THE WHITE FOLKS FIGHT BACK
We are surrounded by invisible dangers, against which nothing can protect us, but our foresight and energy.—John C. Calhoun
In response to the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision a number of organizations dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy mushroomed up in the state. Among these were the National Association for the Advancement of White People, the States Rights League, the Grass Roots League, American Educators Incorporated, the Federation for Constitutional Government, the Association for the Preservation of Southern Traditions and the Citizens Council. In addition the Ku Klux Klan again reared its ugly head. These organizations opposed racial integration with methods that varied from the “legal” opposition of the Citizens Council to the blunt threats of naked force by the Ku Klux Klan. Similarly, they experienced differing degrees of success. The Citizens Council, though last to be organized, has been the most prominent. With the exception of the Citizens Council, none of the organizations developed anything approaching a statewide following. Its appearance in the summer of 1955 virtually signalized the disappearance of the other groups. Only the Ku Klux Klan remains.
The Klan is the largest and most important of the white supremacy groups next to the Citizens Council. As it exists in the state during the period following the Supreme Court’s ruling on school segregation, the Klan is a continuation of the organization that had become almost defunct by the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The Court decision gave the Klan a new lease on life. However, it has not been able to achieve recognition as the state’s chief defender of racial segregation. Essentially this results from the fact that the Klan, because of its checkered history since World War I, has no appeal among “respectable” elements, in short to the state’s “power structure.” The bedsheet brigade also has the official opposition of the state government.
In general the South Carolina Ku Kluxers have found greatest following among the less economically privileged whites, workingmen and petty tradesmen. Klan rallies, replete with burning crosses and fiery oratory, have been held at various points throughout the state. Attendance, as reported by the press, usually has varied from less than a hundred to several hundred, though Klan leaders argue that these figures are much too low. At one meeting in Union, the Klan claimed an attendance of between 12,000 and 15,000.[126]
Several independent Klan factions have been organized in the state. The national organization, with headquarters in Atlanta, recognizes the group headed by Grand Dragon J. H. Bickley, a Marion carpenter, as the “official” Klan in South Carolina. Bickley’s organization has been bothered by periodic Klan rallies which it has not sponsored and which engage in practices which, according to the Grand Dragon, tend to discredit his group and alienate its followers. Since Bickley refuses to release any information on the number of Klansmen or klaverns in the state, the numerical strength of the Klan is impossible to determine. He claims that if he had the time, he “could stage a rally each night of the week.”[127]
The purpose of the Klan according to E. L. Edwards of Atlanta, the national Imperial Wizard, is to protect Southerners “against the NAACP, Knights of Columbus and the ADL [Anti-Defamation League].” The Klan is “a white man’s organization fighting for white supremacy” and is not made up of race discriminators but people who want to live “in a segregated group.”[128] On the basis of stated aims and objectives, there is no discernible difference between the Klan of the 1920’s and that of the 1950’s.
Klan leaders deliver impassioned harangues at klavern rallies. Their principal foes, as evidenced by the organizations singled out by Edwards, are Negroes, Jews and to a somewhat lesser extent Catholics. Liberal use is made of the smear technique of accusing opponents of being pro-Communist. Speaking at Sumter Imperial Wizard Edwards charged that the Supreme Court’s ruling was “a Communist-Jewish-Catholic plot” aimed at “destroying and mongrelizing” the white race. Parties to this conspiracy included Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, “the Jew Bernard Baruch,” and President Eisenhower, whom he referred to as “Eisenberger.” With characteristic disregard for historical accuracy, the Imperial Wizard branded the NAACP as an organization formed in 1906 by a “group of three people sent directly from Russia.” He urged all “one hundred percent Protestant white Americans” to join the Klan and help overcome this menace.[129]
At a Timmonsville meeting Ku Klux attitudes were well expressed by a Klan speaker identified only as a “minister of the Gospel” who would be in his pulpit the following Sunday morning. After the opening prayer, this defender of the faith announced that he hated all Jews and “niggers.”
The NAACP [he continued] is a Communist front organization. We have documents in the House Un-American Activities Committee to prove this. I was supposed to have literature here tonight to prove this, but it was late in arriving....
The main issue in South Carolina is not so much Communism as it is niggerism....
Klansmen don’t wear sheets, they wear robes. It is a shame that good Christian people have to hide themselves to do what our country was founded for....
That nigger-lovin’ Estes Kefauver wouldn’t sign the referendum (Southern Manifesto); we ought to send that nigger-lover to Africa....
The National Council of Churches is a Communist front organization. Bishop Oxnam, the former president, is under indictment by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a Communist....
I’d rather (my little boy) grow up unable to read or write than sit beside a nigger in school.
Another speaker, standing on the flat bed of a Ford truck, told a Klan rally that Henry Ford II had given $1,500,000 to the NAACP and that he (the speaker) would boycott all Ford products until Ford gave an equal amount to a white supremacy group.[130]
Klan speakers invariably include a thinly veiled threat against those who seek to upset racial segregation. The Grand Dragon of South Carolina warned that “the day the Negro steps into a white South Carolina school as a student will be the day we pick up our weapons.”[131] A “preacher” told another rally that “moderation has never been the answer to anything. It’s the extremists—you and me—who are going to solve this situation.”[132]
The lengths to which Klan “extremists” are willing to go, or more accurately the depths to which they can descend, is illustrated by an episode which occurred at Traveler’s Rest in Greenville County which is in the upper part of the state. On the night of July 21, 1957, eleven white men broke into the home of Claude Cruell, a moderately prosperous fifty-eight year old Negro farmer and Baptist deacon. Four of them proceeded to chain him up and beat him. The others watched. During the course of the beating, according to Cruell’s wife, Fannie, who was subsequently driven away several miles from the farm and made to walk home, the invaders berated the Negro couple for “trying to mix with white people.”
Specifically, the group was referring to the Cruells’ association with Sherwood Turner and his family. Turner, a tall, illiterate thirty-four year old white man who eked out a precarious livelihood as an itinerant bean picker and handyman, lived with his wife and seven small children in a nearby house which they rented from Cruell for five dollars a month. On occasion, the Negro farmer had given Turner and his family rides in his car to nearby bean fields. On the day of the beating the Cruells were caring for Turner’s children while the latter had taken his wife, a thin, anemic woman, to the Stroud Memorial Hospital at Marietta for emergency treatment for a kidney ailment. The Turner children, consequently, witnessed the beating of Cruell.
A police investigation led directly to the independent Greenville County Ku Klux Klan. It was A. Marshall Rochester, head of the Greenville Klansmen, who led the “inquisitional” party to the Cruell farm. They had intended to whip not only Cruell but also the pitiful Mrs. Turner. Rochester openly acknowledged his role in the affair. Eight of the other men arrested with him not only in connection with the Cruell beating but also that of another Negro, Willie Lewis Brown, on July 29th, admitted membership in the Klan; a tenth said that he was a “probationary” member, and the eleventh identified himself as its “chaplain.”
The Cruell incident brought an indignant protest from Grand Dragon Bickley who denounced the Greenville Klansmen. He expressed “great pleasure” that the incidents of violence in Greenville had been solved by law enforcement authorities and held that such episodes resulted “only in harmful effects upon the South and our nation as a whole.” He carefully pointed out that his own organization had no acts of violence charged against it and also that it was not on the Attorney General’s subversive list. “This is due to the fact,” said Bickley, “that in all our chartered klaverns, the klansmen are taught to respect law and order.”
When the Klansmen were finally brought to trial after an indictment by a grand jury all but six were exonerated by Judge James M. Brailsford, Jr., who ordered charges against them dismissed. The trial jury found two others innocent. The remaining four, including Rochester, were found guilty of conspiracy and assault and battery and sentenced to jail terms ranging from one to six years. Rochester received the maximum six year sentence from Judge Brailsford who remarked: “I don’t see that I can accomplish any good by lecturing these men.” He was undoubtedly right.[133]
The press of the state has universally harrassed the Klan not only in the Cruell episode but in its other activities as well. The Morning News referred to the organization as “this blasphemy against religion; this living curse against decency; this social cancer that pollutes everyone and every area it touches.” The Independent called the Klan a “latter-day bedsheet brigade” which appealed only to the “mentally immature” who had “something to hide.” The News and Courier believed that it was made up of “hotheads, crackpots and brutes,” who went “night riding for sport” and did more harm than good for the cause of segregation.[134]
Not only does the Klan have to contend with a hostile press but it also faces opposition from the state government. Governor Timmerman quixotically charged that the reorganization of the Klan was the work of the Communist Party. In early 1956 the South Carolina Klan applied for a state charter. Attorney General Callison ruled against this request on the ground that Klan ritual called for the wearing of robes and hoods, which was illegal under the state’s anti-masking law.[135] Previously Callison had joined other Southern attorneys general in a declaration which pledged joint action to “use every legal means” to check Klan growth and expose its “secret and unlawful purposes.”[136] The attorney general’s actions were applauded by the press.
Public support of the Klan is rare. An occasional letter to the editor has defended the order. The writer of one such letter to the News and Courier, for example, had “never heard of the Klu Klux Klan bothering anyone who did not need a double-dose of what they got.” Neither had he ever known of the Klan taking the law into its own hands until “the law had been notified, and had failed to take action.” Because of the nature of the Communist conspiracy, he was in “favor of America waking up” even if the Klan had to do the waking.[137] Another letter writer to the News and Courier, one C. A. Rea of Hamlet, North Carolina, a town close to the South Carolina border, said that he had attended several KKK rallies and was sure that Klansmen did “not want any trouble.” Rea, who concluded his letter with “Yours for Christianity, segregation, and decency,” praised South Carolina law enforcement officers “for their fairness and cooperation” at Klan rallies. “They recognize and respect constitutional rights of peaceful assembly and of free speech,” he declared.[138]
The other white supremacy groups, nearly all of which had short existences, were less well known than the Klan. One of these, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, apparently had only one chapter in the state. This group was located at Florence and affiliated with a national organization led by Bryant Bowles who achieved a fleeting notoriety in connection with his attempts to prevent school integration in Delaware and Washington, D.C. The NAAWP, according to its national president, represented the white man’s “last hope” against the NAACP. He pledged to fight the “trend from communism to liberalism and then to negroism in the United States.”[139]
The Florence chapter was headed by G. L. Ivey, a restaurant owner, who fired all of his Negro employees immediately after the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954. The pronouncements of Ivey and Bowles were similar to those made by some of the more outspoken members of the Klan. What the Negro really wanted, Ivey told white Carolinians, was “to get into your front bedroom.” Bowles protested that he was not anti-Semitic but added “the Jews are fast making me that way” through their support of the NAACP.[140]
The Morning News condemned the NAAWP as being “at least as undesirable” as the opposition it proposed to combat—the NAACP. The News and Courier, professing to know little concerning the organization, was inclined “not to endorse such a movement.”[141] Such criticism may have discouraged white supremacists elsewhere in the state from forming NAAWP chapters.
In March, 1955, apparently because of failure of the organization on both the local and national level, the Florence chapter reconstituted itself as the Florence County Chapter of the States Rights League.[142]
The States Rights League was another abbreviated attempt to combat integration. It had a few chapters in lowcountry counties, e.g. Charleston, Darlington, Florence, but never achieved more than a tiny numerical strength. Its purposes, though couched in constitutional terms, were essentially the same as those of other white supremacy groups. The Darlington chapter of the League, in applying for a state charter, listed its objectives as follows:
To promote constitutional government, including the preservation of the independence of the legislative, executive and judicial departments; the preservation of the sovereign rights of state government and the preservation of individual liberties guaranteed by the Federal Constitution....
To oppose the adoption of socialistic platforms; to seek in every Christian and legal manner the strongest opposition to decisions of the Federal Courts and the Supreme Court, which wrongly abrogated, modified or amended the provisions of the U. S. Constitution which require a separation of power between the three great branches of government....[143]
Spokesmen for the League were more blunt in stating their objectives. A member of the Darlington chapter declared that the League was seeking “to preserve Christianity, segregation, states rights and individual liberties.” The “sole purpose” of the League, announced G. L. Ivey, was “to maintain segregation.” He urged “every white man and woman” who believed that segregation provided “the only stable arrangement for mutual respect and right conduct between the races” to join the League.[144]
In promoting constitutional government, the Florence County States Rights League concerned itself with such momentous issues as passing a resolution demanding the resignation of the Reverend E. L. Byrd, a Florence Baptist minister, who had advocated “the mixing of the white and Negro races” in churches. In another equally dramatic action the League adopted and sent to officials of the Florence County Agricultural Building a resolution requesting that officials correct a situation wherein whites and Negroes had to use the same drinking fountain in the building. This move was taken following a report by a league member that he had seen a “bunch of little Negro children all around the white drinking fountain like a swarm of bees around a saucer of syrup.”[145]
Another of the ephemeral Class B white supremacy groups was the Grass Roots League of Charleston. President of the League was the elderly Stanley F. Morse. Though highly vocal, the Grass Rooters were numerically insignificant. Their method of attack was through the issuance of “Research Bulletins.” Bulletin No. 2, for example, “proved” that the NAACP “was infiltrated by the Communist party in 1925.”[146] Bulletin No. 3 accused the National Council of Churches of distributing “leftist propaganda” which echoed “the subtle Marxist line that the South must give up its constitutional States Rights and necessary local customs in accordance with the Supreme Court’s left-wing segregation ruling.” This Bulletin was prepared by the League’s Religious Affairs Committee whose chairman, Micah Jenkins, was later to become president of the state Citizens Council organization.[147]
The purpose of the Grass Roots League, as stated by its president, was to combat the “threat to the continued existence of our free American Republic,” a threat which resulted from the Supreme Court’s segregation ruling. Various facets of this threat included the “Communist aim” of weakening “America’s constructive white civilization by mongrelization;” the attempt of the Supreme Court to seize legislative powers and destroy the principle of States Rights; the Supreme Court’s surrender to “political expediency” in cooperating with the Eisenhower administration’s “unscrupulous effort to win the Negro vote;” and “the cowardly reluctance of too many Southern businessmen, newspapers, radio stations, etc.,” to support resistance to “the black phases of the Red revolution.” Almost two years later, in February, 1957, Morse further expounded his views on the integration controversy in a letter to the editor of the News and Courier: “In brief the racial issue is political and biological—not religious. Since it is promoted by the atheistic Reds, it is anti-Christian. If the pro-Negro drive of the Communists succeeds, our United States may be wiped out and Christianity may receive a terrible setback. It is incredible that many clergymen and other ‘intellectuals’ are so unfamiliar with the laws of God (natural laws) and the facts of history that they have been duped into participating in this pagan attack on our civilization.”[148]
Still another transitory organization combatting racial equality was the American Educators, Incorporated, with headquarters in Hartsville. The American Educators apparently consisted of little more than their president, George W. Waring, who was connected with other similar groups, notably the States Rights League. Chartered in August, 1955, the American Educators sought to instruct the public to “the dangers of the communistic, socialistic, left wing, and modernistic trends to destroy Christianity and other religious faiths, the Constitution of the United States, individual liberties, high morals and self respect.” President Waring favored the application of economic pressures against “all members and sympathizers of the NAACP as well as any other communist-dominated organizations.”[149]
The Federation for Constitutional Government with headquarters in New Orleans is a “national” coordinating organization for white resistance groups. It has affiliates in South Carolina, notably among the Citizens Councils. The Federation was organized in December, 1955, in Memphis, Tennessee, by representatives from twelve Southern and border states and a sprinkling of delegates (self-appointed) from other states. Among the South Carolinians attending were Micah Jenkins, who was elected to the Executive Committee of the Federation, and Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of Charleston, who offered a resolution, adopted by the Convention, supporting interposition. Present at the Memphis meeting were many persons prominent in pro-segregation organizations such as the Citizens Councils and rightist organizations such as We the People and For America. The motives which brought these elements together, according to the News and Courier, were the same as those which guided “the founders of our Republic”—“the preservation of rights and freedoms built on centuries of Anglo-Saxon culture.”[150]
In the development of organized resistance to integration efforts, the Citizens Council has emerged as the most effective opponent of the NAACP. The Council was a relatively late comer to the state, first appearing in the summer of 1955, a full year after the Court’s original ruling. The “need” for an organization which would rally “moderate” and “respectable” whites was apparent to many segregationist leaders. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups were unable to generate anything approaching popular support and furthermore they represented not particularly desirable white elements. In May, 1955, Farley Smith, son of the late Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith, complained of the “apathy of the average white citizen” toward pro-segregation movements and urged establishment of a white counterpart of the NAACP. Smith, S. Emory Rogers, the Summerton attorney who helped argue the Clarendon school case, and others recognized the Council as the answer to the undermining of segregation by the NAACP. The News and Courier, too, believed that the Citizens Council might succeed in steadying the shaking “foundations of the Republic” by providing leadership of the type which was “sorely needed” in the “uncertain times” of 1955.[151]
The Citizens Council idea originated in Indianola, Mississippi, where the first Council was formed in July, 1954. The movement spread rapidly throughout the South. In the late summer of 1955 Thomas R. Waring of the News and Courier wrote a series of articles on the Mississippi Councils to acquaint South Carolinians as to their nature and purpose with a view to encouraging the creation of similar groups in the state. He reported that the Councils proposed “to preserve separation of the races” against the combined assaults of the NAACP and the federal government. At the same time they allegedly were dedicated to the protection of rank and file Negroes “from the wrath of ruffian white people.” Membership in the Councils, said Waring, was recruited from “private, patriotic citizens,” who were the “pillars of the community.” Council members were citizens who “run the Chamber of Commerce and the Community Chest, serve as officers of churches and do the civic chores in every town worthy of the name.” Meeting the criticism of liberals both in the North and the South, Waring stated that Council leaders were “in no sense the architects of an American Fascist movement.” On the contrary, they were “firm supporters of the Republic and Jeffersonian democracy.” The Councils screened all potential members carefully “for character and dependability, as well as for their determination to keep the races separate,” and accepted only those who could be trusted with “the powers of organized civic righteousness.”[152]
The aims of the Citizens Council do not, in fact, differ particularly from those of other white supremacy groups; in its methods, however, the Council places greater emphasis on economic pressure, legal resistance and respectability. Its members wear business suits instead of bedsheets. In 1956 the State Legislature adopted a resolution commending the Citizens Councils in South Carolina as organizations designed
to preserve and maintain proper relations between all races residing in the State of South Carolina; to oppose the use of force by radicals and reactionaries; to disseminate information concerning radicals and reactionaries who may attempt to disrupt the peace and good relations among the races; to make every legal and moral effort to maintain the segregated public schools of the state; to study and develop ways and means for providing adequate education for children of all races in the State of South Carolina in the event that radical agitators should force the abandonment of the public schools; to operate segregated public schools by agreement between the races on a voluntary basis; to acquaint public officials without the State of South Carolina with the conditions in our State which make integration impossible; to acquaint such officials with the fact that the vast majority of the citizens of our State, both white and colored, favor the continuance of segregation in the public schools as now exists; to continue the present American way of life; and for other eleemosynary purposes.[153]
The emphasis on white supremacy is more apparent in a newspaper advertisement of the Florence Council soliciting membership. After describing the organization as the “modern version of the old town meeting,” it stated that the “Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated! We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.” To do battle with the “mongrelizers” the Council needed “every patriotic white Southerner, rich or poor, high or low,” who was “proud of being a white American.” All such persons were urged to join the Council for the protection of “those baby children at home.”[154] Micah Jenkins, president of the Charleston Council, said the movement aimed “to promote better race relations, and in every way preserve for the South its own way of life.”[155] The Reverend L. B. McCord, the Clarendon County school superintendent and one of the founders of the Clarendon Council, justified formation of the Councils on the ground that should an emergency arise such organizations would be available to give it “thoughtful and prayerful attention.”[156]
The immediate cause for the rapid growth of the Citizens Councils in South Carolina was the appearance of the school integration petitions in the summer of 1955. These petitions served as a catalyst to crystallize the previously unorganized opposition among whites to integration. The first Council was formed at Elloree in Orangeburg County in early August, 1955, immediately following a petition by Negroes for school integration. From this beginning the Councils spread rapidly throughout the lowcountry and into several counties in the upper part of the state. During the first year’s existence, Councils were formed at the rate of better than one per week so that by July 1, 1956, South Carolina had 55 separate Councils.[157] Only a few have been added since that date.[158]
In October, 1955, representatives from the various Councils met in Columbia to lay the foundation for a statewide association. This was effected in December, 1955. Micah Jenkins, a Charleston nurseryman, was named state chairman and S. Emory Rogers executive secretary. Inasmuch as the local Councils were autonomous, the purpose of the state organization was to give overall coordination and direction to activities on the state level. The state association had a speakers’ bureau and a legal advisory committee composed of one member from each of the state’s judicial districts in which at least one Council was organized. The board of directors was made up of one representative from each county in which a Council had been organized. Membership totals were not maintained by the state headquarters but were variously estimated between 25,000 and 40,000 in the summer of 1956.[159]
The South Carolina Citizens Councils are affiliated with the national Citizens Councils of America which has headquarters in Greenwood, Mississippi. The national organization published an official newspaper, The Citizens Council, which had a circulation in early 1957 of approximately 4,000. In 1957 The Citizens Council ran in serial form “A Manual for Southerners,” a segregation handbook designed for public school pupils. That portion designed for third and fourth graders read in part:
Negroes and white people do not go to the same places together. We live in different parts of town. And we are kind to each other. This is called our Southern Way of Life.
Do you know that some people in our country want the Negroes to live with the white people? These people want us to be unhappy.... They want to make our country weak....
Do you know what part of our country you live in? You live in the South.... We are called Southerners. Southerners are people who live in the South. You are a Southerner. You live in the South....
God put the white people off by themselves. He put the yellow, red and black people by themselves. God wanted the white people to live alone....
White men built America. The Negro came to our country after the white man did. The white man has always been kind to the Negro. But the white and black people do not live together in the South....
[Those who seek integration] say we are not good if we don’t live together. But we know it is wrong to live together.... They want to make our country weak. Did you know our country will grow weak if we mix our races? It will.[160]
Although this quotation requires no comment either from the standpoint of logic or historical accuracy, the reaction of Margaretta P. Childs of Charleston is noteworthy:
Such pontifical judgments [she wrote] may not edify the third grade pupil for whom they are intended, but will surely amuse a wide audience all over the country. The Mississippians’ intimate knowledge, perhaps even complicity in, the Deity’s intentions will also catch the attention of the nation’s Biblical scholars and theologians....
Unfortunately for the school child, if he learns any history or geography he may be more perplexed than confirmed in a fine old Saxon interpretation of divine will. If God wanted the white man ‘to live alone’, why did He send the white man across the ocean to trespass on the lands of the red men or to make long voyages to settle among the dark-skinned people of Africa and Asia?
The pamphlet in its ‘simple, easy-to-read style’ will not fool the children for long and will furnish lots of jokes to observers of the Southern scene. Too bad that H. L. Mencken, keenest critic of bigotry, false sentiment, and hypocrisy, is not around to enjoy and lampoon this latest tasteless expression of the cracker mentality. The intellectual bankruptcy of the die-hard segregationists is clearly shown for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.[161]
Local Councils maintain several committees, each charged with specific functions. An information and education committee is assigned to gather and disseminate information on racial problems on all levels. A committee on politics and elections has the responsibility of studying candidates for political office and presenting their qualifications to the voters. A membership and finance committee seeks to enlist “all patriotic white citizens for membership” and thus assure the organization of support. Membership fees are generally set at $5.00. A legal advisory committee provides “legal knowledge” to the Council in its fight against integration.[162] Some of the Councils are organized on a countywide basis while others correspond to a local school district.
The Citizens Councils have quickly endeavored to make their influence felt in the political arena. Although the state organization declares that it will “steer clear of partisan politics,” it nonetheless exerts direct political pressure. Using its power “for principles, not persons; for causes, not individuals,” the state Council makes sure that all candidates hold orthodox views on the race question. The aim is not so much to endorse particular candidates but to insure that all are “safe.” As the News and Courier noted, the Council aimed “to give support to strong officials and put backbone into weak ones.”[163]
In the state elections of 1956 the Council submitted to the candidates a list of questions designed to detect any deviation from orthodoxy on the race issue. The most revealing of these asked: “Do you here and now promise not to seek the Negro vote directly or indirectly?”[164] A joint statement in reply to the queries by five of the six members of the state’s delegation to the House of Representatives—L. Mendel Rivers, John J. Riley, W. J. Bryan Dorn, Robert J. Ashmore and John L. McMillan—reflected the attitudes of South Carolina politicians. Said the representatives:
We believe continued segregation to be in the best interest of South Carolina and the United States. Our country is threatened from abroad and from within by an atheistic menace which will stoop to any methods to create unrest and disunity. South Carolina’s record of tolerance, patriotism and understanding is second to that of no other state. It is far superior to that of some other states which spawn the chief critics of our way of life and harbor fugitives from justice.
There are in South Carolina many patriotic colored citizens who are not misled by outside agitation and who are working at the local level with our white citizens to solve this complex problem.
The votes of such Negroes, continued the congressmen, would and should be welcomed by all South Carolina politicians.[165]
Political leaders, the state press and other moulders of public opinion endorse the Citizens Council in its role as spokesman for “the Southern way of life.” Indicative was the appearance of Senators Thurmond and Johnston, Representatives Rivers and Riley, former Governor Byrnes, State Representative Burnet R. Maybank, Jr., and others of less political note at a Council rally held in Columbia. Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi, the principal speaker, told his audience that the Supreme Court decision had been “dictated by political pressure groups bent upon the destruction of the American system of government and bent upon the mongrelization of the white race.” In making the decision, the Court had “responded to a radical pro-communist political movement.” Senator Thurmond commended the Councils for the “orderly and lawful manner” in which they had approached the “problem” created by the Supreme Court decision.[166]
Among the state press, the News and Courier has become a sort of unofficial organ for the Councils. The Charleston paper presents these organizations as “moderate and sound” in approach and representative of a “deep public sentiment” against integration. To the News and Courier the movement is evidence that the South has “not shrunk from revolution and rebellion,” words which were “honorable” when the cause was just.[167] The Record endorses the Councils but the Independent, reflecting upcountry distrust of lowcountry domination of the Councils, expresses little interest in the movement.
Scattered opposition has developed amongst the South Carolina white population to the Councils. Initially, the Morning News mildly condemned them, stating that their appearance was “tacit admission” that the NAACP occupied a position of superiority in the segregation controversy.[168] Stronger protest has come from the South Carolina Methodist Church. In a statement adopted at its annual conference in 1955—before the Citizens Councils had consolidated their position in the state—the Methodist leaders condemned the movement. They noted that “it is properly supposed that these councils are being formed for the express purpose of exerting economic pressure upon a portion of our citizenry to prevent the exercise and development of their moral conscience and their civil rights according to the dictates of their consciences.” Such action, declared the Methodists, was a “contradiction of the basic teachings of our Lord and Master.”[169] The national executive council of the AFL-CIO has approved a report that contained an especially strong condemnation of the Councils. The labor leaders referred to them as “this new Ku Klux Klan without hoods” whose actions bore “ominous” resemblance “to the pattern of the growth of Naziism and other totalitarian movements which have fed on hatred and defied constitutional democracy.”[170] Expressing similar sentiments, Thurgood Marshall said that “the really vicious part about these groups” was the creation of an “atmosphere of respectability” in which other less scrupulous groups could “intimidate, threaten, beat up and kill Negroes.”[171]
The principal method used by the Citizens Councils in opposing integration is the economic boycott. This policy, which belies professed reliance on constitutional forms of opposition, has been employed from the very beginning. Leaders of the Elloree Council declared their immediate purpose was to exert “economic pressure on all persons connected with the NAACP.” Specifically, these spokesmen were referring to the seventeen Negro parents who had signed the petition seeking the end of race discrimination in Elloree public schools. The effectiveness of the policy was indicated within two weeks following the formation of the Council. Several Negro petitioners lost their jobs or were peremptorily evicted from their farms as a consequence of which fourteen of them asked that their names be removed because they “did not fully understand the meaning of the language of the petition” at the time of their signature.[172]
The overall object of the economic boycott has been to discourage all persons sympathetic to the idea of integration. Because of their generally inferior economic status, Negroes are especially vulnerable to such pressures. In areas where the boycott has been invoked any Negro who did not support segregation could expect to find business and personal credit withheld, home mortgages and installment loans denied, employment terminated or refused, rental quarters barred to him, and business and professional patronage withdrawn.
The city of Orangeburg provides an excellent study of the way in which the economic boycott operates. Located about fifty miles southeast of Columbia, Orangeburg had a population in 1950 of approximately 15,000. It is the county seat of Orangeburg County, a predominantly agricultural area the population of which is approximately fifty percent Negro. The white population of Orangeburg had always considered the city a model of “biracial amity, interracial cooperation, and educational progress.”[173] This attitude prevailed until fifty-seven Negroes petitioned for public school integration in the summer of 1955. The white citizenry was stunned by this action, considering it a breach of good faith on the part of the Negro parents. Reaction was instantaneous. A Citizens Council was organized which immediately began a policy of economic pressure against the petitioners. A number of prominent businessmen joined the boycott and several Negro retail merchants among the petitioners found their supply of such basic commodities as bread and milk curtailed. White merchants refused to extend credit to the petitioners and asked that all outstanding accounts be settled immediately. The white community terminated financial assistance that had previously been available to petitioners.
Negro leaders, realizing that economic pressure was a two-edged sword, immediately began retaliating in kind against those merchants prominent in the Citizens Council boycott. Since Negroes represented approximately fifty percent of Orangeburg’s population, their counter boycott was of considerable proportion and keenly felt by many white merchants. A boycott list of twenty-three local firms was distributed among the Negro community. It included only the more outspoken of the white boycott leaders and those most dependent on Negro trade. According to Reporter magazine, at least one white retail merchant was put out of business.
More positive steps were also taken to aid the Negro boycott victims. A fund, eventually reaching approximately $50,000, was deposited in the Victory Savings Bank, a Negro institution in Columbia, and was made available for small loans to Orangeburg Negroes. This fund included $20,000 donated by the NAACP, $5,000 deposited by an unidentified Catholic church, and $5,000 deposited by the National Council of Churches. The Negroes cooperated among themselves in other ways to help make their counter-boycott effective.
Accompanying the two-sided economic boycott was a general breakdown in race relations. To a suggestion by Negro ministers that they hold joint prayer services to help solve the problem, the white ministerial alliance of Orangeburg replied, “This is not the time” for praying together.
Boycott and counter-boycott reached an impasse and in the spring of 1956 both sides realized the desirability for compromise. The whites made several concessions, notably the resignation of Council Chairman W. T. C. Bates who had been largely responsible for the extreme position taken by the whites. With both sides easing up on the economic boycott, there was a general lessening of tension. However, neither side would compromise the basic issue. Negro parents continue to demand an end to school segregation (the number of petitioners was reduced by the boycott from fifty-seven to twenty-six); whites continue to stand adamantly against ending school segregation.[174]
An important incident in the Orangeburg controversy was the protest against intimidation by the student body and certain faculty members of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. The college is the only state supported institution of higher education for Negroes in South Carolina. Its presence in Orangeburg gives the local Negro community an unusually well educated and effective leadership. Several of the faculty members were at least sympathetic to the policies of the NAACP. The anti-segregation sentiment of these and other persons prominently connected with the college brought a request from Rep. Jerry M. Hughes, Jr. of Orangeburg for an investigation of NAACP activities among the faculty and students. Consequently in March 1956 the state legislature approved a resolution establishing a nine-member committee to determine which individuals at the college were “members of and sympathizers with” the NAACP; the extent of participation of the faculty and students in the activities of the NAACP; whether or not the faculty and students were “serving to mislead the Negro citizens and foment and nurture ill feeling and misunderstanding between the White and Negro races;” and if the activities of the faculty and students were “detrimental to the welfare of the college, its students and the State of South Carolina as a whole.” The resolution described the NAACP as an organization dedicated to the “fomenting and nurturing of a bitter feeling of unrest, unhappiness and resentment among the members of the Negro race with their status in the social and economic structure of the South.”[175]
Following adoption of this resolution, a portion of the student body and faculty of the college framed its own resolution which condemned “pressures and attempts at intimidation” being applied to the college and expressed approval of the policies of the NAACP.[176]
As unrest among the student body grew, Governor Timmerman directed the State Law Enforcement Division’s attention to “information that certain subversive elements” might attempt to sponsor a demonstration against the state government. He directed the law enforcement agency “to keep the situation under surveillance and to arrest immediately any law violators.”[177]
These incidents together with the white-Negro boycott then in effect in Orangeburg led to a protest strike by the student body of the Negro college. During the strike the students presented President Benner C. Turner with a list of grievances which protested against the investigation and the patronage by the college of certain Orangeburg business firms operated by men prominent in the economic boycott against Negroes. The strike lasted a week, achieving little for the students. Fred Moore, student body president and leader of the strike, was expelled from school. At the end of the year the contracts of several faculty members were not renewed and some twenty-five students were requested not to return.[178]
The investigating committee met in July, organized itself and selected Rep. James H. McFaddin of Clarendon County as chairman. When the investigation began, committee members were told by the compliant President Turner that since the student strike had been ended and several faculty members dismissed, there was no longer anything to investigate. Consequently after a perfunctory one-day meeting, the committee held no further hearings.[179]
Use of the economic boycott at Orangeburg and elsewhere has generally been approved by the press of the state. Its dangers are realized but the end is considered worth the risk. The Record has compared the white boycott to Gandhi’s policy of “non-cooperation” (passive resistance) against the British![180] Not surprisingly the policy receives its most enthusiastic support from the News and Courier:
We would not encourage unfair retaliation against any citizen, whatever his race, for free expression of opinion. This is a truly free country and people can say or write whatever they wish.
In exercising this freedom, people must be ready to bear the consequences. If those consequences include unpopularity, public dislike or refusal to do business with them, they need not be surprised.[181]
On another occasion the News and Courier declared that “Negroes wishing to engage in activities repugnant to white people are also free to earn a living elsewhere.” To secure employment in the South, Negroes should be willing “to observe community customs.”[182]
The policies of the Citizens Council at least temporarily have been successful inasmuch as they have postponed an immediate showdown on the school segregation issue. Just how long such unofficial measures will continue to be successful is problematical.