The comments made by South Carolina Circuit Judge G. Duncan Bellinger of Columbia on the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision were an interesting sidelight on the Hutchins incident. They were voiced in his charge to the grand jury considering the indictment of the six men accused of the flogging. Members of the Court, said the judge, had “substituted for legal principles their own personal, social, economic and political ideas, taking away the rights of states, the powers of the departments of the federal government and the rights of individual citizens.” But in urging an indictment of the accused, Bellinger declared that violence would aid only the “scalawags and carpetbaggers” who were seeking to bring about another Reconstruction.[125] By inference the judge considered fighting the “scalawags and carpetbaggers” as important as the rights of individual citizen Guy Hutchins.
Under circumstances and conditions such as those outlined above South Carolina developed its resistance to attempts of the Negro to win integration. The unanimity of opinion among those elements which spoke out on the subject encouraged silence among more moderate persons. Such a situation is further illustrated by a more detailed consideration of the various phases of resistance.
CHAPTER IV
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.