Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

In addition to these measures Rep. Hart introduced still another to strengthen the position of South Carolina in its fight for states rights. Reaching a new nadir, this proposal, which was not adopted, declared that: “No executive order or directive of the President, and no act or resolution of the Congress, and no judicial decision or construction of the Supreme or any inferior Court, and no treaty with any foreign power or international agreement of the United States in conflict with, or diminishment of, or derogatory to the powers not delegated to the United States and reserved to the States respectively or the people, shall become effective as law in this State, except through enactment only by the General Assembly pursuant to the Constitution of the State of South Carolina, and otherwise the same shall be null and void and of no effect in this state.”[375]

Use of official authority to coerce public school officials in maintaining the segregation line intact has been a comparatively easy matter. To move against private educational institutions which served as focal points of disaffection or threatened to lower the segregation barrier is more difficult. One such recent effort by Governor Timmerman and a compliant State Board of Education bared a vicious form of official infighting.

During the summer of 1957 rumor bruited around the campus of Allen University, an African Methodist Episcopal Church school in Columbia, that the Governor’s office had warned the institution’s recently inaugurated president, the Reverend Frank Veal, that he would have to dismiss three professors from the faculty or face the consequences. The men proscribed were Professors John G. Rideout, chairman of the division of humanities; Edwin Hoffman, chairman of the division of education; and Forrest O. Wiggins of the department of philosophy. All were holders of doctorates from leading American universities and Rideout had been a Rhodes scholar. Rideout and Hoffman are white and Wiggins a Negro. While no specific charges were made against the men insofar as their professional competency was concerned—it is generally agreed by the Allen students that they are among the most effective teachers on the faculty—much was made of the fact that the names of Wiggins and Rideout were in the files of the United States House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.

President Veal, betraying an unprofessional sensitivity to academic procedures, wilted under the pressure and without consulting the members of Allen’s board of trustees wrote letters to the three men in question demanding their resignations “for the good of the University.” But Rideout, Hoffman and Wiggins would not resign and to confuse matters further, the board of trustees not only refused to back Veal but also announced that the three professors would continue on as members of the faculty. A few days later, however, Veal reportedly declared that his demand for the resignations of the three men still stood and that they were in effect being given a year’s dismissal notice. Although the Columbia press gave prominent headlines to Veal’s statement, there was no indication that the board of trustees agreed with it. But just on the eve of the new academic year Veal replaced Hoffman as chairman of the division of education with Dr. Sylvia Swinton, a former Negro field supervisor for the State Department of Education.[376]

A few weeks later Allen again bounced back into the news headlines with the announcement that five Hungarian refugees would be enrolled at the University. Their admission would constitute the first modern break-through in South Carolina’s segregation wall. And, as State Attorney General T. C. Callison was obliged to acknowledge, the worst part of the situation was that although it was “against public policy” to integrate Negroes and whites in educational institutions, there was “no law in South Carolina to reach” Allen, a private and church school. Actually, only one of the five Hungarian “freedom fighters,” Andre Toth, enrolled at Allen when its fall term opened.[377]

But the Governor and his advisors on the State Board of Education still held a trump card to play. If Allen could not be dealt with directly, it could be struck a low blow punch through withdrawal of official approval of the University for teacher training. Accordingly, the State Board of Education, on which the Governor sits as an ex officio member, on September 9th sent notice to Allen that its graduates would have teacher certification withheld “until such time as the Board may determine that it is in the public interest to grant approval.” The Board did not specify what if anything was wrong with the education courses offered at Allen, courses that hitherto had had its approval.

President Veal was conveniently out of Columbia, but Allen board of trustees president, Bishop I. H. Bonner, cautiously took up the gauntlet. To the consternation of several administrative officials at the University of South Carolina, the Bishop opined that Allen’s students requiring teacher certification would undoubtedly seek admission to the University and other white state-supported institutions of higher learning.[378] Should such applicants be admitted to these schools by Federal court order, resort to which would, of course, be imperative, state law would oblige the schools to close.

The nadir of official hypocrisy came with the announcement of the State Board of Education following its September 20th meeting, that it was seeking to help Allen solve its internal problems. At the same meeting a “bi-racial” committee consisting of six white members and one Negro, B. C. Turner, president of the State college for Negroes at Orangeburg, was appointed to review applications for teacher training courses in South Carolina’s private and public universities and colleges.

Crocodile tears were copiously shed by “some state officials” over “the plight of Dr. Veal” in light of his failure to rid his faculty of three objectionable professors. These same persons allegedly asked how, for instance, the State Board of Education could approve a teacher training course at an institution whose academic head desired to dismiss members of his faculty but could not do so because of the opposition of his board of trustees. The logic of the state officials was that if the president of an approved teacher training institution didn’t want certain instructors because of lack of faith in them, then the state could not accept a student who received certification for his work under such a professor.[379]

So utterly gross were the actions of the Governor and the State Board of Education that there was embarrassingly little discussion of the affair in the editorial columns of the state’s press. Those few papers that discussed the Allen situation either printed without comment the decision of the Board of Education to withdraw accreditation or looked askance upon it. The Florence Morning News, for example, found the “handling of the Allen case unfortunate” particularly in the light of the secrecy involved, the shortage of qualified Negro teachers, the encouragement that it would give to Negroes to apply to the University of South Carolina and the lack of data supplied to Allen officials as to the reasons for the Board’s actions.[380]