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SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS—JANUARY 1956—PAGE 5
S. C. Legislator Plans Resolution to Reaffirm Sovereignty
COLUMBIA, S. C.
Cchool segregation developments in
^ South Carolina dining the month
of December focused attention on the
forthcoming annual session of the
state legislature, which convenes Jan.
10 and which will be faced with sev
eral important decisions growing out
of the racial problem (see “Legisla
tive Action”).
One legislator already has an
nounced his intention of seeking a
positive reaffirmation of state sov
ereignty by the General Assembly,
along with a declaration that the
state’s citizens and officials owe their
responsibility to South Carolina rath
er than to the United States in mat
ters of public education.
The legislature also will have be
fore it recommendations that state
appropriations spell out racial separa
tion in connection with all sums ear
marked for the operation of public
schools and of state parks. Meanwhile,
the state’s Special School Committee
has issued its third interim report
on its continuing surveillance of the
segregation question, and conceivably
may have specific recommendations
for legislative steps. The report does
not embrace any such recommenda
tions, but it does emphasize the
state’s determination to interpose its
sovereignty between local school of
ficials and the federal judiciary.
The Special School Committee,
generally known as the “Gressette
Committee” (after its chairman, State
Sen. L. Marion Gressette of Calhoun
County), is being called on to assist
the Summerton school trustees in ar
ranging for a survey of both school
and community factors in the Clar
endon County district where South
Carolina’s school segregation case
arose.
Rep. Joseph O. Rogers Jr., a Man
ning attorney now beginning his sec
ond year as a member of the House
of Representatives from Clarendon
County, is drafting a resolution which
A Solid Front for the
South
If the Southern states will stand
together on the Doctrine of Inter
position, they will find strength
in unity. Successful defense of
states rights, though presently
forming around the explosive is
sue of race, would go far beyond
segregation below the Mason-
Dixon Line. It would help to re
store the sagging sinews of the Re
public itself.
Now is the time, we believe, for
the strong voices of the South to be
raised. There are many names in
the South that command respect
throughout the country. Though
the propaganda mills for years
have ground out anti-Southern
poison, citizens of other regions
through personal contacts and
other means are aware that South
ern white men are not demogogs,
brutes and oppressors of the weak.
Let our spokesmen be heard
from Virginia to Texas. Each will
give support to the others.
Charleston News and Courier
° n s ^ a ^e legislature to assert
he state’s sovereignty in the field of
public education.
The time has come,” he says, “for
outh Carolina and its people to re-
rm our belief in those constitu-
°nal principles which guarantee cer-
tain rights to the states of the Union
•• • Now that state sovereignty has
, invaded by the Supreme Court
the United States in the case of
n " s v - Elliott, and in other school
®gregation cases, we are legally and
° rall y justified in holding firm to
r rights under the Tenth Amend-
to the Constitution . .
_ °§ ers contends that the federal
verrunent h as no au tb or ;ty to in-
«. , e t * le field of public education
ess and until the Constitution is
ore’ 6 i C< ^ ' n t ^ lat res Pect through the
erly processes of amendment pre
scribed in the Constitution itself.” His
public statement of his proposed reso
lution quoted from the “Farewell
Address” in which George Washing
ton warned against changing the
Constitution by usurpation. Such
change, Washington said, “is the cus
tomary weapon by which free gov
ernments are destroyed.”
‘HALT ENCROACHMENT’
“If we are to preserve our form of
government,” Rogers said, “we must
halt this federal encroachment upon
the rights of states. I hope my fellow
legislators and fellow citizens will
support this effort to have South Car
olina call a halt to such encroach
ment. Furthermore, we must reassure
our public school officials and trustees
that their responsibility in the field
of public education is to the state
rather than to the federal sover
eignty.”
The Ways and Means Committee of
the House of Representatives, which
is drafting its version of the general
appropriations bill for the fiscal year
1956-57, gives every indication of fol
lowing a recommendation that re
quirements for racially separate
schools and state parks be further
strengthened. The recommendation
for such action came from the State
Budget and Control Board, an agen
cy headed by the governor and in
cluding several top state officials.
The board’s report, which serves
as the framework for the state ap
propriations bill, suggests that appro
priations of state aid for teachers’ sal
aries, supervision and overhead,
maintenance and operation, school
lunch operation, and for school build
ing embody the restriction “for ra
cially segregated schools only.” A
similar restriction would be placed
about the appropriation for South
Carolina’s state parks. (A lawsuit,
Etta Clark et al v. S. C. Forestry Com
mission, is now pending in an effort
to compel admission of Negroes to
the Edisto Beach State Park in
Charleston County).
South Carolina’s Special School
Committee, established four years
ago to deal with segregation prob
lems posed by federal court de
cisions, has disagreed that the Su
preme Court’s anti-segregation de
cree is the final law of the land.
In its third interim report, dated
Dec. 14, 1955 and addressed to the
governor and the presiding officers
of House and Senate, the committee
has this to say concerning the Su
preme Court’s “improper” decision:
“It does not compel us to surren
der our right to seek proper inter
pretations of the Constitution or to
forego efforts to seek to avoid by
due process of law the disastrous
effects that would ensue from an at
tempt to force the races into an asso
ciation unwelcome to both. We pro
pose to employ every legal means
of maintaining a school system we in
good conscience believe to be in the
best interests of all our children.”
NO COMPULSION
But even as it criticized the Su
preme Court decision as a usurpa
tion of legislative and executive au
thority, the committee declared that
the ruling does not compel integra
tion of the races:
“It is becoming plain that the
court did not intend to force integra
tion on an unwilling people. It is the
considered opinion of your commit
tee that there is nothing in the Con
stitution or the decision which com
pels the state of South Carolina to
deliberately mix the races in public
schools.”
The report, which is essentially a
review of the committee’s actions
and a re-affirmation of its stand
against integration, points up the
clash between state and federal sov
ereignty with respect to the school
segregation problem. In a reference
to a 1955 act barring the use of pub
lic funds on schools whose pupils are
transferred by court order, the re
port states:
“The power and prestige of the
General Assembly and of the state
are thus interposed between the lo
cal boards of trustees and the force
and effect of court interference with
DEAN TRAVELSTEAD
Fired
their lawful authority to regulate
and administer the schools.”
3 MAIN OBJECTIVES
Elsewhere, in describing the three
main objectives of the state with re
spect to school problems, the com
mittee said that a major purpose
was “to throw about these [school]
officials the cloak of the sovereignty
of the state to protect them from in
terference in the performance of
their duties and to shield them from
ill-advised court action as they work
to further the cause of better edu
cation.”
The other two objectives fisted in
the committee report were the
strengthening of authority vested in
local school boards and officials, and
the improvement of education op
portunities for all children, regard
less of race.
The interim report concludes with
this statement:
“We will not recommend any
course of action or legislative enact
ment which will force white children
to attend schools established for Ne
gro children or require Negro chil
dren to attend schools established
for white children.”
MAY SUGGEST ACTION
No legislative proposals are incor
porated in the third interim report,
but the committee may yet decide
upon some such suggestions when it
meets in Columbia on Jan. 5 and 6,
during the week preceding the open
ing of the 1956 legislative session.
Since its last interim report, issued
Jan. 11, 1955, the committee has
added a six-man legal staff and an
educational consultant to its organ
ization.
The committee’s resources and as
sistance are to be sought by the
Summerton school trustees in carry
ing out a survey of the school prob
lems and community attitudes in
that district. Board Chairman J. D.
Carson said the school district would
turn for aid to the Gressette Com
mittee on advice of the two attorneys
who have served as lawyers for the
school board and who carried the
Clarendon County case to the U. S.
Supreme Court.
One of those attorneys, S. Emory
Rogers of Summerton, has resigned
as counsel for the school board in the
wake of the Gressette Committee’s
failure to include him among the
six lawyers retained to serve as the
committee’s legal staff. The other,
Robert McC. Figg Jr. of Charleston,
is a member of that six-man staff,
and, according to Carson, recom
mended that the projected survey
be arranged through the committee.
SURVEY NEED TOLD
The matter of a school survey was
brought up July 15 when a three-
judge federal court met in Columbia
to consider the Clarendon County
case in the light of the Supreme
Court’s remander of the case to the
district court. At that time, Figg
made this statement to the court in
behalf of the Summerton trustees:
“The petitioners themselves do not
have the knowledge, training and
experience needed to discharge
their responsibility for elucidating,
assessing and overcoming the obsta
cles presented in their district, and
they have therefore directed and
made provision for a comprehensive
survey of the organization of the
school system of the district, and of
the community served by its schools,
by competent technical consultants
in the fields of education and sociol
ogy and such other fields as may be
found appropriate. . . .”
It is such a survey that the Sum
merton board now plans to have
arranged through the Gressette
Committee. Earlier plans have been
retarded by the confusion stemming
from Rogers’ resignation.
Gov. George Bell Timmerman Jr.,
in response to a National Security
Committee appeal for help in stim
ulating enlistments:
“There are no responsible parents
who would encourage their sons to
choose a bad environment, and there
are few young men of ability who
would voluntarily choose racial mix
ing in our armed forces as a career
for even a short time. So long as our
basic training installations are used
as sociological camps for compulsory
racial mixing, it is reasonable to ex
pect a continued lack of voluntary
enlistments and a continued lessen
ing 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.”
Former Rep. Hugo S. Sims Jr., of
the Second Congressional District:
“The solution to the [segregation]
problem will not come from the reac
tionary or radical, but from those
people who like to five in a spirit of
good will with members of another
race and are willing to sit down to
gether and talk about the problem
... if Negro leaders keep trying
to push integration, the public school
system will be abolished.”
Atty. Gen. T. C. Callison: “If our
own people were agitating the strife
which is now going on, we could be
more patient, but when it comes
from without by meddlers who are
playing directly into the hands of
communism, I am afraid that our
patience may become exhausted and
when that happens, God knows what
the results will be.”
U. S. Sen. Strom Thurmond: “So
long as we have unity and strong
leadership there will be no integra
tion in South Carolina. We, however,
must have men and women within
the Citizens Councils of the state
who have the intestinal fortitude to
fight for the rights that are guaran
teed them under the Constitution of
the United States.”
S. Emory Rogers: “Our people,
especially our school officials, are
entitled to the protection afforded
by the interposition by the state of
its sovereignty between them and
the wrongful acts of the federal gov
ernment. Nullification is one of the
historic and heretofore successful
methods of such interposition and I
am in favor of its use if necessary.
Nullification is not to be confused
with secession. It is the assertion by
one of the parties of its rights under
the contract entered into between
the states in the Constitution. Se
cession involves destruction of the
contract.”
The dismissal of Dr. Chester C.
Travelstead from the University of
South Carolina following his address
favoring school integration contin
ued as a talking point in educational
and editorial circles in December.
The dean of the school of education
made his talk last August and was
dismissed shortly thereafter, but the
developments were not made public
until late November.
The University student newspaper,
The Gamecock, took a strong stand
editorially in support of Dean Trav-
elstead’s right to speak as he did.
The newspaper did not openly come
out in favor of integration, but
based its complaint over the dis
missal on grounds that it infringed
upon academic freedom. In the fol
lowing week’s edition, there were
equally strong statements from other
students who considered the dean’s
talk to have been improper and ill-
advised, especially by virtue of its
delivery in the course of a training
program in which he participated
officially as dean of the school of
education.
Faculty sentiment likewise was
divided over the matter, but there
were no public statements on the
subject. The daily press of the state
did not devote much editorial com
ment to the affair, but most editorial
expressions generally endorsed the
action of the Board of Trustees in its
decision not to renew Dr. Travel-
stead’s contract.
Federal Judge Ashton H. Williams
has set Feb. 6 for hearing the suit
brought by Charleston Negroes seek
ing admission to Edisto Beach State
Park (Etta Clark, et al., v. S. C. For
estry Commission). The date was set
during a conference of Judge Wil
liams with attorneys for both sides.
This latest development does away
with an earlier recommendation by
Judge Williams that the matter be
heard by the State Supreme Court
before coming into the federal courts.
Since that time, the U. S. Supreme
Court has upheld a Maryland case
decision holding park segregation
unconstitutional.
Citizens Councils continued to
grow in South Carolina during De
cember, with several new organiza
tions being formed and a number of
existing councils securing state
charters. Among new Citizens Coun
cils are those at St. Andrew’s Parish
in Charleston County, Hi-Delpha in
Darlington County, St. George in
Dorchester County, and Allendale in
Allendale County.
At a meeting of the statewide di
rectors of the Association of Cit
izens Councils of South Carolina, S.
E. Rogers of Summerton was named
temporary treasurer. Micah Jenkins
of Charleston is chairman of the
state organization.
At Manning, in Clarendon County,
law enforcement officers are inves
tigating evidence which shows that
a Negro funeral home was peppered
with buckshot about the end of No
vember. The home serves as the resi
dence of Billie Fleming, county lead
er of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People and
a nephew of the Rev. J. A. DeLaine,
Negro minister who fled to New
York after admittedly firing upon an
automobile passing his Lake City
home in adjoining Florence County.
Meanwhile, one of the men in the
automobile fired upon by DeLaine in
early October told the press he had
been contemplating bringing a slan
der suit against the Negro minister
when the incident occurred. Jack
Moore said he had talked with a
lawyer concerning the possibility of
suing DeLaine for statements alleg
edly made in a letter written by the
minister to the oil firm for whom
Moore worked.
At Elloree, in Orangeburg Coun
ty, a Ku Klux Klan demonstration
and cross-burning took place on the
night of Dec. 2. A group of some 15
cars, including some from North
Carolina and Georgia, drove through
the streets of the small town and dis
charged about 25 robed but un
masked Klansmen at a rallying point
just outside the city limits.
KLAN REPORTS VARY
Reports vary as to the exact con
tent of talks made by the several
KKK speakers, but there was crit
icism of the NAACP and of a local
official of that association, a Negro
carpenter-contractor named L. A.
Blackmon. One set of reports quoted
(See SOUTH CAROLINA, Page 13)