Toward the Meeting of the Waters

by Moore, Winfred B., Jr.; Burton, Orville Vernon

• ISBN13: 9781570039713
• ISBN10: 1570039712
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Pr

Summary

Toward the Meeting of the Waters represents a watershed moment in civil rights history--bringing together voices of leading historians alongside recollections from central participants to provide the first comprehensive history of the civil rights movement as experienced by black and white South Carolinians. Edited by Winfred B. Moore Jr. and Orville Vernon Burton, this work originated with a highly publicized landmark conference on civil rights held at the Citadel in Charleston. The volume openings with an assessment of the transition of South Carolina leaders from defiance to moderate enforcement of federally mandated integration and includes commentary by former governor and U.S. senator Ernest F. Hollings and former governor John C. West. Subsequent chapters recall defining moments of white-on-black violence and aggression to set the context for understanding the efforts of reformers such as Levi G. Byrd and Septima Poinsette Clark and for interpreting key episodes of white resistance. Emerging from these essays is arresting evidence that, although South Carolina did not experience as much violence as many other southern states, the civil rights movement here was more fiercely embattled than previously acknowledged. The section of retrospectives serves as an oral history of the era as it was experienced by a mixture of locally and nationally recognized participants, including historians such as John Hope Franklin and Tony Badger as well as civil rights activists Joseph A. De Laine Jr., Beatrice Brown Rivers, Charles McDew, Constance Curry, Matthew J. Perry Jr., Harvey B. Gantt, and Cleveland Sellers Jr. The volume concludes with essays by historians Gavin Wright, Dan Carter, and Charles Joyner, who bring this story to the present day and examine the legacy of the civil rights movement in South Carolina from a modern perspective. Toward the Meeting of the Waters also includes thirty-seven photographs from the period, most of them by Cecil Williams and many published here for the first time.

Author Biography

Winfred B. Moore Jr. is a professor of history and dean of humanities and social sciences at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. Orville Vernon Burton is the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Foreword	p. xiii
Preface	p. xxi
Governors
From Defiance to Moderation: South Carolina Governors and Racial Change	p. 3
Comments	p. 22
Ernest F. Hollings	p. 22
John C. West	p. 27
Questions and Answers	p. 29
Aggressors
Lynching in the Outer Coastal Plain Region of South Carolina and the Origins of African American Collective Action, 1901-1910	p. 41
Conflicting Expectations: White and Black Anticipations of Opportunities in World War I-Era South Carolina	p. 50
An "Ominous Defiance": The Lowman Lynchings of 1926	p. 65
The Civil Right Not to Be Lynched: State Law, Government, and Citizen Response to the Killing of Willie Earle (1947)	p. 93
This Magic Moment: When the Ku Klux Klan Tried to Kill Rhythm and Blues Music in South Carolina	p. 119
Reformers
Mr. NAACP: Levi G. Byrd and the Remaking of the NAACP in State and Nation, 1917-1960	p. 146
The Impact of 1940s Civil Rights Activism on the State's 1960s Civil Rights Scene: A Hypothesis and Historiographical Discussion	p. 156
Seeds in Unlikely Soil: The Briggs v. Elliott School Segregation Case	p. 176
Five Days in May: Freedom Riding in the Carolinas	p. 201
The Developmental Leadership of Septima Clark, 1954-1967	p. 222
Resisters
Memories and Forebodings: The Fight to Preserve the White Democratic Primary in South Carolina, 1944-1950	p. 243
Could History Repeat Itself? The Prospects for a Second Reconstruction in Post-World War II South Carolina	p. 252
The White Citizens' Councils of Orangeburg County, South Carolina	p. 261
"Integration with [Relative] Dignity": The Desegregation of Clemson College and George McMillan's Article at Forty	p. 274
Memory, History, and the Desegregation of Greenville, South Carolina	p. 286
Schooling and White Supremacy: The African American Struggle for Educational Equality and Access in South Carolina, 1945-1970	p. 300
Retrospectives
Briggs v. Elliott a Half Century Later	p. 319
John Hope Franklin	p. 319
Joseph A. De Laine Jr.	p. 325
Beatrice Brown Rivers	p. 328
Questions and Answers	p. 330
Voices from the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina	p. 337
Charles F. McDew	p. 337
Constance Curry	p. 342
Matthew J. Perry Jr.	p. 348
Harvey B. Gantt	p. 352
The Orangeburg Massacre	p. 359
Cleveland L. Sellers Jr.	p. 359
Jordan M. Simmons III	p. 367
Jack Bass	p. 368
"We're Not There Yet": Orangeburg, 1968-2003	p. 373
Crosscurrents at Century's End
The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution	p. 383
Civil Rights and Politics in South Carolina: The Perspective of One Lifetime, 1940-2003	p. 402
How Far We Have Come-How Far We Still Have to Go	p. 422
Appendix: "Orangeburg, Let Us Heal Ourselves"	p. 433
Contributors	p. 441
Index	p. 447
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.