The Independent regarded the repeal measure, along with other laws which undermined the public school system, as a tactical action necessary “to realize the overall strategy of maintaining segregated schools.”[338] In abrogating the law the legislature was simply reflecting the will of the people, thought the News and Courier. In thus functioning “as a truly representative body in a Republic,” the legislature was observing a principle “more important than the compulsory attendance law, or even public education itself.”[339] By analogy, then, if the people of South Carolina were bent upon intellectual suicide, the logic of the Charleston paper would have the legislature legally send them to their destruction.
In several other particulars, the 1955 legislature sought to hold the segregation line. Most important was a provision in the general state appropriation bill which stated that: “Appropriations of state aid for teachers, salaries, and all other school district, county and state appropriations for the operation of the public school system shall cease and become inoperative for any school from which, and for any school to which, any pupil may transfer pursuant to, or in consequence of, any order of any court, for the time that the pupil shall attend a school other than the school to which he was assigned before the issuance of such court order.”[340]
The legislators also called upon Congress “to enact legislation limiting the appellate jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court and the jurisdiction of the other Federal Courts so that the fields of government of the executive and legislative branches and that of the several states shall not be invaded, but shall remain separate and distinct.” Later the legislators, in urging the Supreme Court not to implement its earlier decision, declared that integration in South Carolina would result in “hatred, strife, chaos and confusion,” and the “possible wrecking of the educational program.” Consequently, “at no time in the foreseeable future” would it be possible to desegregate the public schools of South Carolina. Reflecting a blindness to the realities of the twentieth century, the resolution concluded on a note of perverse logic that the continuation of segregation would weld and unite America and thus enable the country to present “a solid front of democracy” to the world.[341]
In 1956 the state legislature enacted anti-integration and anti-NAACP proposals at almost a mass production rate. If no pertinent law could be enacted, the legislators adopted, usually unanimously, resolutions to express their opinion on a particular phase of the integration controversy. Altogether more than a dozen important measures were passed. These included a resolution of interposition; a law requiring white colleges and the Negro college to close if integration were ordered by the courts; a law barring NAACP members from state, county or local government employment; a resolution ordering an investigation of NAACP activities at the state Negro college; a resolution requesting the federal government to place the NAACP on the attorney general’s subversive list; a provision limiting all appropriations for state schools and parks to segregated schools and parks only; a law closing Edisto Beach State Park because Negroes had filed a court suit seeking admission; a resolution requesting the State Library Board to remove current, and screen future, books “inimical and antagonistic” to the segregation customs of the state; a resolution commending the Citizens Councils; a resolution requesting President Eisenhower to restore segregation in the nation’s armed forces to rebuild morale and esprit de corps; the establishment of the Gressette Committee as a permanent legislative committee; a measure giving local law enforcement officers the power to transfer pupils from one school to another to avoid “civil commotion;” an enactment giving local school boards the power to make enrollment rules and regulations having the force and effect of law, appeals from such rules to be channeled through state courts; and finally a resolution stating the legislators’ support of continued bus segregation.[342]
Of all these actions the interposition resolution received the most publicity. Revived during the period by Editor James J. Kilpatrick of the Richmond, Virginia, News Leader, interposition has become the shopworn answer of the states righters and “constitutionalists” to the integration controversy. It is designed to please those elements which have rationalized their prejudices and objections to racial integration on constitutional grounds. Their contention, rightly held to be sure, is that the founding fathers had not contemplated integration in 1787 when they wrote the Constitution. Also appealing is the long and hoary history of interposition and its companion nullification. It had begun in 1798 and 1799 with the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of Jefferson and Madison and subsequently had run through the Hartford Convention of 1814, Calhoun’s nullification attempts in 1832 and Wisconsin’s refusal to accept the Fugitive Slave Law in 1859. The Virginia resolution and the Hartford Convention both used the term “interpose.” Illustrating that the use of interposition or nullification was more a weapon of the political outs than of a geographic section, the Hartford Convention, in terms worthy of the best states righters of the 1950’s, had declared that “in cases of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty of such state to interpose its authority for their protection.”
The historically outmoded theory behind interposition is the core of the states rights argument: the federal government is a creature of the states, which had united to establish a central authority. The Constitution set the rules and regulations which governed that central authority. Ultimate sovereignty, however, continued to rest with the states. If the people of the states felt that the federal government had exceeded its authority, then they—acting through the states—had the power to challenge the action of the federal government.[343] In theory the challenge would take the form of a suspensive veto which would hold the particular act of the federal government to be null and void until approved by ¾ of the states by a constitutional amendment. The theory resolved itself into a basic question: Is the federal government or are the state governments the final judge of the authority of the federal government? Historically, the political outs have answered the states, though the Civil War, certainly if it meant anything constitutionally speaking, proved the contrary to be true. In the 1950’s the South represented the political outs in the segregation controversy.
The interposition doctrine connoted different things to different people; consequently, it produced varied reactions. Governor Timmerman, who considered interposition a form of protest, believed it “fundamentally sound.” Representative James L. Richards, dean of the state’s congressional delegation and Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised interposition as a means of protest but balked at talk of nullification. Interposition he defined as “an assertion, a protest, and a declaration of opinion of illegality.” He urged South Carolinians to “avoid the passion and hysteria that will lead men to ‘ride at night,’ take the law into their own hands, or insult the United States flag.”[344] On the other hand, the silver-maned Congressman L. Mendel Rivers of Charleston declared that “interposition is worthless unless it carries with it the corresponding power of nullification.” Indicating that at least one later day Charlestonian had learned nothing from the nullification crisis of 1832, Rivers asserted that “interposition without nullification is a knife without an edge, a gun without bullets, a plane without an engine or a head without a body.”[345] Similarly, S. Emory Rogers, the Summerton attorney and Citizens Council leader, agreed that there could be “no effective interposition without nullification.”[346]
Newspaper opinion also varied. The Record considered interposition “sound” when viewed “as a device for formalizing the states’ protest against amendment of the Constitution by judicial decision.” But like Representative Richards, the Record looked upon any nullification proposal as “counsel of confusion” which could be supported “only by ... outdated law and pre-Confederate War logic.”[347] The Morning News endorsed interposition as “in all probability, the only proper answer” to the segregation controversy. However, it cautioned interposition advocates to be prepared to accept the possible consequences. Should the nation admit the challenge of the interposition theory and in fact approve the integration decision by constitutional amendment, the South would be bound by its own doctrine to adopt integration.[348] Such an eventuality would test the sincerity of the constitutional objections to integration. The Independent, while considering interposition “worthy of the test,” also realized this danger. In the main, however, the Anderson paper was wary of the whole doctrine because of its support by economic conservatives. “Is there thought in some quarters,” asked the Independent, “that the doctrine might be used to combat not racial decisions alone, but also decisions and legislation dealing with such matters as wages and hours, old age pensions, health insurance, right to work laws and other issues that might arise in the future?”[349]
The News and Courier gave unqualified assent to interposition but never definitely identified the doctrine with outright nullification. That this paper was willing to carry the issue to an extreme, however, was demonstrated on several occasions. Southerners, it declared,
... understand, we believe, the meaning of nullification. Though many are afraid of the consequences—they have been coerced, bought and brainwashed for nearly a quarter of a century now—there are many others who are eager for a showdown.