Concerned South Carolinians” or any other group “to prove when and where the Citizens Councils have acted contrary to law or in extreme.”[524]
When the publication of the “Concerned South Carolinians” finally came out in October, it had a brisk sale.[525] The very fact that it appeared on newsstands throughout the state was in itself a victory for its sponsors. Former Congressman James P. Richards praised publication of the booklet as a “real contribution to freedom of expression.”[526] Few South Carolina whites, however, saw fit to endorse the pamphlet and from public officials, aside from Richards, there was a wall of dead silence.
The booklet contained a dozen essays or statements ranging from the old fashioned segregationist arguments of Columbia attorney, R. Beverley Herbert, to the hard hitting integrationist editorials of Arthur Locke King, another attorney, from Georgetown, and Andrew McDowd Secrest, the outspoken editor and publisher of the weekly Cheraw Chronicle. Anthony Harrigan, reviewing the booklet for the News and Courier, found little of value in the collection of opinions save in the case of Mr. Herbert’s essay. The other authors, he maintained, did not represent the views of South Carolinians as were expressed at elections.[527]
Among the contributors to the little volume was Mrs. Claudia Thomas Sanders, wife of a Gaffney physician. Mrs. Sanders suggested that desegregation could be accomplished in the public schools of the state by starting with the first grades. “Children are not born with prejudice,” wrote Mrs. Sanders. “If adults could only learn from children their ability to judge character and worth without regard for externals,” she continued, the desegregation process “would be immeasurably lighter.”[528]
No one could accuse Mrs. Sanders of being one of those Northerners who could never understand the “Southern way of life.” Born in Charleston, the state’s “Holy City,” she can trace her ancestry back to the early colonial period. Moreover, she is a leading Episcopal churchwoman and is engaged in such eminently socially acceptable activities as the American Association of University Women, the Home and Garden Club, the Gaffney Hospital Auxiliary and the Cherokee County Public Library Board.[529]
But Mrs. Sanders had not counted on possible retaliatory action on the part of white supremacy bedsheet brigadiers who haunt the upper part of the state. On the night of November 19th an explosion rocked the Sanders house tearing a gaping hole near the chimney, breaking six windows, and cracking a wall in the living room. Dr. and Mrs. Sanders and their house guests, Mr. and Mrs. Carl B. McLaughlin of Louisville, Kentucky, were in another part of the house at the time of the explosion and escaped injury.[530]
Police officials investigating the explosion discovered that this was the third attempt to dynamite the Sanders home, two other efforts having failed because of the bungling of the perpetrators. Moreover, within three weeks the State Law Enforcement Division had arrested five men in connection with the bombing. With all due respect to the extremely efficient SLED, it required neither a Sherlock Holmes nor a Dick Tracy to track down the culprits, for the trail led directly to a Ku Klux Klan group operating in the area. The five men arrested were factory workers and mill hands. Their ages ranged from twenty-four to thirty-five.[531]
“Respectable” South Carolinians were appropriately shocked by the Gaffney episode and newspaper editorials uniformly called for the arrest of the culprits and later expressed satisfaction when they were apprehended. Yet few if any of the public officials in the state, who were so vocal on the Little Rock “oppression,” saw fit to comment on the bombing, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the Reverend John B. Morris of Dillon, one of the clergymen who helped prepare the “Concerned South Carolinians” booklet. In a letter to papers throughout the state the Reverend Morris, who opposes immediate integration in the public schools of the deep South, wrote: “When big men in public office have hitherto talked loosely on the race issue, very little men have been incited to plan acts of violence. The big men deplore the violence and realize it only hurts their cause, but until they use their influence before the violence occurs, they bear some responsibility for it. When the emotions of simple folk are stirred by emotional talk from public figures, they come to feel that they must take the law into their own hands. Let segregationist politicians realize they can maintain their position calmly and with reason. Otherwise incendiary talk will prompt incendiary action.”[532]
The arrest of the five men in no sense chastened them or made them realize the enormity of their act. Nor did the Klan seek to cover its tracks in the affair. On the contrary, the local Klansmen held a rally at Blacksburg to collect funds to defray the cost of the legal defense of the accused, two of whom, Luther E. Boyette and Robert P. Martin, openly boasted of their affiliation with the nightshirt brigade. Present at the rally, attended by 20 robed Klansmen and approximately 250 onlookers, was the grand dragon of the South Carolina Independent Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. “We do not wish Mrs. James H. Sanders any harm,” he told the crowd. “If we could, we would send her back [sic] to Africa so she would be with her Negro friends.” The Independent Klan would back the accused “all the way,” he asserted. “They have already proved their innocence so far as I am concerned, and of course the first consideration was in proving it to the Klan.”[533]
James McBride Dabbs, whose wife is president of the state United Church Women, has also been prominent in the activities of interracial groups. He is president of the Southern Regional Council. Immediately after the original decision, Dabbs, a one time college professor, urged South Carolinians to “proceed now to implement this ruling with whatever skill and wisdom we have.” He considered segregation “nonsense” and believed that under desegregation “Negroes would still associate almost entirely with Negroes, white people with white people.” The row over desegregation, he maintained, was a tempest in a teapot. It is time “for the white man to realize that he is just a human being; he’s been playing God so long,” declared this modern Old Testament prophet. “The majority of white South Carolinians today are waging a fight which they will lose as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, and about which, when they have lost it, they will wonder why they fought so hard to stave off so small a change.”[534]
The Rev. G. Jackson Stafford, who was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Batesburg until his resignation was forced, typifies in a very real sense those clergymen who opposed segregation. He believed that the Court decision was “in keeping with the constitutional guarantee of equal freedom to all citizens, and ... in harmony with the Christian principles of equal justice and love for all men.” But he also realized that “the people of the South need time to become adjusted to the changing social and political climate with regard to race relations.” Racial tensions, he believed, would be greatly reduced if the politicians would cease their efforts to make a political football out of the problems involved in improving race relations.[535]
Occasionally other South Carolinians publicly expressed support for integration. John Bolt Culbertson, a Greenville attorney who had “been interested in liberal causes and in the labor movement” since his student days at the University of South Carolina, was a strong supporter of the NAACP. He considered the denial of “the fundamentals of democratic government” to Negroes a “mockery” of democracy. In a similar vein D. M. Harrelson of Gresham protested “as a Southern white man” against the “Nazi-Ku Klux Klan climate” fostered in the South by “demagogic politicians, citizens committees, [and] a Metropolitan press.” This agitation, he felt, appealed “to the ignorant, unthinking, whose minds are filled with native prejudice.” E. M. Martin of Charleston, too, was critical of segregation. “Any institution supported by public funds ought to be for all citizens excluding none,” he thought. Segregated school systems were “contrary to the Constitution of the United States.” Another Charlestonian, W. Ernest Douglas, believed that “most white people have such a terrific mental block concerning segregation that, in this matter at least, they forfeit their right to be called rational animals. They become simple animals moving in whatever direction their herders prod them.”[536]
The influence of the segregation issue on freedom of thought in South Carolina was illustrated by the nationally publicized Travelstead affair.[537] Dr. Chester C. Travelstead, a native of Kentucky, was appointed Dean of the School of Education of the University of South Carolina in 1953. According to Dr. Travelstead, he made known to University President Donald S. Russell his views on segregation before his appointment. With the developing resistance to integration in the period following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Travelstead became “distressed to observe that only one side of this whole issue was being presented to the public.” He believed that segregation deprived the Negro of his “right to first class citizenship.” Even more important, he felt that South Carolina was “fast developing an autocratic police state.” In the late spring of 1955, he decided to speak his piece.
In April Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. had addressed the South Carolina Education Association and strongly condemned attempts at integration. Shortly thereafter Travelstead wrote a long and, on the face of it, imprudent letter to the Governor:
You said in your speech, Governor, that “the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in the school-segregation cases upholds for the first time in judicial history that equality of treatment is discriminatory.” It is my considered opinion, Governor, that it was not the intent of the Court to say that “equality of treament is discriminatory.” Rather did it say in effect that segregation is in and of itself discriminatory....
You have said, Governor, that the recommendation [to the General Assembly of South Carolina] to abolish the [state’s] Compulsory Attendance Law “has not weakened ourselves in this respect.” Apparently, Governor, it is the firm belief of most educators and leaders in state and national government that compulsory school attendance at public or private schools has been the backbone of our democracy.
You have attacked, Governor, the integrationist and have said that he is “seeking to abolish parental rights in education....” It is without evidence to say that those who in 1955, for moral, civic, and legal reasons believed that segregation is outmoded and should therefore be abolished are men of “little character” attempting, as you say, “to lynch the character of a fourth of our nation.” It is my opinion, Governor, that many men of great stature are sincerely convinced that the Supreme Court’s ruling was both timely and sound....
You have said: “No precedent, no parallel, can be found for compulsory integration. It is new. It is novel. It is contrary to the divine order of things. Only an evil mind can conceive it. Only a foolish mind can accept it.”
It seems to me that there are many parallels and precedents....
... Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia do have school systems in which the races are integrated. The other 17 states, now practicing segregation of the races in their schools, still practice compulsory integration within each race by requiring that boys and girls of widely different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds go to the same schools in spite of these differences.
It is my opinion, therefore, that the phrases, “evil mind” and “foolish mind,” quoted above, have been ill used and are without foundation.
On May 31 President Russell, while not advising Travelstead to desist from writing such letters, cautioned him that “such controversial matters make politicians mad.” Despite the argumentative letter to the Governor, Travelstead was notified on July 28 of his reappointment as education dean for the 1955-56 school year with a substantial salary increase.
On August 2 Travelstead again attacked segregation. In a speech before the student body of the summer school, he declared:
As I study the Judaic-Christian concept prevalent in Western Civilization; as I examine the bases of our own government—the Bill of Rights and all other pronouncements of our forefathers—I find nothing which requires, justifies, or even allows a notion of second class citizenship for any group. I find no conclusive evidence that one group of men is foreordained to be superior or inferior to other groups of men. I find that this notion of race and national superiority came to ruinous end in Nazi Germany. For races or nations of men to think and act upon the assumption that all other groups are inferior is to invite disaster and downfall.... The fact that we have practiced segregation on the assumption that it was right and just, does not make it right and just.
Three days later President Russell told Travelstead that he had received complaints concerning the speech. (It is generally presumed that these came from the Governor’s office). Two weeks later, August 19, Travelstead received notification of his dismissal as Dean. “The executive committee of the board of trustees,” it said, “is of the opinion that it is not in the best interest of the university to renew your appointment as Dean of the School of Education.” At a hearing before the executive committee which Travelstead requested, the committee allegedly told him that persons employed by the university should not engage in discussion of controversial issues. In response to Travelstead’s request that the committee issue a statement with respect to its policy concerning academic freedom and free discussion by university employes, the committee refused. According to Travelstead, the committee replied that “a person should have enough common sense to know what he should and should not discuss—without any clear-cut policy about such matters.” Following his dismissal as Dean, Travelstead received an appointment as Education Dean at the University of New Mexico.
Reaction of the student body of the university to Travelstead’s dismissal was varied.[538] The Gamecock, the student newspaper, and most of its columnists strongly condemned the action. So did a majority of those students who expressed their opinion in letters to the Gamecock editor. However at least one columnist and a number of the letters to the editor supported the dismissal. Editor Carolyn McClung considered the dismissal “a hard and definite blow to the University.” If University officials took upon themselves to squelch persons with unpopular ideas, it was “no place for students with intellectual curiosity.” Similarly, columnist Herbert Bryant believed that “the University’s escutcheon” bore a deep scar as a result of the trustees’ apparent “ban on freedom of academic thought and expression at the University.” Jack Bass, another columnist, considered the action “rash and shortsighted.” He believed that “at least 90 percent” of the University faculty agreed with the sentiments expressed by Dr. Travelstead; hence, the Dean was fired not for having an opinion but for expressing it openly.
On the other hand, columnist Billy Mellette supported the removal of Travelstead: “People who work for any university or college know they must be careful, or they should know it. You say the policy is not written, and how then are you expected to know what to say?—You use your damned head, that’s how you know. The school doesn’t go around sneaking up on people and trying to find people to fire.... If he [Travelstead] did not know to be quiet—as head of the education department of all positions—then he has now learned.... The University did not invade the castle of free thought. It was challenged and forced to commit itself.”
In a similar vein Fred LeClerq respected Travelstead’s “right as an individual to believe in integration,” but he did not think that he should “occupy a position through which he could mold the opinions of prospective teachers of a state where race purity and segregation are essential to the well-being of its citizens.” LeClerq believed “integration to be as diametrically opposed to the welfare of this state as communism is to the welfare of the nation.” For this reason he thought the ouster both “justifiable and commendable.”
Supporters of segregation generally upheld the board of trustees. The News and Courier pointed out that the issue of academic freedom had two sides—“the freedom of a professor to speak his mind” and “the freedom of a university to choose the lines of education it wishes to follow.” Since Travelstead was out of line with both university policy and the desires of the people of South Carolina, his usefulness as a teacher was over. “He easily can exercise his academic freedom elsewhere,” concluded the Charleston paper.[539]
On the other hand, the Morning News was critical. Editor O’Dowd stated that if the university were “to teach conformity in all schools of thought” it would no longer be a university. It would then be “a machine for making mimeographed mentalities.... If the University of South Carolina rejects a valuable educator because he has one unpopular idea, then our university is not a place for hungry minds.”[540]
A second notable example of this urge to conformity was the case of Jack H. O’Dowd himself. The nephew of Morning News publisher John M. O’Dowd, he almost alone amongst South Carolina news editors had attempted to steer a middle course in the segregation controversy. His difficulties were testimony to the fate of an honest and courageous dissenter. A native of Florence and a graduate of the Citadel, O’Dowd termed himself not a pro-integrationist but an anti-pro-segregationist.
Under O’Dowd’s editorship the Morning News, as already has been noted, opposed all attempts to destroy the “social necessity” of segregation by court order. If segregation were to be eliminated, it had to be done “by the consent of the people and as a result of an evolutionary process.” Segregation was incorrectly defended on the grounds of states rights and constitutionalism. Such arguments indicated to the rest of the world that American democracy meant that “all men are equal but some are less equal than others.”
The Florence editor accepted the decision as the law of the land and urged his readers to do likewise. Since segregation was illegal, it was only a matter of time before it would be a thing of the past. Public schools would have to be desegregated. Those who were thinking in terms of continued segregation under a system of voluntary separation were engaging in “self-delusion and false hope.” “Within too short a period of time,” segregation would be “a legal memory” in the South. Desegregation was not a problem to be considered “in some hazy tomorrow”; it had to be confronted immediately. A policy of adopting expedients, which could at best provide only temporary segregation, would not change the final picture but it would make it more painful and expensive. There had to be a maximum price beyond which the South would be unwilling to go to preserve segregation temporarily.
During the period of adjustment to changes wrought by the Court decision, the greatest danger confronting South Carolina, warned O’Dowd, was “the growth of a new era of demagoguery.” Such would allow “the great racial issue to get out of perspective and past the point of sane solution.” Too many segregationists were already “advocating something akin to secession.” O’Dowd insisted that there was a difference between “honest opposition to the Court’s decree and demagogic reaction that borders on sedition and violates the respect and honor implicit in the theories of our national government.”[541]
In early 1956 O’Dowd made what were to be his last clarion calls to common sense and level-headed thinking on the segregation issue. On February 26 he appealed for a policy of “militant moderation” to counter the extremists. The latter were carrying the day. Extremists, crying “traitor,” “coward” or “brainwashed,” discredited all attempts at moderation. Casting a plague on the houses of both white supremacists and the NAACP, O’Dowd believed that most South Carolinians must know “that truth and proper action lies between the sentiments” of these groups. The only true solution was for the moderates to step forth and lead the way.[542]
O’Dowd’s plea went unheeded. Instead, the Morning News became more and more the object of extremist wrath. The young editor received a threatening telephone call from a man who identified himself as “the Klan.” Attempts were made to force off the road both his car and that of assistant sports editor L. B. Ballard. The latter, who was also a Baptist minister, had the rear tires of his car slashed. City editor Charles Moore was “punched” and chased from a Klan meeting which he was covering for the paper. In February 1956 the Morning News, for the first time in several years, experienced a drop in circulation. Reader complaints mounted. The Florence County Democratic convention denounced the Morning News as a “carpetbagger press.” O’Dowd, nominated as a candidate for delegate to the state Democratic convention, ran 45th in a field of 45.[543]
On March 11 in a lengthy editorial, O’Dowd announced his “retreat from reason.” Because of pressure from white supremacists and silence from the moderates, the Morning News would no longer discuss segregation in its editorial columns:
In order for a newspaper to maintain its proper position of influence for good, its editorial policy must meet with good will and its position must be accepted as expressions of good faith.
Such has not been the case with this newspaper’s expressions of opinion in the field of segregation. It is now possible that the lack of support gained for this position could lessen the paper’s effectiveness in other fields of thought and action.
To avoid this possibility, the Morning News must make a retreat from reason. It has become obvious that to maintain effectiveness in other important areas of thought, this newspaper must abdicate its position in the segregation controversy....
Our editorials have never advocated integration. Our editorials have opposed NAACP extremism as militantly as they have opposed absolutism on the other side of the equation....
Men seeking the fair solution have not, in two years, come forward. They do not exist or they have been unwilling to face the scorn and abuse of those in the extreme fringes of both groups.
Only the few extremists have spoken; and their voice has been accepted as that of the majority. Moderation has been intimidated by hatred, and men of calm, good will have decided that the fight is not their concern. ... Today’s South is becoming dominated by those unable or unwilling to accept the good sense or even good faith of a conflicting or modifying idea.
... By and large, our appeal to reason has brought expressions of hatred, bigotry, unreason and filth. Our plea for moderation has been greeted with threats, lies, rumor and lack of good will. Our honest efforts to present the news—as it happens—have met with charges of distortion and collusion and with words of malice. Those who know better have not seen fit to consider this fight their concern....
Most of those who would be heard in this matter are evidently unwilling to hear thoughts of hope and peace. Editorials that do not speak sedition, bigotry, white supremacy and incitation to legislative folly and physical violence are not accepted as “honest” or “courageous.”[544]
Reaction varied to O’Dowd’s “retreat,” or more accurately his admission of defeat. A number of letters to the editor expressed sympathy with his moderation policy; others were highly critical. Time magazine, in an article favorable to O’Dowd, brought to national attention the plight of the Morning News and its editor. Praise by a magazine such as Time, of course, merely increased the condemnation of white supremacists. Joe B. Powell of Florence, for example, said he “sure would hate to be on the side of TIME or any other lousy YANKEE magazine or newspaper” while living in the South among his “southern white friends.” Florentines, he said, were “sick and fed up” with O’Dowd’s ideas on segregation. In line with the advice of Dorothy Moore Guess to unhappy Southerners, he suggested that O’Dowd “move to the North” where he would feel at home.[545] The News and Courier considered the whole affair “a grandstand play” to enable O’Dowd to reap “publicity as an integrationist advocate.”[546]
O’Dowd remained as editor of the Morning News until August 3 when he accepted a position on the news and editorial staff of the Chicago Sun-Times. The announcement of his resignation contained no mention of the segregation controversy. In the summer of 1957 he was appointed Dean of Students of the University of Chicago’s university college.
In incidents such as these white South Carolina demonstrated its opposition to those few white dissenters who would accept integration or who would admit that there is an element of right on the side of those who oppose the racial status quo.