What was your journey to Clemson?
Sixty years ago, a Black student from Charleston, South Carolina named Harvey Gantt wanted to study at the only college in his home state that offered a degree in his chosen field of Architecture. But he knew that no student had ever been admitted to Clemson College without filling in “white” on the application’s line for race. Clemson officials had ignored or denied the applications of the few Black applicants who previously had tried to become Clemson students.
Harvey Gantt’s journey to Clemson lasted nearly three years, through repeated rejection and stalling, an extensive federal lawsuit, the possibility of violence, and international attention. It was not just his personal journey, but a journey that represented the challenges, hopes and successes of the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s as it slowly began to bring about fundamental changes in South Carolina, the South and the country.
Background: A Segregated State
When Harvey Gantt began his college application process in 1959, schools, public transportation, parks, cemeteries, hospitals, hotels, theaters, restaurants, restrooms, waiting rooms, water fountains and other facilities in South Carolina, like in most of the South, still were segregated by race.
The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the 1954 case Brown v Board of Education declared that segregation in public schools violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, overturning the policy of “separate but equal” that had been justified by the Supreme Court’s 1896 ruling in Plessy v Ferguson. But decades of laws and local ordinances, as well as unwritten discriminatory policies and practices that were established and enforced by white leaders, continued to favor white citizens politically, economically, legally and socially.
In defiance of the Brown decision, South Carolina legislators passed new laws to circumvent the ruling and prevent federally-mandated desegregation. White schools that integrated could lose state funding and be closed. The legislation also threatened that if white colleges were closed, then the state’s only public college for Black students -- South Carolina State College in Orangeburg -- also would be closed.
Individually and in organizations known as “citizens councils,” opponents of integration used threats, intimidation, economic pressure and sometimes violence against both Black citizens and white citizens who supported it.
As South Carolina leaders sought ways to circumvent the Brown ruling and fight federally-mandated desegregation, Clemson officials asked the Board of Trustees to clarify policies and procedures related to Black employees and visitors.
Setting: Clemson College
As the 1960s began, Clemson College (not yet a university) had approximately 3,900 white male students and 100 white female students. Seventy-five percent of the students were from South Carolina and 90 percent were from the South.
There were six dorms housing almost all the unmarried male students, three housing projects for married students and no housing for unmarried women students who commuted from their homes or boarded with local residents.
Two years of basic ROTC training was mandatory for unmarried male students under age 21. The YMCA, the gym and the loggia of the main dormitory (Johnstone Hall) were the centers of extra-curricular life. Dances, concerts and intramural sports were popular campus activities. Local fraternities and sororities began as an experiment the year before.
Memorial Stadium could seat 44,000 football fans. There were two mascots – the Tiger and the Country Gentleman. Fans waved Confederate flags and sang “Dixie” at sporting events.
Clemson had no Black faculty or administrators, although from its earliest days the college had employed a small number of local Black residents to work as custodians, outdoor laborers, construction workers, cooks and cafeteria workers. As early as the 1920s, Black musicians played at some college dances. Like the Black employees, however, they used separate restroom and eating facilities as required by South Carolina law.
Harvey Gantt
Harvey Gantt was an 11-year-old living in Charleston, South Carolina with his parents and four younger sisters when the Brown v Board of Education case was decided by the Supreme Court. Briggs v Elliott, a case from nearby Clarendon County, was one of the five cases that made up the Brown case.
Around that time, Gantt began to take an interest in civil rights issues. He later joined the NAACP Youth Council. During his senior year at Burke High School, he took part in a sit-in protest demanding that Black customers be served at a Charleston store lunch counter. The protestors were arrested and charged with trespassing.
In the summer before his senior year of high school, Harvey Gantt asked for application materials from Clemson College. He wanted to study architecture and Clemson was the only college in South Carolina with an architecture program.
Knowing he wouldn’t be accepted at Clemson because of his race, Gantt didn’t apply at that time.
(from Series 11 - Robert C. Edwards Presidential Correspondence, Box 15, Folder 200)
Architecture Student, Iowa State University
Gantt was accepted at several integrated colleges outside the South. He enrolled in the architecture program at Iowa State University. The South Carolina Regional Education Board (SCREB) paid the difference in the cost for him to study in Iowa instead of at Clemson. State leaders established the SCREB in 1948 as a way to justify denying Black applicants’ admission to the state’s white public colleges even if the major they wanted was not offered at South Carolina State College.
“Will you please send me a bulletin for the 1960-61 school year. I should like the bulletin to include the different curriculums and the cost of attending Clemson for one year. Also, I am asking that you send me some applications for admission next semester or the fall of ’61.” -- Harvey Gantt to Registrar’s Office, November 2, 1960
After one semester in Iowa, Gantt wanted to return to his home state to continue his architecture studies. He sent a transfer application to Clemson in December 1960. It was denied with the excuse that the SCREB already was paying for him to attend Iowa State Univesity.
“Your application for entrance in September 1961 has been received. On inquiry, we find that the South Carolina Regional Education Board is paying, and expects to continue to pay provided you qualify, the difference in cost between in-state and out-of-state enrollment. In view of the above and your satisfactory progress at Iowa State University, we are returning your application.” -- Registrar’s Office to Harvey Gantt, January 23, 1961
Legal Counsel
After his transfer application was returned, Harvey Gantt consulted with Matthew Perry, an attorney who was legal counsel for the South Carolina NAACP and worked with the Legal Defense Fund. They first met when Perry gave a speech at Gantt’s church in 1958. Perry later assisted Gantt and the other students who took part in the Charleston lunch counter sit-in. Gantt submitted his application to Clemson again and asked to be considered for enrollment in the Fall 1961 semester.
Cornelius T. Fludd, another Burke High School graduate, who attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, also applied to transfer to Clemson at the same time. He also consulted with Matthew Perry, but eventually decided not to pursue his application to Clemson.
In June 1961, Clemson’s legal counsel suggested the school initiate background checks on Gantt and Fludd, first with local police and then with the State Law Enforcement Division (SLED).
More Applications, 1961-1962
Clemson placed Harvey Gantt’s Spring 1961 application in the “incomplete” file. After a series of delays and requests for additional application material, Clemson told him that it was too late to be considered for the Fall 1961 semester.
He applied again in December 1961, asking to be admitted for the 1962 Spring or Fall semester. With no response by June 1962, Gantt traveled to Clemson to talk with Registrar Kenneth Vickery. He received help finding Vickery’s office from a local white minister who was a member of the interracial South Carolina Council on Human Relations (SCCHR) and was acting at their request. The minister later was reprimanded by his church board for aiding Gantt.
Vickery told Gantt his application was waiting for his transcripts from Iowa. On July 2, 1962, Gantt was advised that he needed to submit a portfolio of his architecture work before his application could be reviewed.
Legal Action
On July 7, 1962, Harvey Gantt filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of South Carolina, Anderson Division. Because he was considered a minor, his father, Christopher Gantt, filed the lawsuit on his behalf.
Gantt was represented by Matthew Perry and NAACP attorneys from Greenville and New York, including Constance Baker Motley who also represented James Meredith in legal action against the University of Mississippi.
On July 9, 1962, a summons, complaint, and motion for preliminary injunction was served to Clemson President Robert C. Edwards and Registrar Kenneth Vickery. Within the week, similar papers were served to each member of the Clemson Board of Trustees and the State Superintendent of Education.
On September 6, 1962, Charles C. Wyche, U.S. District Judge for the Western District in South Carolina, denied the motion for preliminary injunction. The decision was appealed and heard in the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Virginia on September 25 and October 4, 1962.
On October 5, 1962, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request for a temporary injunction and expressed its desire that the case be heard on its merits by the District Court as soon as possible.
Behind the Scenes
In early 1961, while not publicly supporting accepting Harvey Gantt, President Edwards began working quietly with a coalition of education, business and political leaders to develop a policy of law and order in case the courts ordered a Black applicant be admitted. Several campus ministers and student leaders also began building support among students for allowing Clemson to integrate peacefully.
In early 1962, Governor Fritz Hollings told newspaper editors to begin preparing their readers for “ the inevitable” – a Black student being admitted to a previously all-white public college in South Carolina. Newspapers began to cover the Gantt case in detail. And the public began to take notice.
Meanwhile, In Mississippi
On September 10, 1962, a federal court ordered the University of Mississippi to accept James Meredith, a 28-year-old Air Force veteran, as the school’s first Black student. Mississippi’s governor vowed he would never allow the school to be integrated and personally blocked Meredith’s enrollment. He was supported by hundreds of state policemen, sheriffs, students and others who converged on the campus.
To protect Meredith, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent 123 deputy federal marshals, 316 U.S. border guards and 97 federal prison guards. They were attacked with guns, bricks and bottles. As violence escalated in late September, President John F. Kennedy sent more than 16,000 federal troops. Two people were killed, 28 marshals were shot and 160 people were injured.
Meredith finally enrolled on October 1, 1962. Federal troops remained on campus to protect him until he graduated in 1963.
In the midst of the Gantt lawsuit, the situation in Mississippi had a tremendous impact on Clemson and its supporters. Many people who opposed integrating Clemson more strongly opposed the violence and destruction, and federal involvement, that took place in Mississippi. They called for avoiding a similar situation in South Carolina.
Legal Action Continues
Harvey Gantt v. The Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina was heard by Judge Wyche in Anderson, South Carolina, November 19-21, 1962. Clemson’s defense was based on two points:
• “We contend that Harvey Gantt has never completed an application for admission to Clemson and that he has not been denied admission.”
• “We contend that his application has been processed and treated in every other way in precisely the same manner as have all other applicants similarly situated without regard to race.”
On December 22, 1962, Judge Wyche again ruled that Harvey Gantt be denied admission to Clemson, arguing that he failed to complete application requirements. He also ruled that the college’s actions in the Gantt case were not based on race.
Victory
The case was appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court. On January 16, 1963, the Fourth Circuit Court reversed the lower court decision and ordered Harvey Gantt admitted to Clemson College for the Spring semester. Clemson asked the Fourth Circuit Court, and then the U.S. Supreme Court, for a stay of the enforcement of the decision. Both requests were denied.
On January 22, 1963, in compliance with the ruling of the Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit Court, Judge Wyche issued the order that Harvey Gantt be admitted to Clemson College.
After the final legal ruling, several members of the state legislature debated closing Clemson to prevent Gantt from enrolling. But, few others supported that action. On January 24, newly inaugurated Governor Donald Russell, State Senator Marion Gressette and President Edwards all held press conferences asking that there be no violence or disruption.
Gressette was head of the Gressette Committee, also known as the School Segregation Committee, because it dealt with all the state’s racial issues. His participation was significant in sending a message that there would be no support for any group blocking Gantt’s enrollment.
Security Plan
A detailed security plan, developed after studying the situation at the University of Mississippi, already was in place by January 1963. More than 100 policemen, highway patrolmen and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) officers were assigned to Clemson’s campus. But Governor Russell refused U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s offer to send federal troops.
Students were issued identification cards. Reporters and other outsiders also had to show identification to be on campus.
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January 28, 1963
Only new and transfer students reported to Clemson on Monday, January 28, a few days before Spring semester classes began. Harvey Gantt left Charleston early in the morning with his father and minister and arrived at Clemson around 1 pm.
Gantt first went to the Registrar’s Office in Tillman Hall where he offically enrolled. Then he spoke to the gathered media outside. Next, he met with Dean Harlan McClure in the School of Architecture and then with President Edwards. Last he went to his room in Dormitory B (Johnstone Hall). By his own request, he wasn’t assigned a roommate.
More than 150 members of the press from around the country, including three Black reporters, were in Clemson to cover Harvey Gantt’s enrollment. They followed Gantt to each location. Over a hundred students also followed the crowd before they lost interest.
With Dignity?
Overall, Harvey Gantt’s enrollment at Clemson sixty years ago was peaceful. Local, state, national and international media outlets ran stories about the day, most reflecting The Saturday Evening Post’s famous headline “Integration With Dignity.”
But there also was an undercurrent of opposition from within the campus community and outside it. College and state leaders received many letters opposing Harvey Gantt and integrating Clemson. And many letters of support focused only on accepting the “inevitable” and preventing disruption and violence.
Gantt was followed by plainclothes security guards for several months. He has recalled a few incidents of harassment, but has preferred to focus attention on the overwhelming welcome, comfort, and support he received from Black Clemson employees and other Black local community members.
Graduation and Beyond
Harvey Gantt completed his degree in Architecture and graduated from Clemson with honors in 1965.
He went on to earn a master’s degree at MIT and have a successful career as an architect and politician, serving two terms as the first Black mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. His wife, Lucinda Brawley Gantt, was the second Black student and first Black woman to enroll at Clemson.
By the time Harvey Gantt graduated from Clemson, all of South Carolina’s public colleges and twelve out of twenty-five private colleges were integrated. Clemson area public K-12 schools did not comply with the Brown decision until 1966.
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Digital exhibit created by Susan G. Hiott, Curator of Exhibits, Clemson University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives, March 2023
This virtual exhibit is based on a physical exhibit in R.M. Cooper Library from January - March 2023 and primarily only includes materials on display in that exhibit. Many more documents related to this topic can be found in the Clemson University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives, including the following collections used in the preparation of this exhibit: Office of Admissions and Registration (CU Archives Series 10), Robert C. Edwards Correspondence (CU Archives Series 11), Office of the Vice-President for Business and Finance Records (CU Archives Series 87), Edgar A. Brown Papers (Mss 91), The Tiger newspaper.
Also used in preparation of this exhibit: Transcript of Oral History Interview with Harvey B. Gantt, January 6, 1986. Interview C-0008. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) [accessed online through “Documenting the American South” website]