II
White South Carolinians, regarding integration with outright disdain and horror, advance many arguments in defense of segregation. These range from temporary expediency to the fear of “mongrelization” and ultimate extinction of the white race. Running parallel is the constant reiteration that segregation, which allegedly provides separate-but-equal facilities, is of greater advantage to the Negro than to the white. Such a view, to be sure, runs completely counter to the assertion of President Truman’s committee on civil rights which said in 1948 that segregation had become “the cornerstone of an elaborate structure of discrimination.” Separate-but-equal arguments, declared the committee, were the basis for “one of the outstanding myths of American history;” while facilities were indeed separate they were far from equal.100 In defending segregation white South Carolinians are far less concerned with the equal than with the separate.
Arguments against racial integration indicate a frank belief in the inherent superiority of the white race. In a widely read article in Harper’s magazine, Thomas R. Waring argued against integration on the following grounds: (1) The incidence of venereal diseases was higher among Negroes. (2) The cultural home environment of Negroes was inferior. (3) Marital habits among many Southern Negroes were “to state it mildly, casual.” (4) Crime was more prevalent among Negroes. (5) The intellectual development of Negro school children was generally below that of their white counterparts.101 The late Herbert Ravenel Sass, a well known Charleston author, got down to Freudian bedrock in stating that fear of intermarriage was the most important factor in Southern opposition to racial integration. In an article in the Atlantic Monthly, he asserted that “it is the deep conviction of nearly all white Southerners in the states which have large Negro populations, that the mingling or integration of white and Negro children in the South’s primary schools would open the gates to miscegenation and wide-spread racial amalgamation.” He claimed that there was “almost no hatred of the Negro” nor was there anything that could “accurately be called race prejudice” in South Carolina. In a skillful display of semantic gymnastics, he held the desire for segregation to be based on “race preference.”102
In rebuttal to Sass, Harvard historian Oscar Handlin declared that statistics indicated that the growth of equality between the races did not increase the rate of intermarriage. Historically racial “miscegenation” had been the “direct product of the inferiority of Negro women.” The extent of “miscegenation” varied directly in proportion to the degree of that inferiority. The idea that Negroes were eager to marry whites, he said, was “a delusion born of the white’s own vanity and of his ignorance of the real sentiments of his fellow Americans of another color.”103
Answering criticisms such as those of Handlin the News and Courier replied: “The separation of races in public schools, in the circumstances that exist in South Carolina, is necessary. It is not evil or immoral. It does not deprive Negroes of their rights. It does protect the rights of white people. Arguments to the contrary usually stem from ignorance. Firm decent resistance in the end will win.” The paper branded integrationists as “Meddlesome Matties” who were interfering with a custom “older than the Republic.” Only in the last few years had “native born Americans... learned from the NAACP and the eggheads that a traditionally American practice was un-American.”104
The Record considered segregation a modus vivendi which enabled the two races to live together until a more suitable solution could be evolved. Such would result only from a long and slow process of education in which racial prejudice would be wiped out.105
The attitude of Morning News Editor O’Dowd was highly ambivalent. Four days before the Court’s original decision he had declared that segregation traditionally had been “a social, economic and political expedient” which had no “moral justification.” Yet he believed the institution continued to be necessary. Three months later he described segregation as “a benevolent and paternal social order,” which “has not been a matter of expediency.” Under O’Dowd’s successor, James A. Rogers, the Morning News moved nearer the position of the Record and the News and Courier. In his first editorial comment on the problem, Rogers stated his “sincere belief” that segregation was practiced in the best interest of both races. Under such circumstances segregation was “not an evil scheme to keep the Negro in subjection but a high road” along which the Negro could “achieve maximum development in an atmosphere without tension or ill will.” A suitable solution to the problem of integration, Rogers thought, would come only after “education, education, education for a period of generations, and patience, the practice of tolerance and the willingness to wait until the alchemy of good will has done its work.”106 Such a proposal meant postponing integration indefinitely.
Amongst individual white South Carolinians much the same attitudes prevailed. Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., indignantly contended that “any statement that our law is inherently unequal is inherently untrue.” Lieutenant Governor Ernest F. Hollings, young, handsome and ambitious, told the Lions Club of Florence that he did not know anyone who believed in “any prejudice on account of race.” Segregation was based on “history, culture and economic background” rather than race prejudice. Former Governor Byrnes told the Sumter Kiwanis Club that segregation arose not from “petty prejudice” but from “an instinctive desire for the preservation of our race.”107
Other South Carolinians expressed these sentiments in greater or lesser degree. Charles D. Haigh of Florence pleaded with “white American fathers” to guard their “defenseless children” against all attempts at integration. Criticizing any moderate approach, he recognized only two alternatives—“segregation or integration and eventual mongrelization of the races.” Should the latter alternative come to pass there would be “no ‘Star Spangled Banner’ as a national anthem, but more than likely some such song as, ‘Rest your li’l kinky head upon my breast, w’suns is all alike.’”108 Similarly, Gilbert Wilkes of the Charleston suburb of Mt. Pleasant had not taught his children “any prejudices against other races” except insofar as “racial purity” was concerned. In keeping his children free from prejudice he imparted to them “the knowledge that God chose members of the white race as his chosen people and then colored the others.”109