In 2020, Greenville will celebrate the 50th anniversary of public school integration.
Sixteen years after the Supreme Court unanimously declared in May 1954 that segregated schools were illegal, the School District of Greenville County, under court order, integrated in the middle of the 1969-1970 school year.
The result, if not entirely done with the “grace and style,” the phrase that has long been used to characterize Greenville’s effort, was achieved without the violence that characterized so many places, both North and South, and with quite remarkable community cohesion.
In May 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. South Carolina responded with “massive resistance” to any attempt to change. The NAACP chose what its legal defense office considered less resistant states for the first efforts at desegregation.
They chose wrong. Beginning at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, the result was years of mob violence and hesitant federal response. In South Carolina, the Gressette Committee of legislators and gubernatorial appointees called for resistance to all attempts at integration by ending state support for desegregated schools, annual hiring of all teachers, eliminating school attendance laws, and prohibiting “forced busing” for integration.
Integration “with all deliberate speed,” mandated by the Court in 1955, was interpreted as meaning as slowly as possible by most white Southerners. While most Southern states erupted with violence in the face of court orders, South Carolina’s segregated schools were not challenged.
But when former NAACP chapter president A.J. Whittenberg visited all-white Anderson Street School in Greenville for a Democratic precinct meeting in 1962, he observed piles of new textbooks ready for students. He remembered the ragged textbooks, cast off from white schools, that his 11-year old daughter, Elaine used.
When she was assigned to Gower Street School for fall 1963, he requested that she be allowed to attend the far closer Anderson Street School.
Within two weeks, five other parents, including black Attorney Donald Sampson, also requested transfers into white schools for their children. It was the first challenge to South Carolina’s segregated system. The School District said no.
So the parents sued. Sampson, attorney Willie Smith, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys filed a motion in Federal Court in September 1963. In February 1964, the District again denied Whittenberg’s request and did not acknowledge the others. In March, Federal District Judge Robert Martin allowed the inclusion of the other four children in the suit and gave the District a month to decide about the school placement of all five children.
In April 1964 School District officials yielded, announcing that that the students would be admitted to previously white schools. Then Judge Martin ordered the school district to accept all other black students who applied for the fall. He also ruled that this Freedom of Choice plan be given prominent publicity. NAACP attorneys immediately filed briefs arguing that “Freedom of Choice” was not integration.
In September 1964, 49 black students entered 15 all-white schools. By 1968, 460 black students had enrolled in Greenville schools, but only two teachers were placed in opposite race schools, and the dual system remained unchanged.
But then, in May 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Green vs. New Kent County that most Freedom of Choice plans were inadequate because they did not lead to integration, and Greenville schools were again in the news.
The school board proposed a full integration plan in the summer 1969. Judge Martin agreed to the school board plan to integrate students, faculty, and buses in September 1970. But on Oct. 29, in a case from Mississippi, the Supreme Court ruled that integration should occur “at once.”
Less than two weeks later, Greenville black parents and their lawyers, together with the NAACP legal fund, appealed Martin’s September deadline to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorneys asked the Fourth Circuit Court to order immediate desegregation of Darlington and Greenville districts based on U.S. Supreme Court ruling that “at once” means “right now.”
On Jan. 19, the Fourth Circuit court reversed Martin’s September deadline and ordered Darlington and Greenville districts to desegregate by Feb. 9. It would be difficult even after Judge Martin extended the deadline to Feb. 17.
With less than a month to make arrangements, the Greenville school district, with 58,000 students and 2,384 teachers, arranged to have approximately 80% white, 20% black students and teachers in each school. (Laurel, Donaldson, and Blythe elementary schools were not involved because they already had substantial numbers of black students.)
The improved plan created clusters, with grades 1-5 in white schools and 6th grade in black ones, and made Beck, a black high school, into a 7th and 8th grade school, with its students mostly transferred to J.L. Mann.
Three black elementary schools were closed, and Hattie Duckett elementary became a special education center. Two black high schools, Sterling and Lincoln, were allowed to continue to June graduation because most Sterling students would attend Southside High, due to open in September, when Lincoln would become a vocational/technical education center.
On Jan. 20, the Chamber of Commerce Human Relations Committee pleaded for volunteers. Response was immediate: 700 volunteers, including members of the Junior League, League of Women Voters, AAUW, and PTA councils, began working 9-hour stints at four newly installed school district telephones answering questions about the desegregation order.
Opposition continued. Nearly 3,000 people attended a meeting of Citizens for Freedom of Choice at Parker High School, launching an effort to get 100,000 signatures on a petition opposing integration. On Jan. 25, local politician Carroll Campbell led about 800 cars in a motorcade to Columbia to ask Gov. Robert McNair to stop Greenville “forced busing” for integration. Since busing was a service, not required, “forced busing” was a non-issue.
Interestingly, Greenville’s new federal building will be named for Campbell. He may be the only non-lawyer or judge in the nation to be so honored; he will certainly be the only person so honored who requested that a governor not comply with a Supreme Court decision.
On Jan. 30, school trustees appointed a 30-member biracial Citizens Committee, headed by Furman Professor Ernie Harrill, to coordinate volunteers. Eventually more than 3,000 Greenvillians responded.
The Business and Industry Council raised $3,000 from local companies that allowed Publicity Committee Chair Doug Smith of WFBC to organize speeches, radio, television, school poster contests, and buttons supporting schools and proclaiming that “Education is the Important Thing.
On Friday, Feb. 13, Mayor Cooper White (whose three children were in public school) invited every minister in Greenville County to lunch and asked them to preach Sunday about obeying the law. Schools ended at 1 p.m. that day to begin the move.
Over the weekend, 103 schools prepared for integration; hundreds of books, desks, and supplies were shifted; bus routes (the district had purchased 20 new buses) were finalized; and plans for greeting new students and teachers confirmed.
On Tuesday morning, Feb. 17, Greenville desegregated its schools. While a few mothers picketed at Armstrong and Arrington Elementary Schools and buses ran a bit late, the move, thanks to community involvement, was remarkably smooth. On CBS that night, Walter Cronkite announced that Greenville had integrated “with grace and style.”
But that’s certainly not the end of the story. The following November, three days of intermittent fighting between black and white students at local high schools and shots fired at security guards led to the calling up (but not deploying) of the National Guard.. More than 350 students, most of them black, were suspended.
Black students complained about the playing of “Dixie” at football games, lack of black studies classes, and concerns about black student participation in activities, including sports. Local media blamed “outside agitators,” and U.S. News & World Report commented that “Greenville has “lost its luster.”
But the school district's new superintendent, Floyd Hall, responded positively to the problems. No students were expelled (although some were moved to new schools.) Hall appointed black and white “ombudsmen” for schools to help settle students and douse rumors. Substantial funds were made available for black history and art materials and black visiting artists, thanks to a $369,000 federal grant to support integration efforts.
In May 1971, an article in the Christian Science Monitor was headlined “Greenville Regains its Luster.”
