And then there were 14

By Courtney Tollison  

MARCH 7, 2011 7:16 a.m. (0)

On the night of Feb. 15, 1947, one of the most notorious and tragic sagas in the Greenville community began when a young African American man named Willie Earle hired Thomas Brown, a white taxi cab driver, to drive him to his mother’s house in Pickens County.

Within hours after that ill-fated cab ride, a critically wounded Brown was taken to St. Francis hospital, where he died less than 48 hours later.

Soon after Brown’s injuries became known to local law enforcement, police arrested Earle and took him to the Pickens County jail.

In the early morning hours of Feb. 17, a mob of white taxi cab drivers assembled at the taxi cab office on West Court Street behind the Poinsett Hotel and the Courthouse. Fortified by alcohol purchased from the hotel, they caravanned to the jail, intimidated the jailer, and left with Earle.

The mob drove to Bramlett Road in Greenville County near today’s Highway 124, emboldened their rage with more alcohol from a local tavern, and lynched Earle. They left his body near a meat packing plant and tipped off a local African American funeral home to retrieve the body.

These events prompted a trial and a controversy that has plagued the community ever since. The State newspaper noted both the “grim satisfaction” and the “shame” felt by whites about the lynching, and argued that many whites thought the mere fact there was a trial (which was not so mere at the time) was a measure of racial progress for Greenville.

Many African Americans remember these events differently. A.J. Whittenberg of Greenville viewed Earle’s body at the S.C. Franks Funeral Home; it was a transformative moment, which motivated him to work for racial change.

He later initiated a lawsuit against the school district to gain admittance into a white school for his daughter Elaine and several others. Today, one of Greenville’s elementary schools is named in his honor.

Last Thursday, a crowd gathered at the Hughes Library for a ceremony in observation of the lynching. Afterwards, a caravan visited Bramlett Road and the Courthouse, this time to unveil two historical markers staking the location of the lynching and the trial.

Sixty-four years after the lynching, the event marked an important moment for many in our community, who feel there is much more to discuss in regards to how racial change has been achieved.

Supporting that claim is the fact that one of the more significant cases that prompted racial change throughout the region emanated from our own Main Street, although few Greenvillians are aware of its significance.

Beginning on New Year’s Day 1960, African Americans initiated a flurry of consistent and persistent challenges to racial segregation.

Coached in the tactics of non-violent resistance by Springfield Baptist Church’s the Rev. James S. Hall (widely recognized as the leader of the local movement), young African Americans challenged segregation in Greenville’s airport, library, churches, parks, and at lunch counters in Greenville’s F.W. Woolworth, S.H. Kress, and W.T. Grant stores.

These teenagers bravely confronted the city’s segregation ordinances. The law mandated that utensils and dishes be kept separate and marked according to race. Also required were separate facilities for cleaning serving pieces, separate tables, counters, and booths. Furthermore,  at least 35 feet had to be maintained between the area where the different races were served.

Around 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1960, the manager of the S. H. Kress store – located at the corner of Main and McBee – summoned the police when a group of 14 young African Americans refused to leave the lunch counter.

He did not request arrest, but nevertheless notified the police because of the segregation ordinances; not only were these young people in violation of the law, but the manager would have been similarly complicit had he agreed to serve them.

The police arrested the 14, although the police and manager later acknowledged that the “Negro boys and girls” were “clean, well dressed, unoffensive in conduct, and that they sat quietly at the counter designed to accommodate 59 persons.”

Four of those arrested were minors and were taken to a juvenile detention home. Most others were students at Greenville’s Sterling High School.

The resulting court case, Peterson v. Greenville, climbed the judicial ladder. In May 1963, Matthew Perry, for whom the federal courthouse in Columbia is named, argued the case before the United States Supreme Court, which deemed Greenville’s segregation ordinances unconstitutional.

This case effectively desegregated lunch counters throughout the country, and mandated that the state could not have laws “compelling persons to discriminate against other persons because of race…”

Fifty years ago, Greenvillians strove to move beyond the era of Jim Crow segregation. Activists struggled to enact change while segregationists struggled to accept it. The narrative of our civil rights movement includes a broad spectrum of interpretation.

Some remember a white power structure that realized the violent, headline grabbing events occurring across the South were not good for Greenville’s image of a New South, progressive city, and thus handled racial change with “grace and style.”

Others remember relentlessly pursuing every opportunity to force change, and only achieving it when a judge ordered it.

Over the next several years, the Greenville community will continue to commemorate events from its own civil rights movement. The conversations prompted by these commemorations will be most productive if they are inclusive, informed, and tolerant of the conflicting narratives of our city’s racial past.

How, what, and who we choose to emphasize from our civil rights movement is significant.

Peterson v. Greenville has largely been forgotten about; Greenville’s two newest historical markers, however, will ensure that our last lynching will not be.

Courtney Tollison is an assistant professor of history at Furman University and historian of the Upcountry History Museum.