James Myles Hinton Sr.
NAACP State Conference
After Army service in World War I, James Myles Hinton Sr. (first row, first Person on left) joined Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company, Based in Augusta, Georgia. Pilgrim was a black-owned and black-operated business, and Hinton traveled the South for the company, settling in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1938. Photo courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, USC.
1891
James Myles Hinton Sr., born in Gates County, North Carolina, moves to New York at 4 years old. His parents have died, and he is raised by an aunt. He attends public schools and graduates from a Bible teacher-training school.
World War I
Drafted into the U.S. Army, Hinton rises to the rank of infantry lieutenant. In 1917, only 639 black men receive commissions as first or second lieutenants or captains. The U.S. population is 10 percent black, but 13 percent of men inducted are black. Most black soldiers are assigned to labor battalions.
1919
Hinton musters out of the Army at Augusta, Georgia. He has served at Camp Hancock, one of the nation’s largest World War I military camps. His contacts result in him joining Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company, a black-owned-and-operated business and the first insurance provider to black Georgians.
See Hinton, first row, far left in this photograph of Pilgrim employees.
Read about the Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company.
1920s
Hinton travels, opening territory for Pilgrim in the South.
1922-1928
Hinton marries Ethel Bell. Their sons James and Rodney are born in Alabama, their daughter DeJaris (later spelled D’Jaris) in Texas.
December 15, 1935
Ethel Bell Hinton dies in Queens, New York, of a pulmonary embolism soon after the birth of daughter Novella.
1937
Hinton marries Lula V. Thomas in Jamaica, New York.
1938
Hinton makes his home in Columbia, South Carolina, with his wife and four children. He spends weekdays at Pilgrim’s Augusta office.
1939
Hinton is elected president of the Columbia branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
March 1941
Hinton meets with the provost marshal at Fort Jackson, an Army base in Columbia, about harassment of black citizens by military and city police. Federal law prohibits the military from policing or arresting civilians without specific authorization.
October 1941
Hinton is elected the second-ever president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the NAACP, following Rev. Alonzo Webster Wright. In Hinton’s first three years of leadership, membership expands to 15,000. Within his first seven years, the number of branches grows from seven to eighty.
See Hinton and John McCray, right of center in photo, and Modjeska Monteith Simkins.
Hinton builds a team. John McCray, editor of the Lighthouse and Informer, supports the NAACP’s agenda and investigates and writes about racial atrocities. Modjeska Monteith Simkins invests in the newspaper, serves as secretary of the state NAACP Conference, works for the S.C. Tuberculosis Association, and helps establish the Good Samaritan Waverly Hospital. Attorney Harold Boulware Sr. represents the NAACP as local counsel.
Early 1940s
Hinton also serves as executive secretary of the Colored Citizens Committee, focused on police brutality; executive secretary of the Negro Citizens Committee, focused on the vote; chairman of the Negro Division of the American Red Cross War Fund Drive; chairman of the Negro Defense Recreation Committee, focused on a community center for black soldiers; and secretary-treasurer of the Richland County Interracial Committee.
December 1942
Hinton leaves an NAACP meeting early to go home because members of the Ku Klux Klan have gathered outside his house in the Waverly neighborhood of Columbia. His home is defended by armed neighbors standing atop rooftops. Police refuse to intervene; the Klan members leave the next morning.
November 1943
When the all-black Palmetto State Teachers Association hesitates to file a lawsuit regarding discriminatory teacher pay, Hinton decides the NAACP will step up. Malissa T. Smith volunteers as plaintiff, but school officials dismiss her. Viola Louise Duvall agrees to sue. White teachers are paid $680 to $800 a year, black teachers $360 to $480.
Read a tribute to teacher Viola Louise Duvall.
February 29, 1944
The state Legislature adopts a resolution by Rep. John Long reaffirming “allegiance to established white supremacy.”
Read about the Pledge to White Supremacy in the Congressional Record.
Hinton approaches each civil rights violation, indignity, insult, or assault with actions, such as lawsuits, but also with ferociously eloquent letters and editorials.
Read Hinton’s response.
February 14, 1944
Judge J. Waties Waring issues a consent decree that equalizes teacher pay in Charleston.
Read Duvall v. J.F. Seignous et al.
April 3, 1944
Hinton focuses on what he calls “first-class citizenship,” which, of course, requires the vote. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Smith v. Allwright that primaries are part of general election machinery so black citizens cannot legally be denied participation through the use of all-white primaries.
Read Smith v. Allwright, 321 US 649 (1944).
April 14-20, 1944
Governor Olin D. Johnston calls a special session of the state legislature to repeal all primary laws and thus maintain the all-white primary. “White supremacy will be maintained in our primaries. Let the chips fall where they may!” says Johnston. The Democratic party declares itself a private party. South Carolina becomes the last state in the nation that excludes black citizens from primaries.
Read the South Carolina Plan.
May 24, 1944
The Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), a rebuttal to the all-white Democratic party, holds its first convention.
See a 1944 PDP flyer, which says, “This meeting is not for men only. We want our women too.”
Johnston has threatened use of the home guard to protect white supremacy. Hinton, whose son James is serving overseas, says in his PDP convention speech, “He is good enough to die, but he is not good enough to vote in this hellish South Carolina,” and Johnston should turn his attention to the Japanese and German opponents of World War II.
Read Beating the Primary, proposed by John H. McCray, editor of the Lighthouse and Informer.
July 19-21, 1944
18 PDP delegates, including Hinton, attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, hoping to contest the seating of South Carolina’s all-white delegates. While a credential subcommittee disqualifies them, the PDP delegates represent the first-ever challenge to all-white convention delegations.
Read about Chicago, July 1944.
1945
To block equal pay for teachers, the state legislature creates a grievance procedure and a recertification system requiring minimum National Teacher Examination (NTE) scores. The state provides no graduate education for black teachers and administrators.
Read an explanation of the paradoxical consequences of the NTE.
December 1945
Hinton, who is raising money for a voting rights lawsuit, writes the U.S. attorney general to demand investigations into voter rights. In South Carolina, only 10,000 black citizens have managed to register to vote. Registration is blocked by requirements to read and write the state constitution and/or own property worth more than $300 (about $5,500 today).
August 13, 1946
Hinton has orchestrated many attempts at voter registration. George Elmore -- a light-skinned, straight-haired, portly businessman -- manages to register because the enrollment clerk assumes he is white. As expected, he is denied a vote in Richland County’s Democratic primary because he is not white. Elmore sues with the NAACP’s assistance.
1946
John H. Wrighten, denied admission to the College of Charleston because of race, earns his bachelor’s instead from Orangeburg’s Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College. Later known as South Carolina State College, this is the state’s only public college for black students. Wrighten next applies to the University of South Carolina School of Law. Academically qualified to attend, he sues when denied admission because of race.
July 12, 1947
U.S. District Judge J. Waties Waring opens the primary. “It is time for South Carolina to rejoin the Union,” Waring writes. “It is time to fall in step with the other states and to adopt the American way of conducting elections.” South Carolina appeals.
Read Elmore v. Rice, 72 F. Supp. 516 (1947).
December 30, 1947
South Carolina’s attorneys compare the Democratic Party to the segregated Forest Lake Country Club in Columbia. The state’s fundamental error is assuming a political party is like a private club, says the U.S Court of Appeals. Denying black citizens’ participation in the primary is a denial of constitutional rights.
Read Rice v. Elmore, 165 F. 2d. 387 (4th Cir. 1947).
July 12, 1947
Judge Waring rules that the state must admit Wrighten to USC’s law school or close it or provide an equal law school for black students no later than September.
Read Wrighten v. Board of Trustees, 72 F.Supp., 948 (E.D.S.C. 1947).
Also read Missouri ex rev. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).
Sipuel v. Board of Regents, 332 U.S. 631 (1948.)
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950.)
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950).
September 17, 1947
A law school opens in Orangeburg with nine students, one classroom, one dean, and two professors who have never taught. Hinton, unhappy with the outcome, calls it a “makeshift law school.”
Read “Turning the Tide of Segregation.”
July 20, 1948
Still circumventing black citizens’ constitutional rights, the Democratic Party requires voters to swear that they support social, religions and education separation of races and “the principles of States’ Rights.” David Brown, a registered voter in Beaufort, refuses to sign the oath and is prevented from voting. He sues with the support of the NAACP. A testy Waring orders enrollment books opened. He writes that he will not excuse evasions or subterfuges; he will hold violators in contempt. 35,000 black South Carolinians register.
Read Brown v. Baskin, 78 F. Supp. 933 (E.D.S.C. 1948).
April 21, 1949
White men kidnap Hinton from his Augusta boarding house. They drive into the countryside, take him into the woods, blindfold him, beat him, and release him upon hearing from a car radio broadcast that police are looking for them. Ku Klux Klan “night riders” terrorize black men and women by kidnapping and whipping or beating those they want to intimidate or force to flee.
1947-1955
Hinton sparks and then supports an NAACP lawsuit seeking a “separate but equal education” for black schoolchildren in Clarendon County. Eventually Briggs v. Elliott asks for desegregation of public schools and, with other lawsuits from Delaware, Kansas, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, brings about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court declares in 1954, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and unconstitutional, depriving the plaintiffs of equal protection of the laws.
Read Briggs v. Elliott, 98 F. Supp. 529 (E.D.S.C. 1951).
Briggs v. Elliott, 103 F. Supp. 920 (E.D.S.C. 1952).
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
1950-1953
Hinton manages his civil rights work and his job by working night and day on a few hours of sleep. In 1950, Pilgrim names him a company director. In 1952, the NAACP appoints him to its national board of directors. In 1953, Pilgrim names Hinton an agency director.
May 31, 1955
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education (1955) that school districts must desegregate “at all deliberate speed” but relies on the actions of local school authorities and courts that previously heard the desegregation cases. South Carolina and five other Southern states – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi – do not desegregate their schools.
Read Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 274 (1955).
July 15, 1955
Briggs v. Elliott returns to U.S. District Court. South Carolina’s judges respond that, while it is their duty to accept the Supreme Court decision, children of different races may voluntarily attend different schools. The Constitution does not require integration but merely forbids discrimination, they write. So segregation by “voluntary action” may remain.
Read Briggs v. Elliott, 132 F. Supp. 776 (E.D.S.C. 1955).
August 1955
Hinton responds to repeated attacks on the Brown v. Board decision and the NAACP. He says the NAACP is an American organization that goes into the courts “to fight the issues out before white judges using white men’s laws” and will continue its fight to “break down segregation.”
January 19, 1956
An unidentified gunman fires double-aught buckshot, used to hunt large game, into the Hinton home. Lula Hinton is not injured, but police find nine pellets in the damaged walls and stairs. A mirror and pots for house plants in the foyer are shattered
February 14, 1956
Gov. George Bell Timmerman Jr. signs an interposition resolution. This theoretically places the state’s sovereignty between segregated schools and the Brown rulings but actually clashes with the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states that federal law prevails when in conflict with state law. Hinton writes Congress – after U.S. Sen. J. Strom Thurmond claims nine of 10 South Carolinians favor the measure -- that black South Carolinians compose 42 percent of the population, but not one has been asked to appear before the state legislature.
March 12, 1956
Thurmond’s colleagues revise his Southern Manifesto draft, which calls the Brown decisions illegal and unconstitutional, and 96 members of Congress pledge to use “all lawful means” to reverse the Supreme Court decisions and commend states intending to resist “forced integration.”
Read the Declaration of Constitutional Principles.
March 17, 1956
Gov. George Bell Timmerman Jr. signs legislation barring city, school district, county or state employment of NAACP members. Hinton, who estimates the state NAACP has 22,000 members, points out that such a law is “gross discrimination” and unconstitutional.
March 25, 1956
The legislature ends its session by ordering the closing of the state’s four colleges for white students if a court orders admittance of any black student, ordering an investigation of NAACP activity at the only public college for black students, and asking the U.S. attorney general to put the NAACP on its list of subversive organizations.
March 29, 1956
White Citizens Council members fire black employees, call in or forbid loans, cut off supplies, evict, and otherwise pressure anyone associated with the NAACP and, particularly, anyone who has signed or is connected to a signer of school desegregation petitions. Hinton publicizes relief efforts: $20,000 from the NAACP, $5,000 from the National Council of Churches, funds from the Prince Hall Masons of South Carolina, and food and clothing from The National Committee for Rural Schools.
February 8, 1957
Gov. Timmerman signs a law outlawing barratry, making it unlawful to invite or solicit a lawsuit without a direct interest in relief. This is an attempt to stop NAACP petitions and lawsuits, particularly those related to desegregating public schools. Hinton points out that NAACP help on lawsuits has been given “to those persons seeking constitutionally guaranteed rights.”
September 1958
Hinton announces in a letter to NAACP branches that he will not run again for the presidency of the conference. He has been in charge for seventeen years.
October 17, 1958
At a testimonial banquet honoring Hinton, the retiring conference president says black South Carolinians are still denied all but token rights. This is his farewell, but he says that he looks ahead to better days.
1959
Hinton becomes pastor of Second Calvary Baptist Church in Columbia.
1964-1970
In 1964, Hinton is named a vice president on the NAACP national board of directors. In 1966, he is named chairman of Pilgrim’s board of directors. He serves as chaplain at the segregated state prison and state mental health facility in Columbia.
November 21, 1970
Hinton dies in Augusta after months of illness. The family suggests donations to the Legal Defense and Educational Fund for the NAACP.