Defending White Democracy by Jason Morgan Ward

Author:Jason Morgan Ward [Ward, Jason Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Discrimination, History, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9780807869222
Google: yUfqCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2011-11-21T04:09:54+00:00

South Carolina governor James F. Byrnes urged restraint in the months leading up to the Brown decision, but some of his constituents embraced calls for militant resistance to racial change. In 1949, more than 650 robed Klansmen and -women gathered for this parade and cross burning in Denmark, South Carolina, before Byrnes pushed through anti-Klan legislation in 1951. (William D. Workman Papers, South Carolina Political Collections, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.)

That Grand Dragon was Thomas Hamilton, a former grocer and veteran Georgia Klansman who relocated to South Carolina to build his own hooded empire. Operating on both sides of the state line separating North and South Carolina, Hamilton organized rallies, motorcades, and cross burnings. The Grand Dragon scorned Byrnes’s refined segregationist rhetoric and vilified equalization as a capitulation to black demands. The governor responded decisively. After a series of Klan attacks in early 1951, Byrnes made good on his campaign promises by pushing antimask and anti-cross-burning bills through the state legislature. Undaunted, Hamilton’s hardcore stepped up their reign of terror. In the late summer of 1951, Klansmen opened fire on a popular black nightclub in Myrtle Beach and kidnapped the proprietor. A Klansman killed during the ambush had worn his police uniform under his white robe. Less than two weeks later, Klansmen near Columbia attacked a black church. When Hamilton discovered that local white Baptists intended to teach a Vacation Bible School for black children, he mailed threatening letters that accused church leaders of “blaspheming my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” A few days later, Klansmen broke up the bible school by throwing a stick of dynamite out of a passing car. While state authorities kept a close watch on surging Klan activity, some South Carolina whites bemoaned “the complete lack of interest” shown by local law enforcement. “I have good reason to believe,” a South Carolina merchant reported to Byrnes, “that a great many of these officers are actually members of the Klan.”19

Despite the violent tactics of his followers, Grand Dragon Hamilton claimed common cause with Byrnes in the crusade for racial integrity and conservative principles. “The Klan is fighting for States’ Rights and a Constitutional form of Government,” Hamilton wrote to Byrnes just days after the Myrtle Beach nightclub raid. “I believe that when you made your Speech at Mobile, Alabama in 1950, you advocated the same thing.” While Byrnes counseled moderation and reform, Hamilton blasted the governor for raising unprecedented sums for black school improvements. As one of Byrnes’s top aides admitted, the Klan opposed the equalization plan “because of the preference given to Negro schools.” At a Cherokee County rally, Hamilton declared that South Carolina whites “had been denied their rights” by a school reform campaign that shifted emphasis from white to black education. Railing against Byrnes for appointing a black assistant to the school finance board, the Grand Dragon alleged that state school officials had explicitly ordered surveyors “to give the negro schools the preference” in allocating funds.20

Despite Byrnes’s popularity, more than a few South Carolinians shared Hamilton’s concerns.

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