Advanced search
Publication Cover
Journalism History Volume 37, 2011 - Issue 2
Submit an article Journal homepage
27
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

John H. McCray, Accommodationism, and the Framing of the Civil Rights Struggle in South Carolina, 1940–48

Sid BedingfieldView further author information
Pages 91-101 | Published online: 04 Jun 2019

NOTES

  • See Peter Lau, Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality Since 1865 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006); Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Jack I. Hayes, South Carolina and the New Deal (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001); Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); and Edwin D. Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Civil Rights in South Carolina,” Journal of Negro History 44 (October 1959): 346–69.
  • John McCray, “The I Killits,” Lighthouse and Informer, Aug. 22, 1948.
  • Theodore Hemmingway, “Black Press in South Carolina,” in Henry Louis Suggs, ed., The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1983), 163–81.
  • Lee returned to South Carolina and edited the Orangeburg Herald in the 1950s and the 1960s.
  • “They Should Have Asked,” Lighthouse and Informer, Aug. 22, 1948.
  • See Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 218–28; and Robert J. Norrell, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 122–35.
  • Lau, Democracy Rising, 136.
  • See Lau, Democracy Rising; Hayes, South Carolina and the New Deal; Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968; Sullivan, Days of Hope; Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Civil Rights in South Carolina;” and I.A. Newby, Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1865–1968 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973).
  • See Sullivan, Days of Hope, 145–71; Wim Roefs, “Leading the Civil Rights Vanguard in South Carolina: John McCray and the Lighthouse and Informer, 1939–1954,” in Charles M. Payne and Adam Green, eds., Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 462–91; and Lau, Democracy Rising, 115–210.
  • For some examples, see Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Vintage Books, 1998); and Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
  • Richard H. King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 26–27.
  • See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1966); Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Social Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978); Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media and the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,” American Journal of Sociology 95 (July 1989): 1–37; William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Robert Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43 (April 1993): 51–59; and Kevin Caragee and Wim Roefs. “The Neglect of Power in Recent Framing Research,” Journal of Communication 54 (June 2004): 214–23.
  • See William A. Gamson, Bruce A. Fireman, and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1982); William A. Gamson, “Political Discourse and Collective Action,” International Journal of Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 1 (January 1988): 219–44; Gamson, Talking Politics, 1–9; David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1 (January 1988): 197–218; David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Aldon Morris and Carol Mueller, eds., Frontiers of Social Movement Theory (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1992); Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 611–39.
  • A full run of the Lighthouse and Informer does not exist. This study examined the forty-eight existing issues and focused its analysis on two key civil rights campaigns in South Carolina during the 1940s: the fight over equal pay for black teachers, which was followed by the battle for full voting rights in the Democratic Party. To supplement the analysis of the Lighthouse and Informer, the author reviewed the personal papers of John McCray and his chief colleagues, Osceola E. McKaine and Modjeska Monteith Simkins, as well as oral history interviews that McCray granted in 1985–86. The papers are in the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Also examined were the oral history interviews of McCray by Patricia Sullivan and Charles Franklin Beall in 1985 and 1986 respectively.
  • Roefs, “Leading the Civil Rights Vanguard in South Carolina,” 496.
  • Interview, John McCray by Patricia Sullivan, Feb. 18, 1985. The transcript is in the authors possession.
  • See Theodore Hemmingway, “Under the Yoke of Bondage: A History of Black Folks in South Carolina” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1976), 391; and Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Civil Rights in South Carolina,” 354.
  • Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Civil Rights in South Carolina,” 354.
  • Ibid., 355.
  • See John H. McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, Feb. 20, 1982; and interview, McCray by Sullivan.
  • See Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2009), 172–73; and Lau, Democracy Rising, 116.
  • John H. McCray, “States the Position of Southern Negroes,” Charleston News and Courier, April 13, 1937.
  • Sid Bedingfield, “The Dixiecrat Summer of 1948: Two South Carolina Editors—a Liberal and a Conservative—Foreshadow Modern Political Debate in the South,” American Journalism 27 (Summer 2010): 91–114.
  • See Lau, Democracy Rising, 116; and Sullivan, Days of Hope, 172–73.
  • See Hoffman, “The Genesis of the Modern Movement for Civil Rights in South Carolina,” 368; and Lau, Democracy Rising, 116.
  • Interview, McCray by Sullivan.
  • Miles Richards, “Osceola E. McKaine and the Struggle for Black Civil Rights, 1916–1946” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1993).
  • See ibid., 90–94; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 196–97.
  • Sullivan, Days of Hope, 197.
  • Newby, Black Carolinians, 141.
  • Sullivan, Days of Hope, 145.
  • Barbara Woods, “Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina, Modjeska Monteith Simkins” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1978), 44.
  • See Hayes, South Carolina and the New Deal; and Hemmingway, Black Press in South Carolina.
  • See Woods, “Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina, Modjeska Monteith Simkins,” 47; and Richards, “Osceola E. McKaine and the Struggle for Black Civil Rights, 1916–1946,” 202.
  • Woods, “Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina, Modjeska Monteith Simkins,” 51.
  • John H. McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, March 5, 1982.
  • Interview, McCray by Sullivan.
  • The best account of the teacher pay battle can be found in Richards, “Osceloa E. McKaine and the Struggle for Black Civil Rights, 1917–1946.” The papers of McCray and Simkins include accounts of the teacher pay fight as well.
  • Ervin Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York: Free Press, 1974).
  • See Tuchman, Making News, 15–30; and Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality.
  • Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching, 3–6.
  • Gamson, Fireman and Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority.
  • See Gamson, Talking Politics, 6–8; and Hank Johnston and John A. Noakes, eds., Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 7–11.
  • William A. Gamson, “Promoting Political Engagement,” in Robert M. Entman and W. Lance Bennett, eds., Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
  • Interview, McCray by Sullivan.
  • Among the many examples, see Litwack, Trouble in Mind; and C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
  • Interview, McCray by Sullivan.
  • Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 360.
  • “Black Teachers Called to Arms,” Modjeska Monteith Simkins papers, Politics, reel 2, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
  • Ibid..
  • Woods, “Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina: Modjeska Monteith Simkins,” 165.
  • Gamson, Talking Politics, 7.
  • King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom, 26–27.
  • John H. McCray, “The Need for Changing,” Lighthouse and Informer, June 15, 1947.
  • Osceola E. McKaine, “What Price Unity?” Lighthouse and Informer, Jan. 10, 1943.
  • Richards, “Osceola E. McKaine and the Struggle for Black Civil Rights, 1916–1946,” 137–38.
  • See Tinsley Yarbrough, A Passion for Justice: J. Waites Waring and Civil Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 43–46; Lau, Democracy Rising, 128–32; and Richards, “Osceola E. McKaine and the Struggle for Black Civil Rights, 1916–1946,” 144.
  • Examples include John H. McCray, “Sticking Together,” Lighthouse and Informer, Jan. 19, 1947; and John H. McCray, “Primary Test Looms,” Lighthouse and Informer, Feb. 9, 1947.
  • John McCray, “No Apparent Unity,” Lighthouse and Informer, Feb. 6, 1944.
  • Sullivan, Days of Hope, 143–44.
  • See ibid; and Karen Ferguson, Black Politics in New Deal Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
  • “Negro Vote Jumps…,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 1936.
  • Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).
  • See ibid.; and Darlene Clark Hine, “Blacks and the Destruction of the White Primary, 1935–1944,” Journal of Negro History 62 (January 1977): 43–59.
  • See Sullivan, Days of Hope; Lau, Democracy Rising; and John H. McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, March 13, 1982.
  • South Carolina Colored Democratic Party Organizational Plans (1944), John H. McCray papers, Politics: General, folder 7, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina. See also Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968, 43; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 283–84; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 145–46; Lau, Democracy Rising, 136–37; and John H. McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, March 13, 1982.
  • See interview, John McCray by Sullivan; and John H. McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, March 13, 1982.
  • Osceola E. McKaine, “Black Voters at the Ballot Box,” Southern Youth Negro Council, 1944, John H. McCray papers, Politics: General, folder 7, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
  • John H. McCray to Thurgood Marshall, Nov. 9, 1944, NAACP papers II-B, 2009, as cited in Sullivan, Days of Hope, 191.
  • McCray, “The Way It Was,” Charleston Chronicle, Feb. 27 and March 13, 1982.
  • See ibid.; McCray account in oral history interview cited in Sullivan, Days of Hope; and Lau, Democracy Rising, 175–76.
  • Elmore v. Rice, 72 F. Supp. 516, 528
  • John H. McCray, “The White Primary Goes Out,” Lighthouse and Informer, April 25, 1948.
  • See Charles Franklin Beall, “With Malice Intent: John McCray, Willie Tolbert and the Struggle for Equal Justice in South Carolina” (Unpublished honors thesis, University of Virginia, 1987), 1–62; and Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968, 211–16.
  • William D. Workman, “State's Negroes Backed Kennedy,” Greenville (S.C.) News, Dec. 4, 1960.
  • Sullivan, Days of Hope.
  • See John T. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press); and Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968.
  • See Sullivan, Days of Hope; Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968; and Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944.
  • See Patrick Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 8.
  • Charles Simmons, The African American Press: A History of News Coverage During National Crises, with Special Reference to Four Black Newspapers, 1827–1965 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 1998), 51.
  • Henry Louis Suggs and Bernadine Moses Duncan, “The Black Press in North Carolina,” in Suggs, The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979, 268–69.
  • Simmons, The African American Press, 65.
  • See Walter Edgar, South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998); and Newby, Black Carolinians.
  • Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968, 43.
  • U.S. Census, 1940, at http://www.census.gov/poplutation/www/documentation/twps0056/twps0056.html.
  • Alice Spearman Wright, Feb. 20, 1987, quoted in Beall, “With Malice Intent,” 5.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Order Reprints Request Corporate Permissions

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

Request Academic Permissions

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.

Related research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.