Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

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.