PUBLIC AFFAIRS PRESS, WASHINGTON, D. C.
For the past eleven years Professor Howard H. Quint hasbeen a member of the faculty of the University of SouthCarolina where he specialized in the teaching of Americanconstitutional and intellectual history. Because he believedthat this book should be published but did not wish to causeembarrassment to the University of South Carolina, a state-supportedinstitution, he resigned his position prior to publication.
Professor Quint was graduated from Yale University in 1940and was awarded an M.A. degree from Stanford Universityand a Ph.D. degree from The Johns Hopkins University. DuringWorld War II he was associated with the Foreign BroadcastIntelligence Service as a propaganda analyst and withthe Office of Strategic Services as a political and economicanalyst. In 1954 he won second place in an American HistoricalAssociation competition for the John H. Dunning Prize. In1956 he was Smith-Mundt lecturer in United States history atthe National University of Mexico.
Copyright, 1958, by Public Affairs Press
419 New Jersey Avenue, S. E., Washington 3, D. C.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 58-11889
Although this book deals with South Carolina, it is in effect astudy of the Deep South. What is happening in the Palmetto Stateis fairly typical of the situation in other Southern states where segregation,bigotry and prejudice remain deeply entrenched.
To judge by what Prof. Quint points out in this highly discerningbook, the situation in South Carolina hasn’t improved materiallysince the Supreme Court of the land ruled, in its historic decisionof May 17, 1954, that students in publicly supported educationalinstitutions may not be segregated because of race, creed, or color.A worsening rather than improving racial situation is indeed reflectedby the views expressed by officials, newspaper editors, voluntary organizationsand individual citizens, Negro and white, as cited in thisbook.
Although Prof. Quint handles his material with admirable restraint,the reader, even if he is personally attached to the state,[1] is likely topronounce South Carolina’s record a melancholy one. Is the statebehaving responsibly when it denies the law of the land, busies itselfwith contriving means of avoidance, threatens instead of addressingitself to the manifest mandate? When it revives the plea of peculiaritydoes it remember its own history of nullification and secession? Isit never to reject the demagogue who proclaims exploded notions ofrace and distorts the Constitution of the United States? In the intervalfor reformation which the Supreme Court has wisely allowed mustSouth Carolina indulge bluster and vituperation in place of summoningcandor and courage? Have ignorance, poverty, and prejudicefed on each other until the white community has sunk to second-ratecapacity?
Consider the spectacle of an ancient commonwealth in delirium becausea black child knocks on a schoolhouse door. What are thecauses of this fury? They are many, but the chief is that the applicantfor equal opportuni