The South’s position today in relation to the rest of the U. S. in its constitutional resistance to integration may be strengthened by placing heavier emphasis upon the fact that, unlike the 1850’s the South is on the side of liberty in a battle against a peculiarly insidious type of slavery.[506]
The Independent is by no means alone in speaking of the “conspiracy” between the integrationists and organized labor. Lieutenant Governor E. F. Hollings warned against the combined efforts of CIO labor unions and New England politicians in collusion with the NAACP to “cut the flow of industry” into South Carolina and the South. Likewise, Attorney General T. C. Callison hinted at “some unholy alliance between the NAACP and enemies of ours who would be rejoiced to bring about the condition of confusion, which would interfere with the migration of industry to our state.”[507] Shortly after Congress’ passage of the Civil Rights Act the News and Courier ran the following editorial note under the title of “Know Your Enemy”: “Every South Carolinian who is employed in a textile mill should know that William Pollock, president of the Textile Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, has petitioned President Eisenhower to appoint immediately civil rights commissioners for the South. The man who wants to collect the dues of textile workers in South Carolina can’t wait for the New Reconstruction to begin.”[508]
National labor unions have been, of course, among the most consistent and militant supporters of full civil rights for Negroes. This fact, together with such actions by the national unions as condemning the activities of the Citizens Councils, have been used against the cause of organized labor. The News and Courier commented with much validity that the “traditional viewpoint” of Southerners on separation of the races accounted for the resistance to labor organization in the state. South Carolina’s industrial workers, it maintained, would have to choose between heeding “the orders of union officials who are brainwashed with the popular creed of mixing the races” and declaring “their independence as free citizens.” Noting that the South was traditionally “pro-segregation and anti-union,” it declared that to the “union member who has already parted with one tradition the question is whether he can part with the second, and still be accepted in the community.” In a not very subtle attempt to alienate the South Carolina worker from the labor union, the News and Courier declared that “the white man who wishes to preserve his culture, his civilization, as he and his fathers knew it, is in the minority as the national union labor leaders count noses.”[509]
Anti-union elements have been not unsuccessful in using for their own ends the pro-integration stand of national labor unions and their leaders. In some areas union members support Citizens Councils or other white supremacy groups. And the implication of statements by a number of labor leaders in the state, notably among those of the Textile Workers Union of America, is that these members put loyalty to the Citizens Councils above that of their labor unions. Oversimplifying the case, Representative John Calhoun Hart of Union, one of the leaders of a weak and unsuccessful effort to repeal the state’s right-to-work law, told George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO: “Organized labor will never make any substantial progress in the South until national labor leaders stop uttering such rot and drivel on racial matters in the South. Any Southerner who would go along with you on such things is not worth his salt and could not be elected dogcatcher.”[510]
One of the most curious developments in the integration controversy has been the creation of the United Southern Employes Association, a pro-segregation labor organization imported from North Carolina. Leaders of the new labor group acknowledged that they were reacting against the pro-integration tendencies of the old unions and against “the trend toward concentration of too much power in the hands of ‘a few big-shots.’” Applicants for membership were required to sign a promise to attempt “in a legal manner, to maintain and support the Southern tradition of segregation in education and society of the white and Negro races without discriminating against or violating the civil rights of any other person or persons.” The movement also aimed at the establishment of a member-controlled labor movement and the bringing about of “good friendship” and good relations between workers and industries. The United Southern Employes Association supported amendments to the state’s right-to-work law which would require the approval by secret ballot of union members before any strike could be called by a local union, thus preventing “wildcat strikes by unions without the approval of their members”; prohibit national or international unions from levying more than a seventy cents per month tax on members without membership approval by secret ballot; ban a national or international union from controlling local funds or property; require membership approval, by secret ballot, of all contracts and work agreements before such become binding; allow any union member to withdraw his membership upon ten days notice to the local union; and require that union members be notified ten days in advance of any union elections; investigate labor disputes; and in general serve as a state labor board. Though the dedication of such an organization to the real welfare of the working class might be questioned, the United Southern Employes Association presented itself as labor’s hope in the South. By early 1957 the group had only one office in the state, at Rock Hill, but it had grandiose plans for establishment of others.[511]
The close association of the United Southern Employes Association with conservative elements in the state came to light in January, 1957, when W. A. Somersett, one of its organizers, was asked to address the meeting in Columbia of the South Carolina Independent political movement. Somersett presented the Association as being dedicated to the preservation of racial segregation. He condemned the national Democratic party as being “socialist” and listening overmuch “to persons such as Walter Reuther.”[512]
Somersett descended a few steps down the South Carolina social ladder when he addressed a meeting of the Fort Mill Klan Klavern. According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, he asserted that any klansman was automatically considered a member of the USEA and could be sent across an AFL-CIO picket line. This statement, it is said, was greeted by a chorus of boos and a walkout of most of the klansmen who were themselves textile operators.[513]
Thus the segregationist elements of the state reacted to the diverse phases of the renewed war of Yankee aggression. It is a war in which the South appears doomed to lose again, although at a much slower pace than the struggle of the 1860’s. The growing disagreements between North and South spotlight the ever increasing isolation of the latter, not only in the nation but in the free world. It is evident, by 1958, that the time has come for Southerners to undergo an “agonizing reappraisal” of their traditional concepts of the relationships between the races. It is also evident, however, that South Carolina’s white spokesmen are not yet prepared to do this. On the face of things it appears that white South Carolinians would settle down to a long and slow process of chopping off the dog’s tail a bit at a time: The end result will not change but the process will be much more painful.