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5 Forging a "New South Carolina" The 1ftermath 1'Integration In 1949 V. O. Key described South Carolina as a state dominated by the politics of race. It rivaled Florida in political factionalism, wrote Key, yet whites were united by this singular issue. The civil rights movement drastically changed this situation. The 1965 Voting Rights Act increased the number of black South Carolina voters from 58,000 in 1958 to 220,000 in 1970. No one benefited more from this increase than John Carl West. Winning the last overtly racial statewide campaign in South Carolina history , West defeated segregationist Republican Albert Watson by almost twenty-eight thousand votes, his margin provided by black voters. Indeed, West garnered virtually all the black vote, except for several thousand that went to a black protest candidate. The 1970 election was a "clear test of the politics of race." Race baiting may have worked in Alabama and ended Brewer's moderate administration, but it failed in South Carolina. West's was a victory for racial moderates in the state and served as a positive culmination of three turbulent years in South Carolina race relations. During these years, the state had suffered the massacre of several South Carolina State University students in 1968, court-ordered public school integration in 1969 and 1970, and an attack on several black students by two hundred whites opposed to integration in the small town of Lamar. During his term West addressed the effects of such events, including school dropouts and pushouts1 and flareups of violence. When West entered office, racial tension had never been higher. By the end of his term, relations between blacks and whites had never been better. West's moderate course in office played no small part in this reconciliation. His effort to make integration work led South Carolina into a new day in race relations .2 West may have benefited from an increase in black voters in the late I 18 John C. West ifSouth Carolina 1960s, but he also received help from his moderate predecessors. Former governor Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, one of West's closest friends, blazed the trail toward peaceful integration in South Carolina when he allowed Harvey Gantt to become the first black student admitted to Clemson University in 1963. In his final, and probably most famous, address to the state legislature, Hollings declared that the time for resistance had ended. "We have all argued that the Supreme Court decision of 1954 is not the law of the land," said Hollings. He continued: But everyone must agree that it is the fact of the land. Interposition, sovereignty , legal motions, personal defiance have all been applied to constitutionalize the law of the land. And all attempts have failed. As we meet, South Carolina is running out of courts. If and when every legal remedy has been exhausted, this General Assembly must make clear South Carolina 's choice, a government of laws rather than a government of men. As determined as we are, we of today must realize the lesson of one hundred years ago, and move on for the good of South Carolina and our United States. This should be done with dignity. It must be done with law and order. It is a hurdle that brings little progress to either side. But the failure to clear it will do us irreparable harm. 3 As early as 1962, Hollings concluded that segregation's end was near and that legal defenses would soon "fall like a house of cards." "You might as well start preparing for the inevitable," he said. "We are not going to secede." Later that year three black students enrolled in the University of South Carolina for the first time.4 West also profited from the actions and leadership of Robert McNair, governor from 1967 to 1971 with whom West served as lieutenant governor . By 1969, a mere twelve of South Carolina's ninety-three school districts had permitted token numbers of blacks to attend previously allwhite schools. In 1969, federal courts ordered Darlington and Greenville Counties to desegregate fully by February 1970. Although he decried such orders for "instant school desegregation" and wished for a slower pace, McNair chose not to follow the defiant lead of other southern states. Instead , he appointed a fifteen-member advisory board to work with business and community leaders to ease the transition to a unified system. McNair ordered state legal officials not to intervene on behalf of local school districts. He even went on...

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