Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

The state legislature and the special school segregation committee, headed by Senator L. Marion Gressette of Calhoun County, also have played leading roles in the official opposition to integration. The Gressette Committee, consisting of 15 members appointed by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Solomon Blatt, one of that rare variety of Jewish segregationists, had been formed in 1951 as a result of the Clarendon County school case. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, the committee embarked in earnest on its task of determining the best course to be followed in circumventing the integration drive. Beginning in July the committee held a series of closed hearings which sounded out the attitudes of leading individuals and groups. It heard from such diverse individuals as the presidents of all state supported colleges, including Dr. Benner C. Turner of the state Negro college; former Governor Byrnes; E. H. Agnew, president of the state Farm Bureau Federation; G. L. Ivey, president of the Florence National Association for the Advancement of White People; representatives from the Charleston NAACP and the Negro teachers association.

The initial efforts of the committee were generally applauded. The News and Courier praised its “statesmanlike and cautious approach.”[312] The Morning News was somewhat more reserved. In addition to criticizing the closed hearings, Editor O’Dowd suggested that the scope of the committee’s responsibility be widened to include a study of the price South Carolina was willing to pay for segregated schools. The same paper made the ingenious proposal that a “devil’s advocate,” an “open and declared advocate of integration,” be placed on the committee. Such a person, it was pointed out, could expose the flaws in the various plans for continuing segregation.[313]

In justifying the closed hearings, the committee’s first interim report explained that this was done “to avoid hasty action and public misunderstanding, which could cause inflammation and friction.”[314] In at least one instance what transpired behind committee doors was revealed to the press. In a letter to the News and Courier, A. J. Clement, Jr., the Charleston NAACP president, stated that when appearing before the committee, he had urged “that South Carolina accept the Supreme Court decision” and begin steps toward desegregation “forthwith.” Clement acknowledged the magnitude of the problem involved. “Molds and patterns of living, customs and habits in daily activities” could not be altered overnight. The state of New Jersey provided an example of gradual desegregation such as Clement envisaged for South Carolina. In New Jersey the Negro had “all of the educational, civic, political opportunities” he was fighting for in South Carolina. Yet “the mark, the impression, the influence, the stunting effects of former discriminatory practices and racial segregations” were still present. He appealed to the Gressette Committee to take the initial step toward desegregation in South Carolina.[315]

The attitude of the Gressette Committee has been revealed in its reports to the state legislature and in speeches by its chairman. The latter, like the Governor, holds that a majority of Negroes desire segregation. On one occasion he asserted that 98 percent of the state’s Negroes were uninterested in forcibly integrating the races. (Significantly, he neglected to say whether these same Negroes would be opposed to integration if the question of force was not involved.) To buttress his opinion, Gressette cited the NAACP’s “failure to obtain more petitions” for integration in the public schools, despite its alleged use of “fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” Similar ideas have been expressed in committee reports. In January, 1955, the committee found no reason to alter its view “that the consensus of public opinion in the State favors better educational opportunity for children—in separate schools.” Such a view is in all probability substantially true but the matter is academic since the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. The following December, the committee revealed there were “many indications, and few if any to the contrary, that sentiment in favor of separate schools and against integrated schools” had crystallized during 1956. It further expressed agreement “with those who maintain that the decision of the United States Supreme Court was improper,” representing a usurpation of executive and legislative functions by the Supreme Court. And it proposed “to employ every legal means” to maintain a segregated school system which it “in good conscience” believed to be “in the best interests” of the children of both races. With some real basis in fact the Committee held that events were proving “that the Court did not intend to force integration on an unwilling people.”[316]

The public school system is, of course, the key factor in the segregation-integration controversy. The one great trump card, though a miserable joker for the children of the state, is the threat to close down the public school system if integration is ordered. It has been spelled out to leave no doubts. If a Negro pupil is admitted to a white school by court order, both the white and Negro schools which are involved are to be closed. This threat takes in not only primary and secondary public schools but also state supported institutions of higher education, including graduate and professional schools.

Reactions have varied to the possibility of closing the public schools. Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings, opposing such action, asserted that “it’s foolish to even consider for a moment that abolishing public education is the solution.” On another occasion he insisted: “We can never abandon our public school system.”[317] Yet he reassured the people that schools were “intended for education and not integration.”[318] And since segregation was a “natural thing,” it followed that “a majority of Negroes” was no more enthusiastic about integration than whites. The Lieutenant Governor took the realistic position that any private school plan “might be tossed out by the court as a ‘trick’ designed to circumvent the decree.”[319] He advocated a system that would be premised on local control. Pupils would be assigned to schools by the local superintendent or trustees on a basis other than race—“sex, aptitude, proximity of school to home and available classroom space.” Such a plan, he thought, would meet the requirements of the court.[320]

W. D. Workman, Jr., in evaluating public opinion on the abolition of the public schools, considered it “extremely doubtful” that a majority of South Carolinians was prepared to do away with the system altogether. None the less he reported that “in some parts of the state,” white parents considered segregation more important than education. The News and Courier editorially agreed. “Compulsory mingling of the races in public schools,” it announced, would be “a worse thing than closing them.” The Charleston paper attacked the public school system per se:

Many thoughtful citizens of South Carolina long have been dissatisfied with the educational performance of our public schools. We say this not in criticism of public school teachers or officials, because it has been the system—rather than the participants in the system—which is at fault.

The public schools have suffered because of political pressures, complacency due to lack of competition and a trend to gear lessons to the dullest of the pupils. Social promotions, progressive education and over-emphasis on athletics and such nonsense as drum majorettes and beauty contests have lowered the educational standards of public schools....

In the future, South Carolinians who do not wish to send their children to public schools should be encouraged to send them to private schools. This encouragement should be in the form of an allotment of money by the state toward the private school tuition of any child who does not attend public schools....