Book describes civil rights struggle in South

“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.

For 26 years, a family gathers together

Our family has just returned from an annual trip to Charleston, S.C., trips we have been making for 26 years. The tradition began when my brother moved to Charleston and invited us — our parents and siblings and their families — to celebrate Christmas and the completion of repairs on his historic house, which had been clobbered by Hurricane Hugo.

The first trip was a long haul down Interstate 95, a grand dinner at our brother's renovated house, and a long return trip back home. All of us were enchanted by Charleston, though many of its most magnificent homes, churches and vistas were screened by scaffolding as the years-long process of recovery from Hugo went forward. Despite the long road trips, all of us were eager to continue the new tradition, which evolved into an annual late-December weekend (not just one day) in charming Charleston with dinner at a private club.

The cast has changed. Our own children, who were 12, 15 and 19 that first time, now have children of their own, ages 8 to 12. Similarly, my siblings' children have grown up, married, divorced, and produced children of their own. The annual dinner now requires seating for 25 or more.

Charleston has its charms, but the primary attraction of this December weekend lies in the fact that we see some of these nieces and nephews and their children only in Charleston. During a Friday night conversation with a half dozen of our entourage, I had to remind myself that I was talking to my eldest niece and not to her mother, who died six years ago. The voice, expressions and laugh were all the same, and I felt both a longing to see my sister-in-law again and the comfort that her personality and spirit remains.

Our parents died in 2006 after a decade of decline. My sister-in-law died in 2011, and her husband died unexpectedly a year later. Then my younger sister died shortly after a cancer diagnosis in 2013. With each death, the Charleston weekend had been more difficult but also more important. We know how ephemeral our lives are and how uncertain next year might be.

Soon after returning from Charleston on Sunday, my wife happened across a digital photo album of pictures taken during our 2010 Charleston weekend. Seeing my brother, his wife and my sister enjoying the family again made me gasp. The photos of our grandchildren as toddlers and preschoolers evoked almost as much emotion. But I was so glad to see the pictures of so many smiling faces and conversations.

This is our family, and neither death nor distance can change that.