Charleston County Public Library

Managed compliance, white resistance and desegregation in South Carolina, 1950-1970, by John W. White

eng

"This dissertation aims to reveal the complex history of white resistance to desegregation in South Carolina from 1950 to 1970, a period between the filing of the first federal school desegregation lawsuit, Briggs v. Elliott, and the final failure of overtly racist politics to ensure electoral victory during the gubernatorial election of 1970. Generally, this work contends that historians have underestimated the degree to which physical, legal, and economic pressure were successful in slowing the pace and extent of significant racial change in South Carolina. It also argues that the well-planned bureaucratic roadblocks put in place in the 1950s were instrumental in delaying and minimizing desegregation in the mid-to-late 1960s. From 1950 to 1963, South Carolina engaged in a multifaceted and flexible massive resistance campaign that was dominated by a policy of managed non-compliance with court ordered desegregation. Rather than face federal intervention and civic unrest, whites adapted South Carolina's system of racial control in the mid-to-late 1960s to one that is best described as managed compliance. The dissertation argues that white moderation and acceptance of token desegregation in South Carolina were predicated on maintaining the white economic advantage and preserving a racial balance that heavily favored whites in the state's public school system. It also demonstrates that the generation that controlled the state in the three decades after World War II did not endorse the concept of racial integration and utilized every available device to protect white privilege and advantages. The dissertation reveals that, as late as 1970, after federal intervention and black political agency rendered the politics and practice of massive resistance impotent, whites retained many of the educational and economic advantages that had allowed white supremacy to flourish in the first place."--P. vii-viii

Includes bibliographical references

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 2006.

Managed compliance

138360920

by John W. White

white resistance and desegregation in South Carolina, 1950-1970