Civil Rights: Sen. Hollings' Keynote Address to the Decendants of Briggs v. Elliott

CIVIL RIGHTS:
Sen. Hollings' Keynote Address to the Decendants of Briggs v. Elliott

I want to give you an insight into exactly what happened to your parents 50 years ago in Summerton, South Carolina, that led to the desegregation of our nation's schools by the Supreme Court of the United States.

I speak with some trepidation, because right now I can see Harry Briggs' son walking down that dirt road all the way here to Scotts Branch School, and that school bus passing, all for the white children. Yet all your families were asking for was a bus. But they were told: "you don't pay any taxes, so how can you ask for a bus?" What they didn't say is you didn't have a job, whereby you could make a living and be able to pay the taxes. They didn't say that.

I think of the threats, the burnings, the shooting up of Reverend Joseph De Laine's home. I think about how they turned him into a fugitive. He had to leave his home in South Carolina, never to return. Harry Briggs had to leave his home and go to Florida to earn a living. It's not for me to tell the descendants of the Briggs v. Elliott case how they have suffered.

I didn't try this case - don't misunderstand me. My beginnings with Briggs v. Elliott started in 1948 when I was elected to
the House of Representatives in Columbia.

The previous year James Hinton, the head of the NAACP in the state gave a speech in Columbia. He talked about the need to get separate but equal facilities. He got Rev. De Laine from Summerton in the audience all fired up. Rev. De Laine, who was the principal here, put together a petition signed by 20 parents, of 46 children—the Summerton 66.

I'll never forget the day after I was sworn into the Legislature the superintendent of schools in Charleston County took me across the Cooper River Bridge, down the Mathis Ferry Road, to the Freedom School, the black school. He said I want to show you what we really do—he used the word at that time - "for a Negro education."

This was a cold November Day, and we went into a big one- room building. That's all they had—one room, with a pot belly stove in the middle. They had a class in this corner, a class in that back corner, a class up front in this corner, and a class here. Of course, they didn't have any desks, and very few books, and one teacher teaching the four classes.

When I went to Columbia I was with a bunch of rebels. I introduced an anti-lynching bill. I had never heard of lynchings down in Charleston, but then they had one. As we debated the bill, a fellow who was the grand dragon of the Klan got up with all these Klansmen in the Gallery, and he mumbled and raised cane. Speaker Blott got some order. But several House members walked out. They said they wouldn't be seated in the Legislature with a fellow like that. We passed the anti-lynching bill.

I'm trying to give you this background, so you'll understand the significance of what your parents did. We had just had the case, whereby blacks could participate in the Democratic primary. And we had just given women the right to vote.

And in 1949 and 1950, I struggled because there was no money in the state for separate but equal schools, or anything else.
I said we ought to put in a 3 percent sales tax to pay for things. Governor Thurmond opposed it, and the senators particularly opposed it. But I made the motion for a one-cent tax on cigarettes; a one-cent tax on gasoline; and a one-cent tax on beer. Beer, cigarettes, and gasoline.

We formed a House Committee with six of us to work on it. We worked all summer. It's a long story, but let me cut it and say by December we had it all written. I knew the incoming governor, Governor Byrnes. I felt it would be good to ask him to see if he could help me with this measure.

The second week in January, before he was sworn in, he called me and said: "You've got to come to Columbia, I'm going to include this in my Inaugural address." Over time, I made 79 talks on the proposal, until we finally passed the sales tax, which provided some money for separate but equal schools.

When the Briggs v. Elliott case came up, before Judge Waring in Charleston, he questioned separate but equal. Then in December 1952, the case went to the Supreme Court. Governor Byrnes had served on the state Supreme Court, and he wanted to make sure we won the case. In my mind, he was absolutely sure that under Chief Justice Vinson the state would win it.

But to make sure, he set aside Mr. Bob McC. Figg, who had done all the work, and selected John W. Davis, as the attorney for South Carolina against Thurgood Marshall, who was representing Briggs and the NAACP. Mr. Davis had been the Solicitor General of the United States. He had been the Democratic nominee for president in 1924. He was considered the greatest constitutional mind in the country.

The second thing the Governor did was to call me up and say: "I'm appointing you to go to Washington, because you know intimately this law here that built the schools. You have to go to Washington in case any questions of fact come up."

So we took a train to Washington. We came in at 6 o'clock that morning at Union Station, and we sat down for breakfast. I'll never forget it, because Thurgood Marshall walked in. He and Bob Mc Figg had become real close friends. So he sat down and was eating breakfast with us, and we began swapping stories.

Mr. Marshall said "Bob, you know that black family that moved into that white neighborhood in Cicero, Illinois They have so much trouble. There are riots, and everything else going on." And he said: "Don't tell anybody, but I got hold of Governor Adlai Stevenson." Stevenson was the governor of Illinois at the time. And he said: "I sent that family back to Mississippi for safe keeping." And Thurgood added, "for God's sake, don't tell anybody that or it will ruin me." I said: "for God's sake, don't tell anybody I'm eating breakfast with you, or I will never get elected again."

I tell you that story so you can get a feel for 1952, for what it was like 50 years ago.

We had wanted Briggs to be the lead case before the Supreme Court. It was one of five cases that they would hear collectively. But soon after our breakfast, we found out that Roy Wilkens from the NAACP had gotten together with the Solicitor General and moved the Kansas case in front of the South Carolina case. Some reports said the reason was because they wanted a northern case. That was not it. There was another case from the state of Delaware, which was just as north as the state of Kansas.

Kansas was selected because up until the sixth grade, yes, it was segregated. But thereafter it was a local option, and the schools were mostly integrated.

Before the court John W. Davis obviously made a very impassioned, constitutional argument. But Thurgood Marshall made the real argument, there wasn't any question about it. He had been with this case. He had the feel, and everything else of that kind.

I can still hear and see Justice Frankfurter on the Court leaning over and saying, "Mr. Marshall, Mr. Marshall, you've won your case, you've won your case. What happens next"? And Thurgood Marshall said, well, if he prevails, then the state imposed policy of separation by race would be removed. The little children can go to the school of their choice. They play together before they go to school. They come back and play together after school. Now they can be together at school. The state imposed policy of separation by race in South Carolina would be gone.

Another lawyer arguing the case was George E. C. Hayes, and when I heard him that was my epiphany. Mr. Hayes got everyone because he used a jury argument before the Supreme Court. He said: as black soldiers we went to the war to fight on the front lines in Europe, and when we come home we have to sit on the back of the bus.

I had been with the 9th Anti-Artillery Aircraft unit in Tunisia in Africa for a month. And then I was in Italy and Germany
and crossed over to what is now Kosovo. So I served. I knew exactly what he was talking about. And I said this is wrong.
The next year Chief Justice Vinson died. It was reported at that time that Justice Frankfurter said for the first time that he believed there was a God in Heaven when Vison passed away. They appointed Mr. Earl Warren as Chief Justice, who dragged everybody back to the Court to re-argue the case in December of 1953. He didn't want to hear about separate but equal. He wanted the case re-argued on the constitutionality of segregation itself.

Then on May 17th, 1953 the decision came down—it was unanimous, segregation was over in this country. So the lawyers immediately got together to discuss how to implement the decision. Since the decision said to integrate schools with all deliberate speed, there was arguments back and forth on how we could comply with this order with all deliberate speed and not start chaos all over the land.

Some school authority down in Charleston came up with the idea that with all deliberate speed meant we would integrate the first grade the first year; we would integrate the first and second grades the second year; the third year would be the first, second, and third grades. Over a 12-year period, we would then have the 12 grades integrated. When the head of the NAACP in New York heard that he said: "Noooo Way. We are not going to be given our constitutional rights on the installment plan." And that ended that. But nothing was done for about 10 years, until Martin Luther King came along.

When I became Governor, I started working on other areas that needed to be integrated, beginning with law enforcement. I'll never forget all the white sheriffs who were against all the blacks. We only had 34 black sheriffs. We have about 500 today.
And we literally broke up and locked up the Ku Klux Klan. I remember on the day I was sworn in as Governor, waiting for me was a green and gold embossed envelope, with a lifetime membership into the Ku Klux Klan. I never heard of such a thing. I asked the head of law enforcement, do we have the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina? He said, "Ohhh yes. We have 1,727 members." I asked, you have an actual count? And he said: "Ohhh yes, we keep a count of them." He said he could get rid of them, but no Governor had helped him in the past. I said, I'll help you. What do we do? He said: "I need a little money."

So we infiltrated the Klan, and the members began to know, or their bosses at businesses knew because they would say to these people: "You know on Friday night, your man, so and so, has been going to these rallies." The next thing you know, they quit going to the rallies. So by the time we integrated Clemson with Harvey Gantt, it went very, very peacefully. And there were less than 300 Klansmen.

Then, of course, as Senator I took my hunger trips. This is the effect those arguments before the court had on me. I took those trips with the NAACP to 16 different counties. As a result, we embellished the food stamp program, we instituted the women infants and children's feeding program, and the school lunch program. The attendance in schools went way up when we started that.

As your Senator I had the privilege of employing Ralph Everett. He was the first black staff director of any committee in the United States Senate.

We have both Andy Chishom and Israel Brooks as the first black Marshalls of South Carolina. Matthew Perry, the first black district judge of a federal court ever appointed, I appointed. The first black woman judge to the federal district court, Margaret Seymour, I appointed her. So we have made a lot of progress along that line.

But to give you a feel for how things have changed, I remember speaking at the C.A. Johnson High School in Columbia, the largest black high school in the entire state, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated.

At the event, there was a mid-shipman, a senior at the Naval Academy, who stood up and made one of the finest talks I ever heard. I turned to the principal, because it was his son, and I asked: who appointed your son to the Naval Academy? He didn't answer. We walked down the row, and I can see me now, asking him again. He still didn't answer. When I got to my car, I said evidently you don't understand my accent from Charleston. Who appointed your son to the U.S. Naval Academy? He said, "Senator, I didn't want to have to answer that question. We couldn't get a member of the South Carolina delegation to appoint him. Hubert Humphrey appointed him."

What goes around, comes around. Today, I have more minority appointments to West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academies than anybody. Recently I had Chuck Bolden, who is a major general in the marine corps and a former astronaut, ready to return to NASA as the number two person there. But the Pentagon raised the question about taking such a talent during a time of war and moving him to the civilian space program. So we said the heck with it, he's too needed in the military.

That is the effect Briggs v Elliott had on this public servant. There isn't any question that without the courage of your parents, our society would be a lot worse off today.

I was there a few years back when the Congress of the United gave the Congressional Gold Medal to Rosa Parks. She deserved it, and we wouldn't take anything from her for not moving her seat. But in the 1950s the worst they could have done to her was to pull her off the bus. These descendants lost their homes. They lost their livelihoods. They almost lost their lives. As far as continuing their life in the state of South Carolina, they could not do it.

Without their courage, without their stamina, without their example in starting the Briggs v. Elliott case, we never would have had a civil rights act. We never would have had a voting rights act. We never would have had all the progress we've made over the many, many years.

So I wanted particularly to come back and to publicly thank each of you descendants. And I want to announce that I am putting forward a bill that would honor posthumously Rev. De Laine with a Congressional Gold Medal.

I need 66 co-sponsors in the Senate. We have to have similar support on the House side. But Cong. Clyburn, he can get way more votes than I can. I don't think he'll have any trouble. We'll try to work it out so that in '04, the 50th anniversary of when the decision came down, we'll be able to make that presentation.

I just want to end by saying because of the courage of your parents, we made far more progress in the United States of America. Our country is a far stronger country. We are more than ever the land of the free and the home of the brave because of Briggs v. Elliott. And I thank you all very, very much.