To judge by what Prof. Quint points out in this highly discerning book, the situation in South Carolina hasn’t improved materially since the Supreme Court of the land ruled, in its historic decision of May 17, 1954, that students in publicly supported educational institutions may not be segregated because of race, creed, or color. A worsening rather than improving racial situation is indeed reflected by the views expressed by officials, newspaper editors, voluntary organizations and individual citizens, Negro and white, as cited in this book.
Although Prof. Quint handles his material with admirable restraint, the reader, even if he is personally attached to the state,[1] is likely to pronounce South Carolina’s record a melancholy one. Is the state behaving responsibly when it denies the law of the land, busies itself with contriving means of avoidance, threatens instead of addressing itself to the manifest mandate? When it revives the plea of peculiarity does it remember its own history of nullification and secession? Is it never to reject the demagogue who proclaims exploded notions of race and distorts the Constitution of the United States? In the interval for reformation which the Supreme Court has wisely allowed must South Carolina indulge bluster and vituperation in place of summoning candor and courage? Have ignorance, poverty, and prejudice fed on each other until the white community has sunk to second-rate capacity?
Consider the spectacle of an ancient commonwealth in delirium because a black child knocks on a schoolhouse door. What are the causes of this fury? They are many, but the chief is that the applicant for equal opportunity is now in a superior legal and moral position. It is the Negro who rests upon rights, to be claimed through orderly processes. He leaves desperate remedies to those who refuse him. In the rap on the door sound the measured tones of judges, the command of the President of the United States and the voice of the nation. Echoes too the demand of deprived peoples in many countries.
More solemn than all these is the call of conscience of South Carolina. Immemorial wrongs are at length to be redressed—gradually, painfully, surely. Some will say that the conscience of the state is dead, that to invoke it is delusion. If that is true, no solution offers except coercion, while we entertain the hope that prudent acquiescence will substitute for more valorous self-correction. If the white people of South Carolina furnish no worthy response in the crisis, then humiliation and rehabilitation by other hands is their portion.
In spite of the discouraging showing to date, one awaits a better prospect. Patience, double patience, in the cure of long-standing ills is the obvious counsel. Though South Carolina has had ample warning, public opinion reflects a state of shock. Additional time (but how long, oh Lord, how long?) for readjustment will bring the problem into truer focus. Extravagant allegations still industriously pressed will inevitably be discredited. Who can believe that the Supreme Court is Communist-controlled or that segregation in the schools is the bulwark of racial purity? As other states conform to the court decree and their experience is that the heavens do not fall, fanciful terrors will subside. New leaders will bid for support, persons not pledged to fierce intolerance.
Healthy elements deserve to be nursed. Wholesale condemnation, besides being inapplicable, will act to bring support to the violent, the confused, the cruel. A state may not be disparaged into compliance.
The truly restorative ingredients are within. That they will be roused and meet the nation’s demand there can be no doubt. Prof. Quint’s book makes this amply evident.
Some may feel that the author is much too critical and outspoken. I disagree. While I don’t go along with everything that Prof. Quint says, I am inclined to feel that his book needed to be written; too many things have been left unsaid too long. It’s time that South Carolina—that, indeed, the entire South—face up, boldly and realistically, to their problems. I commend this book to every Southerner and to every American.
Broadus Mitchell
[1] Mr. Mitchell is a graduate of the University of South Carolina, of which his father, the late Samuel Chiles Mitchell, was president. His mother was born in South Carolina, his father in Mississippi of South Carolina (Richland and Abbeville districts) forbears. He is now John Hay Whitney Visiting Professor of Economic History in Hofstra College, Hempstead, Long Island.