Prior to the civil rights movement in South Carolina, African Americans in the state had very few political rights. South Carolina briefly had a majority-black government during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, but with the 1876 inauguration of Governor Wade Hampton III, a Democrat who supported the disenfranchisement of blacks, African Americans in South Carolina struggled to exercise their rights. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept African Americans from voting, and it was virtually impossible for someone to challenge the Democratic Party, which ran unopposed in most state elections for decades. By 1940, the voter registration provisions written into the 1895 constitution effectively limited African-American voters to 3,000—only 0.8 percent of those of voting age in the state.
Jim Crow laws, legalized by the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), created a district color line across the South. African Americans were prohibited from using the same facilities as white Americans, and African-American children were prohibited from attending white schools; schools meant for colored children were typical of lower quality than white schools. Public segregation and voting restrictions were eventually reversed after the events of the civil rights movement in South Carolina and the United States during the 1950s and the 1960s.
Background
The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in the years following the Civil War provided for the enfranchisement of African Americans in South Carolina. During the Reconstruction era, South Carolinians elected a majority-black legislature. Additionally, several African Americans were elected to other higher offices, including Robert Smalls and Richard H. Cain to the U.S. House of Representatives, Alonzo J. Ransier and Richard Howell Gleaves as lieutenant governor, and Francis Lewis Cardozo as South Carolina's secretary of state. Largely, African Americans were free to vote during this period. However, as part of the Compromise of 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes removed the military occupation of the South, which allowed former Confederates and white supremacists to take power in South Carolina.
During the 1876 gubernatorial election, African Americans were largely prevented from voting. Consequently, the incumbent Republican governor, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, lost reelection and Democrat Wade Hampton III took office. Chamberlain refused to leave office, claiming that the election was invalid because of African Americans' voting rights having been trampled. For a brief period, two governments were formed, but the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Hampton to be the lawful governor. Over the next decades, African Americans were kept from voting through literacy tests, poll taxes, and intimidation. The Democrat's retaking of power in 1876 allowed for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which sought to terrorize African Americans through lynchings and fear. The Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Supreme Court decision further allowed for the legality of segregation in public facilities and schools that extended into the 1960s.
In 1944, George Stinney, a 14-year-old black youth, was accused of murdering two white girls, aged 11 and 8, near Alcolu in Clarendon County, South Carolina. Stinney was interrogated by police in a locked room with several white officers and no other witnesses, and it was asserted that he had confessed to the killing within an hour. Stinney's father was fired from his job at a local lumber mill, and his family had to either leave the town or risk lynching. Stinney was rapidly convicted mostly because he faced an all-white jury. Stinney's court-appointed attorney, Charles Plowden, was a tax commissioner with political aspirations, and historians have considered him to have been ineffective in counseling Stinney. On June 16, 1944, Stinney was executed at the South Carolina Penitentiary in Columbia. Seventy years later, historians still questioned whether he was guilty and doubted that he received a fair trial. On December 17, 2014, Stinney's conviction was overturned on the grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated, and his confession had most likely been coerced.
In 1946, Isaac Woodard, an African-American World War II veteran, was attacked hours after being honorably discharged on a bus ride to North Carolina. Woodard and the bus driver argued about whether there was time to use the restroom before the bus departed. When the bus arrived in Batesburg-Leesville, the driver called the police. Woodard was forcibly removed for the bus and attacked by several white men, including the bus driver, several police officers, and Sheriff Lynwood Shull. Woodard was beaten with nightsticks and had his eyes gouged out. Woodard was left permanently blind. The incident sparked national outrage, encouraging President Harry S. Truman to order a federal investigation. The sheriff was indicted and went to trial in a federal court, but he was acquitted by an all-white jury.
Such miscarriages of justice against African Americans, coupled with unfair discrimination laws, influenced South Carolina and the nation toward civil rights initiatives. Much of the civil rights movement in South Carolina was resolved without rioting or violence. African-American protesters were often arrested and sometimes mistreated by police, but protesters typically remained peaceful and nonviolent. Much of the national spotlight during the civil rights movement was focused on Alabama and Mississippi.
Education Public schools
In 1951, Governor James F. Byrnes, supporting the "separate but equal" doctrine required by the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision, proposed a three percent sales tax increase to fund black schools. Byrnes sought to improve black schools to prevent desegregation, and these school improvements were often colloquially regarded to as "equalization schools". In 1952, the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina heard the Briggs v. Elliott case, which argued that unequal schools caused by segregation in Summerton violated African-American children's Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The court ultimately ruled that unequal schools were unconstitutional, but stopped short of requiring schools to integrate. The court in the case of Briggs v. Elliot delivered a verdict that was almost identical to Plessy v. Ferguson in that it provided for legalized segregated facilities based on race so long as the separate facilities were equal. The families of the African-American children in Summerton appealed, and Briggs v. Elliot was the first of five cases to be combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which required the desegregation of schools nationwide. By 1964, South Carolina's 37 Roman Catholic schools desegregated. Desegregation of public schools began in August 1964, though some schools were still segregated into the early 1970s.
Charleston County School District began desegregating in 1963 and was among the earliest to integrate, though the district was still largely segregated. While the district was no longer legally segregated, only 11 black students attended a white school in the first year. The district did not integrate on a large scale until the early 1970s.
Many pro-segregationists supported segregation academies. Between 1963 and 1975, in an extension of white flight, over 200 of these academies were established to keep schools all-white. In 1978, private school enrollment reached a peak of 50,000. In Clarendon County, for example, the private academy Clarendon Hall was established in late 1965 after four black students enrolled in a previously all-white public school. By 1969, only 281 white students were left in the public school system, and only 16 white students were in public schools when they officially desegregated a year later.
Colleges and universities
In January 1963, Harvey Gantt became the first black student to attend Clemson University by order of Federal District Judge Charles Cecil Wyche. On May 20, 1963, over 1,000 students at the University of South Carolina protested integration. They marched to the State House chanting "We don't want to integrate". On the campus' Horseshoe, a cross was burned in opposition to the enrollment of African-American students. In September 1963, the University of South Carolina admitted three African-American students by court order: Robert G. Anderson, Henrie Monteith Treadwell and James L. Solomon Jr. Both Clemson and South Carolina desegregated without much resistance.
The College of Charleston refused to abide by the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and continued to refuse to enroll in African-American students. In July 1965, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare revoked the ability of students at the college to receive federal loans as long as the college was not integrated. In 1967, the College of Charleston enrolled its first black students.
Role of historically black colleges and universities in leading protests and boycotts
Beginning in February 1960, students at Allen University and Benedict College, two colleges in Columbia, began planning protests against segregation laws. On March 2, approximately fifty students from the two schools participated in lunch counter sit-ins, forcing the businesses to close for the day. The following day, five hundred students gathered to protest, two hundred of whom marched to the city center and the State House. On March 4, several white men burned a cross on the property of Allen University and threw bricks at one of the school buildings in retaliation to the protests. Some black students retorted by breaking car windows at a white drive-in restaurant, an event which the leaders of the student protests condemned. In response, the Mayor of Columbia announced that any person caught protesting would be arrested. Students from Allen and Benedict often met at campus locations or in nearby black churches. Students created flyers and other forms of advertisement to gather support for the civil rights cause.
On March 5, students from Claflin University and South Carolina State University, two colleges in Orangeburg, formed the South Carolina Student Movement Association (SCSM). The association's goal was to create collaboration among all South Carolina black schools to bring about integration by protesting stores and businesses with discriminatory policies. On March 15, the SCSM held simultaneous protests in Orangeburg, Columbia, and Rock Hill, resulting in the arrest of 11 students in Columbia. In Orangeburg, approximately 1,000 students nonviolently protested in the business district, resulting in the arrests of 388 students. Police used fire hoses and tear gas to halt the protest, but the students refused to act violently. Not having enough room in the county jail, some jailed students were house in stockades originally built for cattle; they were subjected to 40-degree rainy weather.