Such an internationally myopic viewpoint could be expected from the embattled News and Courier but one could hardly anticipate it being broadcast in a more sophisticated form by Donald S. Russell who when he expressed it was president of the University of South Carolina, a position which he resigned a few weeks later. Addressing the Bamberg Lions Club, Russell lashed out against “the ill-advised efforts of many heedless busybodies to inject the issue of school integration in the South into American foreign policy.”[472] Conceivably Russell was speaking strictly for home consumption as he was in the process of preparing the ground for his announcement as a gubernatorial candidate. Yet this outlook was hardly befitting a man who fancies himself to be well informed in the realm of international diplomacy and who has served as Assistant Secretary of State.
In recognition of the influence of mass communication, various proposals have been advanced to overcome the absence in the South of a single pro-segregation newspaper or periodical of nationwide standing. The South, lamented the News and Courier, had lost its voice in an age of miraculous means of communication. Consequently the Southern arguments were not heard in the North. The “primary need” of the South, then, was “a non-profit and non-political organization to present the Southern viewpoint.” Financed by voluntary contributions by Southerners, such an organization would employ lawyers to argue segregation cases before the courts, issue press releases on the position of segregationists, and furnish speakers to present the Southern argument to the nation.[473] Ironically, it is largely on these very grounds that South Carolinians have condemned the NAACP!
The News and Courier has taken other steps to bolster the Southern ramparts against the integrationists. It plugs W. E. Debnam’s “handbooks for Southerners,” Then My Old Kentucky Home Good Night and Weep No More My Lady. These would intellectually fortify those Southerners who were “being brain-washed by experts” from the North. Southerners who bought the books, furthermore, could send them to Northern acquaintances. On another occasion the News and Courier presented itself as covering the race controversy “more than any other newspaper in the country.” In one of its own advertisements it suggested three ways to pierce the “Paper Curtain”: (1) Southerners could correspond with relatives, friends and business acquaintances in the North and “tell the truth as they know it;” (2) better yet they could “send pamphlets, clippings and other printed arguments through the mail;” (3) “most effective of all would be to send The News and Courier.” A gift subscription was at their command. In 1956 the paper issued a twenty-five cent pamphlet, entitled “We Take Our Stand,” containing thirty-two of its editorials on the race issue. Such methods as these caused the Independent to comment sourly: “The Charleston News and Courier ... constantly stirs the [race] issue with one hand while reaching out with the other to cash in on the agitation by advertising itself as a ‘Southern spokesman’ without peer, urging ‘buy me, buy me.’ The theory seems to be: more strife, more profit.”[474]
W. D. Workman Jr. suggested establishment of a “Southern Foundation” to foster “recognition of Southern achievements (and attitudes) in the fields of industry, agriculture, politics and government, education and sociology.” The foundation could “aid in breaking down the obvious and discriminatory refusal of Northern publishers to print anything out of the South which does not conform with their preconceived ideas of ‘liberality in the New South.’” Finally it “could offset some of the mealy-mouthed preachments of ‘dogooder’ organizations within and without the South which seek to develop a guilt complex among Southerners for simply being Southerners.”[475]
The “Bookworm,” writing in the News and Courier, suggested a boycott against publications attacking segregation. He proposed that (1) all Southern organizations “secede from their national affiliations,” thereby taking large numbers of members and dues from national groups which were attempting to “influence Southern thought and action”; (2) Southerners discontinue subscriptions to national publications unfriendly to the South; and (3) Southerners notify advertisers in these publications that their products are no longer being used.[476]
Scion of an old Charleston family, Arthur Ravenel, Jr., a member of the state House of Representatives, proposed to the Columbia Rotary Club the creation of a fund to be used for the purpose of buying up Northern newspapers and magazines and other media of information. The fund would be financed by non-interest paying bonds subscribed to by loyal South Carolinians. Through these captive magazines “the Southern and conservative story” could be told to America. “You cannot win a defensive battle or a defensive war,” said Ravenel. “South Carolina, as we know her and love her, cannot survive another decade unless we take the offensive quickly and maintain it vigorously. We alone among the forty-eight states can do it. We have the wherewithal. Our assets include a singleness of purpose among our people; geographical unity; an illustrious history; a social system free of racial strife; two societies complete and separate, living in mutual respect for one another; and a community of real Americans.” South Carolina, continued this young legislator, had “no ‘pinks,’ no reds, no ‘isms.’ We have the type of people who form the backbone of the nation. We have a story that can be told.” The battle to win men’s minds could be won, Ravenel maintained. “That real American, David Lawrence, had proven with the U. S. News and World Report that America avidly seeks the truth.”[477]
Suggestions of this nature also reached into the state legislature. In the 1957 session, Representative F. Mitchell Ott of Orangeburg County introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a nine-member commission which would interest other Southern states in sending delegations to visit Northern and Western state legislatures. The purpose of such visits would be to arouse these states to the threat of “continuing and accelerating invasion of states rights by the federal government.”[478]
The successfully waged battle for passage of a federal civil rights act revealed the extent of the South’s isolation from the rest of the country. It was looked upon in South Carolina and the other deep South states as but another campaign in the insidious war of Yankee aggression. The first skirmishes occurred in the spring of 1956 when the Eisenhower administration asked Congress to enact a civil rights law which would include creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate individual grievances and creation of a new civil rights division in the Department of Justice. The proposals also provided that any citizen who felt that his constitutional rights had been infringed might go directly to a federal court with his complaint, bypassing the state courts.[479]
Reaction to these proposals ranged from indignation to outright defiance. Senator Olin D. Johnston considered them “a brazen attempt to abolish all states rights and to establish a form of dictatorship government.” Never before had the nation come “as close to creating a Hitler or Stalin type dictatorship.” The Independent compared them to the “‘force bills’ Black Republicans put into effect” during Reconstruction. Their purpose was to “create more strife” and to “capitalize on such strife to create more Negro votes for the Republican Party.” The News and Courier also considered the proposals “force bills aimed at the South.” The purpose was “political reconstruction, in an all-out attempt to capture the Negro vote.” They meant “invasion of liberties guaranteed under the Constitution.”[480]
The 1956 Civil Rights Bill died in the Senate; consequently, in 1957 a new and stronger bill was introduced into Congress. Again state leaders bellowed their opposition. Representative L. Mendel Rivers charged that the 1957 proposals were based on “a contemptible, malicious, dastardly lie” about conditions in the South. Such a law “is not only not needed but violates every guarantee the Constitution gives us.” Passage of the bill would drench the nation with more “blood than ever a mutinied ship.” All Americans, not only Southerners, would lose their rights with passage of the bill. Senator Thurmond warned the House Judiciary Committee that adoption of the “so-called civil rights” proposals would “turn neighbor against neighbor,” deprive citizens of their rights to trial by jury and “keep our people in a constant state of apprehension and harassment.”[481]