IV
Public spokesmen offer many answers to the school integration question. The press of the state constantly urges “patience and forbearance;” “calm, careful consideration, hard thinking and studied action;” “calm, reasonable, and foresighted” actions; “cool calculation, searching forethought;” “restraint and common sense;” “planning,... determination, perhaps... cunning;” and “calm and wise decisions.”
Of the many proposals for circumventing the Court’s decision, voluntary segregation is the most popular. Morning News Editor Rogers thought it represented the “ultimate answer to the problem.” The News and Courier believed that “of all the approaches... now uppermost in the minds of South Carolinians, the voluntary selection of schools by patrons according to their own race keeps recurring as the most reasonable.” Former Governor Byrnes stated that “the hope” of the South was voluntary segregation.113 Proposals for voluntary segregation, of course, contain no provision for Negro parents who desire integrated schools for their children.
The News and Courier has been a consistent advocate of voluntary segregation. In defending this approach, the Charleston paper said:
Happiness cannot be measured in worldly goods, nor social position, nor many of the things that some of us hold too dear. Contentment is necessary for true happiness....
Too many people of all races and stations in life seem dissatisfied with things as they are. While ambition and the go-getter spirit are praiseworthy, whining for “equal treatment”—which often means excuse for shortcomings—should not be a part of a person’s equipment. Merit has a way of being recognized.
Too many people—both white and Negro—are trying to bite off more of life than they can chew. Not everyone is qualified to take a place in the front rank. Instead of being angry, they would do themselves a favor by adopting a philosophical attitude. Instead some persons dissatisfied with their own accomplishments demand a change in government, in economic laws, in the rules of society.114
Another solution is the migration of the Negroes to non-Southern parts of the United States, thus relieving “the pressure of numbers” on the black belt areas of the South. This proposal represents a revival of the pre-Civil War suggestion that the free Negro should be returned to Africa. But in 1955 even the News and Courier conceded that “migration to Africa seems no longer feasible.” In a letter to the editor of the paper W. W. Bragg of Columbia offered concrete proposals to encourage migration. He urged that the state provide each Negro desiring to migrate with a small sum of money—$100 to $200—and pay his transportation expenses. The Negro would be required to “go to a State in the North,” and agree not to return to South Carolina for five years. In the long run this would be cheaper for the state, argued Bragg, because the Negro paid much less money in taxes than the value he received in state services.115
The South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and its president, E. H. Agnew of Starr, also advanced proposals for the continuation of segregation. Agnew, who strongly opposed “this dastardly thing of forced integration,” summarized what he considered to be the views of farmers in the state: “The farm people of South Carolina, both white and colored, are bitterly opposed to such a program as the Supreme Court outlines. They earnestly desire both separate schools and a continued relationship of peace and harmony but they are determined that this vile thing shall be circumvented. They want neither abolition of public schools nor do they want a shotgun solution to the problem but if worst must come they are ready for either or both.”116
In a booklet entitled “Education and Race Relations” distributed to its 20,000 members, the Farm Bureau proposed the development of a “co-racial program” of separate but equal schools. By co-racial the Bureau meant “equal status, equal opportunity and self-determination.” If facilities were truly equal, contended the Bureau, there would be “more gracious acceptance” of segregation by both races and “no white or Negro child” would be “forced to attend a school of mixed races, unwillingly.” Since segregation would, under these circumstances, be maintained voluntarily both the spirit and the letter of the court decision would be observed. The success of this program would depend on voluntary acceptance by both races. Again significantly, no provision was made to accommodate those pupils seeking integrated schools.117
The Record’s proposals merit special attention since in reality they cracked the door to school integration. It recommended a system (consequently adopted in part in North Carolina) which would allow Negroes in “a few rare instances” to attend white schools. Such a system, which would have assigned pupils to schools on factors other than race, would comply with the Court’s decision and at the same time maintain segregation almost 100 percent intact. Under the system “an occasional white pupil” would have to be assigned to a Negro school. The Record also recommended repeal of all of South Carolina’s segregation laws as a means of removing the basis for further court rulings against the state.118
The Independent, though less concerned with the segregation issue, had its own homespun suggestions as to how to circumvent the Court. Comparing resistance to integration with opposition to the Eighteenth Amendment, it suggested that the time might come “when segregated education will be ‘bootlegged’ and when federal agents, slinking behind hedges, will try to follow little Johnny to the ‘speakeasy’ school.” However, there would be plenty of old timers who could give Johnny “some valuable tips on how to confound the revenooers.”119
Not a few urged defiance to the point of violence in resistance to integration. Others, less extreme in their utterances, helped create a climate of disrespect for the segregation decision which made defiance easier. “Because the Supreme Court has spoken we should not submit without resistance,” said Senator Thurmond. South Carolinians, he added, “must resist integration by every legal means harder than the integrationists fought to end segregation.” The News and Courier asserted that “the will to resist goes deep into the fabric of the Southern people. They do not intend to yield their principles so long as they draw breath.” Commenting on the integration violence in Clinton, Tennessee, it declared that “organized rebellion at the local level” was “a wasteful and disturbing means of dealing with government.” But Southern states should not “give an inch in standing up to the federal government.”120
Despite the intransigent opposition that had developed to integration in the state and the South generally by the summer of 1955, W. D. Workman, Jr., despaired of the “blight of submissiveness” which the Court decision had spread over the land. The “cry of surrender” by those who would accept the decision as law did not “fit well into the traditional pattern of American resistance to dictation,” he declared.121 A number of letters to the editor of the News and Courier were of the same opinion.
Occasional outbreaks of violence have come in South Carolina as a result of the integration “agitation.” These have been rare, however; the threat of violence was usually sufficient. The most prominent case of violence involved the Reverend J. A. DeLaine, an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister122 and leader of one of the organizations sponsoring the school case from Clarendon County, where he had a pastorate. Later he was transferred to Lake City. DeLaine’s church in Lake City was destroyed by a fire of undetermined origin; his home was pelted with rocks, fruits and other objects from passing automobiles. On one occasion DeLaine, claiming that the occupants of a passing automobile had fired gunshots into his home, shot back. Two of the men were slightly injured by metal fragments from the car. The men in the car maintained that they had not fired and were in fact unarmed. As a result of this incident DeLaine fled to New York City, seeking refuge with an AME bishop. In South Carolina he was indicted for assault with intent to kill. Federal authorities took no action to return DeLaine to South Carolina. Governor Timmerman, stating that he did not want to give the NAACP another martyr who could be used for fund raising, decided not to press for extradition. South Carolina was well rid of “this professional agitator,” commented Timmerman.
Some two years later DeLaine, interviewed at New Rochelle, N. Y., where he was serving as pastor of the Mount Carmel Church, asserted that his experiences in South Carolina had permanently scarred both him and the members of his family. However, he added: “It’s worth some suffering—it’s even worth a man’s life, if he can start something that will lead to a little more justice for people.... We helped start some things that are bringing a revolution in education for Negroes in South Carolina, in modern schools and bus transportation.” Nor did the minister harbor any ill feelings toward the people of South Carolina. “There are too many good people there, white and colored. But they need to stand up against the hate-mongers,” he declared.123
A second notable incident of violence, which took place in December, 1956, involved the flogging of a Camden High School band leader, Guy Hutchins, by six hooded men. According to Hutchins, he was attacked while changing an automobile tire on a lonely road. His assailants accused him of making remarks in favor of racial integration, a charge which Hutchins flatly denied.
Although the Kershaw County grand jury on two different occasions refused to indict six men arrested in connection with the case, many white South Carolinians publicly criticized the incident. The Rev. Stiles B. Lines, pastor of the Camden Episcopal Church of which Hutchins was a member, declared that “fear covers South Carolina like the frost.” Referring to the flogging, he told his parishioners: “Men are afraid to speak. Freedom of speech is almost extinct in South Carolina, except for those who wish to speak in favor of and in accord with the policies of the pressure groups who self-righteously assume that they, and only they, have the answers.”124
Criticism of the Hutchins affair was sufficiently widespread to cause the steering committee of the Kershaw County Citizens Council to meet in special session and issue a statement declaring that “unlawful acts of violence, force or intimidation serve only to bring discredit on this community and state, and, insofar as concerns the struggle against integration, the loss of States’ Rights and loss of individual liberties, to cause diversion, dissension and dismay among those who are attempting to maintain our traditional social order and way of life.”
The comments made by South Carolina Circuit Judge G. Duncan Bellinger of Columbia on the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision were an interesting sidelight on the Hutchins incident. They were voiced in his charge to the grand jury considering the indictment of the six men accused of the flogging. Members of the Court, said the judge, had “substituted for legal principles their own personal, social, economic and political ideas, taking away the rights of states, the powers of the departments of the federal government and the rights of individual citizens.” But in urging an indictment of the accused, Bellinger declared that violence would aid only the “scalawags and carpetbaggers” who were seeking to bring about another Reconstruction.125 By inference the judge considered fighting the “scalawags and carpetbaggers” as important as the rights of individual citizen Guy Hutchins.
Under circumstances and conditions such as those outlined above South Carolina developed its resistance to attempts of the Negro to win integration. The unanimity of opinion among those elements which spoke out on the subject encouraged silence among more moderate persons. Such a situation is further illustrated by a more detailed consideration of the various phases of resistance.