Opponents of federal aid usually overlook all factors in the school program except classroom construction. They disregard the pitifully low salaries of classroom teachers and the resultant insufficient training of many teachers. They also tend to ignore the results of tests conducted by the American Council of Education. South Carolina students, according to results announced early in 1956, ranked nationally as follows:

According to a 1958 report of the National Education Association, South Carolina ranks at the very bottom of the nation in its record of public school education. Among the states it is 48th in the number of median school years completed by persons 25 years of age and older. It is 47th in the per cent of adult (25 years and older) population with less than five years of schooling (27.4 per cent of its adults have less than five years of formal education) and it is 48th in the percentage of its adult population who have completed four years of high school. It occupies 47th position in the percentage of selective service registrants disqualified by mental tests. In the percentage of its eighth grade enrollment going on to finish high school the Palmetto State is 46th. With regard to teacher pay, South Carolina ranks 45th; the average salary of its classroom teachers is $3,250.

Statistics such as these hardly give credence to Rep. Ashmore’s statement that “what South Carolina has done with its schools is evidence in itself any state in the union can take care of its own school needs.”[332]

The press of the state generally denounces federal aid for education. The News and Courier went so far as to condemn federally subsidized school lunches. If school children should get such lunches, it argued, they should also receive suppers and breakfasts. “The difference between government-sponsored school lunches and the welfare state is only a matter of degree.” Similarly, the Record thought that federal aid could destroy “freedom and inventiveness in the schools” while the Morning News suggested it would in reality make less funds available for education because of the bureaucratic costs of collecting the taxes and sending the money back to the states.[333]

On occasion, however, a newspaper editorialist has questioned the arguments used against federal aid. The Independent, rarely missing a chance to lash out against former Governor Byrnes, wondered how the Palmetto State’s elder statesman could oppose federal taxation of South Carolinians for building schools in other states and not oppose taxation of citizens of other states to build defense and military installations in South Carolina. Driving this point home, the Anderson newspaper then stated that in the past both South Carolina and Byrnes had received far more money through federal channels than they had paid out in federal taxes. Likewise the Morning News objected to arguments that federal aid was socialism. Socialism, said the Florence newspaper, depended on whether South Carolina got anything from it. “Our politicians say they will not accept federal aid to education because it is socialistic.... The truth is that they do not need this particular aid, so they can refuse it with indignation.”[334]

A concrete instance of the federal aid to education question came to light in mid-August of 1957 when Clemson College, the state’s agricultural and engineering school for whites, rejected a grant of $350,000 from the Atomic Energy Commission. According to the provisions of the grant, of which the college’s board of trustees had accepted an initial payment of $99,050, “the grantee agrees that no person shall be barred from participation in the educational and training program involved or be the subject of other unfavorable discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion.” Inasmuch as racial discrimination undeniably existed at Clemson, the trustees belatedly decided to withdraw from the agreement with the AEC and to return to it the $99,050. Clemson president R. E. Poole stressed, however, that the college’s nuclear testing and experimental program would continue.

Governor Timmerman, choosing to ignore the obvious racial discrimination at Clemson, defended the college’s action on the far less realistic grounds that the inclusion of the word “creed” in the conditions of the grant would prohibit Clemson authorities from denying participation in the atomic energy program to a Communist. This lawyer’s trick in semantics was applauded by the Columbia State which ironically at this very time was leading a last-ditch fight to prevent the closing of nearby Fort Jackson, a federal military installation on which not a small part of Columbia’s economic well being directly depends. “This affair,” pontificated the State, “is an affirmation of the principle that federal aid means federal control.” The News and Courier also praised Clemson’s action, though recognizing that its atomic energy program would have to be reduced in scope to the detriment of the state. “So far as we know,” said the Charleston paper, “Clemson is the first Southern college to make such a forthright choice between freedom and government handouts. Other colleges sooner or later will have to make the same decision. We hope they will be guided by the example of the Clemson trustees. We do not know how many federal dollars the choice of freedom will cost Southern colleges. Freedom is an expensive commodity. It is worth every cent.”[335]

Though the state legislature did not reach the zenith of its anti-integration zeal until 1956, its 1955 session provided an informative prelude. Legislators in 1955 were more hesitant than a year later, perhaps because the Supreme Court had not yet implemented the original decision. Nevertheless a number of important measures were adopted. The Gressette committee recommended and the legislature adopted proposals that repealed the state’s compulsory attendance law, gave local school trustees authority to sell or lease school property, and prohibited automatic renewal of teacher contracts.[336]

Only the repeal of the state’s compulsory school attendance law evoked any considerable opposition. In the Senate Lewis Wallace of York County alone opposed repeal and then on the curious grounds that the measure was an “abject surrender” to the Court decision. Greater objection developed in the House. The House Education Committee approved the measure thirteen to eight but on the floor Representative Richard L. Breeland of Richland County, a high school teacher and lawyer, led the opposition. He urged that repeal be postponed until after the Supreme Court had given its final ruling. “In clearing the decks,” he said, “let’s be careful we don’t sink the ship.” His chief adversary in debate was John Calhoun Hart, an impulsive school teacher from Union County. “Our very way of life is at stake,” he exclaimed. “Our ethnological makeup may be swept away. If we falter, we shall go down into the sewer of mongrelism.”[337] The repeal of this law was generally accepted as an unpleasant but imperative move.