Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

THE NEW NULLIFICATION

In cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty of such state to interpose its authority for their protection.—Hartford Convention (1814)

In the final analysis, the sound and fury of professional hate groups, white supremacy organizations, “legal” resistance movements, and “voluntary” segregation advocates would signify nothing without active leadership and cooperation from the state government. Consequently, organizations and individuals supporting segregation have made doubly sure that there is no wavering on the part of public officials. Toward this end, for example, the Lamar Citizens Council resolved that “the powers of legislative decision and administrative responsibility must remain in the exclusive control” of men who supported “constitutional government, states rights ... individual liberty,” and “the separation of races in the schools and colleges and social institutions of this state.”[297] Segregationists have had no difficulty whatsoever in achieving this objective if for no other than the simple reason that political leaders are of one and the same opinion. Amongst the politicians there has not been a single instance of deviation from accepted attitudes of complete racial segregation. With such unanimity of opinion, extremists inevitably would be able to set the pace in the state legislature. That is precisely what has happened.

Immediately following the Court decision, much advice, largely unsolicited, was given to state policy makers. The News and Courier called “for moderation, for calm and wise decisions” in meeting the crisis. It offered no specific policies for immediate consideration by state officials but it did suggest for the time being a delaying action, “a masterly retreat, in the Robert Edward Lee tradition of rear-guard actions, including flank attacks.” Lest there be any doubt, the Charleston paper reaffirmed its opposition to “de-segregation, or integration, or amalgamation or any other tricky method of mixing the races in public schools.”[298] The Florence Morning News, too, called for “calm, reasonable and foresighted” leadership by “statesmen” not “politicians.” Statesmen, it declared, “are not people who can shout ‘nigger’ and they are not people who can prove—with words—that the Negro is an inferior animal.” Solution of the problem would result not from speeches that “inflame groups and excite the passions of extremists,” but rather from “good sense, calm action and kind reason.”[299]

W. D. Workman, Jr., the News and Courier correspondent in Columbia, thought South Carolina could take any one of five actions: acceptance of the Court decision; “nullification” of the decision; abolition of public schools; “evasive action,” such as the establishment of a private school system to circumvent the Court decision; or “passive resistance” which he deftly defined as “non-compliance rather than open defiance.”[300]

The legislature was not in session at the time of the original ruling. Therefore immediate policy decisions had to be made by Governor James F. Byrnes. The latter decided that since the Supreme Court had failed to implement its decree, it was unnecessary to call a special session of the legislature. On May 20, 1954, however, he ordered a halt to all school construction under the state’s equalization program. In July the Gressette Committee recommended resumption of construction and the ban was lifted on August 31.[301]

The new school building program represents the state’s one real constructive reaction to Negro integration efforts. The purpose may have been less an altruistic desire to improve Negro education than to furnish the state with another arguing point in the preservation of segregation. Whatever the motive, an immediate result has been to provide Negroes with greatly improved, though still segregated, educational facilities.

Early in 1956 Dr. E. Ryan Crow, the able director of the “equalization” program, announced that despite “a fatal indifference to equalizing facilities for Negroes” in some areas, the program had been approximately 85 percent completed. The program’s magnitude demonstrates that South Carolina whites, when pushed far enough, will make efforts to equalize the Negro schools—at least from a physical standpoint. Expenditures in Clarendon County are indicative: between 1951 and 1956 the state spent $770,576 on white school construction as against $2,166,895 on Negro school construction. In the Summerton school district which was directly involved in the case, $102,596 was spent on white school construction as compared to $892,114 for Negro school construction.[302]

In the gubernatorial election of 1954, George Bell Timmerman, Jr., who had been lieutenant governor for eight years, was chosen to succeed Governor Byrnes. Taking office in January, 1955, Governor Timmerman, son of the Federal District Judge who had ruled against the Negro plaintiffs in the Clarendon County case, became the key figure in the state’s official opposition to any and all desegregation. For this reason his public statements are of special significance. The new Governor, a forty-five year old lawyer from Lexington County, is a humorless and fanatical segregationist. On one occasion he told a national television audience that segregation in the state would not end “in a thousand years.”[303] Considering the problem in its more immediate implications, he said on another occasion: “If you let one [Negro] child come in ... you’ve opened the door. There can’t be any compromise—you can’t compromise right with wrong.” In still another instance he declared: “With the knowledge that right, justice and truth are our allies, we shall not fail. There shall be no compulsory racial mixing in our state.”[304]

Timmerman insisted that segregation did not involve discrimination. Equality went “hand in hand” with separation. In developing this theme the Governor added:

The two terms [discrimination and segregation] are not interchangeable. I am opposed to discrimination on any grounds, racial or otherwise, but it does not necessarily follow that racial discrimination results from racial separation. If anything separation makes for less discrimination, for it does not provide a basis for the inevitable discrimination which will follow if white and Negro children are mingled in the same schools and the same classrooms.

... The “separate-but-equal” policy provides a fair and practicable basis for race relations in South Carolina. If the administration of the law in years past has been faulty, the need is for improved administration such as we are now giving, not abandonment of the principle itself.[305]

Timmerman asserted that the positive “benefits” of segregation were realized by the state’s Negro population. He claimed that “many Negro parents living in Washington and other cities to the North of us are leaving their children with relatives in our State so that their children can enjoy the benefit of a Southern climate in segregated public schools.”[306] The Governor did not say whether he was referring to climate in its physical aspects or in the realm of opinion and mores.

In his inaugural address, Timmerman criticized even the suggestion of a moderate consideration of the segregation issue. “The cowardly approach of gradualism,” he described as “the essence of discrimination,” “a creeping evil” that had no place in “the government of a free people.”[307] Constantly reiterating that “white parents” and “most Negro parents” opposed integration, he applauded “the calm attitude” in which white South Carolinians had approached the issue. Since the latter were determined to resist integration, “the sensible choice of the Negro” was to accept and support separate but equal schools. “Our common task is one of patience, understanding and unyielding determination,” said the Governor. “In this way we can minimize some of the tragedy which the Supreme Court would impose upon us all. There will be no compulsory racial mixing in our state.”[308]

Also indicative was Timmerman’s criticism of President Eisenhower’s appeal that every American be “judged and measured by what he is, rather than by his color, race or religion.” He complained that “never before has a national administration proclaimed as unimportant a person’s race and religion.” How better, he asked, could a person be “judged and measured” as to what he is? “A man’s most priceless possession is his heritage. A man’s most priceless achievement is his religious faith.”[309]

Whatever one may think of it, Timmerman’s attitude is in no sense hypocritical; it is in complete consonance with his political credo. He is a conservative in the peculiarly Southern sense of the word, a racist, a states righter, an advocate of decentralized government. In referring to federal aid to education, he declared: “As far as I am concerned, if I must be taxed and controlled, I would rather be taxed by laws enacted sensibly by local representatives of my own state in whose election I have some choice, than to be taxed ill-advisedly by representatives of the other states, in whose selection I have no choice.”[310] The full measure of his political conservatism is reflected in a speech delivered before the Southern regional conference of the Association of State Governments at Charleston in the spring of 1956. George Washington, he said, gave “to posterity prophetic advice of strikingly current significance” when he cautioned against a “spirit of innovation” upon the principles embodied in the Constitution. Such a “spirit,” warned the Governor, was “prevalent and growing.”[311]

The state legislature and the special school segregation committee, headed by Senator L. Marion Gressette of Calhoun County, also have played leading roles in the official opposition to integration. The Gressette Committee, consisting of 15 members appointed by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Solomon Blatt, one of that rare variety of Jewish segregationists, had been formed in 1951 as a result of the Clarendon County school case. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, the committee embarked in earnest on its task of determining the best course to be followed in circumventing the integration drive. Beginning in July the committee held a series of closed hearings which sounded out the attitudes of leading individuals and groups. It heard from such diverse individuals as the presidents of all state supported colleges, including Dr. Benner C. Turner of the state Negro college; former Governor Byrnes; E. H. Agnew, president of the state Farm Bureau Federation; G. L. Ivey, president of the Florence National Association for the Advancement of White People; representatives from the Charleston NAACP and the Negro teachers association.

The initial efforts of the committee were generally applauded. The News and Courier praised its “statesmanlike and cautious approach.”[312] The Morning News was somewhat more reserved. In addition to criticizing the closed hearings, Editor O’Dowd suggested that the scope of the committee’s responsibility be widened to include a study of the price South Carolina was willing to pay for segregated schools. The same paper made the ingenious proposal that a “devil’s advocate,” an “open and declared advocate of integration,” be placed on the committee. Such a person, it was pointed out, could expose the flaws in the various plans for continuing segregation.[313]

In justifying the closed hearings, the committee’s first interim report explained that this was done “to avoid hasty action and public misunderstanding, which could cause inflammation and friction.”[314] In at least one instance what transpired behind committee doors was revealed to the press. In a letter to the News and Courier, A. J. Clement, Jr., the Charleston NAACP president, stated that when appearing before the committee, he had urged “that South Carolina accept the Supreme Court decision” and begin steps toward desegregation “forthwith.” Clement acknowledged the magnitude of the problem involved. “Molds and patterns of living, customs and habits in daily activities” could not be altered overnight. The state of New Jersey provided an example of gradual desegregation such as Clement envisaged for South Carolina. In New Jersey the Negro had “all of the educational, civic, political opportunities” he was fighting for in South Carolina. Yet “the mark, the impression, the influence, the stunting effects of former discriminatory practices and racial segregations” were still present. He appealed to the Gressette Committee to take the initial step toward desegregation in South Carolina.[315]

The attitude of the Gressette Committee has been revealed in its reports to the state legislature and in speeches by its chairman. The latter, like the Governor, holds that a majority of Negroes desire segregation. On one occasion he asserted that 98 percent of the state’s Negroes were uninterested in forcibly integrating the races. (Significantly, he neglected to say whether these same Negroes would be opposed to integration if the question of force was not involved.) To buttress his opinion, Gressette cited the NAACP’s “failure to obtain more petitions” for integration in the public schools, despite its alleged use of “fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” Similar ideas have been expressed in committee reports. In January, 1955, the committee found no reason to alter its view “that the consensus of public opinion in the State favors better educational opportunity for children—in separate schools.” Such a view is in all probability substantially true but the matter is academic since the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. The following December, the committee revealed there were “many indications, and few if any to the contrary, that sentiment in favor of separate schools and against integrated schools” had crystallized during 1956. It further expressed agreement “with those who maintain that the decision of the United States Supreme Court was improper,” representing a usurpation of executive and legislative functions by the Supreme Court. And it proposed “to employ every legal means” to maintain a segregated school system which it “in good conscience” believed to be “in the best interests” of the children of both races. With some real basis in fact the Committee held that events were proving “that the Court did not intend to force integration on an unwilling people.”[316]

The public school system is, of course, the key factor in the segregation-integration controversy. The one great trump card, though a miserable joker for the children of the state, is the threat to close down the public school system if integration is ordered. It has been spelled out to leave no doubts. If a Negro pupil is admitted to a white school by court order, both the white and Negro schools which are involved are to be closed. This threat takes in not only primary and secondary public schools but also state supported institutions of higher education, including graduate and professional schools.

Reactions have varied to the possibility of closing the public schools. Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings, opposing such action, asserted that “it’s foolish to even consider for a moment that abolishing public education is the solution.” On another occasion he insisted: “We can never abandon our public school system.”[317] Yet he reassured the people that schools were “intended for education and not integration.”[318] And since segregation was a “natural thing,” it followed that “a majority of Negroes” was no more enthusiastic about integration than whites. The Lieutenant Governor took the realistic position that any private school plan “might be tossed out by the court as a ‘trick’ designed to circumvent the decree.”[319] He advocated a system that would be premised on local control. Pupils would be assigned to schools by the local superintendent or trustees on a basis other than race—“sex, aptitude, proximity of school to home and available classroom space.” Such a plan, he thought, would meet the requirements of the court.[320]

W. D. Workman, Jr., in evaluating public opinion on the abolition of the public schools, considered it “extremely doubtful” that a majority of South Carolinians was prepared to do away with the system altogether. None the less he reported that “in some parts of the state,” white parents considered segregation more important than education. The News and Courier editorially agreed. “Compulsory mingling of the races in public schools,” it announced, would be “a worse thing than closing them.” The Charleston paper attacked the public school system per se:

Many thoughtful citizens of South Carolina long have been dissatisfied with the educational performance of our public schools. We say this not in criticism of public school teachers or officials, because it has been the system—rather than the participants in the system—which is at fault.

The public schools have suffered because of political pressures, complacency due to lack of competition and a trend to gear lessons to the dullest of the pupils. Social promotions, progressive education and over-emphasis on athletics and such nonsense as drum majorettes and beauty contests have lowered the educational standards of public schools....

In the future, South Carolinians who do not wish to send their children to public schools should be encouraged to send them to private schools. This encouragement should be in the form of an allotment of money by the state toward the private school tuition of any child who does not attend public schools....

We believe that private schools which offered a poor education soon would go out of business, and that private schools which offered a good education would thrive and multiply. There would be competition among private schools to do a good educational job. At present there is no competition among public schools....[321]

Others expressed like sentiments. Henry E. Davis, a Florence attorney, told the local Citizens Council: “Close your schools if it comes to that.... Closing public schools is not such a calamity and private schools get the best results anyway.” Another Citizens Council speaker, state representative O. L. Warr of Lamar, advised a Beaufort rally that rather than accept integration, public schools should be abandoned “reluctantly but inflexibly without flinch or falter.”[322] The letter of T. H. McFaddin of Gable to the News and Courier is revealing:

Any court that does not consider what is best for the white child, in my opinion is a kangaroo court. No one can read into the Constitution, that any child should be found guilty for being born a white child and be sentenced to over three quarters of every year during its school term to be mixed with children of another race. For there is no commandment that reads, Thou shalt not keep thy race pure....

Books are cheap. Education can be gotten by mail to a great extent ... the only way to beat this school mixture of the races is to advertise all school property for sale.[323]

A few outspoken champions of the public school system have come forward to be heard. Morning News Editor O’Dowd declared that “our educational system is of more importance than mores, political opposition, state-wide resentment or mass disappointment.”[324] Likewise Mrs. C. B. Busbee, head of the education department of the South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs, said that “the abandonment of a system of public schools would set back the cause of education for all our people 100 years.”[325]

In view of the role of the schoolhouse in the segregation controversy, the attitude of education groups is significant. The Council of Delegates of the South Carolina Education Association, an organization of white classroom teachers and administrators, in October, 1954, approved a resolution which held segregated schools “the best form of organization for meeting the needs of children of both races,” and urged “an adequate system of free public schools in South Carolina be maintained.”[326] Other education groups have been more hesitant to state their positions. Not until August, 1955, more than a year after the court decision, did the Association of School Administrators and the School Boards Association, an organization of school trustees, take their stand. The School Administrators pledged themselves “to the preservation, continuation, and improvement of the public school system of South Carolina.” The school trustees adopted a resolution which observed that “as long as the State of South Carolina, through its legislative authority, continues its policy of withholding funds for the operation of integrated schools, our schools must continue to be segregated if they are to remain open.” The trustees pledged themselves to keep the public schools open “so that responsibility for closing them must be assumed by other authorities.”[327] A sad commentary is that no one administratively connected with any state supported institution of higher learning publicly has opposed the state’s threat to close those institutions if a Negro were admitted. To summarize, the threatened abolition of the public school system would indicate lack of appreciation by white South Carolinians of the fundamental role of a system of free education in a democratic society.

The question of federal aid to education naturally has intruded itself into the school integration controversy. So intense is the feeling on this subject that it has become another of the articles of faith upon which orthodoxy is demanded of all public spokesmen. Without doubt a large majority of white South Carolinians agreed with the News and Courier when it referred to federal aid to education as “bribery” to be used by integrationists. Governor Timmerman characterized federal aid as “sugar-coated federal taxation.” He told the 1956 General Assembly that propaganda for federal aid to education fostered upon the people “a big political hoax, the claim of an acute shortage of school buildings.” That contention, said the Governor, was “simply untrue.”[328] Some South Carolina school administrators might have been disposed to disagree were it discreet to do so.

Public officials and other leaders in the state have spoken out against federal aid, especially if it suggests any inkling of federal control. That South Carolina’s schools are already receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal money for educational purposes has been conveniently overlooked. Most spokesmen oppose federal aid per se. Occasionally, however, proposals have been made which are designed to give the states federal money with no strings attached. For example, University of South Carolina President Donald Russell who resigned in October, 1957, to run for governor, suggested that the federal government return to the states on a per capita basis ten percent of all federal income taxes collected. This plan, declared Russell, would involve no federal control and thus would test the sincerity of “those who would pervert the matter of federal aid into a coercive weapon to promote some alien or sociological goal.”[329]

The state legislature expressed itself on the subject in March, 1957. The House of Representatives adopted a resolution, introduced by Rep. P. Eugene Brabham of Bamberg, which noted that South Carolinians “are now, always have been and shall always be unequivocally, incontrovertibly and unalterably opposed to any federal invasion, encroachment or infringement of the fundamental right, obligation and duty of the people and their local authority to provide, supervise and control the education of the children of this state or the educational processes concomitant thereon.”[330]

A central theme of the opponents of federal aid to education is the contention that South Carolina does not need any more money for operation of its schools. They point with pride to the large scale school building program which the state has undertaken in response to the demands by Negroes for racial integration. The South Carolina Conference of Education, a group appointed by Governor Byrnes to study education in the state, reported in late 1955 that in regard to federal aid to education “no funds are sought or desired, except in those areas like North Charleston or Aiken where federal installations have caused increases in school population out of all proportion to normal growth and development.”[331]

Opponents of federal aid usually overlook all factors in the school program except classroom construction. They disregard the pitifully low salaries of classroom teachers and the resultant insufficient training of many teachers. They also tend to ignore the results of tests conducted by the American Council of Education. South Carolina students, according to results announced early in 1956, ranked nationally as follows:

• 34th in English correctness and effectiveness of expression
• 36th in general mathematical ability
• 42nd in interpretation of literary material
• 46th in interpretation of reading material on the natural sciences
• 47th in interpretation of reading material in social studies

According to a 1958 report of the National Education Association, South Carolina ranks at the very bottom of the nation in its record of public school education. Among the states it is 48th in the number of median school years completed by persons 25 years of age and older. It is 47th in the per cent of adult (25 years and older) population with less than five years of schooling (27.4 per cent of its adults have less than five years of formal education) and it is 48th in the percentage of its adult population who have completed four years of high school. It occupies 47th position in the percentage of selective service registrants disqualified by mental tests. In the percentage of its eighth grade enrollment going on to finish high school the Palmetto State is 46th. With regard to teacher pay, South Carolina ranks 45th; the average salary of its classroom teachers is $3,250.

Statistics such as these hardly give credence to Rep. Ashmore’s statement that “what South Carolina has done with its schools is evidence in itself any state in the union can take care of its own school needs.”[332]

The press of the state generally denounces federal aid for education. The News and Courier went so far as to condemn federally subsidized school lunches. If school children should get such lunches, it argued, they should also receive suppers and breakfasts. “The difference between government-sponsored school lunches and the welfare state is only a matter of degree.” Similarly, the Record thought that federal aid could destroy “freedom and inventiveness in the schools” while the Morning News suggested it would in reality make less funds available for education because of the bureaucratic costs of collecting the taxes and sending the money back to the states.[333]

On occasion, however, a newspaper editorialist has questioned the arguments used against federal aid. The Independent, rarely missing a chance to lash out against former Governor Byrnes, wondered how the Palmetto State’s elder statesman could oppose federal taxation of South Carolinians for building schools in other states and not oppose taxation of citizens of other states to build defense and military installations in South Carolina. Driving this point home, the Anderson newspaper then stated that in the past both South Carolina and Byrnes had received far more money through federal channels than they had paid out in federal taxes. Likewise the Morning News objected to arguments that federal aid was socialism. Socialism, said the Florence newspaper, depended on whether South Carolina got anything from it. “Our politicians say they will not accept federal aid to education because it is socialistic.... The truth is that they do not need this particular aid, so they can refuse it with indignation.”[334]

A concrete instance of the federal aid to education question came to light in mid-August of 1957 when Clemson College, the state’s agricultural and engineering school for whites, rejected a grant of $350,000 from the Atomic Energy Commission. According to the provisions of the grant, of which the college’s board of trustees had accepted an initial payment of $99,050, “the grantee agrees that no person shall be barred from participation in the educational and training program involved or be the subject of other unfavorable discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion.” Inasmuch as racial discrimination undeniably existed at Clemson, the trustees belatedly decided to withdraw from the agreement with the AEC and to return to it the $99,050. Clemson president R. E. Poole stressed, however, that the college’s nuclear testing and experimental program would continue.

Governor Timmerman, choosing to ignore the obvious racial discrimination at Clemson, defended the college’s action on the far less realistic grounds that the inclusion of the word “creed” in the conditions of the grant would prohibit Clemson authorities from denying participation in the atomic energy program to a Communist. This lawyer’s trick in semantics was applauded by the Columbia State which ironically at this very time was leading a last-ditch fight to prevent the closing of nearby Fort Jackson, a federal military installation on which not a small part of Columbia’s economic well being directly depends. “This affair,” pontificated the State, “is an affirmation of the principle that federal aid means federal control.” The News and Courier also praised Clemson’s action, though recognizing that its atomic energy program would have to be reduced in scope to the detriment of the state. “So far as we know,” said the Charleston paper, “Clemson is the first Southern college to make such a forthright choice between freedom and government handouts. Other colleges sooner or later will have to make the same decision. We hope they will be guided by the example of the Clemson trustees. We do not know how many federal dollars the choice of freedom will cost Southern colleges. Freedom is an expensive commodity. It is worth every cent.”[335]

Though the state legislature did not reach the zenith of its anti-integration zeal until 1956, its 1955 session provided an informative prelude. Legislators in 1955 were more hesitant than a year later, perhaps because the Supreme Court had not yet implemented the original decision. Nevertheless a number of important measures were adopted. The Gressette committee recommended and the legislature adopted proposals that repealed the state’s compulsory attendance law, gave local school trustees authority to sell or lease school property, and prohibited automatic renewal of teacher contracts.[336]

Only the repeal of the state’s compulsory school attendance law evoked any considerable opposition. In the Senate Lewis Wallace of York County alone opposed repeal and then on the curious grounds that the measure was an “abject surrender” to the Court decision. Greater objection developed in the House. The House Education Committee approved the measure thirteen to eight but on the floor Representative Richard L. Breeland of Richland County, a high school teacher and lawyer, led the opposition. He urged that repeal be postponed until after the Supreme Court had given its final ruling. “In clearing the decks,” he said, “let’s be careful we don’t sink the ship.” His chief adversary in debate was John Calhoun Hart, an impulsive school teacher from Union County. “Our very way of life is at stake,” he exclaimed. “Our ethnological makeup may be swept away. If we falter, we shall go down into the sewer of mongrelism.”[337] The repeal of this law was generally accepted as an unpleasant but imperative move.

The Independent regarded the repeal measure, along with other laws which undermined the public school system, as a tactical action necessary “to realize the overall strategy of maintaining segregated schools.”[338] In abrogating the law the legislature was simply reflecting the will of the people, thought the News and Courier. In thus functioning “as a truly representative body in a Republic,” the legislature was observing a principle “more important than the compulsory attendance law, or even public education itself.”[339] By analogy, then, if the people of South Carolina were bent upon intellectual suicide, the logic of the Charleston paper would have the legislature legally send them to their destruction.

In several other particulars, the 1955 legislature sought to hold the segregation line. Most important was a provision in the general state appropriation bill which stated that: “Appropriations of state aid for teachers, salaries, and all other school district, county and state appropriations for the operation of the public school system shall cease and become inoperative for any school from which, and for any school to which, any pupil may transfer pursuant to, or in consequence of, any order of any court, for the time that the pupil shall attend a school other than the school to which he was assigned before the issuance of such court order.”[340]

The legislators also called upon Congress “to enact legislation limiting the appellate jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court and the jurisdiction of the other Federal Courts so that the fields of government of the executive and legislative branches and that of the several states shall not be invaded, but shall remain separate and distinct.” Later the legislators, in urging the Supreme Court not to implement its earlier decision, declared that integration in South Carolina would result in “hatred, strife, chaos and confusion,” and the “possible wrecking of the educational program.” Consequently, “at no time in the foreseeable future” would it be possible to desegregate the public schools of South Carolina. Reflecting a blindness to the realities of the twentieth century, the resolution concluded on a note of perverse logic that the continuation of segregation would weld and unite America and thus enable the country to present “a solid front of democracy” to the world.[341]

In 1956 the state legislature enacted anti-integration and anti-NAACP proposals at almost a mass production rate. If no pertinent law could be enacted, the legislators adopted, usually unanimously, resolutions to express their opinion on a particular phase of the integration controversy. Altogether more than a dozen important measures were passed. These included a resolution of interposition; a law requiring white colleges and the Negro college to close if integration were ordered by the courts; a law barring NAACP members from state, county or local government employment; a resolution ordering an investigation of NAACP activities at the state Negro college; a resolution requesting the federal government to place the NAACP on the attorney general’s subversive list; a provision limiting all appropriations for state schools and parks to segregated schools and parks only; a law closing Edisto Beach State Park because Negroes had filed a court suit seeking admission; a resolution requesting the State Library Board to remove current, and screen future, books “inimical and antagonistic” to the segregation customs of the state; a resolution commending the Citizens Councils; a resolution requesting President Eisenhower to restore segregation in the nation’s armed forces to rebuild morale and esprit de corps; the establishment of the Gressette Committee as a permanent legislative committee; a measure giving local law enforcement officers the power to transfer pupils from one school to another to avoid “civil commotion;” an enactment giving local school boards the power to make enrollment rules and regulations having the force and effect of law, appeals from such rules to be channeled through state courts; and finally a resolution stating the legislators’ support of continued bus segregation.[342]

Of all these actions the interposition resolution received the most publicity. Revived during the period by Editor James J. Kilpatrick of the Richmond, Virginia, News Leader, interposition has become the shopworn answer of the states righters and “constitutionalists” to the integration controversy. It is designed to please those elements which have rationalized their prejudices and objections to racial integration on constitutional grounds. Their contention, rightly held to be sure, is that the founding fathers had not contemplated integration in 1787 when they wrote the Constitution. Also appealing is the long and hoary history of interposition and its companion nullification. It had begun in 1798 and 1799 with the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of Jefferson and Madison and subsequently had run through the Hartford Convention of 1814, Calhoun’s nullification attempts in 1832 and Wisconsin’s refusal to accept the Fugitive Slave Law in 1859. The Virginia resolution and the Hartford Convention both used the term “interpose.” Illustrating that the use of interposition or nullification was more a weapon of the political outs than of a geographic section, the Hartford Convention, in terms worthy of the best states righters of the 1950’s, had declared that “in cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty of such state to interpose its authority for their protection.”

The historically outmoded theory behind interposition is the core of the states rights argument: the federal government is a creature of the states, which had united to establish a central authority. The Constitution set the rules and regulations which governed that central authority. Ultimate sovereignty, however, continued to rest with the states. If the people of the states felt that the federal government had exceeded its authority, then they—acting through the states—had the power to challenge the action of the federal government.[343] In theory the challenge would take the form of a suspensive veto which would hold the particular act of the federal government to be null and void until approved by ¾ of the states by a constitutional amendment. The theory resolved itself into a basic question: Is the federal government or are the state governments the final judge of the authority of the federal government? Historically, the political outs have answered the states, though the Civil War, certainly if it meant anything constitutionally speaking, proved the contrary to be true. In the 1950’s the South represented the political outs in the segregation controversy.

The interposition doctrine connoted different things to different people; consequently, it produced varied reactions. Governor Timmerman, who considered interposition a form of protest, believed it “fundamentally sound.” Representative James L. Richards, dean of the state’s congressional delegation and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised interposition as a means of protest but balked at talk of nullification. Interposition he defined as “an assertion, a protest, and a declaration of opinion of illegality.” He urged South Carolinians to “avoid the passion and hysteria that will lead men to ‘ride at night,’ take the law into their own hands, or insult the United States flag.”[344] On the other hand, the silver-maned Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of Charleston declared that “interposition is worthless unless it carries with it the corresponding power of nullification.” Indicating that at least one later day Charlestonian had learned nothing from the nullification crisis of 1832, Rivers asserted that “interposition without nullification is a knife without an edge, a gun without bullets, a plane without an engine or a head without a body.”[345] Similarly, S. Emory Rogers, the Summerton attorney and Citizens Council leader, agreed that there could be “no effective interposition without nullification.”[346]

Newspaper opinion also varied. The Record considered interposition “sound” when viewed “as a device for formalizing the states’ protest against amendment of the Constitution by judicial decision.” But like Representative Richards, the Record looked upon any nullification proposal as “counsel of confusion” which could be supported “only by ... outdated law and pre-Confederate War logic.”[347] The Morning News endorsed interposition as “in all probability, the only proper answer” to the segregation controversy. However, it cautioned interposition advocates to be prepared to accept the possible consequences. Should the nation admit the challenge of the interposition theory and in fact approve the integration decision by constitutional amendment, the South would be bound by its own doctrine to adopt integration.[348] Such an eventuality would test the sincerity of the constitutional objections to integration. The Independent, while considering interposition “worthy of the test,” also realized this danger. In the main, however, the Anderson paper was wary of the whole doctrine because of its support by economic conservatives. “Is there thought in some quarters,” asked the Independent, “that the doctrine might be used to combat not racial decisions alone, but also decisions and legislation dealing with such matters as wages and hours, old age pensions, health insurance, right to work laws and other issues that might arise in the future?”[349]

The News and Courier gave unqualified assent to interposition but never definitely identified the doctrine with outright nullification. That this paper was willing to carry the issue to an extreme, however, was demonstrated on several occasions. Southerners, it declared,

... understand, we believe, the meaning of nullification. Though many are afraid of the consequences—they have been coerced, bought and brainwashed for nearly a quarter of a century now—there are many others who are eager for a showdown.

Southerners do not talk about Civil War II. That is a bogeyman to scare the faint of heart. There will be no war. There may be “economic sanctions” such as withholding of some form of federal aid....

Whatever may be the form of interposition, the South will not, cannot and should not accept dictatorship while breath remains in Southern breasts....

For many reasons the News and Courier advocated interposition, the most important being that it “could raise the issue above the tumult and the shouting” of race and thus place “state sovereignty on the highest plane.” The doctrine “should be held in reserve for use in cases of maximum gravity.”[350]

Interposition was first considered seriously late in 1955. In January, 1956, Governor Timmerman and several other Southern governors attended a conference in Richmond, Virginia, where the problem was discussed with a view toward united action. The conference approved a statement urging all the Southern states to adopt a “resolution of interposition or protest.” Upon returning from the conference, Governor Timmerman recommended that the state legislature approve such a resolution. He described the interposition doctrine as representing “the studious thought and deliberate work of the men who have provided sound advice and wise leadership in this crisis.”[351]

A resolution interposing the sovereignty of the state of South Carolina between its people and the federal government was introduced into the legislature by Senator Gressette on January 31 and adopted February 14. It condemned “the illegal encroachment by the central government into the reserved powers of the states and the rights of the people.” The resolution protested “against the grave threat to constitutional government, implicit in the recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.” Eight closely connected reasons were enumerated in justification for interposition. “The right of each of the States to maintain ... racially separate public schools ... is not forbidden or limited” by the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Supreme Court handed down its desegregation decision, it departed from “the sanctity of past decisions” and relied “on the current political and social philosophy of its members.” Such in effect constituted an amendment to the Constitution, since the Court ignored the “principle that the meaning of the Constitution and its Amendments does not change. It is a written instrument.” This usurpation of power by the Court transcended even the “problems of segregation in education.” Under such circumstances the sovereign state of South Carolina could “judge for itself of the infraction of the Constitution.”

For these reasons, then, the legislature resolved that the Court decision was “a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous attempt to change the true intent and meaning of the Constitution;” that the state “condemns and protests” against this illegal encroachment of the federal government upon the rights of the states; and that South Carolina reserved for itself the right to take such “legal measures” as it might deem appropriate “to protect its sovereignty and the rights of its people.”[352]

Scattered opposition developed in the legislature against the resolution. The more extreme elements clamored for a stronger statement! One of the modern “fire eaters,” Representative George Harrell of Florence, previously had introduced an interposition resolution in the House on January 10, 1956, which would have declared “that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that segregation of races in public schools of this state is unconstitutional, is, in itself, unconstitutional, contrary to law, and therefore null and void and of no effect so far as this state is concerned.”[353] On the House floor, Representative John M. Horlbeck of Charleston echoed the News and Courier: “This is a resolution of protest and not of interposition. There are many who think that this resolution should state a positive position asserting and pledging the authority of the State to prevent the implementation of what this resolution terms an unlawful decree. I am of this opinion.”[354]

The press of the state underscored the protest nature of the Timmerman resolution. The political writer, W. D. Workman, Jr., termed it “a states rights resolution which is well-worded, well-reasoned and eminently logical, but ... NOT an interposition resolution.” It marched “briskly” up to the threshold of interposition and then stopped. Decrying such hesitation, he declared that “somewhere, sometime, somehow, the people and the states must stand and fight, or else watch the American form of government evolve into centralism.”[355] The Independent agreed. The resolution, thought this upcountry paper, amounted to nothing more than a protest. Since no assertion was made of “the state’s claim to the right of outright nullification,” it was meaningless. The Anderson daily questioned the seriousness of state political leadership in the whole interposition affair.[356] The Record, which strongly opposed all implications of nullification, praised the resolution as a “solemn protest” and a “dignified document.” It condemned the trend in the nation toward “an all-powerful central government, constructed in the form of an absolute democracy” in which the minority would have no rights. This situation was caused by the political thinking of the big Northern cities—thinking that was partially to be explained “by the high proportion of European immigrants in their population.” These people could not “even understand” such historical American concepts as states rights.[357] Shades of John C. Calhoun, perhaps, but completely comprehensible to regular readers of the Record’s xenophobic editorials.

Expressing similar views, Senator Gressette said that the resolution would serve notice to all America that the major political parties were “victims of small pressure groups ... in some of the larger cities and states of the North and East.”[358]

The full implications of the doctrine of interposition emerged in stark reality early in September when Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state’s national guard to prevent implementation of a federal court decree ordering the integration of a Little Rock high school. Though Faubus made no reference to interposition and claimed that he had called out the troops solely to maintain order and to prevent bloodshed, many South Carolinians insisted, and with some reason, that the Governor’s defiance of federal authority constituted interposition in effect if not in name. “Use of state troops to prevent Little Rock’s school board from carrying out integration orders of a federal judge is a direct act of interposition,” said a News and Courier editorial. “The doctrine of interposition,” it added, “has been hazy in the minds of many persons, even in the South. Now it has taken shape in the form of state troops on school patrol.” The following morning the State followed the lead of the Charleston paper: “We have in Arkansas a first-class example of interposition—a state putting itself between the federal government and the people.” A few days later the same paper leveled an editorial blast against United States District Judge Ronald N. Davies who issued the integration decree. “In the first place a North Dakota judge, no matter how learned he may be in law or how sternly he can throw around his bantamweight, should never have been put in the position of making the integration ruling in Little Rock,” said Editor Samuel Latimer. “He couldn’t possibly have any deep understanding of the relationship between the whites and Negroes in the South and because of this shallow knowledge he has created a most unpleasant situation.” Mr. Latimer’s analysis was a bit ironic since the State’s editorials had constantly demanded that judicial decisions be premised on law and not the sociological opinions of the judges.[359]

Measures taken against the NAACP are another important phase in the state’s efforts to preserve segregation unimpaired. These have given official direction to the drive to eradicate the NAACP in South Carolina. In February, 1956, the state legislature unanimously adopted a resolution urging the attorney general of the United States to classify the NAACP “as a subversive organization so that it may be kept under the proper surveillance and that all citizens of the United States may have ample warning of the danger to our way of life which lurks in such an organization.” By way of justification the legislators maintained that the files of the Un-American Activities Committee of the national House of Representatives contained records “of affiliation with ... subversive organizations or activities” of 53 leading officials of the NAACP. Among the individuals so listed were A. Philip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune, Oscar Hammerstein II, Channing H. Tobias, William H. Hastie, Benjamin E. Mays, Arthur B. Spingarn, Ralph Bunche, Allen Knight Chalmers, Norman Cousins, and James Hinton.[360]

In March the legislators approved a law barring all members of the NAACP from employment by state, county or local governments. It declared that the NAACP exerted “constant pressure on its members contrary to the principles upon which the economic and social life of our state rests.” Membership in the organization was held to be “wholly incompatible with the peace, tranquility and progress that all citizens have a right to enjoy.” This legislation required prospective teachers to fill out a long questionnaire designed to uncover the slightest deviation from complete racial orthodoxy. The questions asked included:

Do you belong to the NAACP? Does any member of your immediate family belong to the NAACP? Do you support the NAACP in any way (money or attendance at meetings)?

Do you favor integration of races in schools? Are you satisfied with your work and the schools as they are now maintained? If yes, comment on back.

Do you feel that you would be happy in an integrated school system, knowing that the parents and students do not favor this system? (Give reasons for your answer)

Do you feel that an integrated school system would better fit the colored race for their life’s work? (Give reasons for your answer)

Do you feel that the parents of your school know that no public schools will be operated if they are integrated? Do you believe in the aims of the NAACP?[361]

The 1956 legislature also authorized the investigation of NAACP activities at Orangeburg state college.

Several other anti-NAACP measures were introduced but failed of passage. These followed the pernicious tactic of linking the NAACP with the Klan. Included was a proposal to deny tax exempt status to “any building of public worship” used as a meeting place by the Communist party or the NAACP. Another would have required all state officials and employes to declare by oath that they belonged neither to the NAACP nor the Ku Klux Klan. Declared the latter proposal: “The dangerous policies and doctrines of these despicable organizations constitute a danger to the health, morals, safety and general welfare of citizens in the state.”[362]

The legislature’s preoccupation with such measures was generally criticized by the press of the state. The Morning News questioned the reasonableness, fairness and justness of the anti-NAACP bills and compared them to the pattern of “McCarthyism.” “Bills of this kind,” wrote O’Dowd, “are seldom given a chance of passage—even by the authors. They are written and introduced as a grandstand play for the folks back home. They may serve to make the author look like the champion of white Protestantism to some of the more rabid of his supporters; but the bills also make the legislature look pretty silly and immature.” On another occasion the same paper declared that “speeches and resolutions against the Supreme Court and the NAACP” had replaced “home, mother, God and country in South Carolina political circles.” The 1956 session of the legislature, chided O’Dowd, would possibly be renowned for “turning its back on positive progress and dedicating its efforts to blind blows against the Supreme Court and the NAACP.”[363] In agreement the Independent stated that the 1956 legislature showed “signs of turning into a mad scramble” to see who could introduce the most “‘segregation’ bills.” The low-country Walterboro Press and Standard believed that “some politicians are more interested in ‘cashing in’ politically on the [segregation] issue and prolonging it than in establishing a steady, determined course of action that will in fact preserve both segregation and the fundamental freedoms in South Carolina.”[364] The Record also questioned the wisdom of anti-NAACP measures which might serve only to drive the organization underground or to replace it with “some other apparently less sinister group.”[365]

The News and Courier was more sympathetic especially in the light of the purpose for which the measures were designed. It noted that

Georgia is taking steps to combat race bias among its public school teachers. By banning membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Atty. Gen. [Eugene] Cook has incurred the wrath of NAACP and other race spokesmen.

The same kind of fuss was made over attempts to root communists and subversives out of government jobs. “Interference with individual freedom” is the battle cry.

The News and Courier is a firm believer in individual freedom. For that reason we do not believe that teachers should belong to the NAACP or any other militant group. Such membership destroys freedom to teach the unbiased truth.

The Charleston paper, however, would not achieve its objectives by a law barring NAACP members from state employment. It suggested instead that the matter be handled on the local level. Local school boards knew best which teachers were “spreading the NAACP line. Such teachers should be discharged, firmly but with as little fuss as possible. Membership in the NAACP or any similar organization dedicated to upsetting customs and laws of our state should be grounds for dismissal.”[366]

In the contest to see who could introduce the most segregation bills, Representative John Calhoun Hart of Union County won handily. This rumple-haired legislative fire-brand introduced separately or in conjunction with others the bill to remove tax exemptions from churches used as meeting places for the Communist party or the NAACP (not passed); the bill to require all public officials and employes to take an anti-NAACP and anti-Ku Klux Klan oath (not passed); a resolution asking that the legislature condemn Vice-President Richard M. Nixon “in the strongest manner possible” for the Vice-President’s resort “to the vilest and lowest politics imaginable” in “arousing and causing dissension among the races” (not passed); a resolution asking President Eisenhower to restore segregation in the armed forces (passed); a bill to prohibit Union County schools from belonging to any educational association approving of racially integrated schools (passed); a bill to prohibit state agencies and institutions from buying from firms which sponsored interracial television or radio programs (not passed); the resolution asking that the NAACP be declared a subversive organization by the federal government (passed); and a resolution urging the state’s delegation to the 1956 Democratic national convention to seek restoration of the ⅔ rule for nomination of candidates (passed).[367]

Representative Hart became positively splenetic upon learning that Clarence Mitchell, the Washington NAACP official, had used the white waiting room at the Florence train station. Mitchell was arrested for his action but Florence authorities prudently did not press the case. For such seeming pusillanimity Representative Hart blasted Florence officials. He deplored “the jelly fish manner in which they handled Clarence Mitchell’s flagrant violation of South Carolina segregation customs.” The teacher-legislator then indicated how he would educate Mitchell:

Bashing Mitchell’s head would have had a highly salutary effect on integration psychology in the Florence area....

We must have a showdown sooner or later and it is doubtful that a better opportunity will ever present itself. A few cracked heads here and there could easily avert bloodshed on a large scale later on.... There’s more law and order in a South Carolina night-stick than in sociological U. S. Supreme Court opinion.[368]

One of the least laudable and most farcical of the legislature’s actions was its lapse into book censorship. It arose from discovery that a novel, The Swimming Hole,[369] written for eight to twelve year olds, was being circulated throughout South Carolina by the State Library Board. The following summary from the Morning News indicates the extent of the book’s threat to the South Carolina segregation customs:

The story opens with three little white boys and a Negro boy calling at the home of Larry, another Negro child, to ask him to go swimming with them. Larry’s mother invites the boys in, gives them each an apple and warns them not to go in the water for a while after eating.

The boys troop off toward the swimming hole with one of the Negroes leading the way in what apparently is a game of “Follow the leader.”

Upon reaching the swimming hole, the children disrobe together and the next page shows one of the Negro boys first in the swim as another Negro child holds one of the white boys off the diving board. In the background, several other Negroes are mingled among the white boys.

After several hours of swimming, they dress together and start home. Larry spots a new white boy in the neighborhood, and the next day they invite the new boy to join them in the swimming hole.

Steve, the new boy, isn’t a very good swimmer so he sits all day in his trunks in the sun and acquires a bright red sunburn. When the boys are dressing to go home, Larry finds his clothing tied in knots. Bob, the other Negro boy, makes a similar discovery.

Steve admits the prank, because “I don’t want to play with anyone who’s colored.” Whereupon Steve turns his glowing red back on them all and starts home.

Larry suggests they all tell Steve the next day they “don’t want to play with anyone the color you are.” The others agree “that’s a good idea.”

The plan is carried out the next day and the boys leave Steve contemplating his sunburned reflection in a store window. Apparently after some soul searching, Steve goes to the swimming hole and tells Larry, “I won’t tie your clothes again” because “it doesn’t matter what color people are.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Larry tells him. “Come on in the water. I’ll teach you to swim.”

The last page concludes, “They all had a wonderful time together.”

Discovery of the book in a state library evoked immediate and outspoken criticism.[370] The head of the State Library Board argued that the book was not aimed at integration, but designed to point out that “human values are not to be judged by physical differences.” Nevertheless, a resolution was introduced in the state legislature by Representatives J. Henry Stuckey of Williamsburg County and Albert W. Watson of Richland County to secure removal of the book and to prevent recurrence of similar situations in the future. Books like The Swimming Hole, according to the resolution, were “antagonistic and inimical to the traditions and customs of our state,” and “serve no constructive educational purpose but rather tend to confuse and warp the thinking of our young children.”

Though calmer heads opposed the resolution, it was approved. Charges of “book burning” and “Hitler tactics” were heard on the floor of the legislature. Representative William H. Grimball, Jr., of Charleston urged the House to “let reason combat whatever thoughts are in books ... in any free democracy you ought to be able to expound anything you want.” To another lowcountry representative, Edward Huguenin of Jasper, the resolution represented a “ridiculous extreme.” Supporting the measure, Representative John M. Horlbeck of Charleston and Representative John T. Gentry of Pickens declared that the question was not one of “literary freedom” but of asserting the “attitude of the General Assembly.”

Press reaction was generally unfavorable to this censorship. The Record said that it was “dangerous business when government gets into the field of censorship of literature, business ‘antagonistic and inimical’ to the traditions and customs of South Carolina.” Americans had always thought that bad ideas could be controverted by good ideas. The Record urged South Carolina “to leave censorship to Russia and to Boston.” But the News and Courier was sympathetic. While conceding that “books expressing all viewpoints should be available for adults,” the Charleston paper declared,

But on the children’s shelves, it seems to us, propaganda should be confined to such wholesome generalities as “good is better than evil,” “crime doesn’t pay,” “be kind to people and animals,” and “an industrious child gets more done than a lazy one.”

... And there is no need to stand up for a book that tries by subtle propaganda to make the South’s racial customs appear to be hateful and wicked.

Although a cursory perusal of the anti-integration bills adopted by the 1955 and 1956 sessions of the general assembly might infer that the legislators had exhausted the possibilities along this line, such was by no means the case. The 1957 session was only slightly less productive than that of 1956. In attempting to plug by legislative fiat every possible hole in the segregation dike the solons in 1957 ranged from the petty and silly to the dangerous and ridiculous.

Falling into the first category were the attempt to ban the movie Island in the Sun and the proposal to require all blood banks to label blood White or Colored. The movie is an adaptation of Alec Waugh’s novel Island in the Sun involving love affairs between interracial couples. Though the cinema version of the story soft-pedals its amatory aspects to the point that not a single interracial kiss takes place on the screen, Representative John Calhoun Hart described it as “a sickening, repulsive, indecent spectacle to which no one in this state should be exposed or subjected.” The Union County lawmaker introduced a bill which declared that the movie “openly” advocated “breaking the miscegenation section of the state constitution” and charged the movie industry with “attempting to foster moral depravity by condoning the mixing of the races.” The bill would have fined any theater showing the film $5,000. Hart’s effort to save “the young people of the world” came to naught. Even the News and Courier condemned it as censorship.[371]

Of a similar nature was the bill offered by Rep. George Sam Harrell of Florence County which would have required that blood banks label all stored blood “White” or “Colored.” Rep. Harrell decried the fact that since 1951 blood had not been labeled by race. He said Negro and white blood was now put on a desk and “you come along and they will shoot” Negro “blood in your veins.” To his colleagues in the House, he declared, “I don’t want any ... [Negro] blood in me and I don’t intend to have any.” The bill, which passed the House but not the Senate, carried provisions for $100 fine or 30 days in jail or both for violators.[372]

Potentially the most dangerous of the many pro-segregation measures was a recommendation by the Gressette Committee, subsequently enacted by the legislature, that the governor be given almost dictatorial injunctive police and military power “to prevent violence or threats of violence.” Under provisions of the bill the governor can “by proclamation declare that a danger exists.” Then to “cope with such danger” he may enjoin any acts or planned acts by individuals, associations or corporations, call in all state, county and local law officers and call out the state militia “to maintain peace and good order.” There was surprisingly little reaction to this proposal. Said the News and Courier: “If they are used with discretion, such police powers ... may be an effective method of combatting federal discrimination against South Carolina.”[373]

The 1957 general assembly also considered many other pro-segregation measures: a resolution creating a group similar to the State Sovereignty Commission of Mississippi to acquaint non-Southerners with the South Carolina position on racial segregation (not passed); a resolution by Rep. Hart to impeach six of the nine justices of the Supreme Court (not passed); an anti-barratry law aimed at the NAACP (passed); and a bill repealing the 1956 statute which forbade public employment to NAACP members and the enacting of a new requirement that merely provided that all prospective employes list those organizations to which they belong (passed).[374] This last law was the result of a suit brought by a group of Elloree Negro teachers who refused to answer a questionnaire under the 1956 law. As a result of the new law the federal courts refused to hear the suit brought by the teachers.

In addition to these measures Rep. Hart introduced still another to strengthen the position of South Carolina in its fight for states rights. Reaching a new nadir, this proposal, which was not adopted, declared that: “No executive order or directive of the President, and no act or resolution of the Congress, and no judicial decision or construction of the Supreme or any inferior Court, and no treaty with any foreign power or international agreement of the United States in conflict with, or diminishment of, or derogatory to the powers not delegated to the United States and reserved to the States respectively or the people, shall become effective as law in this State, except through enactment only by the General Assembly pursuant to the Constitution of the State of South Carolina, and otherwise the same shall be null and void and of no effect in this state.”[375]

Use of official authority to coerce public school officials in maintaining the segregation line intact has been a comparatively easy matter. To move against private educational institutions which served as focal points of disaffection or threatened to lower the segregation barrier is more difficult. One such recent effort by Governor Timmerman and a compliant State Board of Education bared a vicious form of official infighting.

During the summer of 1957 rumor bruited around the campus of Allen University, an African Methodist Episcopal Church school in Columbia, that the Governor’s office had warned the institution’s recently inaugurated president, the Reverend Frank Veal, that he would have to dismiss three professors from the faculty or face the consequences. The men proscribed were Professors John G. Rideout, chairman of the division of humanities; Edwin Hoffman, chairman of the division of education; and Forrest O. Wiggins of the department of philosophy. All were holders of doctorates from leading American universities and Rideout had been a Rhodes scholar. Rideout and Hoffman are white and Wiggins a Negro. While no specific charges were made against the men insofar as their professional competency was concerned—it is generally agreed by the Allen students that they are among the most effective teachers on the faculty—much was made of the fact that the names of Wiggins and Rideout were in the files of the United States House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.

President Veal, betraying an unprofessional sensitivity to academic procedures, wilted under the pressure and without consulting the members of Allen’s board of trustees wrote letters to the three men in question demanding their resignations “for the good of the University.” But Rideout, Hoffman and Wiggins would not resign and to confuse matters further, the board of trustees not only refused to back Veal but also announced that the three professors would continue on as members of the faculty. A few days later, however, Veal reportedly declared that his demand for the resignations of the three men still stood and that they were in effect being given a year’s dismissal notice. Although the Columbia press gave prominent headlines to Veal’s statement, there was no indication that the board of trustees agreed with it. But just on the eve of the new academic year Veal replaced Hoffman as chairman of the division of education with Dr. Sylvia Swinton, a former Negro field supervisor for the State Department of Education.[376]

A few weeks later Allen again bounced back into the news headlines with the announcement that five Hungarian refugees would be enrolled at the University. Their admission would constitute the first modern break-through in South Carolina’s segregation wall. And, as State Attorney General T. C. Callison was obliged to acknowledge, the worst part of the situation was that although it was “against public policy” to integrate Negroes and whites in educational institutions, there was “no law in South Carolina to reach” Allen, a private and church school. Actually, only one of the five Hungarian “freedom fighters,” Andre Toth, enrolled at Allen when its fall term opened.[377]

But the Governor and his advisors on the State Board of Education still held a trump card to play. If Allen could not be dealt with directly, it could be struck a low blow punch through withdrawal of official approval of the University for teacher training. Accordingly, the State Board of Education, on which the Governor sits as an ex officio member, on September 9th sent notice to Allen that its graduates would have teacher certification withheld “until such time as the Board may determine that it is in the public interest to grant approval.” The Board did not specify what if anything was wrong with the education courses offered at Allen, courses that hitherto had had its approval.

President Veal was conveniently out of Columbia, but Allen board of trustees president, Bishop I. H. Bonner, cautiously took up the gauntlet. To the consternation of several administrative officials at the University of South Carolina, the Bishop opined that Allen’s students requiring teacher certification would undoubtedly seek admission to the University and other white state-supported institutions of higher learning.[378] Should such applicants be admitted to these schools by Federal court order, resort to which would, of course, be imperative, state law would oblige the schools to close.

The nadir of official hypocrisy came with the announcement of the State Board of Education following its September 20th meeting, that it was seeking to help Allen solve its internal problems. At the same meeting a “bi-racial” committee consisting of six white members and one Negro, B. C. Turner, president of the State college for Negroes at Orangeburg, was appointed to review applications for teacher training courses in South Carolina’s private and public universities and colleges.

Crocodile tears were copiously shed by “some state officials” over “the plight of Dr. Veal” in light of his failure to rid his faculty of three objectionable professors. These same persons allegedly asked how, for instance, the State Board of Education could approve a teacher training course at an institution whose academic head desired to dismiss members of his faculty but could not do so because of the opposition of his board of trustees. The logic of the state officials was that if the president of an approved teacher training institution didn’t want certain instructors because of lack of faith in them, then the state could not accept a student who received certification for his work under such a professor.[379]

So utterly gross were the actions of the Governor and the State Board of Education that there was embarrassingly little discussion of the affair in the editorial columns of the state’s press. Those few papers that discussed the Allen situation either printed without comment the decision of the Board of Education to withdraw accreditation or looked askance upon it. The Florence Morning News, for example, found the “handling of the Allen case unfortunate” particularly in the light of the secrecy involved, the shortage of qualified Negro teachers, the encouragement that it would give to Negroes to apply to the University of South Carolina and the lack of data supplied to Allen officials as to the reasons for the Board’s actions.[380]

The Allen situation stood at a standstill until mid-December with neither the University officials nor the State Board of Education changing their positions. But on December 17th, Bishop Bonner met with the Governor in the latter’s office, at his own request so he said, for a “cordial” talk and the fat was again in the fire. According to Bonner, Timmerman maintained that the controversy over the three professors was “non-political” and “non-racial” and then proceeded to tell him “what was wrong.” Just what was wrong the Bishop did not reveal.[381]

Two days later Bishop Bonner notified Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins that he would recommend their dismissal when the trustees’ board of control would be called for a special meeting on January 10, 1958. He further informed them that they would receive their salaries for the remainder of the year if they resigned and departed quietly but that if they fought their dismissals, they would get nothing. The professors declined to take any action pending the meeting of the trustees on January 10th.

Meanwhile the American Association of University Professors entered into the picture. General Secretary of the Association Dr. Robert K. Carr wired Governor Timmerman requesting that he provide the AAUP with information regarding the grounds on which the State Board of Education had voted to withhold teacher accreditation approval of Allen graduates. Carr at the same time told reporters that his organization viewed with alarm the apparent relationship of the question of academic tenure at Allen with that of political interference “with the internal operations of private institutions.” “We are concerned,” he said, “lest there be direct connection between the two matters—the dismissal of the faculty members and the withholding of teacher certificates.” The AAUP, he added, would support the professors to the hilt. Carr was satisfied that the presence of the Hungarian white student on the Allen campus was in no way related to the certification question.

Timmerman’s response to Carr’s request was completely in character. He told the AAUP that the Allen affair was none of its business. “Our state is concerned with protecting all of its people,” the governor wired Carr, “and your authority to question its official actions is without recognition. The resolution [of the State Board of Education] speaks for itself.”

Carr expressed dismay at the brusque tone of the governor’s telegram. “Governor Timmerman’s reaction is most unfortunate,” he declared. “Our queries are usually received by state officials and institutions respectfully and answered if possible.” For his part Timmerman, clearly annoyed, replied that Carr’s “political whimpering” confirmed his suspicion as to the motive behind the former’s telegram. Timmerman said that Carr should “seek the answer to his questions from his own files” thus implying that prejudicial information against the three professors was at the disposal of the AAUP.[382]

The show-down on the Allen affair came at the board of trustees meeting on January 10th and the results gratified all persons who still believe in academic freedom. Bishop Bonner, who probably hoped to dominate the meeting, found the spotlight taken away from him by Dr. R. A. Mance, a former Columbia physician who lives in Washington, D.C. Mance, a member of the Allen Board of Trustees, is also treasurer of the national African Methodist Episcopal Church. When Mance spoke out in defense of the three professors, those present at the meeting which was open to the public were very much aware that he was voicing the sentiments of the national church organization on which Allen heavily depends.

Bishop Bonner tried to defend his demand for the ouster of Wiggins, Rideout and Hoffman in the face of an audience which booed him when he said that Governor Timmerman impressed him as being “a very fine man.” According to Bonner, who was demonstrably angry at the hostile audience, Timmerman had told him that the State Board of Education believed “that the three men could not possibly exert a good influence on the university in view of their refusal to resign at the request of the president following the recommendation by the dean of the faculty.” The Bishop, disregarding all questions of intimidation and of civil rights, based his position squarely on the ground that the most important thing for Allen to consider was the certification of its graduates by the state.

In the face of needling questions by Dr. Mance and other trustees, the Bishop turned to President Veal for support. It was on Veal’s request, according to Bonner, that the meeting had been called. But here the Bishop was in for a rude awakening as Veal, not unmindful that an investigation committee from the national AME church was present at the meeting, suddenly announced that he would definitely not recommend dismissal of the three professors “at this time.” Veal, who could hardly deny that he had asked for the resignations of Rideout, Wiggins, and Hoffman, said that any decision either to retain or to dismiss them would be arrived at according to academic procedures. Bonner, left out on a limb, accused Veal of having “backed out” on him. The meeting broke up without any action being taken and with the parting comment of Bishop Bonner that failure to dismiss the three controversial professors “could mean death to Allen University.” But Allen’s student body clearly did not share Bonner’s pessimism. A few hours after the meeting had adjourned nearly three hundred students gathered in front of Veal’s home and serenaded him. For the first time in months the harassed president found himself genuinely popular amongst the students.

In the Allen battle, which as the trustee Reverend F. C. James of Sumter pointed out “affects every private institution in America” as well as the issues of “civil liberties and civil rights,” the old “Uncle Tom” leadership, as personified in Bishop Bonner and his supporters, went down to defeat before the new generation of American Negroes. Whether the defeat will be thorough and permanent, only the future will tell. But administrators of private colleges throughout America owe a debt of gratitude to the courageous stand taken by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the face of political intimidation.[383]

On January 15 Governor Timmerman officially spelled out to the people of South Carolina why the State Board of Education had withdrawn its approval of Allen for teacher training. In his annual message to the state legislature he warned of the “communist menace” in South Carolina [as of 1951 the Federal Bureau of Investigation could count only seventeen alleged Communists in the State!] and pointed his finger directly at Allen as a center of possible subversion. Borrowing a trick from the late senator from Wisconsin, the chief executive proceeded to read to the members of the legislature the “party-line” records of the three Allen professors; he mentioned none of them by name. The records, he said, had been procured from administration officials at Allen and from “other” sources of information [the files of the Un-American Activities Committee supplied through the office of Congressman John Riley]. According to the Governor, the chairman of the board of trustees at Allen, Bishop Bonner, was anxious to protect the University’s student body from the noxious influences of “atheism” and “communism” and it was for this reason that he had requested the resignations of the three professors. The State Board of Education was seeking to cooperate with Allen officials toward this end.

Having raised the spectre of communism and its threat to the Palmetto State, Timmerman then suggested a means of coping with the problem, one not very original, to be sure. He recommended establishment of a “permanent legislative committee to investigate communist activities in our state.” In addition, the Governor urged that “consideration be given to the establishment of more realistic requirements for admission to teach in state-supported institutions.” Applicants should be screened more closely before they were employed. Concluding on the following note Timmerman declared: “When academic freedom supersedes loyalty to one’s country, to one’s state and to our trust in God, it becomes an instrumentality of treason and profanes the faith of our nation.”[384]

Senator Gressette of the state’s committee to preserve educational segregation lauded the Governor’s recommendation for a new minor league Un-American Activities Committee. So did other members of the legislature. But the three Allen professors in a statement to the radio and press services blasted the Governor. “The fact of the matter is—and Governor Timmerman knows it well—the real need here in South Carolina is the achievement of American democracy for all the state’s citizens rather than a committee to investigate so-called communistic activities.” The three professors, all church members, also struck back at the Chief Executive’s atheist innuendo. “It comes with ill grace,” they asserted, “for the Governor to question the religious faith of others when he himself so openly repudiates the fundamental teaching of Him who died that all men might dwell together as brothers.” Nor did they think that Timmerman could pose as the shield and defender of the Constitution. “It ill becomes a Governor who spends so much of his time repudiating the Constitution of our country and endeavoring to undermine the highest court of the land to pass upon the patriotism of other Americans. If belief in racial segregation is to be made the definition of loyalty, the vast majority of Americans become disloyal in the eyes of Governor Timmerman.”[385]

On the same day that the Governor was reaffirming his determination to maintain segregation in South Carolina, eleven Allen students appeared on the campus of the University of South Carolina seeking application blanks to permit them to take the University’s entrance examinations. They were turned away by the director of the University’s examination and counseling service who explained that his hands were tied by state law. “According to the orders under which we operate,” he told the students, “I cannot examine you and there is no purpose in supplying you with applications.” Six days later a group of four students from Benedict College, another Negro institution in Columbia, also applied for examination application blanks and were similarly rebuffed.[386]

No effort was made to molest the Negroes when they were on the University of South Carolina campus, though one USC student is said to have leaned out a window and shouted, “Here come the niggers.” During the evening, however, a cross was burned on the University’s athletic field and an effigy of a Negro was hung up on the campus. Telephone calls were received at Allen threatening the University with bombings unless the Negro students desisted in their efforts to enter the University of South Carolina.[387]

Governor Timmerman’s ill-tempered and ill-conceived pressure on Allen opened the door for the very type of law suit that officials of white state-supported universities have been dreading since 1954. The Allen applicants, four of them ministers, indicated that they would resort to “legal steps” to gain admission. “We plan to see this thing through,” said one of their spokesmen. “We all feel that Negroes have been ostracized by being kept out of the University and our cups are just about to run over.”[388]

Only the future can tell, of course, what Governor Timmerman triggered off in his effort to rid Rideout, Wiggins and Hoffman from the Allen faculty. The question of admission of Negroes to white state-supported universities had to be faced sooner or later, but officials of the latter would have preferred to face it later. But to explain Timmerman’s attitude toward the three professors is something else again. The “communist” issue was convenient, if a bit dated, but those who have closely followed the segregation question in South Carolina since the Supreme Court decision of 1954 are inclined to believe that the reason is less ideological than local.

Since the purge of the state Negro college at Orangeburg—the institution is on probation with accreditation agencies because it does not have a sufficient number of holders of the Ph.D. degree on its faculty—Allen has been the chief center for Negro militancy in South Carolina. The three professors who have been the target of official attack have been prominent amongst those on the campus who have urged the University’s students to assert their rights, including the right to sit where they please on city buses. In all of the newspaper accounts of the Allen affair, these facts have not been mentioned, but it is suggested here that they have been governing. Also in the new administration of President Veal and in the person of Bishop Bonner, state authorities were quick to detect a lack of militancy present in their predecessors. It would appear that they have sought to exploit this “softness” and to repeat their disgraceful performance at Orangeburg. But the Allen trustees were made of sterner stuff than the Governor and the State Board of Education had supposed.

The Governor’s frustration was compounded by temporary failure to bring about the dismissal of three white faculty members from Benedict College, a Negro Baptist institution located directly across the street from Allen. In a special message to the General Assembly on January 29, Timmerman cited from the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee the records of three Benedict professors. He also told the legislators that Dr. J. A. Bacoats, president of Benedict and highly respected by both whites and Negroes throughout the state, had delivered a speech in 1941 at a “Protestantism Answers Hate” dinner-forum allegedly sponsored by a “communist-front publication.”[389]

Bacoats and two of the three professors cited, Dr. Lewis Smith and Dr. J. Spencer Kennard, answered the Governor in statements to the press. The former declared: “I have never been a communist nor held membership in the Communist Party. And as I see it from where I now stand, I shall never be a member of the Communist Party.” Smith, a professor of English, said he had no intention of resigning and that he was being attacked “by the same forces that would keep the Negro people from achieving full equality.” Kennard, a Baptist minister and a member of the Benedict history department, asserted that the Governor had “set out deliberately to smear the character of a man who devoted his entire life to serving the Master.”[390]

The governor’s attack on Benedict was successful only in uniting the Negro community in defense of the College (far more so than had been true of the Allen affair) and in alarming white conservatives. The Inter-Denominational Ministerial Alliance of Columbia (Negro), criticizing the Governor’s proposal for a state Un-American Activities committee, held that such a group would be a “fascist gestapo” and threaten Negro academic freedom. It also questioned the very legality of such a committee in the light of recent Supreme Court decisions. Likewise, John H. McCray, chairman of the South Carolina Progressive Democrats, said: “Negro leadership in South Carolina has maintained an eternal and vigorous alert against influence of communism among its people....” And from R. Beverley Herbert, a conservative white attorney of Columbia, came the warning against assuming that men were communists because of past association with left-wing organizations. But the crowning blow came when Benedict’s board of trustees, which includes several white men, among them Dr. Paul Wheeler, a well known clergyman; Dr. R. Archie Ellis, pastor of the Columbia First Baptist Church and B. M. Edwards, a prominent South Carolina banker, issued a public statement completely exonerating President Bacoats and the three faculty members.[391]

White South Carolinians undoubtedly consider public education to be the key issue in the Negroes’ drive for racial equality. Consequently other aspects of the question have received less consideration in discussions relating to the pros and cons of integration. Important developments, however, have been occurring in other areas where attempts at integration are being made, e.g. the armed forces, city buses, and state operated recreation parks.

South Carolina officials can do little more than decry integration in the nation’s armed forces. By the time the Supreme Court gave its initial school desegregation ruling, integration in the armed services had progressed to a point where it had become an accepted fact to all except the most extreme die-hards. Nevertheless Governor Timmerman lodged a futile protest with the National Security Council in late 1955. Referring to statements by military leaders expressing concern over low reenlistment rates among military personnel, the Governor wrote: “So long as our basic training installations are used as sociological camps for compulsory racial mixing, it is reasonable to expect a continued lack of voluntary enlistments, and a continued lessening of morale and esprit de corps in our armed forces. The officials of no other country in the world are so naive as to employ racial integration among military personnel.” Commenting on the Governor’s letter the News and Courier asked editorially: “Is it simply a coincidence that, at about the same time the government mixed the races in the armed forces, enlistments started to sag?” Without answering its question, the Charleston paper continued: “If integration has hurt enlistments and morale, then it follows that integration has harmed national defense.... Gov. Timmerman has courageously brought the matter out into the open.”[392]

In 1956 the general assembly in its onslaught on all phases of integration passed a resolution urging President Eisenhower to “restore segregation of the races in the armed forces of this country which would result in a return of the high morale, efficiency and esprit de corps which our armed forces have always heretofore enjoyed.”[393] The resolution evoked no response in Washington.

Once the assault on armed forces integration had begun, others joined in. From The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, came a booming verbal salvo from President Mark Clark, former United Nations Commander in the Far East. “I did not feel that we should integrate then [in 1950 when the Army order was placed in effect] and I do not think so now,” said the transplanted general from the North. “I looked at integration strictly as a military problem, not from the sociological standpoint.... I wanted the best fighting unit possible ... politics or no politics.”[394]

South Carolina Negroes, following the lead set in Montgomery, Alabama, have endeavored to bring about invalidation of both state and local Jim Crow laws in the field of bus segregation. In this connection Sarah Mae Flemming of Columbia instituted suit against the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, operators of the city bus system of Columbia, asking $25,000 for alleged violations of her civil rights. She charged that a bus driver had forcibly required her to go to the rear of a city bus in conformity with the South Carolina law. In the federal district court Judge Timmerman dismissed Miss Flemming’s suit on the ground that the 1896 decision upholding separate but equal facilities in transportation was still in effect and had not been overruled by the school cases of 1954. (There was a curious lack of logic in Judge Timmerman’s position since for years Southerners had defended segregation in the public school on the basis of the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling which upheld the separate but equal doctrine in transportation.) This decision was appealed and reversed by the federal circuit court presided over by Judge John J. Parker. In an action which the Record considered “brusque arrogance,” the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company thus in effect upholding the circuit court decision.[395]

The practical effect of this decision on South Carolina bus segregation has been nil. Nowhere have traditional patterns of segregation ended. Attorney General T. C. Callison considered the Supreme Court’s action in this case “another unwarranted invasion of state and municipal rights.” In early 1956 the state legislature resolved that it was “unalterably opposed to the mixing of the races on common carriers” and would “tolerate no violation of the laws of this State relating to the separation of the races on common carriers.” The News and Courier, strangely enough, foresaw no drastic results if bus segregation were ended. However, it believed that “as a practical matter, they [Negroes] suffer no hardship by observing regulations that reflect prevailing customs of the community. Even if the laws were removed from the books, good manners call for respect of fellow passengers’ preferences.”[396] Editor Waring’s paper made no comment on the obligation of whites to respect the preference of their Negro fellow passengers.

In its own enveloping attack on the segregation front South Carolina’s Negro leadership has struck at the state operated recreation parks. In 1955 the State of South Carolina maintained twenty-one recreation parks, one of which was operated exclusively for Negroes. Of the other twenty, four had separate areas reserved for Negroes. In view of such obvious discrimination, Negroes brought suit to have Edisto Beach State Park opened for all South Carolinians without regard to race or color. In answering this suit the state attorney general’s office presented a brief before the federal district court which declared that “due to the natural inclination of each race at this time to associate and engage in recreation and social activities with members of its own race, and to the present natural, historical, cultural and deep-rooted mental attitudes and feelings of each race against the social and sexual mixing of the races, there exists potential and definite dangers of unpleasantries, social friction, breaches of the peace and other events leading to riot and bloodshed, which will surely result from an enforced mixing of the races at such a park.”[397]

In the light of recent federal court decisions, state officials realized that such arguments would carry little weight in federal courts. Therefore in 1956, precluding a federal court order on the case, the state legislature passed a resolution closing Edisto Beach State Park to both white and colored. The park remains closed, “a monument,” said the Columbia State, to the “vindictiveness” of race agitators.[398]

With actions such as these the sovereign state of South Carolina has combatted the “alien ideas” of racial equality and equal rights for all men.

CHAPTER VIII