When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law 43 years ago, life didn't change much in segregated Spartanburg.
The law prohibited discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants and other public accommodations. It also outlawed discrimination in employment and authorized the attorney general to bring suits to enforce school integration.
This was the strongest civil rights legislation in almost 100 years. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law July 2, 1964.
The law was expected to put an end to segregation, but it didn't. A few local establishments integrated, but not all.
"Integration of public accommodations may have been the law, but segregation was the practice," said Warren Carson, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina Upstate. "I remember segregated theaters in 1968, so there were still barriers."
Carson grew up just over the state line in Tryon, N.C. He and other local residents said change was slow across the region. Several years earlier, in 1960, local black students held a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter downtown, but their efforts had little impact.
The Spartanburg Herald published a large article about Johnson signing the law the following day. Another article on local reaction said the law would have little effect in Spartanburg because most public accommodations had integrated voluntarily a year earlier.
Black residents, however, said the article was misleading because there wasn't widespread integration in public accommodations at the time.
"That is wishful thinking," said George Wideman, a former educator. "It took a long time to get things straight."
At the time, Wideman was a teacher and assistant principal at Lincoln High School, a former all-black high school on the city's west side.
"Freedom of choice allowing black students to go to white schools didn't start until 1968, so things weren't really integrated."
Melissa Walker, assistant professor of history at Converse College, said change was slow because no one was eager to be the first to change. She said it almost became a game of wait and see.
"People didn't want trouble, but they didn't want to embrace desegregation," she said.
Reaction to the law also was slow. Over the weeks that followed, the South Carolina branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People tested the law by sending black residents to establishments across the state, including in Spartanburg and Greenville. The NAACP said most of the white establishments served the black customers, according to an article in the Spartanburg Herald.
An opponent requested the use of the Spartanburg Courthouse lawn to protest the law, but his request was denied. Later, he joined a group of Ku Klux Klan members in a demonstration outside of Gaffney.
Other opponents were more subtle in their unhappiness with the law. They chose to set up a local office to support the presidential hopes of George Wallace, governor of Alabama and a staunch segregationist at the time. In 1963, Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation. Wallace decided later that year it was better for him to remain governor than focus on the presidency.
The Civil Rights Act brought more immediate changes in other areas of the country, and changes accelerated with the passage of the Voting Rights Act a year later.
"More change comes with the evolving economic and political power of black people," said Joe Dunn, chairman of the Department of History and Politics and Charles A. Dana professor at Converse College. "Black people started saying, 'If you don't integrate, then you will not get our dollars.'"
Dunn, who teaches about civil rights and has written an article about it, said change was going to happen. He said Southerners learned about the economic power of black people in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala. Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for not giving her seat to a white man, and black people boycotted the public transportation system. Their efforts almost bankrupted the bus system.
"When you have black economic power and add political power with a large number of people, it means power." Dunn said. "We see it today in major cities."
Dunn said the law was symbolic and had a strong moral impact. He said people had to take a look at right and wrong.
"It had moral power because people could say segregation was morally wrong," he said. "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could play the moral card, and it had a tremendous impact, but change was going to happen regardless of the law."