The complete subservience of a lot of our politicians to a master such as party instead of principle is a deplorable state of affairs for this nation.
Our timid and seduced politicians and their cohorts endeavor to shield themselves by “working within the party.”
Among the letter writers the Democrats were not without their racist supporters. One warned: “Vote Republican ... and you won’t have as many rights as the Negro has ... the word ‘segregation’ will become extinct.... If he [Eisenhower] is reelected you can expect worse. Should he die, it will be ‘NIX-on’ whites and probably a desegregated Supreme Court.”[431]
Efforts to organize an independent political movement in the state began even before the decision of the state Democratic party to support the national party nominees. In early June Micah Jenkins began distributing petitions seeking the necessary 10,000 signatures to place an independent slate of electors on the general election ballot. He charged that the Democratic Party, made up of “radical, minority and labor groups,” would be unable to protect the interests of the South without alienating “the Negro, labor and the Americans for Democratic Action radical elements.”[432] This early effort achieved negligible success.
Following refusal of the state Democratic convention to endorse a separate slate of independent electors, the dissident extremists held a meeting in Columbia and organized the “South Carolinians for Independent Electors.” Their immediate concern was to get 10,000 petition signatures which had to be in the office of the Secretary of State not later than September 6; the organizational meeting was held August 27. Chairman of the group was Farley Smith, son of the late Senator “Cotton Ed” Smith. Prominent among those attending were Micah Jenkins and S. Emory Rogers, leaders of the Citizens Council movement. The organizational meeting issued a manifesto which declared that the Independents were seeking to give voters of the state “an opportunity to protest” against both national parties.[433] More than three times the number of signatures needed were secured before the deadline, a not inconsiderable achievement.
The Independent revolt, like that of the Dixiecrats of eight years before, stemmed directly out of the segregation conflict. Editor Rogers of the Morning News stated flatly that the Supreme Court’s decision was “the underlying cause” of the movement. Though there may have been much truth to the Anderson Independent’s statement that the real reasons for the movement were economic, there was no gainsaying that the Independents presented themselves as the champions ne plus ultra of white supremacy. Such was admirably illustrated in a pamphlet which they distributed. A brief summary is informative: A vote for Stevenson was a vote for integration according to “the warning uttered by the South Carolina Citizens Councils,” which were “representative of the states rights thinking of thousands of South Carolinians.” The civil rights platform of the Democratic Party was a “complete defeat” for the South, adding up to “FEPC, mixed schools, Federal investigation of white Southerners and enthusiastic endorsement of integration in the armed forces.” (A verbatim quotation from a News and Courier editorial of August 16, 1956, p. 16-A.) The regular Democratic Party in South Carolina was a “scalawag” party, “to which most Negroes belong.” The national Democratic Party was the mouthpiece for “Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem, Walter Reuther of the AFL-CIO, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Adlai Stevenson and the turncoat Southerner, Estes Kefauver,” all enemies of the South.[434]
On other occasions the Independents were prone to emphasize non-racial issues and decry “the trend toward government centralized and socialized, in Washington.”[435] Thomas P. Stoney, former mayor of Charleston who was to become one of the Independent electors, declared that “the time has come to serve notice on the left-wingers and crystal-ball gazers of both national parties that we’ve gone just as far as we’re going” toward “100 percent socialism.”[436] Harold Booker, a Camden newspaper man, told an Independent rally: “In fighting for the election, you are fighting for your homes, families and Southland.”[437]
Originally the Independent electors endorsed no candidate but in October they decided to back Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia and Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi for President and Vice-President respectively. That Byrd announced he was not a candidate did not faze the Independents. The News and Courier commented that it “would rather have Harry Byrd president than any other man in public life.” It described Representative Williams, whose claim to fame included popularizing the term “Black Monday,” as a “distinguished Southerner,” the type of man “whom South Carolinians respect.”[438]
The Independents announced their position in several political advertisements in newspapers throughout the state. Typical was the following, which, it might be observed, directly attacked Adlai Stevenson but did not mention President Eisenhower:
Do you want mixing of the races in schools, factories, shops, offices, restaurants—at the point of a bayonet if necessary? If so vote for Stevenson and Kefauver.