Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

In no other area have South Carolinians been so sensitive to outside criticism as on the race issue. After the end of Reconstruction “outside agitation” on racial problems was infrequent. It became even less so after the Supreme Court in 1896 gave official legal blessing to racial segregation in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. However in the 1930’s and during the Second World War, “agitation” was renewed for more civil rights for the Southern Negro. This agitation inspired passage of the above cited resolution by the state legislature. The latter demanded, “firmly and unequivocally,” that “henceforth the damned agitators of the North leave the South alone.”[14]

II

Elimination of the Negro from state politics became an article of faith, a factor of transcendant importance in the preservation of white supremacy. The instrumentality through which the Negro was effectively excluded from the suffrage was the Democratic Party primary which was adopted in 1896. Not until the late 1940’s was the Democratic primary opened to Negro voters and then only by direction of the federal courts.

Up to the New Deal period the South Carolina white primary faced little real “danger” either from “outside agitators” or homegrown “radicals.”[15] Yet a disruptive force was at work. This was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People which slowly but relentlessly was seeking to break down the restrictions placed on Negro suffrage. An initial breach, which did not directly affect South Carolina, had come with the ruling by the Supreme Court in 1915 that the “grandfather clause” was unconstitutional. South Carolina reacted to these developments by strengthening its determination to maintain and re-enforce the white primary. One venerable device in this effort was the poll tax which, of course, not only disfranchised a mass of Negro voters but many whites as well. White South Carolinians were willing to pay this price, however, to guarantee the white primary. Toward the same end other devices were resorted to as grounds for disfranchisement such as lengthy residence requirements, discretionary educational requirements, property qualifications and numerous petty crimes, supposedly common among Negroes.

Lack of organized opposition made control of the Democratic primary tantamount to control of the state government. Such control traditionally resided in the hands of politicians whose defeats resulted not in the extension of democracy but simply in the creation of a new faction to direct state politics. With great effectiveness politicians used fear of the Negro vote to forestall development of an operative two party system. They contended that a two-party system would split the white vote and thus allow the Negroes to hold the balance of political power. In opposing the repeal of the poll tax, a member of the 1944 state House of Representatives said that Negroes were “trying to vote” and if the suffrage were made too easy a two party system would surely result. To prevent both, he concluded, it was imperative to keep the Democratic Party all powerful.[16] Nor did this feeling end with the abolition of the white primary. In 1952 Governor James F. Byrnes, taking note of the increasing registration of Negro voters, lamented that there would always be white politicians in the state “willing to enter into secret political trades” for Negro votes. Such men had to be “watched” and those who were willing to deal with Negro leaders had to be defeated.[17] In 1956 Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., said that a two party system would bring South Carolina “nothing but permanent strife and damage.” It had brought chaos to the North “where minorities are pawns and politics is played with the lives of small children for the sake of a vote,” asserted the governor. He for one was “not prepared to turn the state Democratic Party over to any radical element or other irresponsible group.”[18]

Increased “agitation” for Negro civil rights in the New Deal and World War II periods eventuated in the end of the white primary. This disaster was the result of several federal court decisions, notably in the cases of Smith v. Allwright (1944), Rice v. Elmore (1947) and Brown v. Baskin (1948). The first and most important of these was a Texas case in which the Supreme Court declared all suffrage restrictions premised on race to be unconstitutional.[19]

Reaction of the white leaders of South Carolina to the Smith v. Allwright decision was instantaneous. Officials, public figures, and private citizens lost no opportunity to condemn it. The late Senator Burnet R. Maybank, aware that the decision was not an isolated incident but part of the developing effort to break down white supremacy, declared that regardless of any Supreme Court decision and any laws that might be passed by Congress, South Carolinians would maintain those political and social institutions which were “in the best interest of our people.” White South Carolinians would “treat the Negro fairly,” said the Senator, but they did “not intend for him to take over our election system or attend our white schools.”[20]

The then Governor Olin D. Johnston, not to be outdone, called a special session of the state legislature to meet the “emergency.” He recommended that the legislators repeal all state laws dealing with primary elections, thus giving the Democratic Party the status of a private club. This maneuver, he believed, would put the party outside the jurisdiction of federal courts. Should it prove inadequate, he announced, South Carolinians would “use the necessary methods to retain white supremacy in our primaries and to safeguard the homes and happiness of our people.”[21] The legislature, following his advice, completely divorced the state from all legal connections with the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party of South Carolina itself took action to nullify the effects of the court decision. If Negroes could not be legally barred from primary election, they would be excluded from party membership. A state Democratic convention, held shortly after the decision, adopted a rule which provided that to be eligible for membership in the party, a person had to be a “white Democrat” who subscribed to the principles of the Democratic Party of South Carolina as declared by the state convention.[22]

In 1947 the newly enacted defenses for white supremacy in the Democratic primary were tested in federal district court and found wanting. George A. Elmore, under NAACP auspices, brought suit against the Democratic Party. He claimed that its recent actions deprived him of his right to vote. Federal District Judge J. Waties Waring[23] agreed and ruled against the state of South Carolina and the Democratic Party. In admonishing South Carolina to “rejoin the union,” he declared racial discriminations illegal in the machinery that selected the officers and lawmakers of the United States. All citizens were entitled to cast a “free and untrammelled” vote in the election. If “the only material and realistic elections” were “clothed with the name ‘primary,’” said the judge, they were no less equally entitled to vote in them.[24]