THE DEVELOPMENT OF RACE RELATIONSHIPS
Emancipation, itself, would not satisfy these fanatics. That gained, the next step would be to raise the Negroes to a social and political equality with the whites.—John C. Calhoun
The present pattern of race relations for South Carolina was shaped in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1877 at the end of the Reconstruction period the mould of segregation had yet to be rigidly defined. Only in the last decade of the century was absolute segregation established. During the Reconstruction years public schools were not integrated, although Negro students attended the state university. In personal and social relationships segregation was generally practiced but more on the basis of social custom than by force of legislation. Largely if not entirely ignored was the Civil Rights law which had been passed by the Reconstruction legislature. This law, which remained on the statute books until 1889, prohibited racial discrimination by “common carriers or by any person engaged in a business, calling or pursuit” for which a federal, state or municipal license was required.[5]
In the political area the establishing of Jim Crowism was slower though no less effective and complete in its end result. Negroes voted until the 1890’s and were influential in the local government of several counties. South Carolina sent three Negro congressmen to Washington after 1876; one served until 1896. In 1882 nine Negroes sat in the state legislature, the last Negro member of that body being defeated for reelection in 1902. Yet these were the exception and not the rule for the Negro was in truth virtually eliminated as a factor in state politics by the end of the 1880’s. With the restrictions on Negro suffrage contained in the new state constitution of 1895 and the adoption of the Democratic Party primary the following year, the Negro was prevented from voting in the state. Yet, in spite of the Negro’s all but complete disfranchisement, the fear that he might be used for political purposes “prevented the whites from dividing into two parties or from breaking out of the restrictions imposed by the Democratic primary.”[6]
With the disfranchisement of the Negro, the repeal of the state Civil Rights law and the establishment of absolute and legalized segregation, a rigid system of caste based on race materialized as a means of race control.[7] It was reflected in the segregation of schools, churches, and other public and private organizations and institutions. The two races seldom came into contact except in the relationship of employer and laborer. In no sense was the concept of racial equality accepted by the dominant whites.[8]
The maintenance of absolute segregation frequently necessitated resort to either the threat or use of force or violence. The threat was ever present in the personal, economic, and political relationships between the races. Fear of slave insurrections was replaced by fear of a “vague and unknown thing,” social equality. As the nineteenth century ground to an end, application of violence was frequently approved by “respectable” whites, especially if Negroes were suspected or charged with murder or rape. The Charleston News and Courier, for example, argued that the lynching of a suspected murderer was “not mob law.” According to the paper’s editorialist, “the brute placed himself outside the pale of the law and was dealt with accordingly.”[9]
Segregation of the races in the state has been both a manifestation of belief in racial superiority and a basic distrust of democracy. Ben Tillman interpreted his election as governor as a triumph of “white supremacy over mongrelism and anarchy.” In his inaugural address he denied “without regard to color that ‘all men are created equal.’” It was not true then and it was not true when Jefferson wrote it, he thundered.[10] Carlyle McKinley, associate editor of the News and Courier, wrote in the 1880’s that in “works of art, skill, science, invention, literature, in the whole field of human enterprise, endeavor, design and discovery, in every respect that can be named, the Negro is far behind the lowliest families of the white race.”[11] The late W. W. Ball, among other things editor of the News and Courier and Dean of the School of Journalism of the University of South Carolina, declared that “every decent white man and woman” in the state maintained and exercised the “right of treating all Negroes as inferiors.” In one of his characteristic diatribes against democracy, he wrote that “universal and unrestricted suffrage” was unthinkable. Safety demanded that South Carolina “steer away from the infatuation even of universal white democracy.”[12]
In 1944, twenty-five years after Ball made the above statement, the state House of Representatives adopted a resolution which “indignantly and vehemently” denounced all organizations seeking “the amalgamation of the white and Negro races by co-mingling of the races on any basis of equality.” Such were deemed “hostile to the existence and preservation of the American Union of States.” Simultaneously, the legislators reaffirmed their belief in and allegiance to “established white supremacy,” and pledged “our lives and our sacred honor to maintaining it, whatever the cost.”[13]
In no other area have South Carolinians been so sensitive to outside criticism as on the race issue. After the end of Reconstruction “outside agitation” on racial problems was infrequent. It became even less so after the Supreme Court in 1896 gave official legal blessing to racial segregation in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. However in the 1930’s and during the Second World War, “agitation” was renewed for more civil rights for the Southern Negro. This agitation inspired passage of the above cited resolution by the state legislature. The latter demanded, “firmly and unequivocally,” that “henceforth the damned agitators of the North leave the South alone.”[14]
II
Elimination of the Negro from state politics became an article of faith, a factor of transcendant importance in the preservation of white supremacy. The instrumentality through which the Negro was effectively excluded from the suffrage was the Democratic Party primary which was adopted in 1896. Not until the late 1940’s was the Democratic primary opened to Negro voters and then only by direction of the federal courts.
Up to the New Deal period the South Carolina white primary faced little real “danger” either from “outside agitators” or homegrown “radicals.”[15] Yet a disruptive force was at work. This was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People which slowly but relentlessly was seeking to break down the restrictions placed on Negro suffrage. An initial breach, which did not directly affect South Carolina, had come with the ruling by the Supreme Court in 1915 that the “grandfather clause” was unconstitutional. South Carolina reacted to these developments by strengthening its determination to maintain and re-enforce the white primary. One venerable device in this effort was the poll tax which, of course, not only disfranchised a mass of Negro voters but many whites as well. White South Carolinians were willing to pay this price, however, to guarantee the white primary. Toward the same end other devices were resorted to as grounds for disfranchisement such as lengthy residence requirements, discretionary educational requirements, property qualifications and numerous petty crimes, supposedly common among Negroes.
Lack of organized opposition made control of the Democratic primary tantamount to control of the state government. Such control traditionally resided in the hands of politicians whose defeats resulted not in the extension of democracy but simply in the creation of a new faction to direct state politics. With great effectiveness politicians used fear of the Negro vote to forestall development of an operative two party system. They contended that a two-party system would split the white vote and thus allow the Negroes to hold the balance of political power. In opposing the repeal of the poll tax, a member of the 1944 state House of Representatives said that Negroes were “trying to vote” and if the suffrage were made too easy a two party system would surely result. To prevent both, he concluded, it was imperative to keep the Democratic Party all powerful.[16] Nor did this feeling end with the abolition of the white primary. In 1952 Governor James F. Byrnes, taking note of the increasing registration of Negro voters, lamented that there would always be white politicians in the state “willing to enter into secret political trades” for Negro votes. Such men had to be “watched” and those who were willing to deal with Negro leaders had to be defeated.[17] In 1956 Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., said that a two party system would bring South Carolina “nothing but permanent strife and damage.” It had brought chaos to the North “where minorities are pawns and politics is played with the lives of small children for the sake of a vote,” asserted the governor. He for one was “not prepared to turn the state Democratic Party over to any radical element or other irresponsible group.”[18]
Increased “agitation” for Negro civil rights in the New Deal and World War II periods eventuated in the end of the white primary. This disaster was the result of several federal court decisions, notably in the cases of Smith v. Allwright (1944), Rice v. Elmore (1947) and Brown v. Baskin (1948). The first and most important of these was a Texas case in which the Supreme Court declared all suffrage restrictions premised on race to be unconstitutional.[19]
Reaction of the white leaders of South Carolina to the Smith v. Allwright decision was instantaneous. Officials, public figures, and private citizens lost no opportunity to condemn it. The late Senator Burnet R. Maybank, aware that the decision was not an isolated incident but part of the developing effort to break down white supremacy, declared that regardless of any Supreme Court decision and any laws that might be passed by Congress, South Carolinians would maintain those political and social institutions which were “in the best interest of our people.” White South Carolinians would “treat the Negro fairly,” said the Senator, but they did “not intend for him to take over our election system or attend our white schools.”[20]
The then Governor Olin D. Johnston, not to be outdone, called a special session of the state legislature to meet the “emergency.” He recommended that the legislators repeal all state laws dealing with primary elections, thus giving the Democratic Party the status of a private club. This maneuver, he believed, would put the party outside the jurisdiction of federal courts. Should it prove inadequate, he announced, South Carolinians would “use the necessary methods to retain white supremacy in our primaries and to safeguard the homes and happiness of our people.”[21] The legislature, following his advice, completely divorced the state from all legal connections with the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party of South Carolina itself took action to nullify the effects of the court decision. If Negroes could not be legally barred from primary election, they would be excluded from party membership. A state Democratic convention, held shortly after the decision, adopted a rule which provided that to be eligible for membership in the party, a person had to be a “white Democrat” who subscribed to the principles of the Democratic Party of South Carolina as declared by the state convention.[22]
In 1947 the newly enacted defenses for white supremacy in the Democratic primary were tested in federal district court and found wanting. George A. Elmore, under NAACP auspices, brought suit against the Democratic Party. He claimed that its recent actions deprived him of his right to vote. Federal District Judge J. Waties Waring[23] agreed and ruled against the state of South Carolina and the Democratic Party. In admonishing South Carolina to “rejoin the union,” he declared racial discriminations illegal in the machinery that selected the officers and lawmakers of the United States. All citizens were entitled to cast a “free and untrammelled” vote in the election. If “the only material and realistic elections” were “clothed with the name ‘primary,’” said the judge, they were no less equally entitled to vote in them.[24]
In the face of the decision, the harrassed and beleaguered state Democratic Party took two important steps to insure continuation of the white primary. By the first a dual system of voting qualifications was established which sought to disbar most Negro voters. Concomitantly a lengthy oath, designed to discourage Negro voters and required of all voters, was adopted. It compelled the voter to swear that he understood, believed in, and supported “the principles of the Democratic Party of South Carolina,” the “social, religious, and educational separation of the races,” and “the principles of states rights,” and was opposed to the “proposed federal so-called FEPC law.”[25]
These restrictions were quickly brought to a court test. In a second decision, in the case of Brown v. Baskin, Judge Waring invalidated the white primary. In a pointed and sharply worded opinion he termed the dual system of voting qualifications “a clear and flagrant evasion of the law” as enunciated in earlier court rulings against suffrage restrictions on the basis of race. He also branded the oath required of all voters in the primary as a “flagrant disregard of the rights of American citizens to exercise their own views and opinions.” The oath was patently unconstitutional.[26] The United States Supreme Court refused to review either of Judge Waring’s decisions, thus in effect upholding them.[27]
Judge Waring, a prominent Charlestonian, was condemned on all sides by white South Carolinians. His decisions were likewise criticized. After the ruling in Brown v. Baskin, Representative William Jennings Bryan Dorn asked Congress to investigate Judge Waring’s “conduct in office.” Under his ruling, said Dorn, “a Communist, a Negro, a Fascist, or a Republican could vote in the Democratic Party of South Carolina.”[28]
III
Traditionally orthodoxy on the race issue has transcended all other considerations in South Carolina politics. Consequently the state has had more than its fair share of zealots willing to play the race issue for the last ounce of its political worth. Even those most outspoken on the issue have not been free of charges of racial heresy. In the 1938 senatorial election Olin D. Johnston, attempting unsuccessfully to unseat “Cotton Ed” Smith, charged that the Senator had not always been anti-Negro. “Why, Ed Smith voted for a bill that would permit a big buck nigger to sit by your wife or sister on a railroad train,” he cried. But Smith was able to use the attack on him by Roosevelt and Northern liberals with telling effect. He boasted that he had walked out of the 1936 Democratic National Convention when a Negro minister was asked to pray. The purpose of that prayer, he declared, was “not to ask divine assistance but to invoke colored votes.” “White supremacy, that time honored tradition,” bellowed the Senator in a campaign speech, could “no more be blotted out of the hearts of South Carolinians” than could the “scars which Sherman’s artillery left on the State House at Columbia.”[29]
During the 1930’s and 1940’s under encouragement given their aspirations by the New and Fair Deals, South Carolina Negroes became Democrats in theory and in fact. Their most ambitious political undertaking was the formation in 1944 of the Progressive Democratic Party under the leadership of John McCray, a newspaperman, and James M. Hinton, a minister and insurance saleman. The Progressive Democrats supported the national Democratic Party but opposed that of the state.[30] The Progressive Democrats had little success. David Duncan Wallace, the historian of South Carolina, estimated that only about 3,500 Negroes voted in the presidential election of 1944 and about 5,000 in 1948. In the latter year the Progressive Democrats sent a slate of delegates to the national party convention and unsuccessfully challenged the regular state Democrats.[31] A similar attempt in 1956 also failed.
The increasing role of the Negro in South Carolina politics has had the effect of spotlighting such issues as civil rights, FEPC, and states rights. The white majority remains as determined as ever to maintain “the Southern way of life” and every inch of ground is yielded grudgingly. The race question is applied to nearly every political issue, either openly or covertly, and all-out attempts have been—and to be sure, still are—made to discredit any proposal or policy that would alter the status quo. The most popular method has been that of equating unpopular measures with communism, atheism, racial “mongrelization,” etc. Sometimes the results have been ludicrous. In his unsuccessful 1950 campaign for the United States Senate, Governor J. Strom Thurmond asserted that had President Truman “not been so busy playing Negro politics,” the nation would not have been involved in the Korean situation.[32] Favorite targets in the 1940’s were President Truman’s civil rights bill and his FEPC proposals. Thomas R. Waring, editor of the News and Courier and not to be confused with his cousin the judge, said the opposition to President Truman’s proposals was based on the belief that they “would be an invasion of states and individual rights” and would result in “an intermingling of races in hotels, restaurants, theaters, buses, and places of employment.” Governor Thurmond termed the FEPC proposals the closest this country had yet come to communism. They would turn the United States into “nothing more than a police state,” he warned. The proposals would force employers “to hire even Hindus.” The Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a few hours after addressing the state legislature where he was warmly received, told a Klan rally that if the civil rights proposals passed, it would “be legal for a Negro to come up on your porch and ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”[33]
Particularly dismaying to the state’s political leaders has been the growing realization that neither of the national political parties can be relied upon to protect what South Carolina Democrats consider to be the best interests of the state and the South. At the 1936 Democratic National Convention the South lost an effective weapon when the party abolished the ⅔ rule for party nominations. Though President Roosevelt had been able to hold the state party leaders in line, major revolts have developed in South Carolina against the national Democratic Party in every presidential election since 1944. Shortly before the 1952 presidential campaign was underway James F. Byrnes declared that the South had become a “stepchild” in national politics while both national parties were becoming slaves to the demands of minorities which held the balance of power in key Northern cities. He labeled the 1948 Democratic platform “more socialistic than democratic,” and the result of pressures brought by “organized minorities of northern states” on the leaders of the Democratic Party. These pressures had forced those leaders “to abandon the cardinal principle of states rights.”[34]
This alleged “renunciation by the Democratic Party of the principles upon which the Republic was founded” led in 1948 to the most successful of the political revolts, if measured in terms of election results. In the presidential election of that year the “Dixiecrat” movement, with Governor Thurmond as its candidate, carried four Southern states. Though this movement was generally justified in terms of states rights and constitutional government, the race issue undoubtedly was of paramount importance in inspiring it.[35] Thurmond publicly and piously objected to the “white supremacy” theme of many of his followers. He professed to be “not interested one whit in the question of white supremacy” and referred to himself as “a progressive Southerner” who was interested in bettering the conditions of the Negro. He said he would conduct his campaign solely in support of “the sovereignty of the states as against federal government interference.” In October he reiterated that he was not running “on a platform of racial discrimination.” That was “for each state to decide.”[36]
Despite such pronouncements the race question ran prominently throughout Thurmond’s campaign speeches. Few did not contain a long attack on President Truman’s various civil rights proposals, especially FEPC. In August he said that if the “segregation program” of President Truman were enforced, “the results in civil strife” might be “horrible beyond imagination.” Lawlessness would be rampant. Chaos would prevail. Streets would be unsafe. The President’s “so called civil rights program” was written by Joseph Stalin in 1920. It was “made to order for Communist use in their designs upon national security.”[37]
In the 1952 election widespread support developed for General Eisenhower in the state because it was believed generally that the Republican Party and its candidate were more in harmony with Southern conservatism and consequently represented less of a “threat” to the South on racial and economic issues.[38] However, slightly more than a majority of the state’s voters remained loyal to the national Democratic Party; Negroes voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic candidate.
IV
The constitution of 1868 authorized the first public school system of South Carolina. Many years passed, however, before the state had a functioning public school system worthy of the name, even for the whites. Funds allocated by the state for public education increased slowly. Though largely spent on white schools such outlays brought limited advancement to Negro education through the trickle down process. Discrepancies between the white and Negro systems continued to grow. Not until the end of the nineteenth century did the total amount spent on Negro education surpass that spent in 1879-80, despite increasing enrollments. Not until 1919-20 did per capita expenditures on Negro schools exceed those of the Hampton administration.[39]
In 1921 Professor Simkins, after making an unverified assertion to the effect that “the educational separation of races in South Carolina at present meets the approval of both races,” admitted that the disproportionate share of the school funds spent for education of the whites displeased the Negro. At this time the white schools received $11.97 per capita while the Negro pupil received only $1.23.[40]
Until the late 1940’s when the NAACP began bringing suits for equal and/or integrated public schools, little support was given in the state for providing public education for Negroes, a situation reflected in the wide discrepancies in the funds spent for white and Negro schools. This attitude, in its most extreme form, was expressed in the inaugural address of Governor Cole Blease in 1911. Blease, a blatant Dixie demagogue, recommended “liberal appropriations for all our state institutions of learning for white boys and girls.” He also favored the improvement of “the free school system so that every white child in South Carolina” could be given “a good common school education.” As for Negro education, the Governor declared that “when the people of this country began to try to educate the Negro they made a serious and grave mistake,” the worst results of which were yet to come. “So why continue?” he asked.[41]
In 1941 Governor Maybank, reputedly more enlightened, appointed a committee to study the state’s education system. It found, among other things, that nineteen counties in the state had no high school for Negroes and that there were 1644 school buses for whites and eight for Negroes.[42]
The relative status of white-Negro education in South Carolina can be illustrated, and better yet dramatized, by reference to a few statistics for the years 1940 and 1952. In 1940 statistics reflected the relative unconcern for quality Negro education. On the other hand, the 1952 figures indicated the progress that had been made by the time the Clarendon County school case was making its way through the courts. The NAACP used these statistics with devastating effect in developing its argument against separate-but-equal systems.[43] Since 1952 substantial improvements have come in both white and Negro schools. Schools for Negroes have been rapidly approaching at least a statistical equality with those of the whites.
| 1940 | 1952 | |||
| White | Negro | White | Negro | |
| Expenditure per pupil | $50.81 | $15.16 | $159.34 | $95.65 |
| Capital outlay per pupil | 6.25 | .66 | 24.70 | 11.45 |
| Average length of school year (days) | 175 | 147 | 180 | 178 |
| Average annual salary of classroom teachers | $938 | $388 | $2,644 | $1,985 |
| Average years of college of classroom teachers | 3.7 | 3.4 | ||
| Books in school libraries per pupil | 2.3 | 0.7 | 3.0 | 0.9 |
Other statistics bear investigation in connection with the state’s public education program. In 1950 the per capita income of South Carolinians was $844, 46th in the nation. In the same year the state spent 3.3 percent of its total personal income on public schools, tenth highest percentage-wise in the country. In 1952, 42.7 percent of the pupils attending public schools in the state were Negroes, a somewhat higher percentage than Negroes in the total population. Between 1940 and 1950 the white population of the state increased 19.3 percent while the Negro population increased only 1.0 percent. Yet during the period 1940-52 the Negro school population increased 12.5 percent compared to a white pupil increase of 9.9 percent.[44]
As late as 1918 only one public Negro high school was operating in the state! Not until 1930 did South Carolina have an accredited Negro high school. By 1950 there were 80 state accredited Negro high schools, only ten of which, however, were recognized by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. By comparison there were 301 state accredited white high schools, 56 of which met the accrediting standards of the Southern Association.[45]
The same inequality evidenced on the public school level existed in higher education. The state maintains five institutions of higher learning for whites and one for Negroes. The Negro institution was originally rather thoroughly named the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural, and Mechanical College. The total state appropriation for the white colleges in 1949 was in excess of $4,500,000 while that for the Negro college was less than $600,000. Dr. Lewis K. McMillan, former professor of history at the Negro institution, described the college as “a glorified high school” treated as a “step child” by the state. Until after World War II the college did not have a nominal graduate or law school. However, in the light of a spate of federal court decisions admitting Negro students to white state universities when equal educational opportunities were lacking in state-supported Negro schools, the 1945 state appropriations act authorized the college to establish “graduate, Law, and Medical departments and such other departments as may be necessary to provide training in all lines of college activities for students attending this college.” No money was appropriated until 1946 and then a completely inadequate $25,000 for the graduate school. In 1947 $60,000 was appropriated for the Law School. “Medical and pharmaceutical training” was authorized to the extent of a paltry appropriation of $15,000 in 1950.[46]
While federal court cases in other states provided a general impetus to this program, the danger that a Negro might be admitted to the University of South Carolina loomed ominously on the horizon in 1946 when a Negro, Cleveland M. McQueen, applied for admission as a graduate student in the School of Education. The state answered his request with the appropriation for a graduate school at the Negro college.[47] In the same year another Negro, John Wrighten, applied for admission to the University Law School and was denied admittance. He then took his case to the courts which ruled that unless the state provided a law school at the Negro college “on a substantial parity with the University Law School” by September, 1947, Wrighten had to be admitted to the latter. By the deadline a law school had been established and Wrighten made no further appeal.[48] Until January, 1958, no Negro made a concerted effort to gain admission to one of the white institutions of higher education. Two Negroes applied for admission to Clemson College in 1956 but did not press their applications after being refused. But in January, 1958, as will be seen in Chapter VII, Negro students were clearing the decks for a law suit to force admission to the University of South Carolina.