Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

A PLACE IN THE SHADE

We’ve always had a place in the sun down South. Now I reckon some of us would like a little of the shade too.—An Unidentified Negro

Throughout the segregation-integration controversy white leaders have rarely attempted to discover what the Negro thinks on the matter. Instead they have arbitrarily declared that the overwhelming majority of South Carolina Negroes have no desire for integrated schools. This claim is made almost without exception. A writer in the Morning News noted that while Southern governors and attorneys general had held conferences to consider the objectives of Negroes, they had never called a biracial meeting at which the latter could voice their aims. On no occasion had white leaders asked Negroes to state their position; the aspirations of Negroes were always specified by white men. Such a situation, it was observed, might well result in “brash action” by “sincere white people, who, alarmed by white men’s statements of Negro aims,” were girding for war without waiting to hear the Negroes themselves.[231] A perusal of public pronouncements by Negro leaders and groups reveals that a misconception in regard to Negro aims and desires exists among the white people of South Carolina.

The goal sought by the overwhelming majority of South Carolina Negro leaders is an immediate end to legal segregation. They recognize that for many years to come de facto segregation will continue to exist. But on the point of legally enforced segregation, there is no compromise. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, a native South Carolinian and president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, told a meeting of the Florence County NAACP that the immediate concern of the Negro was not for integration but desegregation. Desegregation, he said, meant “to destroy segregation based on law.” Likewise A. J. Clement, Jr., president of the Charleston County NAACP chapter, said South Carolina Negroes wished an opportunity to make their “best contribution” to the development of the state, an objective that could be realized only by ending segregation.[232]

At this point a more complete picture of the aims and aspirations of South Carolina Negroes is in order. As already has been noted, white political leaders constantly have stated that the majority of the state’s Negroes oppose desegregation. Only on occasion is it acknowledged that the Negro might, after all, want desegregation. The News and Courier believed that “the average Southern Negro” would accept as much mingling “as the white man would allow.” It did not think, though, that the Negro was “willing to risk a great deal to attain it.” This “moderate attitude” by Negroes was in keeping with “good citizenship as well as good race relations.” The recognition of “conditions as they exist,” according to the Charleston paper, should be neither “humiliating nor degrading for Negroes.” Writing in Harper’s in early 1956, Thomas R. Waring, editor of the News and Courier, admitted that “it would not be hard to believe that, given a choice, a Negro naturally would prefer all restrictions to be removed.” But “a firm and positive stand by people everywhere,” he held, would put an end to “the race agitation that has plagued our country these last several years.”[233]

A more positive statement of this attitude was made by W. D. Workman, Jr., the News and Courier correspondent. Writing in late 1955, he observed that too many white South Carolinians were laboring “under the dangerous delusion that Negroes of the state do not want integration.” In truth, he maintained, “a large percentage” of Negroes “and an even greater percentage of their leaders very definitely do want integration of the races, and as soon as possible.” The failure of the state’s leadership to recognize this situation involved “the tactical error—which could prove disastrous—of underestimating the enemy.” Assessing the extent to which Negroes desired integration, Workman noted that educational, religious and civic leaders seemed overwhelmingly “determined to press for integration.” He reported a division amongst Negroes with “some genuinely and sincerely” opposing any integration and others who doubted the practicability of the “current rate” of integration. But among Negro leaders he found “increasingly open and avowed agitation for integration.”[234] In substantial agreement, the Record termed the belief that a majority of Negroes favored segregation a “head-in-the-sand theory.”[235]

It is hardly possible to evaluate with exactness, of course, the attitude of the rank and file of South Carolina Negroes toward segregation. In early 1956 the Gallup Poll asked people throughout the country their opinion on the Supreme Court decision. No results on a statewide basis were announced; however, the poll indicated that 53 percent of Southern Negroes (13 states) approved the decision while 36 percent opposed it and 11 percent were undecided. For comparison only 16 percent of Southern whites approved the decision, 80 percent disapproved, and four percent were undecided.[236] The vehement opposition of Southern whites to integration, reported the Gallup organization, caused many Negroes “to view with misgivings the possible repercussions” of race mixing. However, the report noted “a common desire” on the part of Southern Negroes “to give their children the best possible education and obtain for their race the treatment which they consider to be in keeping with the ‘American way of life.’” In a survey of the status of race relations in South Carolina in early 1956, the New York Times noted that, while Negroes were “more cautious” in expressing views than whites, nonetheless, there was “little or no question that literate, articulate Negroes generally” desired an end of legal segregation. These groups, reported the Times, resented being “officially classed” as “an inferior race and as second class citizens.”[237]

Despite an understandable reluctance of Negroes to express themselves on segregation, news reporters on occasion have been able to obtain revealing statements. In the summer of 1956 an Associated Press writer, interviewing Negroes in Clarendon County, sought the opinions of the family of William Hilton, a tenant farmer. Several of Hilton’s 13 children spoke out forthrightly:

I’d like to go to school with white children, said Henrietta Hilton, 13. I just don’t like to segregate myself because of my color or hair. I’d like to be able to pick friends on another basis. I think I’d enjoy being friends with some white girls. Maybe they’d enjoy being friends with me.

I never wished I was white, said Morgan Hilton, 16. I just wished many times I was treated like the whites.