History of South Carolina - Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement

Compared to hot spots such as Mississippi and Alabama, desegregation went rather smoothly during the 1950s and 1960s in South Carolina. As early as 1948, however, when Strom Thurmond ran for president on the States Rights ticket, South Carolina whites were showing discontent with the Democrats' post–World War II continuation of the New Deal's federalization of power.

In 1944, George Stinney, a 14-year old black youth, was accused of murdering two girls, aged 11 and 8 near Alcolu at Clarendon County. Alcolu was a small working-class mill town, where residences of whites and blacks were separated by railroad tracks. Stinney was interrogated by police in a locked room with several white officers and no other witnesses, and it was claimed that he had confessed to the killing within an hour. Stinney's father was fired from his job at local lumber mill, and his family had to either leave the city or risk getting lynched. Given the two white female victims, and an all-white male jury, Stinney was rapidly convicted. Stinney's court-appointed attorney Charles Plowden was a tax commissioner with political aspirations, and scholars have considered him ineffective. On June 16, 1944, Stinney was executed at South Carolina State Penitentiary in Columbia. Seventy years later, historians question whether he was guilty and doubt that he received a fair trial.

South Carolina blacks had problems with the Southern version of states rights; by 1940 the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively still limited African American voters to 3,000 - only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state. African Americans had not been able to elect a representative since the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands left the state for industrial cities in the Great Migration of the 20th century. By 1960, during the Civil Rights Movement, South Carolina had a population of 2,382,594, of whom nearly 35%, or 829,291 were African Americans, who had been without representation for 60 years. In addition, the state enforced legal racial segregation in public facilities.

Non-violent action against segregation began in Rock Hill in 1961, when nine black Friendship Junior College students took seats at the whites-only lunch counter at a downtown McCrory's and refused to leave. When police arrested them, the students were given the choice of paying $200 fines or serving 30 days of hard labor in the York County jail. The Friendship Nine, as they became known, chose the latter, gaining national attention in the American Civil Rights Movement because of their decision to use the "jail, no bail" strategy.

In 1962, federal courts ordered Clemson University to admit its first African-American student, Harvey Gantt, into classes. The state and the college's board of trustees had exhausted legal recourse to prevent his admission; influential whites ensured that word was widespread that no violence or otherwise unseemly behavior would be tolerated. Gantt's entrance into the school occurred without incident. The March 16, 1963, Saturday Evening Post praised the state's handling of the crisis, with an article titled "Desegregation with Dignity: The Inside Story of How South Carolina Kept the Peace". Gantt graduated in architecture with honors, served on the Charlotte City Council beginning in 1974 and, in 1983, was elected to the first of two terms as Charlotte's first black mayor.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater's platform galvanized South Carolina's conservative Democrats and led to major defections of whites into the Republican Party, led by Senator Strom Thurmond. With the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, the national government under the Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson worked to enforce rights for South Carolina and other blacks to participate in public life and regain the power of suffrage. Since then African Americans have been regularly elected to national, state and local offices in the state.

In 1968, the tragic shooting at Orangeburg shattered the state's peaceful desegregation. When police overreacted to the violence of students' protesting a segregated bowling alley, they killed three students and wounded more than 30 others.

In 1970, when South Carolina celebrated its Tricentennial, more than 80% of its residents had been born in the state. Since then, people from the North and Midwest have discovered South Carolina's golf courses, beaches and mild climate. The state, particularly the coastal areas but increasingly inland as well, has become more popular as a tourist destination and magnet for new arrivals and retirees. Descendants of black South Carolinians who moved out of the South during the Jim Crow years have moved back in a reverse migration. Despite these new arrivals, about 69% of residents are native born.