In a booklet entitled “Education and Race Relations” distributed to its 20,000 members, the Farm Bureau proposed the development of a “co-racial program” of separate but equal schools. By co-racial the Bureau meant “equal status, equal opportunity and self-determination.” If facilities were truly equal, contended the Bureau, there would be “more gracious acceptance” of segregation by both races and “no white or Negro child” would be “forced to attend a school of mixed races, unwillingly.” Since segregation would, under these circumstances, be maintained voluntarily both the spirit and the letter of the court decision would be observed. The success of this program would depend on voluntary acceptance by both races. Again significantly, no provision was made to accommodate those pupils seeking integrated schools.[117]
The Record’s proposals merit special attention since in reality they cracked the door to school integration. It recommended a system (consequently adopted in part in North Carolina) which would allow Negroes in “a few rare instances” to attend white schools. Such a system, which would have assigned pupils to schools on factors other than race, would comply with the Court’s decision and at the same time maintain segregation almost 100 percent intact. Under the system “an occasional white pupil” would have to be assigned to a Negro school. The Record also recommended repeal of all of South Carolina’s segregation laws as a means of removing the basis for further court rulings against the state.[118]
The Independent, though less concerned with the segregation issue, had its own homespun suggestions as to how to circumvent the Court. Comparing resistance to integration with opposition to the Eighteenth Amendment, it suggested that the time might come “when segregated education will be ‘bootlegged’ and when federal agents, slinking behind hedges, will try to follow little Johnny to the ‘speakeasy’ school.” However, there would be plenty of old timers who could give Johnny “some valuable tips on how to confound the revenooers.”[119]
Not a few urged defiance to the point of violence in resistance to integration. Others, less extreme in their utterances, helped create a climate of disrespect for the segregation decision which made defiance easier. “Because the Supreme Court has spoken we should not submit without resistance,” said Senator Thurmond. South Carolinians, he added, “must resist integration by every legal means harder than the integrationists fought to end segregation.” The News and Courier asserted that “the will to resist goes deep into the fabric of the Southern people. They do not intend to yield their principles so long as they draw breath.” Commenting on the integration violence in Clinton, Tennessee, it declared that “organized rebellion at the local level” was “a wasteful and disturbing means of dealing with government.” But Southern states should not “give an inch in standing up to the federal government.”[120]
Despite the intransigent opposition that had developed to integration in the state and the South generally by the summer of 1955, W. D. Workman, Jr., despaired of the “blight of submissiveness” which the Court decision had spread over the land. The “cry of surrender” by those who would accept the decision as law did not “fit well into the traditional pattern of American resistance to dictation,” he declared.[121] A number of letters to the editor of the News and Courier were of the same opinion.
Occasional outbreaks of violence have come in South Carolina as a result of the integration “agitation.” These have been rare, however; the threat of violence was usually sufficient. The most prominent case of violence involved the Reverend J. A. DeLaine, an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister[122] and leader of one of the organizations sponsoring the school case from Clarendon County, where he had a pastorate. Later he was transferred to Lake City. DeLaine’s church in Lake City was destroyed by a fire of undetermined origin; his home was pelted with rocks, fruits and other objects from passing automobiles. On one occasion DeLaine, claiming that the occupants of a passing automobile had fired gunshots into his home, shot back. Two of the men were slightly injured by metal fragments from the car. The men in the car maintained that they had not fired and were in fact unarmed. As a result of this incident DeLaine fled to New York City, seeking refuge with an AME bishop. In South Carolina he was indicted for assault with intent to kill. Federal authorities took no action to return DeLaine to South Carolina. Governor Timmerman, stating that he did not want to give the NAACP another martyr who could be used for fund raising, decided not to press for extradition. South Carolina was well rid of “this professional agitator,” commented Timmerman.
Some two years later DeLaine, interviewed at New Rochelle, N. Y., where he was serving as pastor of the Mount Carmel Church, asserted that his experiences in South Carolina had permanently scarred both him and the members of his family. However, he added: “It’s worth some suffering—it’s even worth a man’s life, if he can start something that will lead to a little more justice for people.... We helped start some things that are bringing a revolution in education for Negroes in South Carolina, in modern schools and bus transportation.” Nor did the minister harbor any ill feelings toward the people of South Carolina. “There are too many good people there, white and colored. But they need to stand up against the hate-mongers,” he declared.[123]
A second notable incident of violence, which took place in December, 1956, involved the flogging of a Camden High School band leader, Guy Hutchins, by six hooded men. According to Hutchins, he was attacked while changing an automobile tire on a lonely road. His assailants accused him of making remarks in favor of racial integration, a charge which Hutchins flatly denied.
Although the Kershaw County grand jury on two different occasions refused to indict six men arrested in connection with the case, many white South Carolinians publicly criticized the incident. The Rev. Stiles B. Lines, pastor of the Camden Episcopal Church of which Hutchins was a member, declared that “fear covers South Carolina like the frost.” Referring to the flogging, he told his parishioners: “Men are afraid to speak. Freedom of speech is almost extinct in South Carolina, except for those who wish to speak in favor of and in accord with the policies of the pressure groups who self-righteously assume that they, and only they, have the answers.”[124]
Criticism of the Hutchins affair was sufficiently widespread to cause the steering committee of the Kershaw County Citizens Council to meet in special session and issue a statement declaring that “unlawful acts of violence, force or intimidation serve only to bring discredit on this community and state, and, insofar as concerns the struggle against integration, the loss of States’ Rights and loss of individual liberties, to cause diversion, dissension and dismay among those who are attempting to maintain our traditional social order and way of life.”