“In
Darkest South Carolina” by Brian Hicks tells the story of J. Waties Waring, a
federal district judge in Charleston, S.C., and his largely overlooked efforts
to have school segregation outlawed as unconstitutional. Waring’s story, and
Charleston’s story, is also the story of the nation, particularly the South,
during the Jim Crow era.
I
had never heard of Waring, except to see a historic marker about him on Meeting
Street in Charleston, but the gift of this book filled me in. Although the
Confederacy lost the Civil War, its culture and its societal rules lived on for
a century. The removal of federal troops from the South in 1876 and the 1896
Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, which instituted the “separate but
equal” standard in public accommodations, gave racist elements in the
population the green light to subjugate African-Americans throughout the
nation, but especially in the South.
Waring,
a child of the South who was accustomed to seeing black servitude and
oppression as the natural order of things, gradually came to recognize the
injustice of that society. As a federal judge, Waring saw his position as an
opportunity, even a duty, to bring justice to black South Carolinians.
In
an age when the Democratic Party ruled South Carolina and most other Southern
states, a vestige of white citizens’ animus against Republicans rooted in Civil
War and Reconstruction resentments, black citizens were barred from voting in
the Democratic Primary. Claiming they were a club and had the right to choose
their members, Democrats used the “white primary” to disenfranchise blacks. The
Supreme Court ruled Georgia’s white primary unconstitutional in 1946. A year
later, Judge Waring affirmed that the precedent would apply in a South Carolina
case as well. At the same time, he ruled in another case that South Carolina
school districts could not pay white teachers more than it paid black teachers.
That ruling did not challenge “separate but equal,” but it did require schools
to truly be equal in pay, curriculum, facilities, buses, etc.
Waring
became an ally of future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in his quest
to win equal rights for America’s black population. Marshall argued several
cases before Waring, and the two became close friends. It was only a matter of
timing that a Topeka, Kansas, case arrived at the Supreme Court before South
Carolina cases in which Waring had ruled that segregated schools denied black
students an equal education, even if facilities, teacher pay and curriculum
were equal. The Warren Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned
Plessy v. Ferguson and set the nation on a path toward racial equality using
the reasoning Waring employed in South Carolina.
Waring’s
support for civil rights angered his former friends and most whites throughout
the state. Harassing phone calls and violent attacks got so bad that federal
marshals had to be assigned to protect Waring and his family. Politicians such
as Strom Thurmond railed against the judge in their campaign speeches, vowing
to run him out of South Carolina.
Charleston
Post & Courier columnist Hicks used the newspaper’s archives to document Waring’s
historic impact and courage, even though the newspaper was not a supporter of
Waring, who was vilified in newspaper editorials.
Hicks’
book is a good companion to Taylor Branch’s “Eyes on the Prize” history of the
civil rights movement and its leaders. While Branch’s book concentrates on the
legendary leaders of the 1950s-60s, Hicks pinpoints one brave judge and his
efforts to bring racial justice to South Carolina and the nation.
To
Southerners of my generation and older, much of this story will be familiar and
painful. Those who claim that race relations “are worse than ever’ have
forgotten just how bad things were 70 years ago. Books like this one set the
story straight.
Hal Tarleton was managing editor, editor
and opinion editor at The Wilson Daily Times for 29 years. Contact him at
haltarleton@myglnc.com.
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