Good Morning POU! Today we look at the contributions of Judge J. Waties Waring and activist Anne McCarty Braden.
Julius Waties Waring (July 27, 1880 – January 11, 1968) was a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. His dissent in Briggs v. Elliott was foundational to Brown v. Board of Education.
Waring was nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 18, 1941, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina vacated by Judge Francis Kerschner Myers. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 20, 1942, and received his commission on January 23, 1942. He served as Chief Judge from 1948 to 1952. As Chief Judge, Waring ended segregated seating in the courtroom and chose a black bailiff, John Fleming.
Waring had been initially supported by the establishment of Charleston. After divorcing his first wife and marrying the Northern socialite Elizabeth Avery, Judge Waring quickly transitioned from a racial moderate to a proponent of radical change. Speaking at a Harlem church, he proclaimed: “The cancer of segregation will never be cured by the sedative of gradualism.” Political, editorial, and social leaders in South Carolina criticized and shunned Judge Waring and his wife to the point where, in 1952, he assumed senior status, left Charleston altogether, and moved to New York City.
In several cases he ruled in favor of those who had challenged racist practices of the time:
In Duvall v. School Board, he ruled that equal pay must be guaranteed for otherwise equally qualified school teachers, regardless of their race. That ruling was made from the bench, so there is no written opinion. However, Judge Waring referred to his earlier decision when he decided a related case in 1947, Thompson v. Gibbes, 60 F. Supp. 872 (E.D.S.C. 1947).
In his 1946 ruling he held that “a Negro resident of South Carolina was entitled to the same opportunity and facilities afforded to white residents for obtaining a legal education by and in the state” and gave the state of South Carolina three options: that the University of South Carolina admit the plaintiff John H. Wrighten, that the state open a black law school or that the white law school at USC be closed. His ruling was not novel, but merely in accordance with the United States Supreme Court’s 1938 decision in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada. Rather than integrate the University of South Carolina or close it down, the South Carolina General Assembly authorized the establishment of a law school at South Carolina State – South Carolina State University School of Law.
Judge Waring opened the all-white Democratic Primary in South Carolina to African Americans with his rulings in Elmore v. Rice and Brown v. Baskin.
In 1951 Waring was one of three judges to hear a school desegregation test case known as Briggs v. Elliott. Thurgood Marshall represented the plaintiffs against the Clarendon County, South Carolina public schools which were described as separate but not at all equal. Though the plaintiffs lost the case before the three judge panel which voted 2-1 for the defendants, Waring’s eloquent dissent, and his phrase, “Segregation is per se inequality” formed the legal foundation for the United States Supreme Court in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality. She and her husband bought a suburban house for an African American couple during Jim Crow. White neighbors burned crosses and bombed the house. During McCarthyism, Anne was charged with sedition. She wrote and organized for the southern civil rights movement before violations became national news. Anne was among nation’s most outspoken white anti-racist activists, organizing across racial divides in environmental, women’s, and anti-nuclear movements.
In 1954, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, an African American couple who knew the Bradens through association, approached them with a proposal that would drastically alter all lives involved. Like many other Americans after World War II, the Wades wanted to buy a house in a suburban neighborhood. Because of Jim Crow housing practices, the Wades had been unsuccessful for months in their quest to purchase a home on their own. The Bradens, who never wavered in their support for African American civil rights, agreed to purchase the home for the Wades.
On May 15, 1954, Wade and his wife spent their first night in their new home in the Louisville suburb of Shively, Kentucky. Upon discovering that black people had moved in, white neighbors burned a cross in front of the house, shot out windows, and condemned the Bradens for buying it on the Wades’ behalf. The Wades moved in two days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark condemnation of public schools’ racial segregation policy in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. Six weeks later, amid constant community tensions, the Wades’ new house was dynamited one evening while they were out.
While Vernon Bown (an associate of the Wades and the Bradens) was indicted for the bombing, the actual bombers were never sought nor brought to trial. McCarthyism affected the ordeal. Instead of addressing the segregationists’ violence, the investigators alleged that the Bradens and others helping the Wades were affiliated with the Communist Party, and made that the main subject of concern. White supremacists who were pro-segregation at the time charged that these alleged Communists had engineered the bombing to provide a cause célèbre and fund-raising opportunity, but this was never proven.
Nonetheless, in October 1954, Anne and Carl Braden and five other whites were charged with sedition. After a sensationalized trial, Carl Braden—the perceived ringleader—was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. As Anne and the other defendants awaited a similar fate, Carl served eight months, but got out on $40,000 bond after a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Pennsylvania v. Nelson in 1956) invalidated state sedition laws (Steven Nelson had been arrested under the Pennsylvania Sedition Law but the federal Smith Act superseded it). All charges were dropped against Braden, but the Wades moved to the traditionally black west Louisville.