The
Impact of the Civil Rights Movement on a White Activist
M.
Hayes Mizell
Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
Presented
as part of the panel:
The
Civil Rights Movement In South Carolina
65th Annual
Meeting
The Southern Historical Association
November 4, 1999
Fort Worth, Texas
During
the years 1966 to 1987, I lived in South Carolina and advocated various
improvements in that state's public schools. For most of these years
I worked for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international
organization founded in 1917.
AFSC
describes itself as "a Quaker organization that includes people of various
faiths who are committed to social justice, peace, and humanitarian
service. Its work is based on the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker)
belief in the worth of every person, and faith in the power of love
to overcome violence and injustice."
I
was among the "people of various faiths" who worked for AFSC but had
not been raised in the Quaker tradition. In fact, when I was hired by
the organization I knew nothing about either the beliefs or practices
of Quakers. All I knew was that AFSC had begun a project to advocate
for and monitor the implementation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act as it related to the desegregation of public schools. I knew I wanted
to work in the field that was then called "human relations," and I knew
I needed a job.
I
did not come to this work as an "activist." I was born in High Point,
North Carolina and started school in Birmingham, Alabama. I attended
grades four through nine in the public schools of Aberdeen and Macon,
Mississippi. I completed my secondary education at an all-male, all-white
public high school in Anderson, South Carolina and in 1956 I enrolled
as a day student at Anderson Junior College, then at its nadir as a
Southern Baptist institution of higher education. In 1958 I transferred
to Wofford, an all-male, all-white Methodist college in Spartanburg,
South Carolina. In 1960 I entered the University of South Carolina as
a graduate student in American history.
My
development as a young adolescent, that is, between the ages of 10 and
15, was unexceptional, with the major influences being my moderate parents,
the Methodist Church, a local public library's summer reading programs,
and a ninth grade civics course I probably took too seriously. I demonstrated
some curiosity about politics. One summer day I hung around the courthouse
in Aberdeen, Mississippi so I could see and hear Hugh White campaign
for governor. Speaking from the courthouse steps and wearing a white
suit, he gradually stripped down to his shirtsleeves as both his rhetoric
and the temperature intensified.
That
same summer I skipped band practice and got into trouble for it when
I went to the Elkin Theater to hear Paul Johnson, another candidate
for statewide office. When I was 14 the judges of a young author contest
sponsored by The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis thought my five
paragraph short-story "showed an understanding and well-expressed sense
of the principles of American ideals, democracy, brotherhood and fair
play." I won first prize and five dollars.
But
from the time I was in the ninth grade through my sophomore year in
college I was more interested in social acceptance and the emergence
of rock and roll than anything else. My academic career was undistinguished
and until about 1958 I was largely unconscious of matters of race, or
perhaps it is more accurate to say that I was not conscious of being
racially conscious.
It
was not until my junior year in college that I made my first trip out
of the South to attend, with 59 other students from throughout the United
States, the Christian Citizenship Seminar sponsored by the Methodist
Student Movement. In New York I heard speakers such as Eleanor Roosevelt
and Eduardo Mondlane, who later became the founding president of the
Front for the Liberation of Mozambique. In Washington, I heard Representative
John Brademas, and Senators Hubert Humphrey and Jacob Javits. Of course,
the three students from South Carolina also dutifully met with Senator
Thurmond. This trip also provided the first opportunity for me to sit
next to and eat with an African-American student of my own age.
This
event, my friendship with several fraternity brothers at Wofford College,
and history courses under Dr. Lewis P. Jones were about all it took
to rekindle my interest in politics. By my last semester in college
I was reading The Progressive and The New Republic magazines and writing
columns for the college newspaper defending Fidel Castro and Hubert
Humphrey, both of whom were seen in much the same light by Southerners.
But
when I came to the University of South Carolina as a graduate student,
I was unsophisticated in most all matters, including those having to
do with race, culture and even history. I was still using the word "nigra,"
I thought the Kingston Trio was a group of true folk musicians, and
I was startled to hear two of my graduate school friends refer to Robert
E. Lee as a "traitor."
Seven
years later things were different. An editorial in the Columbia, South
Carolina afternoon newspaper charged:
"..there
are destroyers in the state. Among them are the white extremists who
would wreck it all with a stick of dynamite or crackling words of
demagogic hate. Among them, also, is M. Hayes Mizell who says that
a Watts can happen here."
Several
years after that an editorial in Columbia's morning newspaper described
me as a "double-dipped integrationist long active in civil rights causes."
The leader of a five-man slate for the local school board said they
recognized me and my "radical friends for what they are -- an ultra-liberal
minority that wants to control our schools even if they destroy the
public school system as we know it." Another newspaper editorial said
that many people considered me "something of an ogre." A wire service
news story referred to me as "a civil rights leader," not because that
was true but because the reporter was not able to more accurately understand
or label my role.
These
reactions were prompted not because I played an important role in the
state's civil rights movement, but because I was white, I was vocal,
I was not accountable to the power structure, and much of the time I
was right. By the time I came of age in South Carolina, the walls of
de jure segregation were already crumbling. While both the 1964 Civil
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act had only recently passed,
South Carolina was beginning to feel the effects of the federal government's
lumbering civil rights enforcement machinery, enhanced by more consequential
decisions of the federal courts.
It
did not take someone with great prescience to know that schools would
eventually have to desegregate, or that more African-Americans citizens
would have to be represented in venues where decisions were made about
those schools. South Carolina's long war with the federal government
to deprive African-American citizens of their human and civil rights
was drawing to a close. I was merely part of the mopping up campaign.
I
would not have been such an eager participant had it not been for the
civil rights movement. Like a few other young white Southerners, I was
stirred by the drama of the early sit-ins and freedom rides. But at
that time I could not imagine risking everything to join the front lines
of non-violent action. In spite of my political views which were "liberal"
relative to those of many of my white peers, I was from a conventional,
law-abiding, lower-middle class background, lacking both the confidence
and preparation to challenge authority and uncertain how to do so. The
civil rights movement showed me why forceful advocacy is necessary and
the many different ways to use it.
My
point of entry was the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, a
private, statewide organization created in 1957 but rooted in the South
Carolina Committee on Interracial Cooperation founded in 1919. Shortly
after I began graduate school at the University of South Carolina, two
older students who shared my political orientation introduced me to
the Council and I attended one of its annual meetings. Soon after that,
I began to participate in the South Carolina Student Council on Human
Relations (SCSCHR), a new entity created by the parent body in 1960
to establish communication between African-American and white college
students in anticipation of the desegregation of higher education.
While
there were human relations councils in other Southern states, South
Carolina's was the only one to organize a student group. The Student
Council on Human Relations provided the only venues in the state where
African-American and white college students had opportunities to meet
and seek common ground. Most often this occurred on the neutral turf
of the offices of the Council on Human Relations, or on the campus of
either Benedict College or Allen University in Columbia.
At
least once a year, the Student Council sponsored a weekend conference
where college students from the two races shared the same living quarters,
ate together, and discussed civil rights issues of the day. There was
only one place in the state such conferences could be held, Penn Community
Services in Frogmore, South Carolina. The meetings also provided opportunities
for the students to hear speakers such as Ella Baker and Andrew Young
from the South Christian Leadership Conference, and Will Campbell from
the National Council of Churches.
One
issue of concern to the Human Relations Council was the desegregation
of higher education in South Carolina, and the desire for it not to
be accompanied by the same violence that marked James Meredith's admission
to the University of Mississippi. With the impending desegregation of
the University of South Carolina, a small group of us who were active
in the Student Human Relations Council organized a group called the
Student Committee to Observe Order and Peace, or SCOOP.
According
to its statement of purpose, the Committee "was established for the
sole purpose of promoting the peaceful observance of any future court
decisions" in regard to the University's desegregation. Through the
Student Council on Human Relations, members of the group established
contact with Henri Monteith, a niece of Columbia civil rights activist
Modjeska Simkins, and offered their personal support when she desegregated
the University in 1963.
The
accomplishments of the Student Council on Human Relations were modest,
but the organization fostered relationships that resulted in some students
increasing their activism. On a Friday afternoon in 1961 when I was
preparing to hitchhike to Spartanburg to visit a Converse College girl
to whom I was pinned, a friend of mine who was taking me to the highway
suggested that we stop in downtown Columbia to "see" a sit-in. When
we arrived at the site of the sit-in, we found that the leader was a
Benedict College student we had become acquainted with at meetings of
the Student Council on Human Relations. He suggested that we help his
cause by sitting in at Woolworth's and we did so but were not served.
There was no incident except that we were photographed by an agent of
the State Law Enforcement Division.
Following
the sit-in, I made my trip to Spartanburg, but when I told my Pi Kappa
Alpha fraternity brothers about my experience, they were noticeably
cool and remained so thereafter, less enthusiastic about extending their
hospitality on my future visits. The girl to whom I was pinned encouraged
me not to talk too much about the sit-in. "You don't want people to
think you're a nigger lover, do you?" Our relationship also cooled and
eventually ended. On the next Monday, after I had returned to Columbia,
the University of South Carolina's dean and the dean of the graduate
school, both of whom were also history professors, summoned us to a
meeting. We received a reprimand for our participation in the sit-in
and were warned that the university wanted "agitators of neither stripe"
on its campus.
Participation
in the South Carolina Council on Human Relations also brought me into
contact with people who were traveling college campuses to identify
and stimulate the development of students like myself who were interested
in civil rights. Two of these were representatives of the "human relations
project" of the southern regional office of the YWCA, and at their invitation
I attended a 1961 conference of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) in Nashville, Tennessee. There I heard Robert Moses
report on his early voter registration work in Mississippi and Charles
Sherrod discuss his activities in southwest Georgia. I was inspired
not only by them but by the SNCC Freedom Singers. I was out of my element,
but I took away from the meeting a new understanding and appreciation
of the commitment of SNCC field workers.
By
1963 it was becoming clear to me that I was not cut out to be a historian;
I had decided that I wanted to work professionally in advancing the
rights and opportunities of African-Americans and other disenfranchised
groups. One of the people I had met through the Student Council on Human
Relations, Constance Curry, was director of the National Student Association
(NSA) Southern Student Human Relations Project based in Atlanta. In
1964 she left that job to work with the School Desegregation Task Force,
a new project sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee and
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
NSA
hired me to replace Connie and during the next two years I tried to
encourage college students to provide campus leadership on behalf of
improved human relations and civil rights. While this work provided
me with additional opportunities to meet and learn from people more
involved and experienced in civil rights than I was, I lacked the field
experience to provide the leadership the Southern Student Human Relations
Project needed.
At
the end of 1965 I left the Project having failed to sustain the momentum
generated by my predecessor. The truth is that in those years I had
an intellectual commitment to civil rights but not the personal, emotional
commitment necessary to act boldly. Fortunately, the School Desegregation
Task Force was expanding its activities to South Carolina and in 1966
I was hired by the American Friends Service Committee to return to Columbia
as the Task Force's only representative in the state.
At
the beginning of my new job, I worked partly out of my home and partly
out of the cramped offices of the South Carolina Voter Education Project;
within a year I moved to a two-room office in the Columbia Building,
directly across the street from the state capitol. I had no idea it
would be my office for more than a decade. My job was to monitor local
communities' implementation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
inform African-American citizens of their rights under that law, provide
accurate information about federal guidelines for implementing the law,
and generally advocate for speedy and effective desegregation of the
public schools.
In
this role I did everything I could think of to advance school desegregation.
The Columbia newspapers and I fell into almost a call and response.
The papers would publish an editorial criticizing federal enforcement
of school desegregation and I would, in turn, defend or explain it in
a letter to the editor. If invited, I spoke to meetings of local NAACP
branches or community improvement groups, often in African-American
churches. The American Friends Service Committee arranged for my colleagues
and me to appear before Congressional committees, and helped us prepare
testimony.
I
published a statewide newsletter, Your Schools, that provided desegregation
and education information that was otherwise unavailable, particularly
to African-American citizens. Because a key strategy of the School Desegregation
Task Force was to establish relationships with federal officials charged
with enforcing the law, I also documented and shared with them and other
national organizations information about local school officials' efforts
to frustrate the implementation of desegregation or abuses of citizens
attempting to exercise their rights.
As
I worked more closely with local African-American activists seeking
a greater voice in the education of their communities' children, I helped
them organize and secure funding for a small conference that some people
perceived as the beginning of "black power" in the state. Over time,
however, I began to look beyond the desegregation process itself to
the quality of education that would be available to African-Americans
once de jure segregation ended.
Because
of my work, I had more direct access than most white South Carolinians
to the struggles and frustrations of many African-American citizens,
and I was more inclined to listen to them. What I saw and heard in community
meetings and in individual encounters motivated me to support these
people and communicate their views to a wider audience. I expanded my
role by supporting local African-American struggles to gain a political
foothold in education governance or a greater voice in education decisions
affecting African-American children.
I
was able to do this because unlike most other representatives of civil
rights or progressive organizations in the state, I had no board of
directors, no membership, and I had no day-to-day supervision. In fact,
my nearest boss was in North Carolina and he rarely came to the state
to check on me. In addition, I had access to modest financial and informational
resources and the flexibility to use them almost at will. Largely as
a result of my exposure to the civil rights movement, I understood the
importance of acting to advance an issue rather than merely talking
about it.
In
1967, for example, the city of Columbia was seeking its third All-American
City award, an annual competition sponsored by the National Civic League
and Look magazine. Representatives of a variety of African-American
groups in the city, ranging from the activist Richland County Citizens
Committee to more established organizations such as local chapters of
Alpha Kappa Alpha, and Jack and Jill of America, were concerned that
the city was misrepresenting its progress in race relations. However,
the coalition was uncertain what action to take to make its objections
known.
The
mayor, city council members, and other representatives of the city were
to going to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to make the city's final presentation
to the All-American City selection committee. I suggested that representatives
of the opposition group go to Philadelphia to picket the hotel where
the selection was being held, and hand out leaflets stating the reasons
the community groups opposed Columbia's designation as an All-America
City. Because my organization and the South Carolina Council on Human
Relations had the resources to make this trip, and because we were far
less vulnerable to possible reprisals than representatives of the community
groups, the opposition community groups authorized a Council staff person
and me to make the trip and execute the plan. We did, and the city did
not win the award.
I
saw the civil rights movement as the wedge to open the South for a more
progressive and inclusive political system, but what impressed me more
was how a small number of local African-American citizens responded
to the movement. It created for them both the need and opportunity to
demonstrate their intellect and leadership that the more privileged
white community had long stifled. A notable example from South Carolina
was Victoria DeLee.
I
first met Mrs. DeLee in the offices of the South Carolina Voter Education
Project. A resident of Ridgeville in Dorchester County, Mrs. DeLee had
been raised in a share-cropping family, and from an early age she was
concerned about social injustice in her rural community. In 1947 at
the age of 22, her "entry into the civil rights movement resulted in
large part from her desire to vent the anger she felt about racial oppression."
Mrs. DeLee was a tall, stocky woman who was physically intimidating,
sharp-tongued and quick-witted. She used these assets in combination
with great effect. Whenever she met someone who she thought might help
her cause, she did not take "no" or "maybe" for an answer.
In
1964, Mrs. DeLee began to seek admission of her children to the formerly
all-white schools of Dorchester County School District #3. In spite
of being shot at and having her house burned, Mrs. DeLee was persistent
in litigating, demonstrating, and advocating for school desegregation.
By 1969, however, only 10 percent of African-American students were
attending the formerly white schools in her community and no whites
were attending African-American schools. Throughout Mrs. DeLee's struggles,
I tried to provide what small support I could, but it was never enough.
Soon
after the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, there was increasing public
speculation about whether and how the new President would repay Senator
Strom Thurmond for neutralizing the third party threat of Governor George
Wallace and marshalling Southern votes for Nixon. By the summer of 1969
press reports indicated that the Nixon administration was on the verge
of revising the federal government's administrative guidelines for enforcing
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Southern
political leaders and school officials had for years sought to subvert
the effective application of these guidelines while my colleagues and
I in the American Friends Service Committee had sought to strengthen
them. We were frustrated with the pace of desegregation, and news reports
that the Nixon administration might weaken the guidelines angered even
us more.
In
the middle of the week in late June 1969 I called my AFSC counterpart
in Mississippi and suggested that we use our resources and organizing
capacity to make it possible for local desegregation activists with
whom we had been working to go to Washington, D.C. and tell their stories
directly to Attorney General John Mitchell. On the following Sunday,
our chartered bus left Jackson, Mississippi, with some AFSC staff and
a few African-American parents who were among the first in Mississippi
to seek a desegregated education for their children. During the next
two days as the bus traveled through Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina,
it picked up more such parents, including Victoria DeLee.
At
9:00 o'clock on the morning of July 1, about 30 of us walked into office
of Attorney General John Mitchell and asked to see him. When his receptionist
told us he was testifying before Congress and that in any case we did
not have an appointment, we said we would just wait until he was available.
We sat in the few available chairs, as well as on the floor and on the
receptionist's desk. Throughout the day, Justice Department officials
"cajoled, bribed, and threatened" us to get us to leave. But we did
not leave. Instead, we took an empty chair, placed in its seat a piece
of paper on which we had printed, "Attorney General Mitchell," and each
of the African-American parents in our group took turns standing, facing
the chair and told
his story of his commitment to school desegregation and the sacrifices
he had made, and suffered because of that commitment.
Mrs.
Bracey of Wetumpka, Alabama, told of her home being fired bombed when
she enrolled her children in the previously all white school. Mrs. Young
of Sylvester, Georgia, told of her teenage daughter being arrested and
placed in the county detention home for several days for cursing a white
student who had called her a "nigger." Mr. West of Yazoo City, Mississippi,
told of being fired several times when he put his child in the desegregated
school each year for several years. And as he told his story, his voice
trembling and hesitating, to an empty chair which we had labeled "Attorney
General Mitchell," Mr. West wept and tears were in the eyes of most
of us in the room. There were many others participating in this intense
emotional experience, but Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil
Rights, Jerris Leonard could only interpret it as "unreasonable," "unfair,"
"hurting the work of this office."
Indeed,
as the day wore on and it became clear to Justice Department officials
that we did not intend to leave until the parents spoke to the Attorney
General, Jerris Leonard found himself in an impromptu debate with Mrs.
DeLee. This was quite a sight. There was Leonard, a graduate of the
Marquette University School of Law who had served for 12 years as a
member of the Wisconsin State Legislature and had run unsuccessfully
as the Republican nominee for the United States Senate from Wisconsin,
going toe-to-toe with Victoria DeLee, a poorly educated woman from a
share-cropping family in Ridgeville, South Carolina.
Leonard
realized too late that he had made the same mistake as every other person
who had assumed that their education, position, class or experience
would prevail in a confrontation with Mrs. DeLee; he was clearly in
over his head. In frustration, Jerris Leonard suddenly turned and strode
out of the room. But Mrs. DeLee was right behind him, wagging her forefinger
at the back of his head and firing her final salvo, "...and you're as
phony as baloney!"
Fortunately,
cooler heads at the Justice Department prevailed and just as police
were assembling to arrest us, we were told that the Attorney General
would meet with us. Mrs. DeLee was one of three members of our delegation
permitted to speak to John Mitchell. But in the end we received only
tepid assurances from the Attorney General that the Nixon administration
would enforce desegregation laws. The next day, our small band of parents
and AFSC staff retreated back across the Potomac, wiser about the ways
the government really works. On the bus trip to Washington the African-American
parents had sung "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." On the way back
home they sang:
Tell
old Nixon time is windin' up,
Tell old Nixon time is windin' up,
Destruction is in this land;
God's gonna move His hand;
Time is windin' up.
In
the next week's issue of Newsweek there appeared a photograph taken
from behind John Mitchell with Mrs. DeLee facing the photographer, standing
before a microphone addressing the Attorney General.
This
experience, and many that were less dramatic, had a profound effect
on me. In Victoria DeLee and others I saw people who had the characteristics
our nation says it values -- intellect, determination, courage, faith
-- but who had been denied educational and social opportunities necessary
to bring their talents fully to bear on behalf of their communities,
their states, their nation, and, of course, their families.
I
saw people who others of privilege and power would consider "ordinary,"
or less, but who had accomplished great things by force of will and
extraordinary bravery. Though I was involved only at the periphery of
the civil rights movement and late in its brief life, it set me on the
road towards a career seeking to improve the schools that serve children
who have the most to gain from effective education. Dismantling the
South's system of de jure schools was only the first step towards providing
the educational opportunities necessary to develop and unleash the talents
of future generations.
EDITOR'S NOTE: In 2003, Hayes Mizell left the Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation and now serves as the Distinguished Senior
Fellow of the National Staff Development Council.
