Chapter VII: The New Nullification (2)

Representative Hart became positively splenetic upon learning that Clarence Mitchell, the Washington NAACP official, had used the white waiting room at the Florence train station. Mitchell was arrested for his action but Florence authorities prudently did not press the case. For such seeming pusillanimity Representative Hart blasted Florence officials. He deplored “the jelly fish manner in which they handled Clarence Mitchell’s flagrant violation of South Carolina segregation customs.” The teacher-legislator then indicated how he would educate Mitchell:

Bashing Mitchell’s head would have had a highly salutary
effect on integration psychology in the Florence area....

We must have a showdown sooner or later and it is doubtful
that a better opportunity will ever present itself. A few
cracked heads here and there could easily avert bloodshed
on a large scale later on.... There’s more law and order
in a South Carolina night-stick than in sociological U. S.
Supreme Court opinion.[368]

One of the least laudable and most farcical of the legislature’s actions was its lapse into book censorship. It arose from discovery that a novel, _The Swimming Hole_,[369] written for eight to twelve year olds, was being circulated throughout South Carolina by the State Library Board. The following summary from the _Morning News_ indicates the extent of the book’s threat to the South Carolina segregation customs:

The story opens with three little white boys and a Negro
boy calling at the home of Larry, another Negro child, to
ask him to go swimming with them. Larry’s mother invites
the boys in, gives them each an apple and warns them not to
go in the water for a while after eating.

The boys troop off toward the swimming hole with one of the
Negroes leading the way in what apparently is a game of
“Follow the leader.”

Upon reaching the swimming hole, the children disrobe
together and the next page shows one of the Negro boys
first in the swim as another Negro child holds one of the
white boys off the diving board. In the background, several
other Negroes are mingled among the white boys.

After several hours of swimming, they dress together
and start home. Larry spots a new white boy in the
neighborhood, and the next day they invite the new boy to
join them in the swimming hole.

Steve, the new boy, isn’t a very good swimmer so he sits
all day in his trunks in the sun and acquires a bright red
sunburn. When the boys are dressing to go home, Larry finds
his clothing tied in knots. Bob, the other Negro boy, makes
a similar discovery.

Steve admits the prank, because “I don’t want to play with
anyone who’s colored.” Whereupon Steve turns his glowing
red back on them all and starts home.

Larry suggests they all tell Steve the next day they “don’t
want to play with anyone the color you are.” The others
agree “that’s a good idea.”

The plan is carried out the next day and the boys leave
Steve contemplating his sunburned reflection in a store
window. Apparently after some soul searching, Steve goes
to the swimming hole and tells Larry, “I won’t tie your
clothes again” because “it doesn’t matter what color people
are.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Larry tells him. “Come on in the
water. I’ll teach you to swim.”

The last page concludes, “They all had a wonderful time
together.”

Discovery of the book in a state library evoked immediate and outspoken criticism.[370] The head of the State Library Board argued that the book was not aimed at integration, but designed to point out that “human values are not to be judged by physical differences.” Nevertheless, a resolution was introduced in the state legislature by Representatives J. Henry Stuckey of Williamsburg County and Albert W. Watson of Richland County to secure removal of the book and to prevent recurrence of similar situations in the future. Books like _The Swimming Hole_, according to the resolution, were “antagonistic and inimical to the traditions and customs of our state,” and “serve no constructive educational purpose but rather tend to confuse and warp the thinking of our young children.”

Though calmer heads opposed the resolution, it was approved. Charges of “book burning” and “Hitler tactics” were heard on the floor of the legislature. Representative William H. Grimball, Jr., of Charleston urged the House to “let reason combat whatever thoughts are in books ... in any free democracy you ought to be able to expound anything you want.” To another lowcountry representative, Edward Huguenin of Jasper, the resolution represented a “ridiculous extreme.” Supporting the measure, Representative John M. Horlbeck of Charleston and Representative John T. Gentry of Pickens declared that the question was not one of “literary freedom” but of asserting the “attitude of the General Assembly.”

Press reaction was generally unfavorable to this censorship. The _Record_ said that it was “dangerous business when government gets into the field of censorship of literature, business ‘antagonistic and inimical’ to the traditions and customs of South Carolina.” Americans had always thought that bad ideas could be controverted by good ideas. The _Record_ urged South Carolina “to leave censorship to Russia and to Boston.” But the _News and Courier_ was sympathetic. While conceding that “books expressing all viewpoints should be available for adults,” the Charleston paper declared,

But on the children’s shelves, it seems to us, propaganda
should be confined to such wholesome generalities as “good
is better than evil,” “crime doesn’t pay,” “be kind to
people and animals,” and “an industrious child gets more
done than a lazy one.”

... And there is no need to stand up for a book that tries
by subtle propaganda to make the South’s racial customs
appear to be hateful and wicked.

Although a cursory perusal of the anti-integration bills adopted by the 1955 and 1956 sessions of the general assembly might infer that the legislators had exhausted the possibilities along this line, such was by no means the case. The 1957 session was only slightly less productive than that of 1956. In attempting to plug by legislative fiat every possible hole in the segregation dike the solons in 1957 ranged from the petty and silly to the dangerous and ridiculous.

Falling into the first category were the attempt to ban the movie _Island in the Sun_ and the proposal to require all blood banks to label blood White or Colored. The movie is an adaptation of Alec Waugh’s novel _Island in the Sun_ involving love affairs between interracial couples. Though the cinema version of the story soft-pedals its amatory aspects to the point that not a single interracial kiss takes place on the screen, Representative John Calhoun Hart described it as “a sickening, repulsive, indecent spectacle to which no one in this state should be exposed or subjected.” The Union County lawmaker introduced a bill which declared that the movie “openly” advocated “breaking the miscegenation section of the state constitution” and charged the movie industry with “attempting to foster moral depravity by condoning the mixing of the races.” The bill would have fined any theater showing the film $5,000. Hart’s effort to save “the young people of the world” came to naught. Even the _News and Courier_ condemned it as censorship.[371]

Of a similar nature was the bill offered by Rep. George Sam Harrell of Florence County which would have required that blood banks label all stored blood “White” or “Colored.” Rep. Harrell decried the fact that since 1951 blood had not been labeled by race. He said Negro and white blood was now put on a desk and “you come along and they will shoot” Negro “blood in your veins.” To his colleagues in the House, he declared, “I don’t want any ... [Negro] blood in me and I don’t intend to have any.” The bill, which passed the House but not the Senate, carried provisions for $100 fine or 30 days in jail or both for violators.[372]

Potentially the most dangerous of the many pro-segregation measures was a recommendation by the Gressette Committee, subsequently enacted by the legislature, that the governor be given almost dictatorial injunctive police and military power “to prevent violence or threats of violence.” Under provisions of the bill the governor can “by proclamation declare that a danger exists.” Then to “cope with such danger” he may enjoin any acts or planned acts by individuals, associations or corporations, call in all state, county and local law officers and call out the state militia “to maintain peace and good order.” There was surprisingly little reaction to this proposal. Said the _News and Courier_: “If they are used with discretion, such police powers ... may be an effective method of combatting federal discrimination against South Carolina.”[373]

The 1957 general assembly also considered many other pro-segregation measures: a resolution creating a group similar to the State Sovereignty Commission of Mississippi to acquaint non-Southerners with the South Carolina position on racial segregation (not passed); a resolution by Rep. Hart to impeach six of the nine justices of the Supreme Court (not passed); an anti-barratry law aimed at the NAACP (passed); and a bill repealing the 1956 statute which forbade public employment to NAACP members and the enacting of a new requirement that merely provided that all prospective employes list those organizations to which they belong (passed).[374] This last law was the result of a suit brought by a group of Elloree Negro teachers who refused to answer a questionnaire under the 1956 law. As a result of the new law the federal courts refused to hear the suit brought by the teachers.

In addition to these measures Rep. Hart introduced still another to strengthen the position of South Carolina in its fight for states rights. Reaching a new nadir, this proposal, which was not adopted, declared that: “No executive order or directive of the President, and no act or resolution of the Congress, and no judicial decision or construction of the Supreme or any inferior Court, and no treaty with any foreign power or international agreement of the United States in conflict with, or diminishment of, or derogatory to the powers not delegated to the United States and reserved to the States respectively or the people, shall become effective as law in this State, except through enactment only by the General Assembly pursuant to the Constitution of the State of South Carolina, and otherwise the same shall be null and void and of no effect in this state.”[375]

Use of official authority to coerce public school officials in maintaining the segregation line intact has been a comparatively easy matter. To move against private educational institutions which served as focal points of disaffection or threatened to lower the segregation barrier is more difficult. One such recent effort by Governor Timmerman and a compliant State Board of Education bared a vicious form of official infighting.

During the summer of 1957 rumor bruited around the campus of Allen University, an African Methodist Episcopal Church school in Columbia, that the Governor’s office had warned the institution’s recently inaugurated president, the Reverend Frank Veal, that he would have to dismiss three professors from the faculty or face the consequences. The men proscribed were Professors John G. Rideout, chairman of the division of humanities; Edwin Hoffman, chairman of the division of education; and Forrest O. Wiggins of the department of philosophy. All were holders of doctorates from leading American universities and Rideout had been a Rhodes scholar. Rideout and Hoffman are white and Wiggins a Negro. While no specific charges were made against the men insofar as their professional competency was concerned--it is generally agreed by the Allen students that they are among the most effective teachers on the faculty--much was made of the fact that the names of Wiggins and Rideout were in the files of the United States House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.

President Veal, betraying an unprofessional sensitivity to academic procedures, wilted under the pressure and without consulting the members of Allen’s board of trustees wrote letters to the three men in question demanding their resignations “for the good of the University.” But Rideout, Hoffman and Wiggins would not resign and to confuse matters further, the board of trustees not only refused to back Veal but also announced that the three professors would continue on as members of the faculty. A few days later, however, Veal reportedly declared that his demand for the resignations of the three men still stood and that they were in effect being given a year’s dismissal notice. Although the Columbia press gave prominent headlines to Veal’s statement, there was no indication that the board of trustees agreed with it. But just on the eve of the new academic year Veal replaced Hoffman as chairman of the division of education with Dr. Sylvia Swinton, a former Negro field supervisor for the State Department of Education.[376]

A few weeks later Allen again bounced back into the news headlines with the announcement that five Hungarian refugees would be enrolled at the University. Their admission would constitute the first modern break-through in South Carolina’s segregation wall. And, as State Attorney General T. C. Callison was obliged to acknowledge, the worst part of the situation was that although it was “against public policy” to integrate Negroes and whites in educational institutions, there was “no law in South Carolina to reach” Allen, a private and church school. Actually, only one of the five Hungarian “freedom fighters,” Andre Toth, enrolled at Allen when its fall term opened.[377]

But the Governor and his advisors on the State Board of Education still held a trump card to play. If Allen could not be dealt with directly, it could be struck a low blow punch through withdrawal of official approval of the University for teacher training. Accordingly, the State Board of Education, on which the Governor sits as an ex officio member, on September 9th sent notice to Allen that its graduates would have teacher certification withheld “until such time as the Board may determine that it is in the public interest to grant approval.” The Board did not specify what if anything was wrong with the education courses offered at Allen, courses that hitherto had had its approval.

President Veal was conveniently out of Columbia, but Allen board of trustees president, Bishop I. H. Bonner, cautiously took up the gauntlet. To the consternation of several administrative officials at the University of South Carolina, the Bishop opined that Allen’s students requiring teacher certification would undoubtedly seek admission to the University and other white state-supported institutions of higher learning.[378] Should such applicants be admitted to these schools by Federal court order, resort to which would, of course, be imperative, state law would oblige the schools to close.

The nadir of official hypocrisy came with the announcement of the State Board of Education following its September 20th meeting, that it was seeking to help Allen solve its internal problems. At the same meeting a “bi-racial” committee consisting of six white members and one Negro, B. C. Turner, president of the State college for Negroes at Orangeburg, was appointed to review applications for teacher training courses in South Carolina’s private and public universities and colleges.

Crocodile tears were copiously shed by “some state officials” over “the plight of Dr. Veal” in light of his failure to rid his faculty of three objectionable professors. These same persons allegedly asked how, for instance, the State Board of Education could approve a teacher training course at an institution whose academic head desired to dismiss members of his faculty but could not do so because of the opposition of his board of trustees. The logic of the state officials was that if the president of an approved teacher training institution didn’t want certain instructors because of lack of faith in them, then the state could not accept a student who received certification for his work under such a professor.[379]

So utterly gross were the actions of the Governor and the State Board of Education that there was embarrassingly little discussion of the affair in the editorial columns of the state’s press. Those few papers that discussed the Allen situation either printed without comment the decision of the Board of Education to withdraw accreditation or looked askance upon it. The Florence _Morning News_, for example, found the “handling of the Allen case unfortunate” particularly in the light of the secrecy involved, the shortage of qualified Negro teachers, the encouragement that it would give to Negroes to apply to the University of South Carolina and the lack of data supplied to Allen officials as to the reasons for the Board’s actions.[380]

The Allen situation stood at a standstill until mid-December with neither the University officials nor the State Board of Education changing their positions. But on December 17th, Bishop Bonner met with the Governor in the latter’s office, at his own request so he said, for a “cordial” talk and the fat was again in the fire. According to Bonner, Timmerman maintained that the controversy over the three professors was “non-political” and “non-racial” and then proceeded to tell him “what was wrong.” Just what was wrong the Bishop did not reveal.[381]

Two days later Bishop Bonner notified Hoffman, Rideout, and Wiggins that he would recommend their dismissal when the trustees’ board of control would be called for a special meeting on January 10, 1958. He further informed them that they would receive their salaries for the remainder of the year if they resigned and departed quietly but that if they fought their dismissals, they would get nothing. The professors declined to take any action pending the meeting of the trustees on January 10th.

Meanwhile the American Association of University Professors entered into the picture. General Secretary of the Association Dr. Robert K. Carr wired Governor Timmerman requesting that he provide the AAUP with information regarding the grounds on which the State Board of Education had voted to withhold teacher accreditation approval of Allen graduates. Carr at the same time told reporters that his organization viewed with alarm the apparent relationship of the question of academic tenure at Allen with that of political interference “with the internal operations of private institutions.” “We are concerned,” he said, “lest there be direct connection between the two matters--the dismissal of the faculty members and the withholding of teacher certificates.” The AAUP, he added, would support the professors to the hilt. Carr was satisfied that the presence of the Hungarian white student on the Allen campus was in no way related to the certification question.

Timmerman’s response to Carr’s request was completely in character. He told the AAUP that the Allen affair was none of its business. “Our state is concerned with protecting all of its people,” the governor wired Carr, “and your authority to question its official actions is without recognition. The resolution [of the State Board of Education] speaks for itself.”

Carr expressed dismay at the brusque tone of the governor’s telegram. “Governor Timmerman’s reaction is most unfortunate,” he declared. “Our queries are usually received by state officials and institutions respectfully and answered if possible.” For his part Timmerman, clearly annoyed, replied that Carr’s “political whimpering” confirmed his suspicion as to the motive behind the former’s telegram. Timmerman said that Carr should “seek the answer to his questions from his own files” thus implying that prejudicial information against the three professors was at the disposal of the AAUP.[382]

The show-down on the Allen affair came at the board of trustees meeting on January 10th and the results gratified all persons who still believe in academic freedom. Bishop Bonner, who probably hoped to dominate the meeting, found the spotlight taken away from him by Dr. R. A. Mance, a former Columbia physician who lives in Washington, D.C. Mance, a member of the Allen Board of Trustees, is also treasurer of the national African Methodist Episcopal Church. When Mance spoke out in defense of the three professors, those present at the meeting which was open to the public were very much aware that he was voicing the sentiments of the national church organization on which Allen heavily depends.

Bishop Bonner tried to defend his demand for the ouster of Wiggins, Rideout and Hoffman in the face of an audience which booed him when he said that Governor Timmerman impressed him as being “a very fine man.” According to Bonner, who was demonstrably angry at the hostile audience, Timmerman had told him that the State Board of Education believed “that the three men could not possibly exert a good influence on the university in view of their refusal to resign at the request of the president following the recommendation by the dean of the faculty.” The Bishop, disregarding all questions of intimidation and of civil rights, based his position squarely on the ground that the most important thing for Allen to consider was the certification of its graduates by the state.

In the face of needling questions by Dr. Mance and other trustees, the Bishop turned to President Veal for support. It was on Veal’s request, according to Bonner, that the meeting had been called. But here the Bishop was in for a rude awakening as Veal, not unmindful that an investigation committee from the national AME church was present at the meeting, suddenly announced that he would definitely not recommend dismissal of the three professors “at this time.” Veal, who could hardly deny that he had asked for the resignations of Rideout, Wiggins, and Hoffman, said that any decision either to retain or to dismiss them would be arrived at according to academic procedures. Bonner, left out on a limb, accused Veal of having “backed out” on him. The meeting broke up without any action being taken and with the parting comment of Bishop Bonner that failure to dismiss the three controversial professors “could mean death to Allen University.” But Allen’s student body clearly did not share Bonner’s pessimism. A few hours after the meeting had adjourned nearly three hundred students gathered in front of Veal’s home and serenaded him. For the first time in months the harassed president found himself genuinely popular amongst the students.

In the Allen battle, which as the trustee Reverend F. C. James of Sumter pointed out “affects every private institution in America” as well as the issues of “civil liberties and civil rights,” the old “Uncle Tom” leadership, as personified in Bishop Bonner and his supporters, went down to defeat before the new generation of American Negroes. Whether the defeat will be thorough and permanent, only the future will tell. But administrators of private colleges throughout America owe a debt of gratitude to the courageous stand taken by the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the face of political intimidation.[383]

On January 15 Governor Timmerman officially spelled out to the people of South Carolina why the State Board of Education had withdrawn its approval of Allen for teacher training. In his annual message to the state legislature he warned of the “communist menace” in South Carolina [as of 1951 the Federal Bureau of Investigation could count only seventeen alleged Communists in the State!] and pointed his finger directly at Allen as a center of possible subversion. Borrowing a trick from the late senator from Wisconsin, the chief executive proceeded to read to the members of the legislature the “party-line” records of the three Allen professors; he mentioned none of them by name. The records, he said, had been procured from administration officials at Allen and from “other” sources of information [the files of the Un-American Activities Committee supplied through the office of Congressman John Riley]. According to the Governor, the chairman of the board of trustees at Allen, Bishop Bonner, was anxious to protect the University’s student body from the noxious influences of “atheism” and “communism” and it was for this reason that he had requested the resignations of the three professors. The State Board of Education was seeking to cooperate with Allen officials toward this end.

Having raised the spectre of communism and its threat to the Palmetto State, Timmerman then suggested a means of coping with the problem, one not very original, to be sure. He recommended establishment of a “permanent legislative committee to investigate communist activities in our state.” In addition, the Governor urged that “consideration be given to the establishment of more realistic requirements for admission to teach in state-supported institutions.” Applicants should be screened more closely before they were employed. Concluding on the following note Timmerman declared: “When academic freedom supersedes loyalty to one’s country, to one’s state and to our trust in God, it becomes an instrumentality of treason and profanes the faith of our nation.”[384]

Senator Gressette of the state’s committee to preserve educational segregation lauded the Governor’s recommendation for a new minor league Un-American Activities Committee. So did other members of the legislature. But the three Allen professors in a statement to the radio and press services blasted the Governor. “The fact of the matter is--and Governor Timmerman knows it well--the real need here in South Carolina is the achievement of American democracy for all the state’s citizens rather than a committee to investigate so-called communistic activities.” The three professors, all church members, also struck back at the Chief Executive’s atheist innuendo. “It comes with ill grace,” they asserted, “for the Governor to question the religious faith of others when he himself so openly repudiates the fundamental teaching of Him who died that all men might dwell together as brothers.” Nor did they think that Timmerman could pose as the shield and defender of the Constitution. “It ill becomes a Governor who spends so much of his time repudiating the Constitution of our country and endeavoring to undermine the highest court of the land to pass upon the patriotism of other Americans. If belief in racial segregation is to be made the definition of loyalty, the vast majority of Americans become disloyal in the eyes of Governor Timmerman.”[385]

On the same day that the Governor was reaffirming his determination to maintain segregation in South Carolina, eleven Allen students appeared on the campus of the University of South Carolina seeking application blanks to permit them to take the University’s entrance examinations. They were turned away by the director of the University’s examination and counseling service who explained that his hands were tied by state law. “According to the orders under which we operate,” he told the students, “I cannot examine you and there is no purpose in supplying you with applications.” Six days later a group of four students from Benedict College, another Negro institution in Columbia, also applied for examination application blanks and were similarly rebuffed.[386]

No effort was made to molest the Negroes when they were on the University of South Carolina campus, though one USC student is said to have leaned out a window and shouted, “Here come the niggers.” During the evening, however, a cross was burned on the University’s athletic field and an effigy of a Negro was hung up on the campus. Telephone calls were received at Allen threatening the University with bombings unless the Negro students desisted in their efforts to enter the University of South Carolina.[387]

Governor Timmerman’s ill-tempered and ill-conceived pressure on Allen opened the door for the very type of law suit that officials of white state-supported universities have been dreading since 1954. The Allen applicants, four of them ministers, indicated that they would resort to “legal steps” to gain admission. “We plan to see this thing through,” said one of their spokesmen. “We all feel that Negroes have been ostracized by being kept out of the University and our cups are just about to run over.”[388]

Only the future can tell, of course, what Governor Timmerman triggered off in his effort to rid Rideout, Wiggins and Hoffman from the Allen faculty. The question of admission of Negroes to white state-supported universities had to be faced sooner or later, but officials of the latter would have preferred to face it later. But to explain Timmerman’s attitude toward the three professors is something else again. The “communist” issue was convenient, if a bit dated, but those who have closely followed the segregation question in South Carolina since the Supreme Court decision of 1954 are inclined to believe that the reason is less ideological than local.

Since the purge of the state Negro college at Orangeburg--the institution is on probation with accreditation agencies because it does not have a sufficient number of holders of the Ph.D. degree on its faculty--Allen has been the chief center for Negro militancy in South Carolina. The three professors who have been the target of official attack have been prominent amongst those on the campus who have urged the University’s students to assert their rights, including the right to sit where they please on city buses. In all of the newspaper accounts of the Allen affair, these facts have not been mentioned, but it is suggested here that they have been governing. Also in the new administration of President Veal and in the person of Bishop Bonner, state authorities were quick to detect a lack of militancy present in their predecessors. It would appear that they have sought to exploit this “softness” and to repeat their disgraceful performance at Orangeburg. But the Allen trustees were made of sterner stuff than the Governor and the State Board of Education had supposed.

The Governor’s frustration was compounded by temporary failure to bring about the dismissal of three white faculty members from Benedict College, a Negro Baptist institution located directly across the street from Allen. In a special message to the General Assembly on January 29, Timmerman cited from the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee the records of three Benedict professors. He also told the legislators that Dr. J. A. Bacoats, president of Benedict and highly respected by both whites and Negroes throughout the state, had delivered a speech in 1941 at a “Protestantism Answers Hate” dinner-forum allegedly sponsored by a “communist-front publication.”[389]

Bacoats and two of the three professors cited, Dr. Lewis Smith and Dr. J. Spencer Kennard, answered the Governor in statements to the press. The former declared: “I have never been a communist nor held membership in the Communist Party. And as I see it from where I now stand, I shall never be a member of the Communist Party.” Smith, a professor of English, said he had no intention of resigning and that he was being attacked “by the same forces that would keep the Negro people from achieving full equality.” Kennard, a Baptist minister and a member of the Benedict history department, asserted that the Governor had “set out deliberately to smear the character of a man who devoted his entire life to serving the Master.”[390]

The governor’s attack on Benedict was successful only in uniting the Negro community in defense of the College (far more so than had been true of the Allen affair) and in alarming white conservatives. The Inter-Denominational Ministerial Alliance of Columbia (Negro), criticizing the Governor’s proposal for a state Un-American Activities committee, held that such a group would be a “fascist gestapo” and threaten Negro academic freedom. It also questioned the very legality of such a committee in the light of recent Supreme Court decisions. Likewise, John H. McCray, chairman of the South Carolina Progressive Democrats, said: “Negro leadership in South Carolina has maintained an eternal and vigorous alert against influence of communism among its people....” And from R. Beverley Herbert, a conservative white attorney of Columbia, came the warning against assuming that men were communists because of past association with left-wing organizations. But the crowning blow came when Benedict’s board of trustees, which includes several white men, among them Dr. Paul Wheeler, a well known clergyman; Dr. R. Archie Ellis, pastor of the Columbia First Baptist Church and B. M. Edwards, a prominent South Carolina banker, issued a public statement completely exonerating President Bacoats and the three faculty members.[391]

White South Carolinians undoubtedly consider public education to be the key issue in the Negroes’ drive for racial equality. Consequently other aspects of the question have received less consideration in discussions relating to the pros and cons of integration. Important developments, however, have been occurring in other areas where attempts at integration are being made, e.g. the armed forces, city buses, and state operated recreation parks.

South Carolina officials can do little more than decry integration in the nation’s armed forces. By the time the Supreme Court gave its initial school desegregation ruling, integration in the armed services had progressed to a point where it had become an accepted fact to all except the most extreme die-hards. Nevertheless Governor Timmerman lodged a futile protest with the National Security Council in late 1955. Referring to statements by military leaders expressing concern over low reenlistment rates among military personnel, the Governor wrote: “So long as our basic training installations are used as sociological camps for compulsory racial mixing, it is reasonable to expect a continued lack of voluntary enlistments, and a continued lessening of morale and _esprit de corps_ in our armed forces. The officials of no other country in the world are so naive as to employ racial integration among military personnel.” Commenting on the Governor’s letter the _News and Courier_ asked editorially: “Is it simply a coincidence that, at about the same time the government mixed the races in the armed forces, enlistments started to sag?” Without answering its question, the Charleston paper continued: “If integration has hurt enlistments and morale, then it follows that integration has harmed national defense.... Gov. Timmerman has courageously brought the matter out into the open.”[392]

In 1956 the general assembly in its onslaught on all phases of integration passed a resolution urging President Eisenhower to “restore segregation of the races in the armed forces of this country which would result in a return of the high morale, efficiency and _esprit de corps_ which our armed forces have always heretofore enjoyed.”[393] The resolution evoked no response in Washington.

Once the assault on armed forces integration had begun, others joined in. From The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, came a booming verbal salvo from President Mark Clark, former United Nations Commander in the Far East. “I did not feel that we should integrate then [in 1950 when the Army order was placed in effect] and I do not think so now,” said the transplanted general from the North. “I looked at integration strictly as a military problem, not from the sociological standpoint.... I wanted the best fighting unit possible ... politics or no politics.”[394]

South Carolina Negroes, following the lead set in Montgomery, Alabama, have endeavored to bring about invalidation of both state and local Jim Crow laws in the field of bus segregation. In this connection Sarah Mae Flemming of Columbia instituted suit against the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, operators of the city bus system of Columbia, asking $25,000 for alleged violations of her civil rights. She charged that a bus driver had forcibly required her to go to the rear of a city bus in conformity with the South Carolina law. In the federal district court Judge Timmerman dismissed Miss Flemming’s suit on the ground that the 1896 decision upholding separate but equal facilities in transportation was still in effect and had not been overruled by the school cases of 1954. (There was a curious lack of logic in Judge Timmerman’s position since for years Southerners had defended segregation in the public school on the basis of the _Plessy v. Ferguson_ ruling which upheld the separate but equal doctrine in transportation.) This decision was appealed and reversed by the federal circuit court presided over by Judge John J. Parker. In an action which the _Record_ considered “brusque arrogance,” the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company thus in effect upholding the circuit court decision.[395]

The practical effect of this decision on South Carolina bus segregation has been nil. Nowhere have traditional patterns of segregation ended. Attorney General T. C. Callison considered the Supreme Court’s action in this case “another unwarranted invasion of state and municipal rights.” In early 1956 the state legislature resolved that it was “unalterably opposed to the mixing of the races on common carriers” and would “tolerate no violation of the laws of this State relating to the separation of the races on common carriers.” The _News and Courier_, strangely enough, foresaw no drastic results if bus segregation were ended. However, it believed that “as a practical matter, they [Negroes] suffer no hardship by observing regulations that reflect prevailing customs of the community. Even if the laws were removed from the books, good manners call for respect of fellow passengers’ preferences.”[396] Editor Waring’s paper made no comment on the obligation of whites to respect the preference of their Negro fellow passengers.

In its own enveloping attack on the segregation front South Carolina’s Negro leadership has struck at the state operated recreation parks. In 1955 the State of South Carolina maintained twenty-one recreation parks, one of which was operated exclusively for Negroes. Of the other twenty, four had separate areas reserved for Negroes. In view of such obvious discrimination, Negroes brought suit to have Edisto Beach State Park opened for all South Carolinians without regard to race or color. In answering this suit the state attorney general’s office presented a brief before the federal district court which declared that “due to the natural inclination of each race at this time to associate and engage in recreation and social activities with members of its own race, and to the present natural, historical, cultural and deep-rooted mental attitudes and feelings of each race against the social and sexual mixing of the races, there exists potential and definite dangers of unpleasantries, social friction, breaches of the peace and other events leading to riot and bloodshed, which will surely result from an enforced mixing of the races at such a park.”[397]

In the light of recent federal court decisions, state officials realized that such arguments would carry little weight in federal courts. Therefore in 1956, precluding a federal court order on the case, the state legislature passed a resolution closing Edisto Beach State Park to both white and colored. The park remains closed, “a monument,” said the Columbia _State_, to the “vindictiveness” of race agitators.[398]

With actions such as these the sovereign state of South Carolina has combatted the “alien ideas” of racial equality and equal rights for all men.