Civil Rights In South Carolina

1. Civil Rights Issues

2. The Hamburg massacre (or Hamburg riot) was a key
event in South Carolina during July 1876, leading up to
the last election season of the Reconstruction Era. It
was the first of a series of civil disturbances, many of
which Democrats planned in the majority-
black/Republican Edgefield District, to disrupt
Republican meetings and suppress black voting
through actual and threatened violence.
Beginning with a dispute nominally over free passage
on a public road, this incident was based on racial and
political grounds. A court hearing attracted armed
white militia numbering more than one hundred,
including members of Red Shirts paramilitary groups.
They attacked about 30 black militia of the National
Guard at the armory, killing two as they tried to leave
that night. Later that night the Red Shirts murdered
four freedmen of the militia while holding them as
prisoners, and wounded several others. In total, the
events in Hamburg resulted in the death of one white
man and six freedmen; several more blacks were
wounded by the white mob. Although 94 white men
were indicted for murder by a coroner's jury, none was
prosecuted.

3. • The Orangeburg Massacre took place in Orangeburg, South Carolina at South Carolina State
University on February 8th, 1968.
• This horrific incident which ended with three young men, Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and
Delano Middleton, killed and 27 other students wounded, was the worst example of violence on a
college campus in South Carolina’s history.
• The incident began when approximately 200 students gathered on February 6 to protest the
segregation of black patrons at the nearby All Star Bowling lane.
• The first demonstration proceeded without incident. The following night many of the students
returned to resume the protest but in this instance fifteen of them were arrested.
• The third night, February 8th, tensions were already running high on both sides from the previous
night’s arrests.
• Nine officers were held responsible for the
shootings and were brought to trial on charges of
excessive force at a campus protest.
• All nine were acquitted of all charges.
• The only person who was charged and sent to
prison as a result of this incident was Cleveland
Sellers, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) representative who was
convicted of inciting the riot that had led to the
shootings. Sellers was later pardoned for his role in
the incident.
• The day after the shootings Governor Robert E.
McNair spoke of this as “one of the saddest days in
the history of South Carolina”.

4.  1903 - South Carolina – Railroads
[Statute]
Amended 1900 law stating that
railroads were required to furnish
separate apartments for white and
colored passengers only on
passenger trains, not on freight
trains. (Jim Crow History.org)
 1905 - South Carolina – Streetcars
[Statute]
Authorized streetcars to separate
the races in their cars. Penalty:
Conductors who failed to enforce
the law could be fined up to $100,
or imprisoned for up to 30 days for
each offense. (Jim Crow
History.org) South Carolina –
Railroads [Statute]

5.  Woodrow Wilson Administration,
1913-1921
 In the Wilson administration’s first
congressional session “there were no
less than twenty bills advocating ‘Jim
Crow’ cars in the District of
Columbia, race segregation of
Federal employees, excluding
negroes from commissions in the
army and navy, forbidding the
intermarriage of negroes and whites,
and excluding all immigrants of
Negro descent. (Gilmore, 18)
 President Wilson issues an executive
order segregating the federal
government’s operations in
Washington. (Gilmore, 18) Wilson
segregates the federal civil service.
(Brown and Stentiford, 679)
 President Wilson segregates the U.S.
Navy and replaces negroes who hold
appointed offices with whites.
(Brown and Stentiford, 564)

6.  1922 - Dyer anti-lynching bill
passes the House with Republican
support, but fails in the Senate due
to Southern Democratic resistance.
(Brown and Stentiford, 256)
 1928 - Anti-lynching bill dies in
Congress. (Brown and Stentiford,
256)

7.  1935 - South Carolina – Education
[Statute]
Required school bus drivers to be
of the same race as the children
they transported. (Jim Crow
History.org)
 1936 -Jesse Owens wins four gold
medals at the Summer Olympics in
Berlin. (Brown and Stentiford, xxvi
 1941- January – The 332nd Fighter
Group – Tuskegee Airmen – of the
Army Air Corps forms. (Brown and
Stentiford, xxvi)

8.  1947
 President Truman’s Committee on
Civil Rights issues its 178-page
report, “To Secure These Rights.”
 The report calls for laws requiring
states to end discrimination in
education, mandating a ban against
discrimination in the armed services,
laws to guarantee fair employment
practices for blacks, federal
prohibition of lynching, repeal of poll
taxes and other discriminatory voting
restrictions, denial of federal grants
when discrimination in evidence, an
expanded civil rights division at the
Justice Department, creation of
permanent civil rights commissions
at the federal and state levels,
specific federal ban on police
brutality, and enforcement of a
Supreme Court decision against
restrictive real estate covenants.
(Roberts and Klibanoff, 38)

9.  1948 - A group of Southern
Democrats form the States Rights
Democratic Party to oppose the
reelection of Harry Truman because
of his proposed civil rights program.
(Brown and Stentiford, 233)
 By 1949, at least 17 states –
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut,
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode
Island, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas, and West Virginia – and the
District of Columbia had enacted
laws requiring racial segregation of
public school children. Four other
states – Arizona, Kansas, New
Mexico, and Wyoming – provided for
a local option in determing whether
to segregate public education.
Wyoming was the only state that did
not exercise this option. (Brown and
Stentiford, 104)
South Carolina
South Carolina