This article is reprinted from July 1997 and references events of a decade before.
Orangeburg County, S.C. (with its county seat the city of Orangeburg) lies between the state capital, Columbia, and the coastal city of Charleston. Until recently it was primarily agricultural but a lot of industry has moved in or sprung up. Population countywide is 80,000. Within the city limits about 15,000 people reside. Approximately 50 percent of these are black.
The city of Orangeburg is a two-college town. Claflin and South Carolina State are predominantly black and have been in existence over 100 years. Claflin is a Methodist College and S.C. State is South Carolina’s largest black public college.
There is no known Ku Klux Klan activity within the county. But in late January the city got a request from a Klan Klavern some 40 miles away for permission to march on Saturday, Feb. 7, 1987. After careful inquiry and consultation with attorneys for both county and city, it was determined that a permit had to be issued. Not to do so would give the Klan maximum publicity and, if the Klan could find the legal talent, it would have prevailed in court.
A permit was issued and the local daily newspaper (The Times and Democrat) apprised the community of this fact.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is our statewide FBI. In the past 20 years they have kept the KKK back on its heels. Chief J.P. Strom says that although the Klan claims 1,600 members in South Carolina, he doubts they have more than 200 dues-paying members out of a population of 3 million. The reason for occasional Klan marches is a desperate need to generate new membership. As one law enforcer says, “They don’t hardly have enough money to buy gas to go to meetings. I think now they join because they can’t join anything else.”
When they do march there is no recent history of lawbreaking because, Chief Strom says, “they are not violent because they know that wherever they meet, the police are going to be there, and they don’t want to go to jail.” SLED covert operations give it the knowledge of who the members are and where they live.
Political scientist William Moore of the College of Charleston has expertise in Klan activities and told me, “You can see Klan growth during a racial crisis but generally it is a movement of have-nots who tend to lack leadership skills to keep members and to keep them active. Most can’t keep up dues-paying obligations of $3 a month.”
Klansmen feel threatened by minorities. They achieve whatever pseudo legitimacy they can project with a combination of anti-communism, patriotism and Christianity. Their concentration is primarily on blacks, but there’s enough hate left over for Jews and Catholics.
So, at 1:30 Saturday afternoon they came in their decrepit vans and cars. I was there. I estimated their number at about 150. At any rate they were outmanned by the state Highway Patrol, SLED agents, sheriff’s deputies and the 34-man Orangeburg Police Department headed by Chief Gene Brant, a veteran white officer. They’d been warned to come totally disarmed and this prohibition included knives. Apparently they complied. They were told they could have no bullhorns and marched in silence. They were confined to a six-block parade route on Russell Street. They were allowed to reverse and retrek their way back to the starting point and their cars.
There were no violations of instructions except that some of them, in almost a conversational tone, asked bystanders if they’d like an application blank. I saw no takers.
Now, as to the bystanders, Dr. Albert Smith and Dr. Oscar Rogers, the two college presidents had urged their students in the strongest terms not to turn out for the event and were for the most part obeyed. The local chapter of the NAACP took the same position. Mayor Pendarvis urged that everyone stay home or, at least, away. As a result I counted less than 300 spectators, not counting the police. Some came with cameras and took a few pictures because as one black woman told me, “I’ve heard my mama talk about them.” The caravan of 30 or so cars was headed out of the county by 3:30 p.m.
At one point some teen-agers started to jeer at the polyglot procession. Chief Brant walked over to them, shook his finger and said sternly, “They’re being quiet. Now you do the same.” And the weird silence continued.
The Grand Dragon of the Klan in South Carolina was present, a Mr. Horace King. I talked to him. He was described in one paper as a “slender, mustachioed 54-year-old carpet installer.” He grew up one of 10 children of a sharecropper. He said to me, “Nobody could have been brought up worse than I was. Part of the time we didn’t have nothing to eat. We were in the fields before sunup to after sundown. Had to pick a bale of cotton a week.”
My memories of the Klan invasion of Orangeburg could be summarized as follows: Nothing was thrown. There was no exchange of views. There were no arrests. A few of the onlookers looked amused, most were solemn. The Klansmen made no effort to march. They shambled. Only five or six had the uniform. Remember, no band, not even a drum. Bunched in the middle of the procession was a group of what looked like bikers with the beer bellies and the beards. In a fight they could have been trouble. One carried a large Confederate flag.
I’m describing an Orangeburg on a Saturday afternoon when you could have heard a pin drop. No cars, no human voices. The eerie silence was only broken by the sound of shuffling feet.
Later on their eyes haunted me. Bear in mind, the purpose of the Klan is to terrify blacks and the selected whites they loathe. But these people knew they looked foolish out there in the broad daylight. They stared straight ahead, their eyes reflected defiance and they looked scared.
Attorney Austin Cunningham has been the president of five business companies and in 1988 was named Outstanding Elder Citizen of the Year for South Carolina.