The city of Orangeburg provides an excellent study of the way in which the economic boycott operates. Located about fifty miles southeast of Columbia, Orangeburg had a population in 1950 of approximately 15,000. It is the county seat of Orangeburg County, a predominantly agricultural area the population of which is approximately fifty percent Negro. The white population of Orangeburg had always considered the city a model of “biracial amity, interracial cooperation, and educational progress.”[173] This attitude prevailed until fifty-seven Negroes petitioned for public school integration in the summer of 1955. The white citizenry was stunned by this action, considering it a breach of good faith on the part of the Negro parents. Reaction was instantaneous. A Citizens Council was organized which immediately began a policy of economic pressure against the petitioners. A number of prominent businessmen joined the boycott and several Negro retail merchants among the petitioners found their supply of such basic commodities as bread and milk curtailed. White merchants refused to extend credit to the petitioners and asked that all outstanding accounts be settled immediately. The white community terminated financial assistance that had previously been available to petitioners.
Negro leaders, realizing that economic pressure was a two-edged sword, immediately began retaliating in kind against those merchants prominent in the Citizens Council boycott. Since Negroes represented approximately fifty percent of Orangeburg’s population, their counter boycott was of considerable proportion and keenly felt by many white merchants. A boycott list of twenty-three local firms was distributed among the Negro community. It included only the more outspoken of the white boycott leaders and those most dependent on Negro trade. According to Reporter magazine, at least one white retail merchant was put out of business.
More positive steps were also taken to aid the Negro boycott victims. A fund, eventually reaching approximately $50,000, was deposited in the Victory Savings Bank, a Negro institution in Columbia, and was made available for small loans to Orangeburg Negroes. This fund included $20,000 donated by the NAACP, $5,000 deposited by an unidentified Catholic church, and $5,000 deposited by the National Council of Churches. The Negroes cooperated among themselves in other ways to help make their counter-boycott effective.
Accompanying the two-sided economic boycott was a general breakdown in race relations. To a suggestion by Negro ministers that they hold joint prayer services to help solve the problem, the white ministerial alliance of Orangeburg replied, “This is not the time” for praying together.
Boycott and counter-boycott reached an impasse and in the spring of 1956 both sides realized the desirability for compromise. The whites made several concessions, notably the resignation of Council Chairman W. T. C. Bates who had been largely responsible for the extreme position taken by the whites. With both sides easing up on the economic boycott, there was a general lessening of tension. However, neither side would compromise the basic issue. Negro parents continue to demand an end to school segregation (the number of petitioners was reduced by the boycott from fifty-seven to twenty-six); whites continue to stand adamantly against ending school segregation.[174]
An important incident in the Orangeburg controversy was the protest against intimidation by the student body and certain faculty members of the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. The college is the only state supported institution of higher education for Negroes in South Carolina. Its presence in Orangeburg gives the local Negro community an unusually well educated and effective leadership. Several of the faculty members were at least sympathetic to the policies of the NAACP. The anti-segregation sentiment of these and other persons prominently connected with the college brought a request from Rep. Jerry M. Hughes, Jr. of Orangeburg for an investigation of NAACP activities among the faculty and students. Consequently in March 1956 the state legislature approved a resolution establishing a nine-member committee to determine which individuals at the college were “members of and sympathizers with” the NAACP; the extent of participation of the faculty and students in the activities of the NAACP; whether or not the faculty and students were “serving to mislead the Negro citizens and foment and nurture ill feeling and misunderstanding between the White and Negro races;” and if the activities of the faculty and students were “detrimental to the welfare of the college, its students and the State of South Carolina as a whole.” The resolution described the NAACP as an organization dedicated to the “fomenting and nurturing of a bitter feeling of unrest, unhappiness and resentment among the members of the Negro race with their status in the social and economic structure of the South.”[175]
Following adoption of this resolution, a portion of the student body and faculty of the college framed its own resolution which condemned “pressures and attempts at intimidation” being applied to the college and expressed approval of the policies of the NAACP.[176]
As unrest among the student body grew, Governor Timmerman directed the State Law Enforcement Division’s attention to “information that certain subversive elements” might attempt to sponsor a demonstration against the state government. He directed the law enforcement agency “to keep the situation under surveillance and to arrest immediately any law violators.”[177]
These incidents together with the white-Negro boycott then in effect in Orangeburg led to a protest strike by the student body of the Negro college. During the strike the students presented President Benner C. Turner with a list of grievances which protested against the investigation and the patronage by the college of certain Orangeburg business firms operated by men prominent in the economic boycott against Negroes. The strike lasted a week, achieving little for the students. Fred Moore, student body president and leader of the strike, was expelled from school. At the end of the year the contracts of several faculty members were not renewed and some twenty-five students were requested not to return.[178]
The investigating committee met in July, organized itself and selected Rep. James H. McFaddin of Clarendon County as chairman. When the investigation began, committee members were told by the compliant President Turner that since the student strike had been ended and several faculty members dismissed, there was no longer anything to investigate. Consequently after a perfunctory one-day meeting, the committee held no further hearings.[179]