Byrnes on the Barricades

The governor of South Carolina, James Byrnes, is a distinguished politician who was once an undistinguished Secretary of State and an even less distinguished Justice of the Supreme Court. He knows the temper of his state. He and South Carolina's legislature are cheek to cheek on the question of "white supremacy." They would abolish the state's public-school system rather than give up the segregation of Negroes and whites.

At Columbia last week, the house of representatives, following similar action by the senate, voted in favor of a popular referendum to repeal a section of South Carolina's constitution that provides free public schools for all children. Critics of the Byrnes proposal warned that it was a "revolution," and that it might lead from "confusion" to "chaos" in education and racial rights.

The governor has had his dander up ever since the state's school system came under legal fire about a year ago from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A federal district court in Charleston ordered an improvement in school facilities for Negroes, but found nothing illegal in segregation. The N.A.A.C.P., arguing that segregation is an infringement of the 14th Amendment, carried the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has still to pass judgment. If the high tribunal bans segregation, the state's public schools may be replaced by privately operated schools subsidized by the state, but run for their own races by Negro and white church groups. The N.A.A.C.P. promised last week to fight the governor's maneuver to the legal hilt.

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