Negro leaders were restrained in commenting on the Court decision. James M. Hinton said that “Negroes, though happy,” were “most mindful of the seriousness of the decision” and would cooperate fully with state leaders in its implementation. “There is no place in a democracy for segregation,” he declared. Bishop Reid called for “a special day of thanksgiving at this hour when the Supreme Court has answered the challenge and call of democracy.”[248]
A small minority of Negro religious spokesmen opposed the decision. The Reverend Hydrick Strobel of St. George, a black-belt town, urged his congregation to “be well pleased and thank God for equal but separate schools for our colored children, where they can learn to take pride in their own race, instead of being ashamed of it.”[249]
A staff writer for the Record, analyzing the reaction of Clarendon County Negroes to the decision, stated that “there is not much rejoicing, even among the colored people of this district, over the way their case has turned out. They hold their heads a little higher and they seem to have a little more confidence in themselves, but they are concerned about the future of the schools.”[250] In like manner an Associated Press writer noted the difficulty of determining the opinion of the majority of Clarendon Negroes. “Some say that they want segregation to continue as long as facilities are equal,” he reported. “Some are against it. Many won’t say either way.”[251]
White South Carolinians in maintaining that Negroes desire segregation, customarily quote Negro “hands,” domestic servants or others who had said they favored segregation. In evaluating these pro-segregation statements by Negroes, the whites rarely distinguish between the uneducated, economically dependent Negro and recognized Negro leadership. Such a mistake results naturally from the Booker T. Washington tradition that the Southern white man is the only true friend of the Negro and has always stood ready to give him assistance and advice in meeting the challenges of the white man’s civilization. Whereas Yankees might mouth pious platitudes about all men being created equal and having equal rights, the Southerner is the true benefactor of the Negro on the individual level.
Indications are that in some quarters this attitude is changing as a result of the segregation controversy. James M. Hinton spoke of the rise of a “new Negro” in the South, one whom “traditional” Southerners had difficulty in understanding. A few white spokesmen have admitted that the “new Negro” was difficult to comprehend. W. D. Workman, Jr., spoke of the “incapacity of the white man to fathom the thinking of the Negro.” In a similar vein the Record editorially observed that “no white person can know what the Negroes are thinking. For ordinarily a Negro tells a white man in the South what he thinks that white person wishes to hear. It may not be and frequently is not what the Negro actually thinks.”[252]
Despite such evidence the state’s political leaders continue to assert that Negroes favor the status quo. They possess, in short, a superabundance of William James’s “will to believe.” In his inaugural address, Governor Timmerman asserted that “most Negro parents” did not want their children “to mix with large groups of white children.” Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings, characterizing segregation as a “natural thing,” maintained that “a majority of Negroes” were no more enthusiastic about mixed schools than white persons. Senator Marion Gressette told a Bamberg audience that “thousands of Negroes” were fighting with the whites to preserve segregation.[253]
Newspaper editorialists also generally agree that the majority of Negroes oppose integration. The News and Courier thought that “except for the NAACP and a few other zealots,” Negroes were not willing “to disrupt harmonious race relations for a goal that many of them view with indifference.” The Independent believed public school integration was opposed “not only by white people but by thinking Negro leaders and the patrons of Negro schools.” The Morning News, after James A. Rogers replaced Jack H. O’Dowd as editor in August, 1956, felt that the majority of Negroes did not regard “with sympathy the efforts of some of their contemporaries to force an unnatural mixing of the races which would create unbearable tensions and inequalities.”[254]
White spokesmen only rarely can see any reason for the Negro’s “agitation” for the abolition of segregation. Under segregation, said the Morning News, the Negro had “opportunities for racial development unparalleled anywhere else in this country.” Segregation was “not an evil scheme” to keep the Negro in subjection but a high road along which he could achieve “maximum development in an atmosphere without tension or ill-will.” An excellent example of the “separate-but-equal” argument appears in the following editorial statement from the Morning News:
We believe that an integrated school system would deepen the Negro’s inferiority complex, that it would magnify his sense of being a second class citizen, that he would not develop normally under the tensions and inequalities of integration. We believe that his finest opportunities are with equal segregated facilities. We believe that he is entitled to equal facilities, that he, like his white brother, is entitled to all the benefits of being an American citizen, but for the sake of his race, its potential, its integrity, its development, he should demand segregation in the public schools as offering the only normal, natural atmosphere in which to work for maximum racial development. Furthermore, we believe that the majority of Negroes themselves who view the problem objectively are of the same opinion.[255]
Segregation by such reasoning is less a benefit for the white than for the Negro.