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| Joseph Margolis in 1956 From The State newspaper September 9, 1956 |
As South Carolina's largest public university, the University of South Carolina naturally played an important role in the civil rights movement within the state. In desegregating, the university avoided the sort of mob violence that was seen in many other other states (most famously in Mississippi but also in Georgia and Alabama). State politicians have celebrated this as "integration with dignity," an achievement they credit to the state's culture. The view was pithily summarized by the first student to desegregate a public university in the state (former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt): "If you can't appeal to the morals of a South Carolinian, you can appeal to his manners."
South Carolina politicians certainly should be celebrated for avoiding violence, but an examination of the desegregation of higher education reveals a more complicated, troublesome, and often undignified process. While working to prevent political violence, state politicians also employed heavy-handed methods to suppress dissenting voices. The best-known case is the 1955 dismissal of Chester C. Travelstead, dean of the college of education. Less well-known is the case of philosophy professor Joseph Margolis. I'll discuss what happened to him in this blogpost.
Margolis was not an obvious target for segregationist politicians. He had been hired in fall 1956 as part of a general effort to improve academics and scholarship at the university. The arrival of Margolis and eleven other new professors was announced in an article in The State newspaper that included their photographs beneath the approving title "Many-degreed professors come to the university."
The USC job was Margolis's second. He had received a bachelor's degree in Romance languages at Drew University, but he then turned to studying philosophy, receiving a M.A degree from Columbia University in 1950 and then a PhD three years later. He had been teaching at Long Island University since 1947 and had been promoted to assistant professor in 1954, after he earned his PhD. (Allen University professor Edwin Hoffman also studied at Columbia and then taught at Long Island University, but I haven't found any evidence that the two knew each other.)
Had they examined his background, South Carolina politicians, who were almost uniformly strongly supportive of the military, would have positively noted that Margolis was a decorated army veteran. Before beginning his graduate studies, Margolis had volunteered in the army. Not only had he served in a paratrooper unit during World War Two, but he had been wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, and his twin brother had died while serving in France.
Margolis's job application gave no indication of political controversy. His dissertation "The Art of Freedom: An Essay in Ethical Theory" was on ethics, a topic he explored in his first journal publication "Some Famous Ghosts in Ethical Theory." By the time he arrived in South Carolina, he had published a number of journal articles, including one on the philosophy of art, a developing interest. Between these publications and his Ivy League degree, Margolis's hire did much to advance administrators' goal of improving scholarship at the university.
Almost certainly no South Carolina politician took the time to read any of Margolis's work, but if they had, the only article that would have been of more than scholarly interest was the one titled "That All Men Are Created Equal." In it, Margolis interrogates the idea of equality among mankind. He observes that the idea is commonly held even though people are not equal in any simple sense since they clearly exhibit different levels of talent and ability. He proceeds to examine the ways in which people can be understood to be equal.
The broad contour of his argument was one state politicians could recognize. Although they had not engaged with the idea in any serious, intellectual way, politicians had been arguing for generations that state laws and social practices had to recognize the purported "reality" that Black were inferior to whites even though people of both races were recognized as equal under federal law.
Even the manner in which Margolis framed his argument would have appealed to them. To illustrate his point, he began by quoting a speech by Stalin in which he makes makes the seemingly contradictory statement that Marxism means equality of all but also starts with the assumption that people are not equal in "tastes and requirements." Certainly South Carolina's staunchly anti-communist politicians approved of university professors criticizing communist ideology.
Margolis attracted politicians' attention in December 1957 (his second year at the university) when he published an article titled "The Role of the Segregationist." In it, Margolis lays out an unusual assessment of the battle over desegregation. He argues that white segregationists are not so much actually resisting desegregation as futilely playing a theatrical role in national politics. In his view, the Supreme Court, with its recent decisions declaring segregationist laws unconstitutional, had forced southern white conservatives to rapidly face the reality of the unjust nature of segregation. They had not been given enough time to come to terms with their views, so they were falling back on a traditional role that had been established during the Civil War: performing doomed resistance to the federal government. In turn, the federal government was responding by working even harder to force state governments in the south to comply with court decisions. The net result was that everyone acting in a way that was emotionally satisfying but made genuine reform and productive compromise nearly impossible.
Margolis certainly was not sympathetic to segregation, and he wrote several passages that would have angered any segregationist reading them. However, he was also somewhat critical in his assessment of desegregation. He acknowledged white southerners' "legitimate hatred for the revenge of Reconstruction" – a remarkable statement as this "legitimate" hatred had led to wide-spread extralegal political violence that included the death of hundreds of freedmen. After remarking that white southerners cannot "simply make an about-face now and clasp the Negro to [their] bosom," he parenthetically remarks that "no one asks for this, of course," although only a few years later Martin Luther King would call on Americans to do just that. Margolis must have been surprised at the political movement that King and other Black leaders later created as he wrote that Blacks' "impulse to organize" had been slowed by the "inexperience of [their] race."
Regardless, all nuances in Margolis's writing were lost on South Carolina politicians. Margolis published in the American Association of University Professors Bulletin. This was certainly not a periodical regularly read by politicians, but it attracted attention in South Carolina after the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper called attention to it. By early January (only a month after the article was published), a number of state newspapers including the Barnwell People-Sentinel and the Summerville Scene were publishing articles condemning Margolis. The original Post and Courier article was written by William D. Workman. Workman was an influential journalist who worked closely with state politicians to fight desegregation. He almost certainly wrote his article with the intent to bring public condemnation down on Margolis.
Margolis soon found himself at odds with some of the most powerful political figures in the state. In late December, the Speaker of the South Carolina House Solomon Blatt wrote to the acting university president Robert Sumwalt concerning Margolis's employment. Blatt wrote that "something should be done" about Margolis before the start of spring term because otherwise "the University is going to be in terrible shape and we might run into trouble with the legislature." This was no idle warning. Blatt was an important, politically powerful alumnus who had long wielded control over the university. Blatt was not the only politician to get involved on the issue. Similar views were expressed by U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, Governor George B. Timmerman, and former governor James F. Byrnes.
University officials obliged state politicians and the press. In February, Margolis's department chair (Kershaw Walsh) recommended that Margolis's yearly contract not be renewed after disingenuously reporting that he was not getting along with his colleagues. When word of the non-renewal reached the faculty, several influential professors (chemistry professor Delos DeTar, physics professor Anthony French, math professor Tomlinson Fort, and engineering professor Rufus Fellers) protested that this was a violation of national standards. Some even threatened to resign if the administration followed through on the matter.
President Sumwalt held fast to the plan, and Margolis was dismissed from his job in a manner that validated the concerns of the faculty. Margolis was told that, in accordance with accepted practice, he would be allowed a hearing concerning his dismissal, but before this occurred, William Workman reported in the Post and Courier that "Prof. Margolis will not be at the University next year." Margolis evidently recognized that the writing was on the wall. By May, he had arranged short-term employment at the University of California at Berkeley and requested a leave of absence. His request became moot as the trustees approved of his dismissal a month later.
The protests against Margolis's dismissal yielded little substance. Nobody followed through on their threat to resign. Margolis requested that the American Association of University Professors investigate whether the university had followed recommended practices for dismissing university faculty. Despite the egregious nature of the administration's actions, the association reported an inconclusive finding and made no public remarks on the issue. While Margolis's dismissal was celebrated by the Post and Courier, the campus newspaper The Gamecock took no notice of the incident. The city newspaper The State simply reported that Margolis would be teaching at Northwestern University over the summer and at Berkeley in the fall. Overall, events demonstrated that politicians were free to dismiss dissenting USC faculty.
Margolis's employment at the University of South Carolina continued to be a political issue even after he left. He had been hired while Donald S. Russell was serving as university president. The year after Margolis was dismissed, Russell ran for governor. Although, as president, Russell had worked hard behind the scenes to effectively limit desegregation, he was criticized for his record. A political advertisement published in The State called him a "socialistic 'do-gooder'." The article by Margolis, who was described as "[a]nother Russell employee," was cited as evidence of Russell's "socialistic" views. Russell lost the election, although his record on segregation played only a minor role. He was defeated by Fritz Hollings who held moderate views on racial issues. This was only a minor setback for him as he won the gubernatorial election after Hollings's term in office ended. Within South Carolina, the whole matter of Margolis's employment was soon forgotten.
Margolis too appears to have quickly moved beyond his experience in South Carolina. Ultimately, he enjoyed a successful academic career, publishing over thirty books. After holding a series of short-term academic positions, he was hired by Temple University in 1967. He remained there until his death in 2021. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a length obituary about him, but it gave no mention of his experience in South Carolina.
Margolis's last word on South Carolina appears to have been an article he published in winter 1958, while teaching at Berkeley. Titled "The American Negro and the Issue of Segregation," the article describes what Margolis viewed as the significant features of racial segregation in the south especially with a view towards comparing the practice with racial issues concerning people in other countries such as India, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The article reads as a rebuke of segregationists: while many attempted to justify segregation by pointing to racial conflict in other countries, Margolis concluded that these comparisons were superficial and did not amount to a "cogent defense."
The most pointed remark Margolis made in the article was one unnoticed by most readers. Although he had been dismissed over the summer, he gave as his professional affiliation "on leave of absence from the University of South Carolina."
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| Margolis's Author's Bio for his 1958 article From “The American Negro and the Issue of Segregation.” |
Select Publications by Margolis
1. “The American Negro and the Issue of Segregation.” The American Scholar 28, no. 1 (1958): 73–79.
2. “Some Famous Ghosts in Ethical Theory.” The Journal of Philosophy 51, no. 19 (1954): 549–59.
3. "Reviewed Work: Feeling and Form; a Theory of Art Developed from Philosphy in a New Key by Susanne K. Langer." The Journal of Philosophy 52, no. 11 (1955): 291–96.
4. “‘That All Men Are Created Equal.’” The Journal of Philosophy 52, no. 13 (1955): 337–46.
5. “In the Name of Human Finitude: An Examination of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Realism and Political Problems.” The Journal of Philosophy 53, no. 8 (1956): 276–84.
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