Plan B Forum

On Waties Waring: Charleston Civil Rights Hero Stood Against the Entire South: Live From the Roasterie CXLV: April 21, 2014

Brian Hicks: Charleston civil rights hero stood against the entire South: "Waties Waring and his wife, Elizabeth, were playing canasta...

...in their living room when the first brick crashed through the window. Shattered glass flew across the room as another projectile hit the front door. The Warings dove for the floor, certain they had heard gunfire. It was 9 p.m. on Oct. 9, 1950, and the home of a federal judge was under attack.

He had always assumed it would come to this. The Warings had been receiving threatening phone calls almost every night for the past few weeks. Recently, men had accosted Elizabeth on the street, called her a "witch." One day a man came to the door with a petition calling for the judge's impeachment. He said he was from the Ku Klux Klan. And seven months earlier, someone had burned a cross in his yard. It was clear that a lot of people wanted Julius Waties Waring off the bench and out of Charleston - no matter what.

For years, Judge Waring had joked that no one in Charleston would speak to him on the street save for lawyers, and they only did it because they were afraid not to. His hometown had shunned him, exiled him from its prestigious clubs. His friends acted as if he did not exist, and some of his own family publicly ridiculed him. Locals claimed he had been ostracized for the sin of divorce. To be sure, divorce was not even legal in the state at the time, and it had long been a path to social exclusion in Charleston. Waring had not only left his socially connected wife - he then had the audacity to marry a Yankee. But in truth, much of the animosity toward Waring was simply the Old South fighting for a lost cause with its dying breath.

This week, a statue to Waring will be unveiled in the park behind the federal courthouse. The monument is a nod to an unsung hero who orchestrated the end of segregation on the 60th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. It was a ruling that owed everything to Waring. In the five years leading up to the attack on his home, Waring had done something no one thought possible in the South. He had eliminated segregation in his courtroom, he had declared that black teachers deserved the same pay as their white counterparts. And worst of all, he had declared the state's insular Democratic primary open to black voters. Waring believed that the rally cry of Southern politicians - "separate but equal" - was inherently unequal, and he was trying to change that. The reaction was swift and harsh. State officials asked that he be removed from the bench. Southern congressmen threatened impeachment. Now they were attacking his wife, his home. But Waring was not a man easily intimidated. ... " see link for the rest of the story, its worth it.