Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

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.