Oration at Columbia

On a clear, cold night last week some 4,000 South Carolinians converged upon the capital city of Columbia for the first statewide assembly of their Citizens' Council, a Southwide white-supremacy outfit. In places of honor in the Township Auditorium sat noted Southern leaders: former Senator, former Supreme Court Justice, former "Assistant President," former Secretary of State, former Governor James Byrnes; South Carolina's two U.S. Senators, Olin Johnston and Strom Thur. mond; and the principal speaker of the evening, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi. A retired Presbyterian minister, L. B. McCord, began the meeting with a prayer: "If we're wrong, enlighten our minds, enlarge our hearts. Help us in our efforts to preserve our race and our country." When a Confederate flag was unfurled from the second-floor balcony, the citizens shouted their approval.

Senator Eastland, in a speech interrupted 87 times by applause, proposed that the Southern states should set up a regional commission, financed with public funds, to fight the Supreme Court desegregation decision. He noted that the decision outlawed segregation in the schools "solely because of race." He thought that the Southern states could evade the court's order by framing new standards of segregation based on factors other than race, "to promote the public health, raise the academic standards, protect the psychological welfare of the child, prevent violence, promote peaceful and harmonious race relations. This kind of segregation is not based upon race . . . The court has no power to interfere with or place a limitation upon the power of any state to regulate health, morals, education, marriage and good order within the state." Eastland said heavily that President Eisenhower's grandchildren go to a segregated private school: "Ike is like all interracial politicians-he wants it for the other fellow."*

Eastland concluded by charging that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was backed by organizations "of all shades of red ... the blood red of the Communist Party . . . the almost equally red of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A."

* Two of Major John Eisenhower's children, David, 7, and Barbara Anne, 6, attend a private Episcopal school in Alexandria, Va. Susan, 4, goes to the integrated kindergarten at the U.S. Army's Fort Belvoir, Va. All three children attend Sunday schools that have Negro as well as white children.

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