Page 146 →The Lamar Bus Riots

The 1970 riots in Lamar, SC, mimicked other forms of white resistance that occurred throughout the South during public school desegregation. One of the most well-known instances took place in Little Rock, Arkansas. Nine Black high school students enrolled in the formerly all-white Central High School in 1957. White people verbally threatened and threw rocks at the Black students and their parents as they tried to enter the school. The state’s governor, Oral Faubus, even blocked the school entrance, preventing the nine students from attending school that day.² Desegregation efforts at Americus High School in Georgia led to a similar outcome. As the Black students arrived at the all-white school, white students and parents attacked their shared vehicle with rocks, racial slurs, and threats. These students were able to make it inside of the school but still faced violence even after the school day had started.³ White South Carolinians were watching these Page 147 →events unravel in larger locales, seeing that the rioters faced few, if any, consequences. Even though Lamar was a much smaller town than Little Rock or Americus, the 1970 bus riots had a significant impact on discussions of desegregation throughout the country.⁴

Although the Lamar bus riots attracted nationwide attention in the 1970s, scholars have not given the incident sufficient attention. Most historical studies only discuss the events in Lamar within larger studies of desegregation and the civil rights movement with an emphasis on the political and legal contexts. For example, Philip G. Grose included the incident in his analysis of South Carolina Governor Robert McNair’s overall civil rights politics.⁵ Similarly, Timothy J. Minchin used the riots to hook readers into his study of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) fight for civil rights in the South.⁶ Although these and other studies include the riots in Lamar, there has not been a fully developed discussion of the events.⁷ However, addressing what happened in Lamar is important in understanding the educational and racial politics of South Carolina and the United States in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, as well as the legacies of those politics in the twenty-first century.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Lamar bus riots approached, public interest in memorializing the events gained momentum. In the spring of 2019, South Carolina State Senator Gerald Malloy presented a resolution and recognized three survivors on the floor: Ronald Bacote, Clarence Brunson, and Reverend David Lunn.⁸ The next year, the University of South Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights and Research hosted the three survivors to share their stories.⁹ These three men became the voices of the riots, but they were only three of the six on their bus, and there were three buses that day carrying about thirty young people. The students’ experiences varied and influenced their lives in differing ways. The renewed public attention encourages scholars to revisit the events with additional perspectives and to resituate the story in different historical contexts. Although it happened more than fifty years ago, the event’s effects still linger, and segregation still exists in many school districts across South Carolina.

In the years leading up to the riots, white academics, ministers, and politicians delivered sermons, made speeches, and circulated pamphlets reinforcing white supremacy and condemning desegregation. These influential individuals provided encouragement and validation for white southern Page 148 →parents who feared public school integration. Local and national newspapers and magazines reported on Lamar in the wake of the events and around the fiftieth anniversary, including the Florence Morning News, The New York Times, Time, and Jet. However, these sources represent the perspectives of adults. Our research combines magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, and court records with recently recorded oral testimonies of survivors of the Lamar bus riots, as well as by students who experienced desegregation in nearby communities. We interviewed Clarence Brunson and Robert Hammonds Jr., two of the Black teenage bus drivers on March 3, 1970. We also incorporated public testimonies and oral histories of other teens who experienced segregation and desegregation in the area, including Dr. Alvin Heatley, David Lunn, and Dr. Carol McClain. Combining printed sources with oral accounts provides a fresh perspective on the riots as well as on the educational politics and race relations in the 1960s and 1970s in South Carolina.

For much of the twentieth century, segregation permeated southern society, but people began to call for change in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson allowed segregation based on the “separate but equal” ruling. Public facilities had “colored” sections and items for all nonwhite individuals to use. For instance, Heatley shared that his earliest memory of racial discrimination was drinking from a “whites-only” water fountain at Sears in nearby Florence, SC.¹⁰ Furthermore, Hammonds described purchasing a hot dog in Lamar: Black customers had “to go to the back window” for service.¹¹ As the civil rights movement made headway in desegregating public facilities and schools, white South Carolinians pushed back. Lunn, an African-American student who was on one of the buses on March 3, described tensions in Lamar during this time as “a Coke bottle shaken up … you don’t want to take the top off!”¹² South Carolina’s young people who were growing up in the Jim Crow era, such as Brunson, Hammonds, and Lunn, were ready for change, but ending segregation was not going to be easy or peaceful.

By the early 1950s, civil rights activists, legislators, and a growing number of Americans realized that the schools designated for Black students were separate but substantially unequal and saw desegregation or integration as necessary and desirable.¹³ White southern parents, however, did not want to send their children to Black schools, because they knew that those schools Page 149 →were unequal. In 1950, Briggs v. Elliot was the first case to address segregated schools in South Carolina. Black residents of Clarendon County sued the local school district, chaired by Roderick Elliot. In a pretrial hearing, the school district admitted to some inequities in its Black schools. South Carolina Governor James Byrnes asked the legislature to create a school equalization program. The program was intended to provide equal facilities, transportation, and teachers’ salaries in Black schools funded by a three-cent sales tax. Because of the governor’s directive, the court ruled in favor of Elliot and the school district.¹⁴ Although Americans increasingly sought desegregation, South Carolinians used equalization to keep Black and white students separate, at least for several more years.

The equalization program, even if properly administered, never solved racial disparities, nor could it meet the standards of federal mandates. The 1954 Brown decision ruled that even if the facilities and supplies were equal, segregation still deprived Black students of “equal educational opportunities.”¹⁵ The equalization program could not be a substitute for desegregation or integration. Still, the state moved forward with Governor McNair’s plan. The Darlington County School District established Spaulding Elementary and Spaulding High School as equalization schools in 1953. Black students in Lamar attended these supposedly equal but still segregated schools. In an oral history, Hammonds shared that it was quite clear how Spaulding High School was very unequal. He spoke about hand-me-down equipment and outdated textbooks that were sometimes ripping at the seams. He was excited to integrate at Lamar High School, because Black students would finally have access to better facilities and materials.¹⁶

Despite federal court rulings ordering desegregation, many white southerners attended churches where their ministers used scripture to justify segregation. In some cases, those ministers published their racist sermons for distribution throughout the South. For instance, Presbyterian Reverend G. T. Gillespie gave an address in Mississippi in favor of segregation, and in 1954, the Synod of Mississippi printed it as a pamphlet that is now part of the papers of the Wallace family of Florence, SC. In the address, Gillespie used both Old and New Testament passages to argue that God intended the separation of races. Although acknowledging that “the Bible contains no clear mandate for or against segregation as between the white and ‘negro’ races,” he believed that he could infer God’s true intentions through his interpretations.¹⁷ Many southern families clung to Reverend Gillespie’s claims because Christianity was, and still is, a cornerstone of southern culture, especially in rural communities, such as Lamar.¹⁸ Despite Page 150 →the Brown ruling, white southerners had leaders who defended segregation and legitimized their racial biases.

Many white politicians also defended white supremacy and openly defied segregation in speeches and interviews. In 1956, approximately one fifth of the US Congress signed a document resisting desegregation and agreeing to take all necessary actions to maintain segregation. Former South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and former Georgia Governor Richard B. Russell Jr. authored the document they officially titled The Declaration of Constitutional Principles, which is commonly known as The Southern Manifesto. The Declaration argued that the US Supreme Court had overstepped its judicial power in the decision to end public school segregation and that southern states should “use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision, which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.”¹⁹

Once integration became a federal law and trickled down into small towns throughout the South, white families that could not afford expensive private academies rallied behind “freedom of school choice” and “neighborhood school” initiatives, which allowed Black parents to select their children’s schools but provided no assistance with transportation. In most cases, these parents had no choice but to select the school closest to their homes. This gesture toward integration, in fact, perpetuated segregation.²⁰ White parents found these plans beneficial in making sure their children attended all-white schools, while the district claimed to abide federal and state legislation concerning public school integration. These plans effectively maintained white supremacy by putting a heavier strain on Black families. In an article for Jet, Warren Brown asserted, “The favorite desegregation dodges of whites were the ‘freedom of choice’ and the ‘neighborhood school’ concepts.”²¹

Florence, SC, offered school choice to families, allowing Black students to attend previously all-white schools. Dr. Carol Maurice McClain shared her experiences with school choice in an oral history. Her parents discussed the choices McClain had for junior high school. She could have attended all-Black Williams Junior High School, but she chose to attend Poynor Junior High School, mainly because it offered honors classes not available at Williams. For her, it was about the quality of the curriculum and course offerings in the desegregated school. She shared how she hated Poynor because the teachers did not provide the same quality of instruction to the Black students as they did to the white students. However, she attended Poynor for all three years of junior high.²² Although school choice was an option Page 151 →for Black families, it did not guarantee an equal education, even for students able to attend previously all-white schools.

White educators and parents of white students in desegregated southern classrooms found justification for their views toward Black students in segregationist pamphlets and magazines. William S. Milburn was a veteran educator from Kentucky who presented at the 1966 Citizens’ Councils of America Annual Leadership Conference.²³ The organization’s magazine, The Citizen, later published his presentation, which asserted that “the capacity of the white students to learn is markedly greater than that of the Negroes.”²⁴ Milburn also expressed concern about the “temperament” of Black students in comparison with that of white students. He claimed that “the Negro student’s emotions seem to be more intense, to operate over a wider range and with less self-restraint than those of the white students.”²⁵ Emeritus Professor of Psychology Henry E. Garrett also published a pamphlet making similar claims. He argued that, because the average IQ of a white child was twenty points higher than that of a Black child, desegregated classrooms required a reduction in standards, meaning that white children would “work below their capacity with resultant inferior education.”²⁶ The publication of such misinformation by educated leaders who supported racist ideologies led whites almost to hysteria once the federal government forced school districts to desegregate.

Although Brown v. Board of Education was a monumental Supreme Court case, the “all deliberate speed” clause stifled its efforts of public school desegregation because southern states used the broad statement to stall public-school desegregation. Legislators started to realize that these school districts used this vague description, possibly done to appease southern Democrats, as a justification for keeping schools mostly segregated with only a few Black students. In 1965, Charles C. Green challenged freedom of choice plans in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The US Supreme Court settled the case in 1968. With a unanimous verdict, the Supreme Court rejected freedom of choice plans and required districts to develop realistic plans for desegregation. More than fourteen years after the Brown decision, the “the Court now required school boards to eliminate affirmatively all vestiges of segregation.”²⁷ In other words, school choice was no longer an option by 1968. Both Black and white families had their reservations about desegregation but did not necessarily know what to do after the court rulings.

Two years after Green v. New Kent County, families in Lamar faced desegregation. In early 1970, the federal courts ordered the Darlington County School District to create a plan of action for desegregation that state and Page 152 →federal officials would have to approve. Rezoning the Lamar area seemed like the best option for desegregation, so the Darlington County School Board redrew the lines to determine where students would attend public schools based on their address. There was perceived socioeconomic bias to the new zoning. One white parent claimed, “Not a single doctor, lawyer, school-board member or anybody prominent got put in the nigger schools.”²⁸ Anger over desegregation now became focused on both class and race in South Carolina.

Some African-American students also resisted integration. For example, Brunson, a senior at Spaulding High School in 1970, shared that many of his classmates did not want to attend and graduate from a school in which they had no pride. Moreover, the students had already purchased graduation caps and gowns, class rings, and varsity athletic jackets, and most students would not have been able to afford to repurchase these items for Lamar High School. Brunson’s mother provided for him and his three siblings, earning only thirteen dollars a week.²⁹ Like many parents, she struggled to provide for her children and had little money for duplicative purchases.

Beyond the financial hardships on families, many Black teachers lost their jobs during public school desegregation through consolidation. Florence County, the neighbor to Darlington, ended up with a largely unbalanced ratio of Black to white teachers once desegregation began in their schools.³⁰ In losing teachers who looked like them, “Black parents feared that the children would be forced to adopt White culture and lose their own rich culture and identity.”³¹ Moreover, some white teachers discriminated against their new Black students.³² McClain explained how she attended clinics where Black adults prepared them for desegregated classrooms. The adults told the Black children to sit in the front of the classroom so the white teacher could not miss them, but the teachers “would leave the front of the room” and “stand beside” the desks of Black students so they did not have to look at them.³³

Not surprisingly, African-American families felt that the new desegregation decision still left African-American students underserved, but they recognized that advocacy for true equality could jeopardize their livelihoods and homes. Many of these families sharecropped on land owned by white families. Some white employers gave Black parents the ultimatum to do as white community members told them or face the consequences. Despite these obstacles, “Black children in Lamar boycotted their schools almost one hundred percent because their parents didn’t think the plan brought enough integration.”³⁴ These students faced strong resistance. Leading up to the Page 153 →events on March 3, white families met to protest desegregation. The “Freedom of Choice” organization in Darlington County developed plans to resist desegregation. One newspaper article claimed, “More than 800 persons met at St. John’s High School” and “voted to oppose court ordered integration of Darlington County public schools.”³⁵ St. John’s was a “white” high school for the city of Darlington and made a favorable location for white families to discuss these matters while inherently excluding the Black community and their perspectives on the federal order of immediate integration. At another rally at Lamar High School, Congressman Albert Watson “congratulated the group for carrying out their protest in a calm manner,” and “said that because of the interest and non-violent manner of the protest,” Americans were listening to southern “problems.”³⁶

Many white families in Lamar were upset over desegregation because they believed the government had “forced” it upon them. This perception was so pervasive in Darlington County that even white students espoused it. According to the Florence Morning News, white students from Lamar wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon in response to the desegregation order. They claimed that Lamar would have sixty-five percent Black enrollment, making white students the minority. Echoing white educators like Milburn and Garrett, the students argued that “we will suffer both academically and psychologically.”³⁷ With emotions running high, the nonviolent approach praised by Albert Watson would not last long.

Desegregated classes in Darlington County officially began on February 18. Many white families boycotted the school and petitioned to shut it down.³⁸ Even when these attempts began to lose steam, white parents were unwilling to watch their way of life disrupted in the name of progress. They now turned to violence. On the morning of March 3, 1970, a large crowd of white citizens formed along the roadside where public school buses would transport Black students from Spaulding High School to Lamar High School. Many of these citizens armed themselves with chains and ax handles, but there were city and state police present at multiple points along the bus route to stop the crowd from breaking into a riot.³⁹ Darlington County viewed these precautions as necessary because other incidents of violence had taken place during desegregation, including the attacks on the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas.

That morning, South Carolina Highway Patrol officers were not supposed to route the buses carrying the African-American students to Lamar High Page 154 →School, but they did so anyway. As the buses approached the school, the white citizens entered the road and began throwing rocks and glass objects into the buses, harming almost every Black student aboard. “I screamed: ‘Oh Lord, help us…. I was so afraid that I was going to be killed,” Sally Mae Wilds recounted to Darlington County NAACP President Arthur Stanley.⁴⁰ Students were able to evacuate the buses moments before the mob overturned them. Police released pepper spray and gas to disperse the crowd; however, many students commented that the state troopers and county law enforcement officers seemed unconcerned with their safety. For instance, Lunn told Stanley that “one of the patrolmen seemed to think it was funny to see some ‘nigger’ child assaulted.”⁴¹ After the students were safely inside of the school, Dr. Sidney Griffith came to treat their wounds.⁴² School officials told the African-American students who had been attacked that they were going to be sent home for the day. Many of the students decided to have their parents pick them up or have police officers escort back to their residences.

As news reached Columbia, state officials were horrified. Governor McNair classified the attack as “an act which defies all human reasoning and understanding.”⁴³ On March 3, McNair ordered the school to remain closed for an undisclosed amount of time and worked with South Carolina Attorney General John N. Mitchell to deploy approximately one hundred National Guard troops stationed in Hartsville to Lamar to deter additional violence. On a federal level, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew stated, “violence was aimed unbelievably … at children who are innocent participants in the court-ordered desegregation of a Southern school district” and promised that those responsible for the attacks would be “brought to the bar of justice.”⁴⁴

By March 6, 1970, local law enforcement officers had initially taken twenty-seven white rioters into custody on varying charges. After less than a day, a magistrate judge of Darlington County, the Honorable Sam Chapman, released all the men on a mere two-thousand-dollar bond. After the judge’s decision, one white male spectator remarked, “I don’t think there’ll be any more trouble, not on the surface leastways. Remember the raccoon goes hunting at night.”⁴⁵ Multiple other white citizens present in the courtroom that day made similar comments. The use of threatening language to scare African Americans out of exercising their rights was not a new phenomenon of the 1960s. In the late 1800s, the Ku Klux Klan used intimidation tactics to prevent African Americans from pursuing legal actions against others in the community. Richard Schaefer noted, “The Klan became fairly successful in undermining the actions of the Radical Republicans in Congress by Page 155 →intimidating the freed slaves to keep them from voting.”⁴⁶ These methods of terrorism continued throughout the twentieth century not only through lynchings, arson, and other acts of violence, but also through Confederate memorials, which were designed to oppress and silence African Americans.⁴⁷

The white citizens’ remarks in the courtroom showed their willingness to intimidate Black people. It also demonstrated their confidence that whites would face few consequences for doing so. In fact, only three of the twenty-seven people arrested were charged, and they received light sentences, ranging from twelve to twenty-four months and fines of differing amounts. The men served only six months, and after they paid their fines, they were released on probation. These actions highlight how southern circuit courts showed leniency toward white convicts, in this case, finding ways to lessen the consequences for those who incited violence against the Black community.

The NAACP appealed the light punishments given to those who incited a riot, destroyed state-owned transportation, and injured multiple minors. By 1972, the NAACP had secured a hearing before the South Carolina Supreme Court in hopes that justice would be served to the Black community in Lamar and that the three main organizers who had been charged, Jeryl Best, Delmar Kirven, and James Dewey Marsh, would serve substantial sentences for their crimes.⁴⁸ Notably, Best owned Mr. B’s Seafood House in Lydia, SC, about ten miles North of Lamar. His own daughter attended school in neighboring Lee County, so his leadership in Darlington County was somewhat surprising and suggests that some of the rioters were not seeking to protect their own children but simply wanted to prevent integration in any South Carolina school.⁴⁹ In seeking to overturn the ruling, the NAACP hoped to deter similar crimes as school boards adhered to federal legislation concerning integration. The lawyers for the NAACP questioned whether Wade S. Weatherford Jr., the initial presiding judge, had the power to reduce the defendants’ sentences. The South Carolina Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s decision and required the defendants to serve the remainder of their sentences. This ruling was a great victory for the NAACP and the Black community within South Carolina.⁵⁰

Even after the courts carried out justice, many white southerners still believed that the attackers were heroes for standing up for what they believed was right. According to an essay in The Afro-American, one local resident, George Dority, “regretted not being with the two hundred whites who attacked the buses and highway patrolmen with bricks, chains and clubs.”⁵¹ Others were not supportive of the violence but backed the sentiments of the protestors. One New York Times article summarized this notion quite clearly Page 156 →as: “Condemn the act but condone the motives.”⁵² As evidenced by the interviews and oral histories, many white residents seemed to have been fine with living around Black people, having Black employees, and maybe even sharing public spaces with the Black community, but they opposed school desegregation because it might allow for the dismantling of the racial ideologies and hierarchy that many of their ancestors fought to maintain in the Civil War.

One of the hardest realizations for the Black community was that people they knew were members of the mob—people they had worked under, share-cropped with, and knew as acquaintances. Lunn shared, “The FBI showed us pictures. These people were our next-door neighbors…. We knew all of them.”⁵³ These white southerners were not out-of-state agitators storming into Lamar and harming African-American children. They were fellow local citizens. Hammonds recounted a similar feeling. He shared a childhood story of white neighbors playing basketball with him and his brothers. On the day of the riot, Hammonds remembered looking out the windows of the bus he was driving and seeing those same white boys taking part in terrorizing African-American students. Brunson also shared a similar reaction. He often asked himself, “How was I good enough to play with you and work with you but could not go to school with you?”⁵⁴ The idea of living among people willing to use violence to stop desegregation was not only terrifying for African Americans but also confusing and dehumanizing.

The Black community, especially its youths, was resilient despite the physical and psychological harm suffered that day. Both Brunson and Hammonds spoke of the peaceful coexistence of white and Black students within the schools after Lamar’s desegregation.⁵⁵ When the school finally reopened in March, one student told a newspaper that she was unhappy about desegregation, but her education took priority: “Somehow we have a feeling that if adults speak less, the students and teachers would find the situation manageable—even perhaps profitable. It’s worth an honest try.”⁵⁶ Progress may have been slow and hampered by violence, but eventually it came. A newspaper article written five years after the riots discussed how unified this desegregated school had become. The Southern Association of Schools and Colleges accredited all the public schools in the Lamar area, with an “emphasis on quality education,” and that body declared, “The transition … in Lamar has gone far better than almost anyone dared believe it could.”⁵⁷ Reflecting on the events, Lunn advocated for reconciliation: “We cannot forget, but we must be able to forgive.”⁵⁸ His statement reflects how many African Americans living in Lamar have been able to reckon with those who harmed them and their families.

Page 157 →Although this event occurred only for a few hours, it shaped local and national debates on public school desegregation, especially the issue of busing. In fact, President Nixon included antibusing as a part of his presidential reelection campaign platform in 1972. In a speech, he claimed he wanted to put a stop to the “anger, fear and turmoil in local communities, and worst of all, agonized concern among hundreds of thousands of parents for the education and safety of their children who have been forced by court to be bused miles away from their neighborhood schools.” He proposed legislation to provide funds to improve schools in poorer neighborhoods instead—reminiscent of South Carolina’s equalization school program. Although he admitted, “There’s no escaping the fact that some people do oppose busing because of racial prejudice,” he added “but to go on from this to conclude that antibusing is simply a code word for prejudice is a vicious libel on millions of concerned parents who oppose busing—not because they are against desegregation, but because they are for better education for their children.”⁵⁹ Jet magazine published a lengthy response. The author explained that some Black Americans opposed busing because it was a “bankrupt, suicidal method of desegregating schools, based on the false notion that Black children are unable to learn unless they are in the same setting with white children.” ⁶⁰ The article featured multiple pictures from the Lamar bus riots. Although court-ordered busing continued until 1999, many American schools remain segregated and the fight to keep them that way continues.⁶¹

One legacy of the Lamar bus riots is the question of whether parents should be able to choose their children’s public school. Leading up to the events of March 3, 1970, many white families leaned into the idea of choice to avoid exposing their children to an integrated student body. Although there has been some progress in public school integration across the United States, the freedom of choice movement has been revived within the past few years, especially in the South. This time, the movement includes racial as well as social issues, such as critical race theory; issues pertaining to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual/aromantic/agender plus other individuals; social–emotional learning; and basic sex education. American political polarization has begun to play out in schools as religious and political leaders are feeding parents misinformation yet again.⁶² Vouchers, school choice, and education savings accounts have all become buzzwords for politicians within the past few years. Vouchers allow Page 158 →parents to use the money allotted for their student within a public school to offset the cost of private school tuition. Education savings accounts are public funds placed in special accounts for parents to access and use for private educational costs, such as tuition, textbooks, and other types of programs.⁶³ Many proponents argue that these programs allow parents to spend the money they pay into the school system as they see fit, whereas opponents argue that the programs deprive low-income schools of the funding needed to serve large populations of at-risk students.

Moreover, public schools remain highly segregated, largely on the basis of race and socioeconomic status, because of the way the United States funds public schools. In South Carolina, as in other states, property taxes fund a significant portion of public school budgets. The value of the homes within the district determines how much funding a district receives.⁶⁴ Under this system, lower income neighborhoods will always have poorer funded schools, and even today, many of those impoverished neighborhoods have majority-Black populations. In large part, this “racial residential segregation” stems from the redlining practices of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.⁶⁵ Redlining deemed those living in certain areas low-income and high-risk loan applicants, which often prevented African-American families from obtaining mortgages and other loans. During the 1950s and 1960s, middle-class white families moved to suburban neighborhoods with high property values and well-funded schools, “a process facilitated by federal government housing and transportation investments.”⁶⁶ However, redlining laws kept Black families out of suburban housing developments, and the property values of the houses in African-American neighborhoods remained low. Therefore, schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods had and continue to have less funding. Current policy makers argue that Black families can use school choice to overcome the impacts of racial residential segregation on their children’s educations.⁶⁷ However, these arguments ignore the challenges, especially those related to transportation, that Black families face in placing their children in districts where they do not live. Scholars sometimes refer to these burdens as the “parent tax.” Along with paying this “tax,” there are also discrepancies in the information concerning school choice given to white families and families of color.⁶⁸

Magnet schools are another form of school choice that emerged in the 1970s, but most studies on them have focused on urban areas, not rural areas such as Lamar.⁶⁹ Magnet schools are public institutions with specialized programs and curricula intended to create “an alternative to mandatory reassignment and forced busing.” Districts should manage enrollments Page 159 →“to ensure a racially balanced student population.”⁷⁰ In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that magnet schools could not use race as an admission criterion, but they could use neighborhood demographics and socioeconomic status.⁷¹ The lasting legacies of redlining ensure some level of diversity. There are currently seven magnet programs or magnet schools within Darlington County.⁷² However, they are in the county’s two larger towns. Families from a smaller town such as Lamar would still have to find transportation, which is especially burdensome for low-income families.

Desegregating schools in the South is still underway, and evasion policies such as school choice, as well as outright violence, have marred public school integration efforts. This study shifts away from a focus on the political and legal history of the Lamar bus riots to emphasize the educational context and legacies. Incorporating oral testimony from African Americans who experienced desegregation as young people in Darlington and Florence Counties helps to decenter the perspectives of predominantly white adults. Although Lamar was unique because of its small size, the riots grew out of the same racial tensions present across the South. The Lamar bus riots were senseless acts of violence that harmed innocent children. They were carried out by individuals who wanted to maintain white supremacy in southern public schools. Ministers, educators, and politicians misinformed parents and community members about the benefits of integration. As a result, misguided individuals went so far as to defend those who broke the law. The Lamar bus riots provide not only a lens to study developments concerning race relations within South Carolina’s educational system but also an important lesson regarding the work still needed to achieve integration.

Lakin Hanna is from Lancaster, South Carolina. She is a recent graduate from Francis Marion University with a degree in secondary history education. She plans to teach history in the Lancaster County School District.

Erica Johnson is an associate professor of history and faculty coordinator for Universities Studying Slavery at Francis Marion University. She has published two books and numerous articles on various elements of the African diaspora and the legacies of slavery in the Americas.

1. 1. Although scholars and the public alike often use the terms desegregation and integration interchangeably, they are not synonymous. Warren Brown explained the difference in 1972. He noted that desegregation involves adding just one Black student to a white school. Integration would only occur if peoples of different races accept one another. Integration is about more than numbers of students. He identified a third category: racial balance. This would mean that a school maintained “a fixed number of students of one race in proportion to the number of students of another race attending a school.” See Warren Brown, “Busing: Bigots Battle to Keep Blacks Separate and Unequal,” Jet, 42, no. 8 (May 18, 1972): 24. https://books.google.com/books?id=trEDAAAAMBAJ.
2. 2. See David L. Chappell, “Diversity within a Racial Group: White People in Little Rock, 1957–1959.” The Arkansas Historical Review, 66, no. 2 (2007): 181–93.
3. 3. See Jim Auchmutey, The Class of ‘65: A Student, a Divided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015).
4. 4. Little Rock had a population of nearly one hundred thousand people. Americus had a population of about thirteen thousand people. In contrast, Lamar had only twelve hundred residents. National news outlets were quick to point out Lamar’s small population when reporting on the bus riots. See, for example, “South Carolina: Rebellion at Lamar.” Time, March 16, 1970. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,909055,00.html; William F. McIlwain, “On the Overturning of the Two School Buses in Lamar, S. C.” Esquire, January 1971, 98; and “A Bad Day in Lamar.” Newsweek, March 16, 1970, 26.”
5. 5. Philip G. Grose, South Carolina on the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 278–81.
6. 6. Timothy J. Minchin, “Making Best Use of the New Laws: The NAACP and the Fight for Civil Rights in the South, 1965–1975,” The Journal of Southern History 74, no. 3 (2008): 669–70.
7. 7. See also Billy B. Hathorn, “The Changing Politics of Race: Congressman Albert William Watson and the South Carolina Republican Party, 1965–1975,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 89, no. 4 (1988): 232; and Winfred B. Moore and Orville Vernon Burton, eds., Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 16–17.
8. 8. South Carolina Senate, “Senate Resolution to Recognize an Incredible Group of South Carolina Citizens from Darlington County for Their Role in the Fight for Desegregation and for Their Outstanding Resiliency in the Face of Trauma,” 123rd Session, April 24, 2019, S. 784 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess123_2019-2020/bills/784.htm).
9. 9. See John Monk, “After 50 years, SC White Supremacists School Bus Riot Still Haunts Survivors,” The State, March 8, 2020.
10. 10. Alvin Heatley, “Eyewitnesses of the Civil Rights Movement,” in person, USC Center for Civil Rights History and Research, Jerusalem Baptist Church, Hartsville, SC, March 3, 2023. In 1956, Heatley graduated from Butler High School, an equalization school in Darlington County. After earning his doctorate in Page 161 →education, he returned to Darlington County as a coach and administrator in the public schools. The South Carolina House and Senate honored him with resolutions on May 26, 2015. South Carolina Senate, “A Senate Resolution to Honor Dr. Alvin T. Heatley of Darlington County for His Outstanding Accomplishments in the Field of Education and for His Dedicated Service to Butler Heritage Foundation as Its Chairman and to the State of South Carolina,” S. 818, 121st Session (2015) (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess121_2015-2016/bills/818.htm); South Carolina House of Representatives, “A House Resolution to Honor Dr. Alvin T. Heatley” of Darlington County for His Outstanding Accomplishments in the Field of Education and for His Dedicated Service to Butler Heritage Foundation as Its Chairman and to the State of South Carolina,” H. 4251, SC General Assembly, 121st Session (2015) (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess121_2015-2016/bills/4251.htm).
11. 11. Robert Hammonds Jr., interview by Lakin Hanna, March 6, 2023. https://lib guides.fmarion.edu/OralHistoryProj/RHammonds.
12. 12. David Lunn, “Eyewitnesses of the Civil Rights Movement,” in person, presented at the program Eyewitnesses: Memories of the South Carolina Civil Rights Movement, Spartanburg, SC, April 3, 2023.The author reports that there is no URL for this presentation.
13. 13. American public support for school desegregation swelled from the 1950s to the 1970s. According to public polls, the percentage of Americans wanting integrated schools increased from forty-eight in 1956 to eighty-six in 1972. For more, see Erica Frankenberg and Rebecca Jacobsen, “Trends—School Integration Polls,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2011): 788–811.
14. 14. Delia B. Allen, “The Forgotten Brown Case: Briggs v. Elliot and Its Legacy in South Carolina,” Peabody Journal of Education 94, no. 4 (2019): 442–46.
15. 15. Allen, “Forgotten Brown Case,” 445.
16. 16. Hammonds Jr., interview by Lakin Hanna.
17. 17. Reverend G. T. Gillespie, “A Statement in Defense of the Principle of Racial Segregation,” Reprint of speech given at the Synod of the Mississippi Presbyterian Church, November 4, 1954. Folder 285, Wallace Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia [hereinafter cited as WFP]. The original text is available online (https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=citizens_pamph).
18. 18. See, for example, Leah M. Bouchard, Sara Kye Price, and Laura E. T. Swan, “The Role of the Contemporary Christian Church in the Rural American South: Philosophical Approaches to Operationalizing Religion in Research,” Journal of the North American Association of Christians in Social Work 47, no. 2 (2020): 47–64; David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); and Robert B. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021).
19. 19. US Congress (102nd). “The ‘Southern Manifesto,’” 102 Cong. Rec. 4515–16 (1956).
20. 20. Patricia Dillon, “Civil Rights and School Desegregation in Sanford,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 76, no. 3 (1998),” 310–25.
21. 21. Brown, “Busing,” 24.
22. 22. Page 162 →Dr. Carol Maurice McClain, interview by Alex Lietka and Erica Johnson, April 11, 2023. https://libguides.fmarion.edu/OralHistoryProj/CMcClain.
23. 23. Better known as White Citizens Councils, these groups began in Indianola, Mississippi, after the Brown decision. They quickly spread from Mississippi into Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and South Carolina, fighting against the integration of public spaces. See Harold C. Fleming, “Resistance Movements and Racial Desegregation,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 304 (1956): 46–47.
24. 24. William S. Milburn, “Some Problems of Integration,” The Citizen, April 1966, 10.
25. 25. Milburn, “Some Problems of Integration,” 11.
26. 26. Henry E. Garrett, How Classroom Desegregation Will Work (Richmond, VA: The Patrick Henry Press, 1965).
27. 27. Jody Allen and Brian Daugherity, “Recovering a ‘Lost’ Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court’s Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia,’ Decision,” The Oral History Review 33, no. 2 (2006) 41.
28. 28. Anonymous quoted in McIlwain, “On the Overturning,” 98.
29. 29. Clarence Brunson, interview by Lakin Hanna.
30. 30. Alabama Council on Human Relations, American Friends Service Committee, Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., Southern Regional Council, and Washington Research Project, It’s Not Over in the South: School Desegregation in Forty-Three Southern Cities Eighteen Years after Brown (Washington, DC, and Atlanta, GA: Southern Education Foundation and Urban Coalition, 1972) (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED065646.pdf).
31. 31. Barbara Loomis Jackson, “Race, Education, and the Politics of Fear,” Educational Policy 22, no. 1 (2008): 143.
32. 32. See James E. Haney, “The Effects of the Brown Decision on Black Educators,” The Journal of Negro Education 47, no. 1 (1978): 88–95; Linda C. Tilman, “(Un) Intended Consequences? The Impact of the Brown v. Board of Education Decision on Employment Status of Black Educators,” Education and Urban Society 36, no. 3 (2004): 280–303; and Adam Fairclough, “The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration,” Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (2004): 43–55.
33. 33. McClain, interview by Alex Lietka and Erica Johnson.
34. 34. McIlwain, “On the Overturning,” 98.
35. 35. “Newspaper Clippings: ‘Freedom of Choice’ Opposes Integration Order” [newspaper clippings], Darlington County, SC: Lamar Riots Collection, Darlington Historical Commission and Museum [hereinafter cited as DHCM], n.d.
36. 36. Jerry L. Allegood, “Watson Backs Protest,” Florence Morning News, n.d., DHCM.
37. 37. “Student Letter Critical of Decision,” Florence Morning News, February 1, 1970, 3A.
38. 38. “Darlington Attendance Up,” Florence Morning News, February 26, 1970, 7B.
39. 39. McIlwain, “On the Overturning,” 99.
40. 40. See Arthur W. Stanley, “White Violence—Lamar, SC,” The Crisis: A Record for the Darker Races 77, no. 5 (1970): 200.
41. 41. Stanley, “White Violence,” 199.
42. 42. McIlwain, “On the Overturning,” 99.
43. 43. Page 163 →Jon Nordheimer, “Gas Routs Whites Who Upset Buses at Carolina School,” New York Times, March 4, 1970.
44. 44. Quoted in Herb Frazier, “Lamar Riots,” in The South Carolina Encyclopedia, Walter B. Edgar, ed. (University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies, June 8, 2014).
45. 45. Jon Nordheimer, “27 Whites, Accused of Carolina School Riot, Lauded by Neighbors,” New York Times, March 6, 1970 (https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/06/archives/27-whites-accused-of-Carolina-school-riot-lauded-by-neighbors.html).
46. 46. Richard T. Schaefer, “The Ku Klux Klan: Continuity and Change,” Phylon 32, no. 2 (1971): 145.
47. 47. For a useful history of Confederate memorials and their ideology, see Roger C. Hartley, Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021).
48. 48. State v Best, 257 S.C. 361 (1972) (https://law.justia.com/cases/south-Carolina/supreme-court/1972/19343–1.html).
49. 49. McIlwain, “On the Overturning,” 100.
50. 50. State v Best, 257 S.C. 361 (1972).
51. 51. “Many of Lamar’s Whites Seem Proud of Attack on Children,” The Afro-American, March 17, 1970, DHCM.
52. 52. Jon Nordheimer, “Lamar Gives Its Answer to the Courts,” New York Times, March 8, 1970 (https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/08/archives/lamar-gives-its-answer-to-the-courts.html).
53. 53. Monk, “After 50 Years.”
54. 54. Brunson, interview by Lakin Hanna.
55. 55. Brunson, interview by Lakin Hanna; Hammonds Jr., interview by Lakin Hanna.
56. 56. “First, Education,” Darlington County, SC: Lamar Riots Collection, DHCM, n.d.
57. 57. “Lamar: 5 Years After,” Florence Morning News, March 20, 1975.
58. 58. Lunn, “Eyewitnesses.”
59. 59. “Transcript of Nixon’s Statement on School Busing,” New York Times, March 17, 1972, 22A (https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/17/archives/transcript-of-nixons-statement-on-school-busing.html).
60. 60. Brown, “Busing,” 30.
61. 61. Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, “Busing Ended 20 Years Ago. Today Our Schools Are Segregated Once Again,” Time, September 11, 2019.
62. 62. See, for example, Jaime Lovegrove, “SC Senate Policy Stakes: Graham Favors ‘School Choice,’ Harrison Backs Public Schools,” Post and Courier, October 25, 2020; Lauren Camera, “DeVos Says School Choice Is Coming, like It or Not,” U.S. World News & World Report, October 20, 2020; and David Marques, “Conservatives: ‘School Choice’ Will Punish Public Schools for Wokeness.” The New Republic, January 27, 2023.
63. 63. “Types of Private School Choice,” in The ABCs of School Choice (Indianapolis, IN: EdChoice, 2023), 3 (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED628554.pdf).
64. 64. In 1977, South Carolina passed the Education Finance Act, creating a formula for funding schools based on the numbers of students with and without special needs or services. The state passed the Education Improvement Act in Page 164 →1984, creating a new sales tax to fund education. The state also has an education lottery. Beyond these state funds and some federally funded programs, school districts must provide thirty percent of education costs. See Allen, “Forgotten Brown Case,” 447.
65. 65. Mark Pearcy, “‘The Most Insidious Legacy’—Teaching about Redlining and the Impact of Racial Residential Segregation,” The Geography Teacher 17, no. 2 (2019): 44–55
66. 66. Angela Simms and Elizabeth Talbert, “Racial Residential Segregation and School Choice,” Phylon 56, no. 1 (2019),” 34.
67. 67. Pearcy, “’The Most Insidious Legacy,’” 47.
68. 68. Simms and Talbert, “Racial Residential Segregation and School Choice,” 34.
69. 69. See, for example, Ellen Goldring and Claire Smrekar, “Magnet Schools and the Pursuit of Racial Balance,” Education and Urban Society 33, no. 1 (1998): 17–35; and Loretta F. Meeks, Wendell A. Meeks, and Claudia A. Warren, “Racial Desegregation: Magnet Schools, Vouchers, Privatization, and Home Schooling,” Education and Urban Society 33, no. 1 (2000): 88–101.
70. 70. Goldring and Smrekar, “Magnet Schools,” 17.
71. 71. Virginia Riel, Toby L. Parcel, Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, and Stephen Samuel Smith, “Do Magnet and Charter Schools Exacerbate or Ameliorate Inequality?” Sociology Compass 12, no. 9 (2018): 3.
72. 72. Some schools include an on-site program. For instance, Darlington High School has an early college program. Other schools are full magnet schools, such as the Thornwell School for the Arts in Darlington. All seven magnet programs and schools are in the cities of Darlington or Hartsville. Darlington has a population of around sixty-one hundred, and Hartsville has a population of approximately seventy-five hundred. Neither of those populations qualify as urban, as they number less than ten thousand people (South Carolina Department of Education, Directory of Magnet Schools; https://ed.sc.gov/districts-schools/school-choice/school-choice/magnet-schools/).

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• Brown, Warren. “Busing: Bigots Battle to Keep Blacks Separate and Unequal.” Jet, 42, no. 8, May 18, 1972. https://books.google.com/books?id=trEDAAAAMBAJ.
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• “Darlington Attendance Up,” Florence Morning News, February 26, 1970, 7B.
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• “Directory of Magnet Schools.” South Carolina Department of Education, n.d. https://ed.sc.gov/districts-schools/school-choice/school-choice/magnet-schools/.
• Fairclough, Adam. “The Costs of Brown: Black Teachers and School Integration.” Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (2004): 43–55. https://www.umass.edu/legal/Hilbink/250/Adam%20Fairclough%20-%20The%20Costs%20of%20Brown.pdf.
• “First, Education.” Darlington County, SC: Lamar Riots Collection, Darlington Historical Commission and Museum, n.d.
• Fleming, Harold C. “Resistance Movements and Racial Desegregation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 304 (1956): 46–47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1032106.
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• Garrett, Henry E. How Classroom Desegregation Will Work. Richmond, VA: The Patrick Henry Press, 1965.
• Gillespie, Reverend G. T. “A Statement in Defense of the Principle of Racial Segregation.” Reprint of speech given at Synod of the Mississippi Presbyterian Church, Folder 285, Wallace Family Papers, South Caroliniana Library. Page 166 →November 4, 1954. Full text available at https://egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=citizens_pamph.
• Goldfield, David. Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013.
• Goldring, Ellen, and Claire Smrekar. “Magnet Schools and the Pursuit of Racial Balance.” Education and Urban Society 33, no. 1 (1998): 17–35.
• Grose, Philip G. South Carolina on the Brink: Robert McNair and the Politics of Civil Rights. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006.
• Haney, James E. “The Effects of the Brown Decision on Black Educators.” The Journal of Negro Education 47, no. 1 (1978): 88–95. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2967104.
• Hartley, Roger C. Monumental Harm: Reckoning with Jim Crow Era Confederate Monuments. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2021.
• Hathorn, Billy B. “The Changing Politics of Race: Congressman Albert William Watson and the South Carolina Republican Party, 1965–1975.” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 89, no. 4 (1988): 227–41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27568058.
• Heatley, Alvin T. “Eyewitnesses of the Civil Rights Movement.” In person. Presented at the Eyewitnesses: Memories of the South Carolina Civil Rights Movement, March 3, 2023.
• Jackson, Barbara Loomis. “Race, Education, and the Politics of Fear.” Educational Policy 22, no. 1 (2008): 130–54.
• Jones, Robert B. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.
• “Lamar: 5 Years After,” Florence Morning News, March 20, 1975.
• Lovegrove, Jaime. “SC Senate Policy Stakes: Graham Favors ‘School Choice,’ Harrison Backs Public Schools.” Post and Courier, October 25, 2020. https://www.postandcourier.com/article_40cac610–1477–11eb-b1c3-afd330079cc0.html.
• Lunn, David. “Eyewitnesses of the Civil Rights Movement.” In person. Presented at the program Eyewitnesses: Memories of the South Carolina Civil Rights Movement, Spartanburg, SC, April 3, 2023.
• “Many of Lamar’s Whites Seem Proud of Attack on Children.” The Afro-American, March 17, 1970. Darlington County, SC: Lamar Riots Collection, Darlington Historical Commission and Museum.
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• Page 167 →Minchin, Timothy J. “Making Best Use of the New Laws: The NAACP and the Fight for Civil Rights in the South, 1965–1975.” The Journal of Southern History 74, no. 3 (2008): 669–70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27650232.
• Minow, Martha. “Confronting the Seduction of Choice: Law, Education, and American Pluralism.” The Yale Law Journal 120, no. 4 (2011): 814–48. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41060152.
• Moore, Winfred B., and Orville Vernon Burton, editors. Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.
• “Newspaper Clippings: ‘Freedom of Choice’ Opposes Integration Order.” Darlington County, SC: Lamar Riots Collection, Darlington Historical Commission and Museum, n.d.
• Nordheimer, Jon. “Gas Routs Whites Who Upset Buses at Carolina School,” New York Times, March 4, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/04/archives/.
• Nordheimer, Jon. “Lamar Gives Its Answer to the Courts,” New York Times, March 8, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/08/archives/.
• Nordheimer, Jon. “27 Whites, Accused of Carolina School Riot, Lauded by Neighbors,” New York Times, March 6, 1970. https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/06/archives/.
• Pearcy, Mark. “‘The Most Insidious Legacy’—Teaching about Redlining and the Impact of Racial Residential Segregation.” The Geography Teacher 17, no. 2 (2019): 44–55.
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• South Carolina Senate. “A Senate Resolution to Honor Dr. Alvin T. Heatley of Darlington County for His Outstanding Accomplishments in the Field of Education and for His Dedicated Service to Butler Heritage Foundation as Its Chairman and to the State of South Carolina,” S. 818, 121st Session (2015). https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess121_2015-2016/bills/818.htm.
• South Carolina Senate. “A Senate Resolution to Recognize an Incredible Group of South Carolina Citizens from Darlington County for Their Role in the Fight for Desegregation and for Their Outstanding Resiliency in the Face of Trauma,” Page 168 →S. 784, 123^rd Session (2019). https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess123_2019-2020/bills/784.htm.
• Stanley, Arthur W. “White Violence—Lamar, SC.” The Crisis: A Record for the Darker Races 77, no. 5 (1970): 196–97. https://books.google.com/books?id=emuSKG0gk4kC.
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• “Transcript of Nixon’s Statement on School Busing,” New York Times, March 17, 1972, 22A. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/17/archives/transcript-of-nixons-statement-on-school-busing.html.
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• US Congress (102nd). The “Southern Manifesto,” 102 Cong. Rec. 4515–4516 (1956).