POLITICS AND SEGREGATION
In all parts of the Republic, thoughtful people are talking about realignment of political parties. On many issues, including appeal to bloc-voting Negroes in the big cities, the Republicans and the Democrats have grown too much alike. The South can split them by voting against both and setting up a climate for new political alliances.—News and Courier
Following the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision, politics have reflected South Carolina’s intense preoccupation with the integration issue. The Negro, of course, has always been an important factor in the state’s politics. However since the New Deal period the national political parties and the federal government have no longer been content to allow the white South to handle the race issue without “interference.” Reflecting the sentiment of Northern liberal elements, they have been insistent on the extension of civil rights to Negroes in the South. This fact, increasingly important since World War II, has been the principal cause for the reaction against the national Democratic Party in South Carolina in the presidential elections of 1948, 1952 and 1956. Political factions were unable to solve their differences within one party and, at least on the level of presidential elections, rival groups emerged to challenge the supremacy of the regular Democratic Party. They did not contest that party’s hold on other levels.
In state wide elections of 1954-1956 the race issue transcended all others with but one important exception, the J. Strom Thurmond-Edgar Brown senatorial election of 1954. Both rabid segregationists and “liberals” criticized this concentration on race. The News and Courier believed the constant political agitation of “the race issue” since the Supreme Court decision had upset “an era of good will, harmony and progress” in race relations in the South. “Tension ... and danger of civil disturbance” had replaced the previous racial harmony. It blamed “a small militant group of white and Negro radicals” who had revived an issue which Southern politicians had “for years” kept out of the political arena. On the other hand David D. Carroll of Bennettsville, risking his “freedom from ‘assault and arson,’” accused “inter-state lynch-leaders” of stirring up the issue for private political gain. “Thus a truth-starved South,” he said, “tragically believes that today’s issue is a spontaneous racial crisis, never suspecting its partial origin in sinister politics.”[399]
Appeals to keep the segregation issue out of politics have gone unheeded. Its political worth is too great to be ignored. Segregation was “as surefire as political fuel as home, church, mother, and Wade Hampton,” stated the Independent. As a consequence, the state suffered from “crack pot oratory and poorly considered prosecutions and impractical laws” at a time when “imponderable, quiet, reserved, never relenting, never compromising resistance” was needed.[400]
While the full import of the segregation decisions of the Supreme Court was not fully realized in state politics until the presidential campaign of 1956, the gubernatorial election of 1954 provided a good example of the use to which South Carolina politicians put the race issue. In that election Lieutenant Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. opposed Lester Bates, a Columbia businessman and a novice whose political experience was limited to service on the Columbia City Council. Timmerman, the successful candidate, developed two campaign themes—the race issue and Bates’ alleged business malpractices. In a series of unproven charges, the Lieutenant Governor made good use of smear techniques. On May 26, a few days after the Supreme Court’s original decision, Timmerman charged Bates with “sleeping in the same political bed” with South Carolina NAACP officials. He declared that the school segregation problem could not be solved “under leadership of the NAACP’s candidate [Bates].” The following day the Independent carried a political advertisement by “friends” of Timmerman which asked South Carolinians if they wanted as governor “a man who would owe a political debt to Mojeska Simkins [then secretary of the state NAACP], the Lighthouse and Informer [401]
By way of degrading Bates further for his alleged connections with the NAACP, Timmerman, even before the Court decision, declared that the “NAACP has degenerated into a subversive organization in South Carolina” and “lives and breathes the ‘big lie.’” (To this James M. Hinton replied that the charges were and would remain “political demagoguery” unless Timmerman offered substantiating evidence. He urged Timmerman to make available to Attorney General Brownell “any and all information” in his possession which indicated subversion in the NAACP.)[402]
Bates was not above these same tactics. He criticized Timmerman’s proposal that the state establish three school systems—one white, one Negro, and one integrated—and dismissed it as a “hastily devised plan which would include mixed schools in South Carolina.” Bates favored segregated schools “for the peace, happiness and contentment” of both the white and Negro races. Offering no specific proposals to the voters, he advocated establishment of a special committee of distinguished South Carolinians to consider ways of meeting the problem. Action should be based on the recommendations of that committee. Characteristically, Timmerman replied with the allegation that Bates’ plan was “proposed” by James M. Hinton.[403]
The campaign was not without its irony. In a statement that must have been galling to Timmerman, the Columbia Lighthouse and Informer, in reference to Timmerman’s triple school system proposal, said: “It was more than astounding and gratifying that the younger Timmerman should show the liberality to come out openly for the mixing of the races in a segment of the South Carolina schools. We believe he is the first candidate for high public office to take such a stand in South Carolina. The Lighthouse and Informer congratulates Mr. Timmerman upon the advancement he has shown in this respect.” In the same vein the Marion Star asked if the triple school proposal had been made by Timmerman in a bid for NAACP support.[404]
In 1954-55, while attitudes were hardening on the race issue, there was increasing criticism of the national political parties and the traditional role of the South in national politics. Many like the late Senator Burnet R. Maybank, felt that both national parties had sold the South down the river. Segregationists frequently blamed the South itself. For too long, they cried, the solid South had forfeited its right to political consideration by remaining “in the bag” of the Democrats.[405]
In establishing the mood of political rebellion in 1956, segregationist bitter enders intensified their criticism of the national parties. “Political forces at the national level,” declared the News and Courier, were “lined up against the Southern way of dealing with the race question.” This Southern way had enabled the Negro, “a late-comer in western civilization,” to meet the challenges of the white man’s culture. The steady progress which the Negro had made in the past was now in danger of being destroyed by these “misguided agitators” from outside the South. Only through unity could the white South meet this threat. Along the same line, the News and Courier criticized the national Democratic Party for seeking Negro votes in key Northern cities and states. “How long will bribery of minority blocs” in the name of “welfare” control national politics, it asked. “Ever since F. D. Roosevelt lured the Negroes away from the Republicans with bigger and better promises, the weak rather than the strong have been shaping the course of the Republic.” The News and Courier observed that “of all the racial and nationality groups” subjected to such bribery, the Negro was “most easily manageable.” He had always been “managed” by whites.[406]
Wails of woe came from other quarters. Anyone selecting his national party on the basis of its position on the racial problem “really has no place to go today,” declared the Record. Yet the paper found itself in a dilemma. Only lukewarm toward the idea of a third party, it eventually endorsed Eisenhower in the 1956 campaign.[407] More outspoken was Charleston’s Representative L. Mendel Rivers. He thought it “tragic” to see President Eisenhower and leaders of both parties “supinely bowed to the demands of an association which follows the Communist line of lying, of vilification and untruth aided and abetted by an iron curtain of a Northern press which is ceaseless and relentless in its vilification of our people.” This “capitulation” the Charleston solon thought to be “the most fraudulent and hypocritical surrender of principle in the history of this republic,” which if carried to its logical conclusion would “bring a flow of blood unequalled since the tragic times of the War Between the States.”[408] Thomas R. Miller of Florence expressed another extreme viewpoint when he wondered
how any loyal, intelligent Southerner, or any other white American for that matter, can vote for a man that openly tells the South that the Supreme Court decision was right, is the law of the land, and should be obeyed, is more than we can see. Stevenson is the spiritual successor to Roosevelt, who sowed the seeds of racial hatred and started this country down the road to Communism, and to Truman, the happy little piano-banger, who cultivated and nurtured both—who administered the coup de grace to Southern white civilization, who consigned unborn children to racial mongrelization and slavery under the Black Race, which is what the Communist has in store for the South, and which will be the lot of our children if our people don’t wake up! If the people don’t believe it, let them take a little time off from pleasure-seeking, money-making, starting new organizations and clubs every day, and study it out for themselves. If this country isn’t going straight down the line of the Communist pattern, then “there ain’t a dog in Georgia.”[409]
The political course that extremists would follow in 1956 depended on the action of the state Democratic Party. They themselves, nominally Democrats, entertained the hope that they would be strong enough to control the party as the Dixiecrats had done in 1948. In South Carolina the state Democratic convention is held much earlier than in other states. Consequently, it was in early March when the county conventions met as preliminaries to the state convention. In many of the county conventions, generally in the lowcountry, extremists were in control. This was illustrated by the actions of the Florence County Democratic convention which adopted resolutions urging restoration of the ⅔ rule in the national party nominations; reaffirming the delegates’ firm support of states rights; praising the Citizens Councils and urging Democrats to give them “whole-hearted support;” commending the News and Courier “for its constancy and unfailing zeal” in fighting racial integration; and rendering the “heartfelt thanks” of the convention to Editor Thomas R. Waring “for his courage, his fearlessness and his devotion to duty.”[410] Other conventions adopted similar resolutions.
The state Democratic convention met in Columbia on March 21. Approximately 525 delegates attended, of whom two—one from Richland County and another from Beaufort County—were Negroes.[411] Governor Timmerman reflected the mood of the delegates in his address to the convention:
We meet today at a time when our freedom is imperiled—our freedom to choose our associates and the associates of our children—our freedom to make and enforce our own local laws in accordance with the wishes of our electorate—our freedom to establish and maintain our own local institutions without interference or intimidation—these freedoms and many more are threatened by the deliberate attempt to destroy constitutional government and to invade rights of the states and their people....
When we think in terms of racial mixing, remember that it was first advocated in the United States by the Communist Party. It was then and still is a part of the Communist program to create dissension and discord. It is a tactic in the Communist plan to divide and conquer. Racial mixing in the South is a very real and very meaningful part of the Communist conspiracy.[412]
The Democratic Party of South Carolina, while recognizing a nominal affiliation with the national Democratic Party, considers itself autonomous in state political affairs. In contemplating their course of action in 1956, party leaders weighed the advantages of continued amicable relations with the national party against the disadvantages of a potential revolt against their leadership in the state. Elements loyal to the national party dominated the state convention. They were strongly anti-integrationist as was evidenced by a resolution adopted on the second day of the convention. The delegates resolved that the Fourteenth Amendment in no way applied to education; that the Supreme Court’s decision was an “illegal and unconstitutional” verdict based on “sociological and psychological works of comparatively unknown authors, some of whom were foreigners;” and that the federal government was guilty of encroachment on the rights of the states. The strength of party loyalty was shown by the fact that the convention agreed that “the remedies for the ills which beset us arising from usurpations, encroachments, unprecedented actions without legal justification and unreasonable centralization of government” could best be resolved within the Democratic Party.
While professing complete loyalty to the party, the convention urged “the States of the South and all others believing in constitutional government” to counsel together, adopt a program of joint action and present a united front at the national convention. The Palmetto State Democrats also urged other states to follow the South Carolina example of adjourning their state conventions to reconvene after the national convention.[413]
In directing the efforts of South Carolina Democrats to achieve an all-Southern pre-convention unity, the party convention appointed a steering committee headed by Governor Timmerman. A second purpose of the committee was to acquaint other Southern states with the efforts and intentions of the South Carolina Democracy. As committee chairman, the Governor wrote letters to all Southern senators, congressmen, governors and Democratic national committeemen. All of the letters, prefaced with the statement “South Carolina Democrats want to remain in the National Democratic Party,” said substantially the same thing: The South could expect an anti-Southern platform and nominees unless pre-convention unity could be achieved and a united front presented at the convention.
Response to the appeal was generally disappointing. Southern senators and congressmen considered it a “sugarcoated” Dixiecrat movement. However, the Governor was able to secure the calling of a convention of state party chairmen at Atlanta in July. This meeting adopted a resolution which urged unity but within the Democratic Party. Toward this end, another conference was recommended, this time to be attended by Southern governors, convention delegation chairmen and vice-chairmen, and members of the convention platform and resolutions committee.[414]
This second parley was also held at Atlanta in early August. Four governors and three United States senators attended along with approximately thirty other political officials. Again advocates of “Southern independence” were in a minority and the convention adopted a declaration which urged unity but again within the Democratic Party.[415] For all their efforts, Southern Democrats achieved only a minimum of unity.
The Morning News and Independent were skeptical of these maneuvers, viewing them as posing the threat of a potential third party movement. The Morning News, furthermore, pointed out the inconsistency of Southern Democrats damning the national party for its attention to minority groups and at the same time demanding special treatment because of minority standing.[416] But the News and Courier, not forgetful of Strom Thurmond’s leadership of the Dixiecrat movement in 1948, thought South Carolinians should take pride in Governor Timmerman’s emergence as leader of “Southern Independence” at a time when other Southern politicians were shielding their timidity “with the time worn cloak of party loyalty.”[417] Others were no less critical of the emphasis on unity within the party. The Record considered the declaration by the second Atlanta conference “quite docile,” “timid in tone,” and “disappointing.”[418]
At the Democratic National Convention in August the South Carolina delegation was primarily concerned with securing an acceptable platform. Governor Timmerman spoke for the delegation before the platform committee. He warned that a civil rights plank infringing upon the constitutional rights of the states, a pro-integration plank, or an approval of the school desegregation decision would insure a Democratic defeat in November. The basic issue was not “sectionalism, race per se, or special privilege,” he maintained. It was whether “this great Democratic party of individual freedom and states rights shall survive or ‘rot with radicalism.’”[419]
The pleadings of the Southerners were not without success for the civil rights plank adopted by the Democrats was much milder than it might have been. In regard to the Supreme Court decision it was nearer the Southern position than that of the Republicans. No direct endorsement was given the decision, and force was rejected as a method of accomplishing compliance. However the Democrats recognized Supreme Court decisions in general as “part of the law of the land.” Contrary to Southern wishes, the platform also endorsed previous Democratic accomplishments in the field of civil rights, e.g., armed forces integration, and urged the curbing of the filibuster in Senate debates.[420] In the latter respects the Democratic platform was further from the Southern position than was that of the Republicans.
Reaction to the platform varied with the more moderate elements generally considering it a compromise or a Southern victory. However, the News and Courier thought that despite “some weasel words,” the platform represented “a complete victory for Northern viewpoint and complete defeat of the South.” To the Charleston paper the platform added up to “FEPC, mixed schools, Federal investigation of white Southerners and enthusiastic endorsement of integration in the armed forces.” The trouble was that people had their terms confused, declared the News and Courier. A “compromise” on the civil rights issue would have been no civil rights plank at all. A Southern victory on the issue would have been a platform expressing opposition to the court decision, invasion of states rights, FEPC and integration in the armed forces.[421] The Record characterized the platform as “an effort at straddling, not actually the fence but an area just left of the fence.”[422]
Concerning nominees, the South was also not without success in that Adlai E. Stevenson, the least objectionable of the leading contenders to the South, won the nomination for President. However, the Tennessee liberal, Estes Kefauver, loathed by Southern extremists as a traitor to his section, was selected for Vice-President. The general strategy of the South Carolina delegation was to vote for Governor Timmerman as a favorite son in the hope that a candidate less enthusiastic about the Supreme Court decision than Stevenson would be nominated.
The News and Courier, as was to be expected, blasted the Democratic ticket. It described Kefauver as “an unprincipled opportunist, a Southerner who sold out the South for a mess of NAACP votes.” As for Stevenson, he was “another Franklin Roosevelt.” The rasping voice of Charleston warned that the United States would be unable to survive “another scholar-gentleman-socialist in the White House.” In general agreement, the Record thought Stevenson would be “under virtual compulsion from the NAACP, CIO and other integrationist groups to act federally against the South.”[423]
The upcountry Independent, on the other hand, heartily endorsed the Democratic ticket. Stevenson was characterized as “a man of decision, wisdom and an understanding of the basic problems confronting the American people.” The addition of Kefauver gave the Democrats “an exceptionally strong ticket.”[424] The Morning News, under Editor Rogers, was noncommittal.
The reconvening of the state party convention was the next act in the political drama. The delegates were about equally split as to whether to support the national party nominees or to back an independent movement. When one state party official after another endorsed party loyalty, the convention, by a narrow vote of 167 to 152½, officially agreed to stand by Stevenson and Kefauver.[425] The News and Courier pictured the party crawling back “‘into the bag’ of the socialistic integrators.” Governor Timmerman, who had urged party loyalty, received a special share of News and Courier wrath. Once “one of the South’s most lucid supporters of States Rights,” he had descended to using “unworthy demagoguery” in supporting “his retreat from the spirit of Southern independence.”[426]
Endorsement of the national party platform and nominees by the state convention set the stage for another political revolt against the Democratic Party. Such a movement, the origins of which will be noted subsequently in greater detail, developed immediately following the state Democratic convention. A considerable division of opinion existed within the state over the desirability of an independent movement. In general terms it was one of lowcountry versus upcountry. Speaking for the latter the Independent opposed “the will-o-wisp of a ‘third party,’” which would harm rather than aid Southern efforts to preserve segregation. It found fallacious the argument of the independents, namely, that the Southern states, by combining forces, could throw the election into the House of Representatives. Past political movements had shown that the South would not unite. Moreover, even if the election were tossed into the House, either the Democratic or Republican candidate would be elected; the South would gain nothing. Questioning the motives of those leading the movement, the Independent suggested that the opposition to the Democrats was based “less on the segregation issue” than on other considerations. These, it said pointedly, were economic—special interests arraigned against the welfare of the working public.[427]
The Morning News was also outspoken in opposing the revolt. Editor O’Dowd thought it “politic, advantageous and wise” for South Carolina to preserve its ties with the national Democratic Party. He chided those South Carolina Democrats who kept themselves “in a state of permanent rebellion against the National Party.” Such persons served only the cause of disunity. According to O’Dowd, criticism of the national party’s liberalism was pointless. The secret of the party’s strength traditionally was “the presence of liberal forces” and the balance these struck with the conservatives. He noted that Thomas Jefferson, who was “almost sacred” to Southern Democrats, was “further ‘left’ for his day than [Michigan Governor G. Mennen] ‘Soapy’ Williams.” Picturing the Democratic Party as the political bailiwick of “Harriman-Williams-Kefauver and the ADA” was simply waving the red flag. The Democratic Party, O’Dowd noted, was also the party of “Walter George, Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, Olin Johnston and the Southland.” Under the new editor, James A. Rogers, the Morning News changed its political line. While not unsympathetic to the revolt, Rogers took the common sense position that the most effective protest against the Democratic Party was a vote for the Republican candidates.[428]
The News and Courier, the state’s leading press advocate of “independence,” did not understate its editorial theme. The Democratic Party had become infested with “goons, eggheads, radicals, and NAACP agitators.” The Republicans were almost as bad. There was, in reality, no place for “conservative white voters” to go. The South was not bolting the Democratic Party; rather the party had long ago bolted the South. The real third party was not that of the Southern Independents but the Democratic Party gone Socialist. This situation had created problems, not only in regard to public school integration, but also “business interference and high cost government.” The South’s duty was to redeem “the rest of the Republic from Negro politics” and restore “honor, decency and liberty” to the political arena of the nation. But the News and Courier sadly acknowledged that the South’s minority status left it in a position of such “helpless ignominy” that its protest would probably be ineffective. Yet by voting against both national parties Southerners could at least “preserve their self respect.”[429]
Following refusal of the state Democratic convention to endorse “independence,” the News and Courier printed a lengthy series of “letters to the editor” commenting on the political situation in South Carolina. A majority of these advocated Southern independent political action and held that the state’s delegates should have bolted the national Democratic convention. Most urged formation of a new Dixiecrat Party or presentation of a slate of independent electors as a protest against both national parties. Various names were suggested as nominees, most prominently Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia and General Mark Clark. Another suggestion called for the formation of a third national party which would appeal to “constitutionalists” and conservatives like Governor J. Bracken Lee of Utah. It would oppose the “socialism” of the other national parties.
A few of these letters were written by persons prominent in white supremacy groups, including Micah Jenkins, state Citizens Council president and chairman for South Carolina of the Federation for Constitutional Government, and Stanley F. Morse, president of the Grass Roots League of Charleston.[430] But most came from persons of no particular significance in political circles. A sampling of quotations taken from these letters reflects the state of mind of the writers:
Another John C. Calhoun is the crying need of this hour, for whom we could all vote in full confidence to represent us in Congress for constitutional government.
We don’t have any leaders in the nation today—we have drivers. Southerners are being driven like cattle to the slaughter.
If it ever was a time for a Ben Tillman it is now.
I am a Democrat, a follower of Jefferson, Cleveland, Wilson, and Robert Taft. [!] I have nothing in common with the present National Democratic Party whose name and organization have been captured by the Radical Socialists and semi-communists of the Northern city slums, assisted by the crackpots, egg heads and pseudo-intellectuals of the Northern colleges.
What the AFL-CIO is planning on doing to us is not just “plain” brainwashing. We are in for a THOROUGH brain-sudsing and scrubbing until every trace of our Southern ways and traditions is gone and we come out “integration bright.”
The complete subservience of a lot of our politicians to a master such as party instead of principle is a deplorable state of affairs for this nation.
Our timid and seduced politicians and their cohorts endeavor to shield themselves by “working within the party.”
Among the letter writers the Democrats were not without their racist supporters. One warned: “Vote Republican ... and you won’t have as many rights as the Negro has ... the word ‘segregation’ will become extinct.... If he [Eisenhower] is reelected you can expect worse. Should he die, it will be ‘NIX-on’ whites and probably a desegregated Supreme Court.”[431]
Efforts to organize an independent political movement in the state began even before the decision of the state Democratic party to support the national party nominees. In early June Micah Jenkins began distributing petitions seeking the necessary 10,000 signatures to place an independent slate of electors on the general election ballot. He charged that the Democratic Party, made up of “radical, minority and labor groups,” would be unable to protect the interests of the South without alienating “the Negro, labor and the Americans for Democratic Action radical elements.”[432] This early effort achieved negligible success.
Following refusal of the state Democratic convention to endorse a separate slate of independent electors, the dissident extremists held a meeting in Columbia and organized the “South Carolinians for Independent Electors.” Their immediate concern was to get 10,000 petition signatures which had to be in the office of the Secretary of State not later than September 6; the organizational meeting was held August 27. Chairman of the group was Farley Smith, son of the late Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith. Prominent among those attending were Micah Jenkins and S. Emory Rogers, leaders of the Citizens Council movement. The organizational meeting issued a manifesto which declared that the Independents were seeking to give voters of the state “an opportunity to protest” against both national parties.[433] More than three times the number of signatures needed were secured before the deadline, a not inconsiderable achievement.
The Independent revolt, like that of the Dixiecrats of eight years before, stemmed directly out of the segregation conflict. Editor Rogers of the Morning News stated flatly that the Supreme Court’s decision was “the underlying cause” of the movement. Though there may have been much truth to the Anderson Independent’s statement that the real reasons for the movement were economic, there was no gainsaying that the Independents presented themselves as the champions ne plus ultra of white supremacy. Such was admirably illustrated in a pamphlet which they distributed. A brief summary is informative: A vote for Stevenson was a vote for integration according to “the warning uttered by the South Carolina Citizens Councils,” which were “representative of the states rights thinking of thousands of South Carolinians.” The civil rights platform of the Democratic Party was a “complete defeat” for the South, adding up to “FEPC, mixed schools, Federal investigation of white Southerners and enthusiastic endorsement of integration in the armed forces.” (A verbatim quotation from a News and Courier editorial of August 16, 1956, p. 16-A.) The regular Democratic Party in South Carolina was a “scalawag” party, “to which most Negroes belong.” The national Democratic Party was the mouthpiece for “Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem, Walter Reuther of the AFL-CIO, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Adlai Stevenson and the turncoat Southerner, Estes Kefauver,” all enemies of the South.[434]
On other occasions the Independents were prone to emphasize non-racial issues and decry “the trend toward government centralized and socialized, in Washington.”[435] Thomas P. Stoney, former mayor of Charleston who was to become one of the Independent electors, declared that “the time has come to serve notice on the left-wingers and crystal-ball gazers of both national parties that we’ve gone just as far as we’re going” toward “100 percent socialism.”[436] Harold Booker, a Camden newspaper man, told an Independent rally: “In fighting for the election, you are fighting for your homes, families and Southland.”[437]
Originally the Independent electors endorsed no candidate but in October they decided to back Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia and Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi for President and Vice-President respectively. That Byrd announced he was not a candidate did not faze the Independents. The News and Courier commented that it “would rather have Harry Byrd president than any other man in public life.” It described Representative Williams, whose claim to fame included popularizing the term “Black Monday,” as a “distinguished Southerner,” the type of man “whom South Carolinians respect.”[438]
The Independents announced their position in several political advertisements in newspapers throughout the state. Typical was the following, which, it might be observed, directly attacked Adlai Stevenson but did not mention President Eisenhower:
Do you want mixing of the races in schools, factories, shops, offices, restaurants—at the point of a bayonet if necessary? If so vote for Stevenson and Kefauver.
Do you want to do away with unlimited debate (filibuster) which is the only protection the South has against laws that big cities of the North will force upon us? If so, vote for Stevenson and Kefauver who unalterably oppose freedom of debate.
Do you want the Right-to-work law in South Carolina repealed? If so, vote for Stevenson and Kefauver who are dedicated to repeal of the Taft-Hartley law.
Do you want a President who would stop tests of H-bombs and enable Russia to dominate the world? Then Stevenson is your man. He and Bulganin want to stop these tests in America.
Do you want Socialism to replace the free and independent form of government under which America has become the greatest nation in the world? Then vote for either national party. Both are dedicated to Socialism.
Do you want to live under the domination of political machines? Then vote for and with the politicians who place party label above principle.
The prominence given economic issues is significant. Independent leaders had two goals: to sound the tocsin for reactionaries and to show to the country that their movement was premised on grounds other than racial. Economic policies advocated by Stevenson and the national Democrats were smeared as “a new America built on Socialistic and Communistic theories.” In view of the wide use of the term “socialism,” the News and Courier’s definition is interesting. Socialism, it said, “would give bigger ‘benefits’ to farmers, old people, veterans, little business men, workers, unemployed persons, the disabled and children.” This would mean “more handouts for everyone, except the big corporations—and the government would run them.” Inflation, controls and higher taxes accompanied such a program. The Independents also criticized Kefauver’s advocacy of “World Government under which the United States of America would become a satellite nation under Communist control.”[439]
The Independents never attracted the active support of prominent Democrats in the state. An important exception was James F. Byrnes. In an address which the News and Courier considered “the speech of a statesman,” the former governor, senator, war mobilizer, secretary of state and Supreme Court justice, urged South Carolinians to desert both national parties and to back the Independents. He criticized Eisenhower’s support of integration in the District of Columbia and pictured the Democratic Party, whose nomination for the vice-presidency he had once coveted, as being “dominated by the bosses of the big cities, the Americans for Democratic Action, the CIO and the NAACP.” The Independent received Byrnes’ speech less sympathetically. The up-country paper declared that “the spectacle of this aging and embittered politician trying to explain unsuccessfully how he arrived at this dead-end would merit sympathetic pity were it not part of a calculated effort, based upon hatred for the Democratic Party that fed and clothed him for over 50 years, to reelect a Republican president.”[440]
During the course of the election campaign, the Morning News, Record, News and Courier and Independent each took a different position on the question of political revolt. With the exception of the Morning News, which changed editors, the papers continued the positions which they had taken in the pre-campaign period. The Morning News, under Editor Rogers, was sympathetic to the Independents but refrained from advising its readers as to how to vote. Rogers’ proposal for an independent movement to support the Republican candidate went unheeded. The Record, too, was sympathetic to the Independents but ultimately endorsed the Republicans. It considered a vote for the Independents as a less effective protest than one for the G.O.P. The News and Courier, which luxuriated in its own world of perpetual political frustration, gave unqualified endorsement to the Independents as “a grass roots protest without professional leadership.” It represented “the people of South Carolina standing up for their rights, in a spontaneous movement which could overthrow the forces controlling the State Democratic Party.” Out of it might “come a force to redeem the Republic and reshape United States history.”[441]
The Anderson Independent attacked the movement, its leaders and its motives. The “agitation” was described as “another effort to give aid and comfort to the Republican Party and its millions of Negro adherents.” The Independents included “an unusually high proportion of rejected office-holders and worn-out political hacks,” “tub-thumpers” who were using the race issue as a screen for other issues, mainly economic. When the Independents issued a statement decrying “the perversion of taxation to a tool of social reform for the redistribution of wealth,” the Anderson paper concluded that they opposed “such laws as social security, old age pensions, federal wage and hour laws to protect workers, federal funds for school lunches, and numerous other activities designed to benefit the vast majority of citizens who are not blessed with the status of the independently wealthy.”[442] This statement was not without irony in view of the Independent’s violent opposition to labor unions and to the repeal of the state’s right-to-work law.
The same paper was no less critical of the Republicans. A vote for either the Republicans or the Independents was “a vote for sending South Carolina school trustees to jail.” Its editorials contained such loaded and politically indelicate phrases as “‘Put’em in Jail’ Eisenhower,” “‘jailing judges,’” “Richard M. (for Mixer) Nixon,” “naming Negroes to the South Carolina federal bench,” and “a vote for Ike is a vote for integration.”[443]
In the campaign the Democrats made only slightly less use of the race issue than did the Independents. Democratic strategy was to present the latter as Republicans in disguise and then to attack the racial policies of the Republicans. Democrats called Eisenhower “the greatest integrator since Abraham Lincoln” for his endorsement of the Court decision; his appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren; his elimination of segregation in the armed forces (“Except for this, it might not be necessary to continue the draft.”); his abolition of separate recruitments for Navy stewards; his abolition of segregation in the Charleston Naval Yard; his abolition of segregation in all veterans hospitals (“The helpless sick are denied any choice.”); and his abolition of segregation in Washington. Indicative of the Democrats’ attitude was the use of a quotation from an NAACP report stating: “When freedom, equality, and justice shall have been fully realized for every citizen, historians of tomorrow may well look back to the year of 1953 as the beginning of the end of social discrimination and segregation in the United States.”[444]
The Democrats made wide use of state officials in reassuring voters that the South’s best hope lay with its traditional party. Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn declared that the support of the national Democratic Party by Senator Richard B. Russell and Herman Talmadge of Georgia was sufficient proof for him. The Democrats also emphasized such issues as Democratic control of Congress and the appointment of federal judges. State executive committeeman E. P. Riley of Greenville asked, “Do you want judges selected by our senators, who believe in our way of life, or do you want them selected by Negro Congressman Adam Clayton Powell ... [and] Dewey and Brownell, whose only thought of the South is hatred?”[445]
The Republicans soft-pedalled the race issue and even made some efforts to attract Negro votes. An undated open letter from State Republican Chairman Oscar W. Pitts urged all South Carolinians, “regardless of creed or color,” to support Eisenhower.[446] Barrington Parker, a Washington attorney sponsored by the Republican National Committee, told the Palmetto State Voters Association that “no thinking Negro can go to the polls to vote the Democratic ticket.”[447] Political advertisements of the only Republican candidate in the election, Leon P. Crawford, the mayor of Clemson and the opponent of Senator Olin D. Johnston, made no reference to the race issue. They noted, however, Crawford’s belief in “firm aggressive pursuit of States Rights measures.... Constitutional government of the people, for the people and by the people ... [and] less Federal meddling in State and local schools and other affairs.”[448] Henry Gaud, a Charleston County Republican leader, told Carolinians that segregation was not the issue in the election. Segregation had been used by the Independents to get “prejudices aroused.” The real issue was “whether or not this government is going to become totalitarian. Stevenson believes in socialization.” He agreed with the Independents that “leftwingers and racketeers” ruled the Democratic Party.[449]
Election results showed approximately 138,000 votes for the Democrats, 75,000 for the Republicans and 88,000 for the Independents. Generally the upcountry counties voted strongly Democratic while the lowcountry voted Independent. Eisenhower carried two counties, Aiken and Beaufort in the lowcountry. The News and Courier, still frustrated, expressed disappointment and indignation over the vote for Stevenson. According to the voice of “independence,” white South Carolinians again had betrayed themselves to the “compulsory race mixers, Northern busybodies and professional South-baiters.” They were disloyal “to their forefathers—such men as Wade Hampton and John Calhoun.”[450] Some consolation was derived from the fact that for the first time since Reconstruction, the Democratic Party in the state received less than an absolute majority of the votes cast. Yet it should also be noted that slightly more than 70 percent of the voters were against the Independents.
The Negro vote cannot be evaluated accurately but indications are that it was split fairly evenly between the Democrats and Republicans. For example Columbia’s Ward Nine, a traditional bellwether precinct for the Negro vote in the state, gave 551 votes to the Democrats, 504 to the Republicans, 56 to the Independents. Many Negro dominated precincts throughout the state went Republican, reversing the 1952 results.[451] Then the Negroes had voted overwhelmingly Democratic.
Although most of the drive behind the Independents petered out with the election returns, leaders of the movement endeavored to keep the organization alive. In January 1957 a meeting was held in Columbia, attended by 75 persons. Talk centered on plans for taking over control of the state Democratic Party organization. Since this could not be immediately achieved, the 75 had to be content with the establishment of a permanent organization outside the party. Farley Smith was reelected chairman of the Independents.[452]
Because of the large anti-Democratic vote in South Carolina in 1952 and 1956, many consider the state at last ready for a bona fide two-party system. The more conservative, however, favor continuation of a one-party system. M. H. Sass, in a revealing newspaper article, thought that “the very last thing that would be desirable for South Carolina in the foreseeable future” was the two-party system. Such, he declared, would “result in the political fragmentation of the South along social and economic lines.” Southern conservatives would be aligned with non-Southern conservatives while “Southern workers and smaller farmers would be in alliance with their national counterparts.” Such an arrangement would not only be “a severe blow to the South’s maintenance of its separate identity, culturally speaking,” but would also give “the balance of political power ... to the Negro.” Under these circumstances “questions of economic policy, labor relations, etc., would become paramount issues.” The presence in South Carolina of “an abundance of raw scalawag material,” said Sass, would insure chaos if a two-party system were established.[453]
In the political arena, then, the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision and the increasing Negro efforts to achieve integration have resulted in a continuation and intensification of the use by South Carolina politicians of the race issue. In 1958 indications are that this situation will not end until the Negro vote becomes important enough to be vied for by politicians.