The fight against Nazi fascism during World War II brought to the political forefront the steep contradictions between America’s stated ideals of democracy, freedom, and God-given equality and its unfair treatment of racial minorities. The fight against government oppression in Europe “put racists everywhere on the defensive” (Newby 275). Throughout World War II, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations like CORE worked tirelessly to end discrimination not only within the armed forces but also back home in the states. During this period, African Americans became more assertive in their demands for equality at home and abroad. This “second reconstruction” changed the political landscape in South Carolina and laid the foundation for a government led by men of all races and backgrounds that our Constitution idealizes.
South Carolina, like most other Southern states, was locked in the constraints of a one-party system made up of politicians who emphasized the role of local government and supported racial segregation (Graham 64). Continuing with this pattern, South Carolina’s Democratic party, led by traditionalistic figures like Olin D. Johnston, excluded African Americans from participating in its primary elections (Graham 65). After the war, and with the onset of the Cold War, racial segregation and economic inequality within the United States were spotlighted on the world stage and prompted federal and judicial action. President Truman created a special committee to investigate and monitor the quality of interracial conditions that detailed a civil rights agenda. Truman later issued an executive order that abolished racial discrimination in the military. The NAACP helped win several important Supreme Court victories and mobilized a massive lobby of organizations to urge Congress to pass civil rights legislation. In 1943, the Reverend William McKinley Bowman, a columnist for the Palmetto Leader and prominent figure in racial and religious affairs, expressed these objectives by claiming that "As long as we have a Jim Crow Army, Navy, and Air Force, even when there is a war; as long as the Southern Negro is disfranchised, under one or another pre-text; as long as there is lynching; job discrimination; the theory of race superiority [will exist]” (Newby 277)
During the 1950s, executive action from the President and governors, rather than legislative measures, set the standard for forward progress towards desegregation. President Truman expanded on former President Roosevelt’s small steps toward racial moderation and desegregation and Congress lagged behind the president, the courts, and public sentiment during much of the civil rights movement after World War II. Southern conservatives still held the power in Congress and continued to exert a substantial influence by acting as committee chairmen in a time when Democrats were in control of the House almost exclusively. The Democrats eventually regained the seat majority after a brief stint of Republican control and embarked on forty years of rule. Some of the House committees, including some of the most influential panels—Education and Labor, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Ways and Means, Rules—were chaired and controlled by southerners who were relatively unsympathetic to black civil rights. The new albeit powerful coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans that had rallied during the 1930s against the liberal programs of President Roosevelt continued for various reasons to impede a wide range of social legislation regarding civil rights.
In an address to Allen University in 1942, Reverend John J. Alston stated that blacks in South Carolina “do not know how it feels to live in a democracy” (Newby 276). Several factors prevented the small number of African Americans in Congress from playing any legislative roles of prominent influence to pass the major Civil Rights acts. Black Congressmen were too scarce to alter any ways of business or form a consequential voting bloc big enough to make a difference. Moreover, black members disagreed on the best way to achieve civil rights advances and personality differences impeded their ability to craft an agenda.
The downfall of the white primary occurred in April of 1948, when blacks voted in the city primary election in Columbia. 35,000 voters representing a small percent of the electorate voted in the statewide Democratic primary and did so without serious interracial incident—the first of its kind. In Columbia and Greenville, local party organizations ended their traditional objections and began to accept African-American participation in political party activities. This was a rare case, however. Most local organizations remained adamantly traditionalist due to the state party leaderships efforts to neutralize the controversial Elmore decision (Newby 286). It divided registered Democrats into two groups, members of the party (whites) and nonmembers (blacks). Members were automatically eligible to vote in party primaries, but nonmembers could do so only after taking an oath which was constructed to be so offensive to blacks that, it was hoped, few would take it. Activist David Brown of Beaufort eventually challenged the oath in federal court, and the court upheld his challenge on the grounds of being unconstitutional (Newby 286).
The decay of the white-dominated primary was a landmark victory for African Americans in South Carolina. African-Americans in South Carolina regarded their movement as more of a reformist rather than radical one. They sought to reform the social, economic, and political systems of South Carolina to favor the rights of all men and level the political playing field. They worked through established institutions like the courts in pursuit of piecemeal change. It was, for example, the Supreme Court that decided the Smith case and destroyed the constitutional basis for the white primary. The Court ruled that primaries are a critical part of the election process and therefore are protected by the 15th Amendment. Their approach was pragmatic and rested on the underlying faith that the American system, if not by ethical persuasion, could be legally bound to realize its own stated ideals. Such an approach permitted blacks to attack the white supremacy clause at vulnerable points without having to spell out their ultimate goals or even consider the long-range consequences of individual reforms, allowing the white leaders to “absorb, and even accept, individual reforms without having to face up to their full implications” (Newby 288). It enabled them to use the rhetoric of American democratic sentiments and to describe their movement in terms according to the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.
The era’s final major piece of civil rights legislation reflected the changing emphasis of the civil rights movement itself. Now that African-Americans, having secured a measure of political rights, black leaders now emphasized the importance of equal opportunity. Congressional action in this area was measured because the national mood and major political events had begun to turn against the momentum of reform. The ambitious agenda of federal programs like the Great Society had begun to die off. Initiated by President Johnson, these programs were in many ways conceived of as an extension of Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms. Great Society legislation was a typical example of federal activism—it addressed civil rights, urban development, healthcare, social security, consumer protection, and poverty. With Democratic majorities now in both houses of Congress, the administration passed a number