Squeezing Back
Orangeburg’s black Citizens Answered the White Citizen Councils’ squeeze by Squeezing back
Gas and oil distributors refused to supply the gas station of James Sulton, treasurer of Orangeburg’s NAACP. In kind, Sulton participated in black residents’ boycotts of Coca-Cola, Sunbeam bread, and Paradise ice cream; they boycotted these products because a WCC participant held the local franchises. “Everywhere there are signs of pluck, determination, and courage,” reported Jet magazine, October 20, 1955. Photo by Cecil J. Williams for Jet.
“‘Here what the White Peoples saying You Negroes are making it hard for us and we going to make it hard for you,’ wrote L. A. Blackman, NAACP branch president in Elloree. But the [White Citizens’] Councils’ [1955] ‘squeeze’ eventually boomeranged. After all, Clarendon and Orangeburg counties were majority black. Businesses participating in the WCC members’ refusals of jobs, goods, or credit said goodbye to the majority of their workers, customers, and debtors. The Citizens’ Councils had distributed lists of petitioners and NAACP members, asking white business owners to deny service or credit. So, in Orangeburg, Elloree, and Summerton black activists distributed lists of WCC members or sympathizers, asking neighbors and friends to boycott their products or stores and to refuse to work in their fields. The South Carolina Independent, a four-page publication, exhorted, ‘The economic squeeze can be operated from both ends,’ and suggested techniques, such as buying only from black-owned businesses and starting cooperatives. At South Carolina State [College], students staged a walkout, hanged a legislator and the governor in effigy, and boycotted food and drink products distributed by WCC members on or off campus.”
Matthew D. McCollom, far right, a key strategist in the Black Community’s boycott of WCC merchants, served as president of Orangeburg’s NAACP in the 1950s and later As state conference president. He was a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Here, McCollom receives a commemorative plaque from Bishop Charles Golden, center, and Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman, NAACP field secretary for the state conference, far left. Photo courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, USC.
“Matthew McCollom, president of the Orangeburg NAACP, reported that WCC economic pressure on and harassment of black petitioners included foreclosures, evictions, termination of credit, and obscene phone calls. The WCC pressured white distributors to deny wholesale goods to black merchants and pressured white professionals to deny their services— even medical services — to black citizens. Police took down car license numbers during black people’s meetings, and firefighters burst into homes or buildings during meetings — all with the expectation this would force petitioners and/or their relatives to remove their names from the 1955 school desegregation petitions sponsored by the NAACP. About half eventually did, but the petitions survived.
The black citizens’ rebuttal, an NAACP-organized boycott of white-owned Orangeburg businesses, took into account that black residents couldn’t refuse to deal with every white business since white people ran the city. Instead, the NAACP drew up a list of the twenty-three worst WCC offenders and achieved 95 percent compliance in boycotting their products or businesses.
Even better, those boycotted reacted to the selective boycotting by becoming suspicious of merchants who retained black customers, and that caused dissension among WCC members and supporters. Said McCollom, ‘The merchants, all of them, began hurting. The net result was that the economic pressure on the blacks eventually dissipated, and the petition of the blacks remained intact.’”