POLITICS AND SEGREGATION
In all parts of the Republic, thoughtful people are talking about realignment of political parties. On many issues, including appeal to bloc-voting Negroes in the big cities, the Republicans and the Democrats have grown too much alike. The South can split them by voting against both and setting up a climate for new political alliances.—News and Courier
Following the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision, politics have reflected South Carolina’s intense preoccupation with the integration issue. The Negro, of course, has always been an important factor in the state’s politics. However since the New Deal period the national political parties and the federal government have no longer been content to allow the white South to handle the race issue without “interference.” Reflecting the sentiment of Northern liberal elements, they have been insistent on the extension of civil rights to Negroes in the South. This fact, increasingly important since World War II, has been the principal cause for the reaction against the national Democratic Party in South Carolina in the presidential elections of 1948, 1952 and 1956. Political factions were unable to solve their differences within one party and, at least on the level of presidential elections, rival groups emerged to challenge the supremacy of the regular Democratic Party. They did not contest that party’s hold on other levels.
In state wide elections of 1954-1956 the race issue transcended all others with but one important exception, the J. Strom Thurmond-Edgar Brown senatorial election of 1954. Both rabid segregationists and “liberals” criticized this concentration on race. The News and Courier believed the constant political agitation of “the race issue” since the Supreme Court decision had upset “an era of good will, harmony and progress” in race relations in the South. “Tension ... and danger of civil disturbance” had replaced the previous racial harmony. It blamed “a small militant group of white and Negro radicals” who had revived an issue which Southern politicians had “for years” kept out of the political arena. On the other hand David D. Carroll of Bennettsville, risking his “freedom from ‘assault and arson,’” accused “inter-state lynch-leaders” of stirring up the issue for private political gain. “Thus a truth-starved South,” he said, “tragically believes that today’s issue is a spontaneous racial crisis, never suspecting its partial origin in sinister politics.”[399]
Appeals to keep the segregation issue out of politics have gone unheeded. Its political worth is too great to be ignored. Segregation was “as surefire as political fuel as home, church, mother, and Wade Hampton,” stated the Independent. As a consequence, the state suffered from “crack pot oratory and poorly considered prosecutions and impractical laws” at a time when “imponderable, quiet, reserved, never relenting, never compromising resistance” was needed.[400]
While the full import of the segregation decisions of the Supreme Court was not fully realized in state politics until the presidential campaign of 1956, the gubernatorial election of 1954 provided a good example of the use to which South Carolina politicians put the race issue. In that election Lieutenant Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. opposed Lester Bates, a Columbia businessman and a novice whose political experience was limited to service on the Columbia City Council. Timmerman, the successful candidate, developed two campaign themes—the race issue and Bates’ alleged business malpractices. In a series of unproven charges, the Lieutenant Governor made good use of smear techniques. On May 26, a few days after the Supreme Court’s original decision, Timmerman charged Bates with “sleeping in the same political bed” with South Carolina NAACP officials. He declared that the school segregation problem could not be solved “under leadership of the NAACP’s candidate [Bates].” The following day the Independent carried a political advertisement by “friends” of Timmerman which asked South Carolinians if they wanted as governor “a man who would owe a political debt to Mojeska Simkins [then secretary of the state NAACP], the Lighthouse and Informer [401]
By way of degrading Bates further for his alleged connections with the NAACP, Timmerman, even before the Court decision, declared that the “NAACP has degenerated into a subversive organization in South Carolina” and “lives and breathes the ‘big lie.’” (To this James M. Hinton replied that the charges were and would remain “political demagoguery” unless Timmerman offered substantiating evidence. He urged Timmerman to make available to Attorney General Brownell “any and all information” in his possession which indicated subversion in the NAACP.)[402]
Bates was not above these same tactics. He criticized Timmerman’s proposal that the state establish three school systems—one white, one Negro, and one integrated—and dismissed it as a “hastily devised plan which would include mixed schools in South Carolina.” Bates favored segregated schools “for the peace, happiness and contentment” of both the white and Negro races. Offering no specific proposals to the voters, he advocated establishment of a special committee of distinguished South Carolinians to consider ways of meeting the problem. Action should be based on the recommendations of that committee. Characteristically, Timmerman replied with the allegation that Bates’ plan was “proposed” by James M. Hinton.[403]
The campaign was not without its irony. In a statement that must have been galling to Timmerman, the Columbia Lighthouse and Informer, in reference to Timmerman’s triple school system proposal, said: “It was more than astounding and gratifying that the younger Timmerman should show the liberality to come out openly for the mixing of the races in a segment of the South Carolina schools. We believe he is the first candidate for high public office to take such a stand in South Carolina. The Lighthouse and Informer congratulates Mr. Timmerman upon the advancement he has shown in this respect.” In the same vein the Marion Star asked if the triple school proposal had been made by Timmerman in a bid for NAACP support.[404]
In 1954-55, while attitudes were hardening on the race issue, there was increasing criticism of the national political parties and the traditional role of the South in national politics. Many like the late Senator Burnet R. Maybank, felt that both national parties had sold the South down the river. Segregationists frequently blamed the South itself. For too long, they cried, the solid South had forfeited its right to political consideration by remaining “in the bag” of the Democrats.[405]