The News and Courier was more sympathetic especially in the light of the purpose for which the measures were designed. It noted that
Georgia is taking steps to combat race bias among its public school teachers. By banning membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Atty. Gen. [Eugene] Cook has incurred the wrath of NAACP and other race spokesmen.
The same kind of fuss was made over attempts to root communists and subversives out of government jobs. “Interference with individual freedom” is the battle cry.
The News and Courier is a firm believer in individual freedom. For that reason we do not believe that teachers should belong to the NAACP or any other militant group. Such membership destroys freedom to teach the unbiased truth.
The Charleston paper, however, would not achieve its objectives by a law barring NAACP members from state employment. It suggested instead that the matter be handled on the local level. Local school boards knew best which teachers were “spreading the NAACP line. Such teachers should be discharged, firmly but with as little fuss as possible. Membership in the NAACP or any similar organization dedicated to upsetting customs and laws of our state should be grounds for dismissal.”[366]
In the contest to see who could introduce the most segregation bills, Representative John Calhoun Hart of Union County won handily. This rumple-haired legislative fire-brand introduced separately or in conjunction with others the bill to remove tax exemptions from churches used as meeting places for the Communist party or the NAACP (not passed); the bill to require all public officials and employes to take an anti-NAACP and anti-Ku Klux Klan oath (not passed); a resolution asking that the legislature condemn Vice-President Richard M. Nixon “in the strongest manner possible” for the Vice-President’s resort “to the vilest and lowest politics imaginable” in “arousing and causing dissension among the races” (not passed); a resolution asking President Eisenhower to restore segregation in the armed forces (passed); a bill to prohibit Union County schools from belonging to any educational association approving of racially integrated schools (passed); a bill to prohibit state agencies and institutions from buying from firms which sponsored interracial television or radio programs (not passed); the resolution asking that the NAACP be declared a subversive organization by the federal government (passed); and a resolution urging the state’s delegation to the 1956 Democratic national convention to seek restoration of the ⅔ rule for nomination of candidates (passed).[367]
Representative Hart became positively splenetic upon learning that Clarence Mitchell, the Washington NAACP official, had used the white waiting room at the Florence train station. Mitchell was arrested for his action but Florence authorities prudently did not press the case. For such seeming pusillanimity Representative Hart blasted Florence officials. He deplored “the jelly fish manner in which they handled Clarence Mitchell’s flagrant violation of South Carolina segregation customs.” The teacher-legislator then indicated how he would educate Mitchell:
Bashing Mitchell’s head would have had a highly salutary effect on integration psychology in the Florence area....
We must have a showdown sooner or later and it is doubtful that a better opportunity will ever present itself. A few cracked heads here and there could easily avert bloodshed on a large scale later on.... There’s more law and order in a South Carolina night-stick than in sociological U. S. Supreme Court opinion.[368]
One of the least laudable and most farcical of the legislature’s actions was its lapse into book censorship. It arose from discovery that a novel, The Swimming Hole,[369] written for eight to twelve year olds, was being circulated throughout South Carolina by the State Library Board. The following summary from the Morning News indicates the extent of the book’s threat to the South Carolina segregation customs: