Reaction of the student body of the university to Travelstead’s dismissal was varied.[538] The Gamecock, the student newspaper, and most of its columnists strongly condemned the action. So did a majority of those students who expressed their opinion in letters to the Gamecock editor. However at least one columnist and a number of the letters to the editor supported the dismissal. Editor Carolyn McClung considered the dismissal “a hard and definite blow to the University.” If University officials took upon themselves to squelch persons with unpopular ideas, it was “no place for students with intellectual curiosity.” Similarly, columnist Herbert Bryant believed that “the University’s escutcheon” bore a deep scar as a result of the trustees’ apparent “ban on freedom of academic thought and expression at the University.” Jack Bass, another columnist, considered the action “rash and shortsighted.” He believed that “at least 90 percent” of the University faculty agreed with the sentiments expressed by Dr. Travelstead; hence, the Dean was fired not for having an opinion but for expressing it openly.
On the other hand, columnist Billy Mellette supported the removal of Travelstead: “People who work for any university or college know they must be careful, or they should know it. You say the policy is not written, and how then are you expected to know what to say?—You use your damned head, that’s how you know. The school doesn’t go around sneaking up on people and trying to find people to fire.... If he [Travelstead] did not know to be quiet—as head of the education department of all positions—then he has now learned.... The University did not invade the castle of free thought. It was challenged and forced to commit itself.”
In a similar vein Fred LeClerq respected Travelstead’s “right as an individual to believe in integration,” but he did not think that he should “occupy a position through which he could mold the opinions of prospective teachers of a state where race purity and segregation are essential to the well-being of its citizens.” LeClerq believed “integration to be as diametrically opposed to the welfare of this state as communism is to the welfare of the nation.” For this reason he thought the ouster both “justifiable and commendable.”
Supporters of segregation generally upheld the board of trustees. The News and Courier pointed out that the issue of academic freedom had two sides—“the freedom of a professor to speak his mind” and “the freedom of a university to choose the lines of education it wishes to follow.” Since Travelstead was out of line with both university policy and the desires of the people of South Carolina, his usefulness as a teacher was over. “He easily can exercise his academic freedom elsewhere,” concluded the Charleston paper.[539]
On the other hand, the Morning News was critical. Editor O’Dowd stated that if the university were “to teach conformity in all schools of thought” it would no longer be a university. It would then be “a machine for making mimeographed mentalities.... If the University of South Carolina rejects a valuable educator because he has one unpopular idea, then our university is not a place for hungry minds.”[540]
A second notable example of this urge to conformity was the case of Jack H. O’Dowd himself. The nephew of Morning News publisher John M. O’Dowd, he almost alone amongst South Carolina news editors had attempted to steer a middle course in the segregation controversy. His difficulties were testimony to the fate of an honest and courageous dissenter. A native of Florence and a graduate of the Citadel, O’Dowd termed himself not a pro-integrationist but an anti-pro-segregationist.
Under O’Dowd’s editorship the Morning News, as already has been noted, opposed all attempts to destroy the “social necessity” of segregation by court order. If segregation were to be eliminated, it had to be done “by the consent of the people and as a result of an evolutionary process.” Segregation was incorrectly defended on the grounds of states rights and constitutionalism. Such arguments indicated to the rest of the world that American democracy meant that “all men are equal but some are less equal than others.”
The Florence editor accepted the decision as the law of the land and urged his readers to do likewise. Since segregation was illegal, it was only a matter of time before it would be a thing of the past. Public schools would have to be desegregated. Those who were thinking in terms of continued segregation under a system of voluntary separation were engaging in “self-delusion and false hope.” “Within too short a period of time,” segregation would be “a legal memory” in the South. Desegregation was not a problem to be considered “in some hazy tomorrow”; it had to be confronted immediately. A policy of adopting expedients, which could at best provide only temporary segregation, would not change the final picture but it would make it more painful and expensive. There had to be a maximum price beyond which the South would be unwilling to go to preserve segregation temporarily.
During the period of adjustment to changes wrought by the Court decision, the greatest danger confronting South Carolina, warned O’Dowd, was “the growth of a new era of demagoguery.” Such would allow “the great racial issue to get out of perspective and past the point of sane solution.” Too many segregationists were already “advocating something akin to secession.” O’Dowd insisted that there was a difference between “honest opposition to the Court’s decree and demagogic reaction that borders on sedition and violates the respect and honor implicit in the theories of our national government.”[541]
In early 1956 O’Dowd made what were to be his last clarion calls to common sense and level-headed thinking on the segregation issue. On February 26 he appealed for a policy of “militant moderation” to counter the extremists. The latter were carrying the day. Extremists, crying “traitor,” “coward” or “brainwashed,” discredited all attempts at moderation. Casting a plague on the houses of both white supremacists and the NAACP, O’Dowd believed that most South Carolinians must know “that truth and proper action lies between the sentiments” of these groups. The only true solution was for the moderates to step forth and lead the way.[542]