Rev. Cecil Augustus Ivory, 1921-1961
Bus Strike and Sit-in Leader
“We do not protest against you. We protest your evil and unjust system of segregation and discrimination. We will return your hate with love. We will endure your oppression with patience, but we will protest until death, if need be, your unjust policies.”
1921
Born March 3, 1921 in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, third of four children. Ivory’s father dies of a fever when Ivory is a toddler.
1935
Ivory falls while climbing a pecan tree and injures his spine. His family cannot afford medical treatment. He teaches himself to walk again, using chairs as crutches.
1936
Determined to continue studies past 10th grade, Ivory obtains a place at Cotton Plant Academy in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. The coeducational boarding school of eleven grades, run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen, provides a college-prep education. Ivory becomes the star of his schools’ football and basketball teams.
1937-1939
Word of Ivory’s scholastic and sports talents travel far. He is offered a football-and-work scholarship by President Byrd Randall Smith of Mary Allen Junior College, a co-ed junior college in Crockett, Texas.
1940
Ivory accompanies Smith to Harbison Agricultural and Industrial Institute, in Irmo, South Carolina, where he does odd jobs. Formerly Harbison College in Abbeville, South Carolina, the school was burned down by night riders in 1910 and relocated to Irmo after what was its third fire.
See a collection of Harbison Agricultural College photographs at South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
1942-1944
Ivory obtains a work scholarship at Johnson C. Smith University, where he earns a bachelor of arts.
1945
Ivory and Emily Richardson marry. He works at a Merita bakery while she finishes her bachelor’s in elementary education.
1944- 1946
Ivory continues at Johnson C. Smith, earning a bachelor of divinity from its School of Theology and a first prize in homiletics.
1946-1947
Ivory returns to Harbison, fulfilling a promise to President T. B. Jones. He serves the campus church and coaches the softball and basketball teams.
1947
Ivory is ordained a Presbyterian minister.
October 1948
Ivory serves as pastor of First Presbyterian and director of religious education at Harbison Junior College.
1949-1961
Ivory is called to serve Hermon Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
See the original Hermon Presbyterian Church, now on the National Register of Historic Places.
May 17, 1954
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, that separate educational facilities are “inherently unequal.”
Read Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (347 U.S. 483) 1954.
June 22, 1954
A driver orders Sarah Flemming off a Columbia bus after she takes a second-row seat in the full bus. He strikes her as she leaves. The South’s segregation customs and laws require black passengers to both enter and sit in the back of buses; drivers enforce the rules harshly. Flemming sues with the help of the NAACP. U.S. District Judge George Bell Timmerman Sr. dismisses the case. On appeal the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals says there is no doubt the Brown ruling repealed the “separate but equal” doctrine.
Read Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, 239 F.2d. 277 (4th Cir. 1956).
The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to review the appeals court decision and returns the lawsuit for further proceedings. But Judge Timmerman ignores the Fourth Circuit. He writes, “One’s education and personality is not developed on a city bus.”
Read Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company, 128 F. Supp. 469 (E.D.S.C. 1955).
Bus segregation in South Carolina remains.
December 1, 1955 - December 20, 1956
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasts more than a year. A U.S. District Court rules, on November 13, 1956, that bus segregation in Montgomery is unconstitutional, violating due process and equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, and cites Flemming in its decision, Browder v. Gayle.
Read Browder v. Gayle, 142 F. Supp. 707 (1956).
Ivory is inspired.
July 1957
In Rock Hill, Addelene Austin White accepts a bus seat offered by a white passenger and disembarks when the driver orders her to stand. The next morning black workers turn their backs on the buses of the Star Bus Line. Ivory talks to White.
July 29, 1957
Ivory is elected chairman of the Local Committee for the Promotion of Human Rights (CPHR). He sets up a car pool, with volunteer women driving nine cars full-time, six part-time.
August 1957
Black riders boycott the Star Bus Line, which holds a city franchise and is the city’s only bus line. The boycott is extended to Star Cab Company.
Mid-August 1957
Black churches buy a 32-passenger bus after the city refuses to allow an integrated bus service. The Local Committee serves 350 riders a day. Riders can pay a self-determined donation or ride free. A second bus is purchased through donations from the city’s junior colleges and South Carolina churches.
End of 1957
Ivory also is the president of the Utopia Club and a member of the biracial Rock Hill Council on Human Relations and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. The nonstop activity and stress of Ivory’s activism impair his ability to walk. He begins to use a wheelchair and a cane. He travels to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, for removal of the spinal blood clot, and to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for leg braces. The Star Bus Line and Cab Co. close; the owner leaves town.
See Rev. Ivory in front of his home.
1959
The CPHR bus service continues with Ivory and Horace Goggins mapping routes, Edward Billings and Rev. J.C. Pate working as dispatchers, and John Robinson and Clarence Toatley as drivers. Toatley drove trucks in the European theater during World War II.
February 12, 1960
Friendship Junior College students hold the first sit-in in South Carolina after Ivory arranges for James T. McCain of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to train the students in nonviolent direct action. 150 students sit-in or attempt to sit-in at F.W. Woolworth and J. T. McCrory variety stores and Phillip’s and Good’s drug stores. The stores close to stop the protests.
February 23, 1960
Stores re-open, and students return.
February 29, 1960
A mass meeting of 700-900 shows local support. Churches hold rallies every Sunday for students.
March 1960
White youths and men harass black workers in their neighborhoods; bomb threats are called into Friendship Junior College.
March 15, 1960
71 students are arrested after protests at the segregated city hall and the whites-only waiting rooms of the two bus depots. 1,100 attend a rally to support the students, who describe their experiences.
May 1960
Ivory accepts an honorary doctor of divinity from Johnson C. Smith
June 7, 1960
Ivory purchases a trash can and notebook paper at McCrory’s. At the lunch counter, Arthur Hamm Jr., a Friendship student, takes a seat, and Ivory parks his wheelchair. When told by the manager and then a law officer that they must leave, Ivory points out that he has made purchases and is a customer. Ivory and Hamm are arrested and charged with trespass. A few days later Ivory also accompanies Revs. W.R. Jones and Ida Watson to McCrory’s and Woolworth, where all three are refused service.
Read City of Rock Hill v. Hamm, 128 S.E.2d. 907 (S.C. 1962).
September 1960
Ivory receives a special citation from the national NAACP as “Leader of Bus Boycott” and “Counselor of Student Sit-Ins.”
October 1960
The NAACP state conference awards Ivory a certificate of merit for “courageous and unselfish service.”
January 31, 1961
Shaping a new movement called “jail, no bail,” CORE recruits 9 Friendship Junior College students to accept arrest and serve time rather than pay bail, thus making a point about Constitutional rights and costing the system. Thomas W. Gaither, a CORE field secretary, chose Rock Hill because of Ivory’s leadership and the dedication he has aroused in the student protesters. The ten, convicted of trespass, are sent to York County Prison Camp. Nine serve the full 30-day sentence, earning national media attention and hundreds of visitors attempting to show support. Four volunteers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) also come to Rock Hill, where they too take seats at the counters, are arrested, convicted of trespass, and serve their sentences, the two men at the prison camp, the women in jail.
Read Gaither’s account, “Jailed-In.”
February 17, 1961
Winthrop College, a segregated state college for women, denies admission to Allidease James and Thelma Davis, students at Friendship who apply with Ivory’s support. A carload of Friendship students, who plan to apply, drive onto the Winthrop campus. They are stopped by police; 19 picket and are arrested for trespassing. Police barricade the campus.
February 23, 1961
Ivory is arrested with George Hackley and John Paul Dietrich, a white seminary student and founder of the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) in Washington, DC. The three are charged with breach of peace for picketing and are jailed when they refuse to pay bail. As the only white person participating in Rock Hill demonstrations, Dietrich receives much hostile attention. A few days before, Dietrich and a black reporter had been attacked by a Rock Hill resident and arrested after an ensuing scuffle; all stayed in jail over a weekend. All three men agreed to drop charges.
Read Dietrich’s 1960-61 history of NAG.
May 9, 1961
Freedom Riders arrive in Rock Hill, their sixth stop since leaving Washington, DC, on Trailways and Greyhound buses. They are testing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation by race in public transportation is illegal; they will do so by riding through the Deep South to New Orleans, Louisiana. In Rock Hill white youths attack three of the Freedom Riders at the Greyhound station. This is the first violence of the ride. The young men punch and knock to the ground John Lewis, a recent graduate of Nashville’s American Baptist Theological Seminary; Albert Bigelow, a Navy veteran and school administrator; and Genevieve Hughes, a CORE staffer. That afternoon Ivory rescues additional Freedom Riders at the Trailways depot, where white men shout threats and briefly follow the cars holding the riders. Dinner is served at Ivory’s home for all. The next morning the Freedom Riders desegregate both depots.
See Jet magazine, May 25, 1961
Read Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960).
See U.S. Rep. John Lewis with one of his attackers, Elwin Wilson of Rock Hill, who personally apologized.
June-October 1961
Ivory is hospitalized with pressure ulcers.
November 10, 1961
Ivory dies at home of an infection.
In 2017, Ivory is named a Freedom Walkway Local Hero. Rock Hill’s Freedom Walkway honors those who fought for justice and equality for all. Photo courtesy of Darnell Ivory, family collection.