Three months passed, and Turner said nothing more about the book. Then, in May, one of the College janitors, told McMillan that he had heard the professor had been dismissed. A cook for a local white family said she had heard a similar rumor.

The next morning, May 6, McMillan got a letter from the president: "I am instructed by the Board of Trustees to notify you that your contract of employment, which expires June 30, 1953, will not be renewed."

Neither the chairman of the History Department nor the College dean knew of McMillan's dismissal before he showed them the letter. The board of trustees would not let him appear before it to make an appeal, nor would it let him file a formal letter of complaint. "Write your letter to the president," said the secretary of the board. "If he sees fit, he will turn it over to us."

Book Draws Comment

Meanwhile, McMillan's book had made an impression. Its voice was not loud, but some heard it. Said the daily Columbia Record: "This book should be read by every South Carolinian regardless of race. It should be required reading in schools. It should be publicized from one end of the State to the other.... The facts which McMillan describes should be a source of deep shame to every resident of the Palmetto State, not so much because the conditions as he describes them exist, but because we are, for the most part, totally ignorant of them...."

Throughout last summer, McMillan sought action on his case. An appeal to the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools brought only the following answer: "...this Association does not have the time or the staff to investigate cases of individual misunderstanding between professors and administrations...."

Today, a year after his dismissal, Lewis McMillan has still been unsuccessful in his appeal. Presidents of the other Negro colleges have been warned that he is a "troublemaker," and they will not hire him. He now works with his wife in her small wholesale cosmetics business.

McMillan was fired because there is no such thing as a tenure system in the "glorified high schools" that are the average deep-South Negro college. For tenure would violate the classical Southern tradition of denying the Negro the right to question white authority. A corollary to this principle is the institution of the Publication of this book, "Negro Higher Education in the State of South Carolina," brought down the wrath of a college president and caused the firing of its author, Lewis McMillan, a professor of History. The book, a documentary study of educational opportunities in the South, was published at McMillan's own expense.

"good Negro" boss who "knows his place."

The book, cause of all the controversy, has already had some effects, however. Some of the worst of the dirt and filth it describes has been cleaned up. More important, more attention is focused upon the Negro colleges of South Carolina than over before.

Court Ends Problem

Now, finally, the Supreme Court's decision outlawing segregation will eliminate this whole problem at one stroke. It will give the Southern Negro access to the education without which he can never hope to achieve equal status. It will eliminate the despotic Negro school administrator, and it will force the passing of the untrained Negro public school teacher. And the little, privately supported Negro college will lose its raison d'etre.

But as the Court has recognized, implementation of its ruling will be difficult. The mentality that bred segregation has not yet died. For legal decisions cannot eliminate apathetic, even hostile state legislatures. And they can only slowly conquer the fear that creates men like Benner C. Turner.