Judge Waring made tough rulings in fight for racial equality

Before there was Brown v. Board, there was Briggs v. Elliott.

And there was J. Waties Waring, a white U.S. district court judge from South Carolina who, at a time when much of the country fought to maintain segregation, fought for equality.

Waring became one of South Carolina’s most controversial judicial figures in a decade-long career as a federal judge in Charleston. Waring’s rulings for racial equality on numerous issues earned him the admiration of African-Americans, but the hatred of many whites in his time.

The eighth-generation Charlestonian is credited with making some of the state’s earliest desegregation decisions in the 1940s and early ’50s. They included equalizing pay for black and white teachers; ordering the desegregation of the University of South Carolina’s law school or the creation of an equivalent black institution; and striking down the state’s all-white political primaries.

In 1951, Waring was one of three judges to hear Briggs v. Elliott, a case from Clarendon County challenging racial segregation in public schools. The only one of the three to oppose segregation, Waring wrote in a minority opinion that segregation by itself was unconstitutional, opening the door to an appeal of the case.

The Briggs case was one of five eventually combined into the historic Brown v. Board of Education case, which, at the order of the U.S. Supreme Court, struck down racial segregation in public schools.

This story was originally published November 16, 2015 at 10:19 PM with the headline "Judge Waring made tough rulings in fight for racial equality."