In establishing the mood of political rebellion in 1956, segregationist bitter enders intensified their criticism of the national parties. “Political forces at the national level,” declared the News and Courier, were “lined up against the Southern way of dealing with the race question.” This Southern way had enabled the Negro, “a late-comer in western civilization,” to meet the challenges of the white man’s culture. The steady progress which the Negro had made in the past was now in danger of being destroyed by these “misguided agitators” from outside the South. Only through unity could the white South meet this threat. Along the same line, the News and Courier criticized the national Democratic Party for seeking Negro votes in key Northern cities and states. “How long will bribery of minority blocs” in the name of “welfare” control national politics, it asked. “Ever since F. D. Roosevelt lured the Negroes away from the Republicans with bigger and better promises, the weak rather than the strong have been shaping the course of the Republic.” The News and Courier observed that “of all the racial and nationality groups” subjected to such bribery, the Negro was “most easily manageable.” He had always been “managed” by whites.[406]
Wails of woe came from other quarters. Anyone selecting his national party on the basis of its position on the racial problem “really has no place to go today,” declared the Record. Yet the paper found itself in a dilemma. Only lukewarm toward the idea of a third party, it eventually endorsed Eisenhower in the 1956 campaign.[407] More outspoken was Charleston’s Representative L. Mendel Rivers. He thought it “tragic” to see President Eisenhower and leaders of both parties “supinely bowed to the demands of an association which follows the Communist line of lying, of vilification and untruth aided and abetted by an iron curtain of a Northern press which is ceaseless and relentless in its vilification of our people.” This “capitulation” the Charleston solon thought to be “the most fraudulent and hypocritical surrender of principle in the history of this republic,” which if carried to its logical conclusion would “bring a flow of blood unequalled since the tragic times of the War Between the States.”[408] Thomas R. Miller of Florence expressed another extreme viewpoint when he wondered
how any loyal, intelligent Southerner, or any other white American for that matter, can vote for a man that openly tells the South that the Supreme Court decision was right, is the law of the land, and should be obeyed, is more than we can see. Stevenson is the spiritual successor to Roosevelt, who sowed the seeds of racial hatred and started this country down the road to Communism, and to Truman, the happy little piano-banger, who cultivated and nurtured both—who administered the coup de grace to Southern white civilization, who consigned unborn children to racial mongrelization and slavery under the Black Race, which is what the Communist has in store for the South, and which will be the lot of our children if our people don’t wake up! If the people don’t believe it, let them take a little time off from pleasure-seeking, money-making, starting new organizations and clubs every day, and study it out for themselves. If this country isn’t going straight down the line of the Communist pattern, then “there ain’t a dog in Georgia.”[409]
The political course that extremists would follow in 1956 depended on the action of the state Democratic Party. They themselves, nominally Democrats, entertained the hope that they would be strong enough to control the party as the Dixiecrats had done in 1948. In South Carolina the state Democratic convention is held much earlier than in other states. Consequently, it was in early March when the county conventions met as preliminaries to the state convention. In many of the county conventions, generally in the lowcountry, extremists were in control. This was illustrated by the actions of the Florence County Democratic convention which adopted resolutions urging restoration of the ⅔ rule in the national party nominations; reaffirming the delegates’ firm support of states rights; praising the Citizens Councils and urging Democrats to give them “whole-hearted support;” commending the News and Courier “for its constancy and unfailing zeal” in fighting racial integration; and rendering the “heartfelt thanks” of the convention to Editor Thomas R. Waring “for his courage, his fearlessness and his devotion to duty.”[410] Other conventions adopted similar resolutions.
The state Democratic convention met in Columbia on March 21. Approximately 525 delegates attended, of whom two—one from Richland County and another from Beaufort County—were Negroes.[411] Governor Timmerman reflected the mood of the delegates in his address to the convention:
We meet today at a time when our freedom is imperiled—our freedom to choose our associates and the associates of our children—our freedom to make and enforce our own local laws in accordance with the wishes of our electorate—our freedom to establish and maintain our own local institutions without interference or intimidation—these freedoms and many more are threatened by the deliberate attempt to destroy constitutional government and to invade rights of the states and their people....
When we think in terms of racial mixing, remember that it was first advocated in the United States by the Communist Party. It was then and still is a part of the Communist program to create dissension and discord. It is a tactic in the Communist plan to divide and conquer. Racial mixing in the South is a very real and very meaningful part of the Communist conspiracy.[412]
The Democratic Party of South Carolina, while recognizing a nominal affiliation with the national Democratic Party, considers itself autonomous in state political affairs. In contemplating their course of action in 1956, party leaders weighed the advantages of continued amicable relations with the national party against the disadvantages of a potential revolt against their leadership in the state. Elements loyal to the national party dominated the state convention. They were strongly anti-integrationist as was evidenced by a resolution adopted on the second day of the convention. The delegates resolved that the Fourteenth Amendment in no way applied to education; that the Supreme Court’s decision was an “illegal and unconstitutional” verdict based on “sociological and psychological works of comparatively unknown authors, some of whom were foreigners;” and that the federal government was guilty of encroachment on the rights of the states. The strength of party loyalty was shown by the fact that the convention agreed that “the remedies for the ills which beset us arising from usurpations, encroachments, unprecedented actions without legal justification and unreasonable centralization of government” could best be resolved within the Democratic Party.
While professing complete loyalty to the party, the convention urged “the States of the South and all others believing in constitutional government” to counsel together, adopt a program of joint action and present a united front at the national convention. The Palmetto State Democrats also urged other states to follow the South Carolina example of adjourning their state conventions to reconvene after the national convention.[413]
In directing the efforts of South Carolina Democrats to achieve an all-Southern pre-convention unity, the party convention appointed a steering committee headed by Governor Timmerman. A second purpose of the committee was to acquaint other Southern states with the efforts and intentions of the South Carolina Democracy. As committee chairman, the Governor wrote letters to all Southern senators, congressmen, governors and Democratic national committeemen. All of the letters, prefaced with the statement “South Carolina Democrats want to remain in the National Democratic Party,” said substantially the same thing: The South could expect an anti-Southern platform and nominees unless pre-convention unity could be achieved and a united front presented at the convention.